Fitting dinner into the day

It's not uncommon (historically) for children to eat first, and separately, and food kids like, and then for the adults and teens and guests to eat a little later, at leisure, and not have to worry about whether their food is something the kids would like.

I have more energy in the morning but I don't always want to use it thinking about dinner. When I do, I do better. 🙂 If I start bread and put something out to thaw, or better yet mix up a casserole or put something in the crock pot—at least a sauce or something easy like ground beef or chicken in barbecue sauce—then dinner is easy and if plans change, the thing that was started earlier can go in the fridge. . . . .
We've never made our kids wait for dinner. If they're hungry, they can snack.

—Sandra, when kids were still home

SandraDodd.com/eating/dinner
photo by Sandra Dodd

Reading (parts of) everything

"What unschooling really is" can't easily be defined, because some people use it vaguely, admitting they don't understand.

Parents need to understand their own unschooling clearly enough to defend it. It might take a while, and discussions can help people see it better, but discussions are about information and resources, so read everything you can find, and hold every piece of info up to the light, overlay the ideas on your own family and beliefs, and adopt slowly and carefully, any changes you make.

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What's above was adapted from a recent facebook post. I was referencing that particular discussion, and by "read everything you can find," I meant the links left there, which are mostly from my site and from Joyce Fetteroll's.

Reading everying you can find would work well with Just Add Light and Stir. If you're reading e-mail on a phone, click under "You can read this post online." There will be a randomizer, at the bottom.

Better yet, open the blog from a computer and use the randomizer or the image tags. Tags will let you see many of whatever you've chosen—posts good enough to repeat or re-run; gates; waterfalls; paths; cats doing cool things; kids doing cool things; dads; playgrounds.... The tags are a beautiful and soothing randomizing feature.

My favorite definition of unschooling is:

Unschooling is creating and maintaining an atmosphere in which natural learning can flourish.

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SandraDodd.com/readalittle
photo by Cara Jones

the Purpose of Cake

A mom once asked a long question, ending with:

The cleaning up of making a cake is just part of the whole process of cake making—isn't it? Am I making any sense?

Joyce Fetteroll responded:

Yes, your question makes perfect sense.

It might help you see it more clearly if you ask yourself what your goal is. Is the goal to have a clean kitchen or the experience of making a cake? If the goal is a clean kitchen, then it's better not to have children! 😉

There was more, and it's good. Sweet and messy.

SandraDodd.com/chores/cake
photo by Sandra Dodd, of little Devyn's cupcake art
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Links and connections

Sarah Anderson-Thimmes wrote:

TV topics are a great conversation link between my kids and schooled kids. They can talk about favorite movies or shows or actors or musicians. These topics are much better than, "What grade are you in?"
. . . .

It connects us generationally. My kids can talk to their grandparents about shows they mutually like and they can watch them together. My grandparents don't go to the skating rinks and sledding hills and zoos with us, but they can watch Mary Poppins with my kids and laugh and bond together.

—Sarah Anderson-Thimmes

from a much longer list of Why I Love TV
at SandraDodd.com/t/learning

image is from The Simpsons,
and is in reference to a Leonardo da Vinci's
Vitruvian Man

Privacy and dignity

This regards the way I helped make peace between kids when they argued:

The reason I used the method of speaking to each child separately, and ME going back and forth, rather than summoning them to where I was is that I was trying to comfort them and help them be safe and to be better people—people they would be glad to be. They don't like it when they're all frustrated. If I could tweak sibling behavior and comfort the aggrieved child, and then go to the other one with comfort and ideas, each was better prepared, in private, without a witness knowing what he was "supposed to do" the next time. That was important to me, to give them some privacy and some dignity, and some time to think without other people looking at them or praising my suggestion, or criticizing them further.

SandraDodd.com/peace/fighting
There's more on the topic on Joyce's site: Siblings Fighting
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Nice is better

Change takes time. Don't send the bill. Don't "be nice" for two months and then say "I was nice and you weren't any nicer to me!" Be nice because being nice is better than not being nice. Do it for yourself and your children.

SandraDodd.com/betterpartner
photo by Ester Siroky
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Finding more excitement

A mom once wrote:

I am ready for his Obsession with these [Yu-Gi-Oh] cards to be gone.

A dad named Lyle responded:

He's learning about the cards. He wants to learn to duel. He's found something that fascinates him, and has a deep passion for, and you don't want to help. I think you're the one with the obsession.

The mom:

We all went to the [aquarium] over Valentines Weekend! Learned a lot about Fish and Water, and wildlife.

Lyle:

Cool! Sounds great! And when you can show the same excitement about every other thing he does, you will be officially deschooled!

