Dark corners, lit up

"Don't let fear and worry drive your decisions and interactions with your kids, though. If you focus on joy and partnership, dark corners won't seem dark. You and your kids will be able to illuminate them together through open dialogue and trust."

—Jo Isaac

SandraDodd.com/partners/child
photo by Erika Ellis

Distraction can be a blessing

If someone is flipping out, distraction can be a blessing. If the problem is insurmountable, they will get right back to it. If the problem was that the problem itself was creating feedback and a small thing had turned into a roar, distraction can break the tension and let them breathe and relax, or even better—to laugh and to slump until some adrenaline can pass.

The reason I'm telling this sudden story is that in another topic Meredith wrote:

I've been listening to a podcast called The Hilarious World of Depression which is all interviews with comics who have various kinds of depression. In one episode (I don't recall which) they talk about distraction, and how it's actually a helpful strategy for a lot of people with anxiety, depression, and the like. That was nice to hear. There's a lot of pressure on people to journal and talk and ruminate and Not try to be distracted, but it turns out for some people distraction is a good thing.

SandraDodd.com/distraction
photo by Jo Isaac

They will do it

Q: How will you know if they can read?

How did you know they could ride a bike?
How do parents know when a baby can walk? Talk?

MANY families' reading stories,
and gathered stats by Jo Isaac, PhD

Quote from SandraDodd.com/faq
photo by Michelle Tovaas Huelle

Happiness, harmony and joy

Nicole Kenyon wrote:

When I first talked to Jo Isaac I was like "that sounds nuts" but some of the things she said made me realise that my perception or ideas were copied and not mine. It made me stop and look at things from different angles.

I changed, became softer and let go of a belief system that wasn't mine while observing my son and our family. Are we happy? Do we live in harmony? What can I do to bring more joy?

—Nicole Kenyon

Not so crazy after all
SandraDodd.com/crazy
photo by Nicole Kenyon

Instead of schoolish ideas...

Rebeccas Justus, when she was new to unschooling, created an inspired and inspiring list of the differences between schoolishness and unschooling. There are two dozen sets. Here are a few to make your day lighter:

---

instead of "Instill knowledge" :

Trust that learning is natural; trust that children are interested in life

instead of "Follow a schedule" :

Flow with the moment, with the inspiration

instead of "Memorize facts" :

Understand stories

SandraDodd.com/unschool/difference
photo by Jo Isaac

Learning gently

Don't have him around others who will tease him. That's the main benefit of homeschooling, being away from bullies. Don't bully or tease him and don't let anyone else do it either.

Unschooling really depends on helping kids gently get to their own learning in their own way. Wanting them to conform uniformly and on schedule isn't the way unschooling works.

An archived discussion with a bad name, but good info
photo by Jo Isaac

Changing, building, and understanding

JoyfullyRejoycing

SandraDodd.com/unschooling

Those sites exist so that people can explore unschooling, but reading those pages doesn't make anyone an unschooler. Only changing one's own thoughts and beliefs and actions and reactions, and building a relationship with one's children based on those understandings can make unschooling work in a family.

There is a "there there" tradition among women. I've referred to it as "teaparty" talk in the past, and then made a page to illustrate what I was talking about. It *sounds* like support, but it's really more like "let's all avoid real thought together!" Unschooling takes real thought, and a desire to change. Any desire to be supported in staying the same will be a problem.

SandraDodd.com/support

Less entertaining, but easier to read from a phone:
"Support" messages all in one list
photo by Jo Isaac
❖

People, writing, improvement (really)

Writing to real people for real purposes improves writing in real ways.

There are some people who haven’t been born yet who will, someday, read things Jo Isaac wrote, and other people here. It might be hard for them to find it, or it might not be. But good ideas, written well, can outlive the writers.

SandraDodd.com/realwriting
photo by Karen James

What do trees, cats, and people need?

What does a tree need for its leaves and twigs to develop more?
What does a cat need for its brain to develop more?

They need a lack of abuse. They need water and food, sunshine. The cats can use things or people to play with, and people or other cats to groom them, pet them, lie down next to them sometimes. The tree might need to be less in the shade of other trees for optimal growth, or might need not to be where the wind is banging their branches against a cliff or building or fence or something.

If you think of people as the natural, biological beings they are, rather than as school kids who either are or are not in school, things become much clearer.

Synapses & Brain Development

Longer version here, with some Pam Sorooshian commentary

photo by Jo Isaac

Help learning flood in

Find ways to make your lives better, happier, cheerier, if you want learning to flood in.

SandraDodd.com/positivity
photo by Jo Isaac

Don't stop too soon

Some people define unschooling as a relationship (or lack of one) with school. Others define it as a relationship (or potential damage to a relationship) with their children.

It seems our detractors say "If my kids aren't in school and I'm not using a curriculum, I'm unschooling."

It seems to me that stopping there will lead to frustration and failure and the continuous little additions of rules and lessons and requirements.

It's enough if one is looking toward school and wants to declare the kids are out AND they're not going to use a curriculum. So at that point in the sort (if we were writing a computer program), they've passed through two gates:
     School? if no, then homeschooling
     Curriculum? if no, then unschooling

But will that last years? It's the label of a moment. "Now what?"

It's not a computer program. For me it's about natural human learning, not about not-school and not-curriculum.

SandraDodd.com/lists/help
photo by Jo Isaac
in