You're still looking for the learning, and I know that's a tough habit to get out of. But you can do it, with a lot of conscious effort on your part. Going to the aquarium is not better than dueling or playing a GameBoy. Different, but not better. I'll bet that the kids he knows talk more about dueling or video games than they do about fish and wildlife. He's in touch with what goes on around him, the people he knows and the things that they do. Including you. He enjoys Yu-Gi-Oh AND the aquarium. If you try real hard, you can do that too!

🙂
Lyle

That's the end of something longer, and interesting, at Deschooling and Games

The image is from an "Aquarium" page on a large Yu-Gi-Oh wiki page, which probably didn't exist when Lyle was writing to the mom quoted above. You can see the word "aquarium" translated into several languages, and more, there.

Figuring out what helps

Pam Sorooshian wrote:

Think about how you feel when you are "out of sorts." What will help you? What do you want from your family? I doubt it would help you for your husband to threaten, "If you behave badly again I'm going to take away your cell phone." You WANT to feel better, happier, nicer, right? What you need is support for doing what you, deep down, want for yourself.

Same with your kids. Lots of times that means to help them have the chance to be alone to recenter themselves.... Your kids don't KNOW yet what helps them—your role is to help them figure it out.

—Pam Sorooshian

Attentive parenting
photo by Julie Daniel

Let things flow

Pam Sorooshian wrote:

What's your favorite thing to do? Watch movies? Read a book? Garden? Go to Disneyland? Why don't you just do that all the time and nothing else? I mean — if it is your favorite, then doesn't it give you higher utility than anything else? Why do you ever stop doing it?

The answer is that as you do more and more of something, the marginal utility of doing even more of it, goes down. As its marginal utility goes down, other things start to look better and better.

When you restrict an activity, you keep the person at the point where the marginal utility is really high.

—Pam Sorooshian

Economics of Restricting TV Watching of Children
(and it's not just about tv)
photo by Sandra Dodd

Positive and sweet

Find beauty and hope wherever it can be found. Say and think sweet things about your children. If people can be positive and sweet, it doesn't matter so much where they do it. Being better is better.

Deposit the good stuff.
photo by Jesper Conrad
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Lots of little yeses

One big okay is a problem.
One giant "I'm changing everything" can make kids nervous, and could undermine their confidence in the mom's regard for them.

Depending how limited it was before, the mom shouldn't be surprised if there is a binge, or a frenzy. So go easy, and keep reading other things about unschooling, gradually, gently.

SandraDodd.com/betterchoice (Making the Better Choice)

Lots of little yeses are better than one big one (both for the mom and the kids).

Lots of little decisions are better than one unsustainable big one.

SandraDodd.com/problems/toofar
photo by Janine Davies

Happier and more positive

When people ask about being happier and more positive, the answer can't help but be the same. BE happier. BE positive.

But as with any accounting (think a bank account), withdrawals deplete your reserves. Every negative word, thought or deed takes peace and positivity out of your account.

Cynicism, sarcasm—which some people enjoy and defend—are costly, if your goal is peace. Biochemically / emotionally (those two are separate in language, but physically they are the same), calmer is healthier. I don't know of any physical condition that is made better by freaking out or crying hard or losing sleep or reciting fears. I know LOTS of things that are made better—entire lives, and lives of grandchildren not yet born—by thoughtful, mindful clarity.

It's okay for mothers to be calm. There are plenty of childless people to flip out. Peek out every few days, from your calm place, and check whether their ranting freak-out is making the world a more peaceful place. If not, be grateful you weren't out there ignoring (or frightening) your children while helping strangers fail to create peace from chaos.

SandraDodd.com/factors might be helpful.

SandraDodd.com/issues might, too.

Source of writing, on facebook
photo by Karen James

Finding and using tools

Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

The basic idea of unschooling is that we learn what we need by using it. And that's exactly how kids learn to speak English. Toddlers aren't trying to learn English. They're using a tool (English) to get what they want: which might be juice or a hug or picked up to see better. The English tool is more efficient than other tools they've been using: pointing or crying or wishing. And because English is more efficient, they use it more. And because they use it more, the get better at it. Kids learn English (and everything else) as a *side effect* of living and pursuing what they enjoy.

The theory of school is that someone can't be an engineer until they know everything an engineer needs to know.

But that's not now people learn best. Someone who loves to build things learns how to build things by doing what they love: building things! And since they love to build, they'll be fascinated by things that connect to building. They may be fascinated by history of building or artistic design in building or how structures built with different materials behave or the physics of balance and load distribution and so on and so on.

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/joyce/products
photo by Roya Dedeaux

The joys of unschooling

My goal isn't to help parents feel better about their parenting. I want to help their kids experience the joys of unschooling. That is misunderstood by some parents who think I want to treat them gently as though they were my children. I want to help them (adults that they are) to treat their children as gently as they can.

SandraDodd.com/notyourmom
photo by Cátia Maciel

Illuminating the world

I remember being in school and asking "Why do we need to know this?" I asked it, other kids asked it, and one answer I remember was when I asked my Algebra II teacher, when I was 15, why we needed to know how to figure out square roots. He said it was in case we wanted to figure out how far away stars were. I said, "Don't we have people to do that?"

I didn't care how far away stars were. I thought it should be left to those who really are curious or have a need to know. That need to know the distance of stars has never been good for anything at all yet, as far as I know.

It wasn't long after that (six years) that I myself was a teacher in that same school. Luckily for me and for all the world, I wasn't teaching algebra or astronomy. But still I would be asked "Why do we have to learn this?" Sometimes I gave a serious answer, and sometimes a philosophical answer. Sometimes I made light of it. Sometimes the honest answer was "You don't have to learn this, but I have to try to teach it so I can get paid." Or "Only some of you will need to know it, but they don't know which ones yet, so I have to say it to everybody."

Then one day, the question came phrased a new and better way: "What is this GOOD for?" The answer I gave then changed my life and thinking. I said quickly "So you can get more jokes." I think we were reading a simplified Romeo and Juliet at the time. I could've gone into literature and history and fine arts, but the truth is that the best and most immediate use of most random learning is that it illuminates the world. The more we know, the more jokes we will get.

To Get More Jokes
photo by Sandra Dodd
(click the photo if you don't know what it is)

Know what you mean

Favorite response to “What about socialization?”

I say "What do you mean?"

Usually the question is asked by rote, the same way adults ask stranger-children "Where do you go to school?" Most people just blink and stammer, because they don't even know what they meant when they asked it.

—Sandra Dodd

From a questionnaire, bottom of some questions
(with links to other sets of questions and answers)
photo by Colleen Prieto

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There was an error in the e-mail version, which went to this related page Those pages are better linked back and forth now, too.

One of those people

So they say, "Okay, well I have heard and I've read that people have done... something? and then they get good results?" That's not enough to move on, but it's enough to read a little and try a little. Because they've seen other people say it worked, they can start trying it. And still they ought to be skeptical. Everybody ought to be skeptical about anything this crazy.

So see how it's going at your house. Tweak it. Move more toward a good relationship. Move toward being more present, and then you start to understand. Then you start to be one of the people who's saying, "I tried this, and this was the result I got: my kids seem to be getting along better. My kids seem to be interested in more things. They're curious. They're conversational. They can deal with younger people, and older people."

SandraDodd.com/crazy
photo by Alex Polikowsky,
of a girl who is now off at university

"I hope you don't mind"

Dylan isn't twelve anymore; Deb Lewis still writes beautifully.

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Yesterday was David's birthday and we had guests. I left dishes in the sink when I went to bed. I got up early with the dogs but then went back to bed. When I got up later Dylan had done the dishes. He said "I know you really like to do the dishes mom, so I hope you don't mind, but I just felt like doing them."

Dylan is twelve.

I *know* living life joyfully makes a difference in the way our kids see us and the way they see the little things that make life better.

—Deb Lewis

SandraDodd.com/chores/tales
photo by Janine Davies
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Gentle and sweet

Be as gentle and sweet as you can be. Practice breathing and making the better choice, so you will be confident that you are being thoughtful.

Those small tools can build strong relationships.

SandraDodd.com/parentingpeacefully

Quote is from an interview in 2023
photo by Roya Dedeaux

Better ways to be

This is post #5004!
#5003, yesterday's, had links that didn't work, so I'm back with a thank you for reading, an apology for yesterday's problem (my fault completely), and a repeat, with working links (I HOPE!).

If you usually read from e-mail or on a phone, maybe visit from a computer or iPad so you can play with the randomizer and "Themes in the Images" (tags of photo elements). I'm not sure how it shows from other tablets, but the iPad works.

Thank you for reading!

(I had intended to make a big deal of the 5,000th post, but it came in the midst of me keeping grandkids for five days while their parents were out of state, so this is a small deal, about #5004.)


"Being there for and with the family" seems so simple and yet many parents miss out on it without even leaving the house. Maybe it's because of English. Maybe we think we're "being there with our family" just because we can hear them in the other room. There is a special kind of "being" and a thoughtful kind of "with" that are necessary for unschooling and mindful parenting to work.

Being an unschooling parent Being flexible and creative and patient Being a mindful parent Being supportive Being at peace Being with... Being aware Being fun Being as

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SandraDodd.com/being
photo by Sandra Dodd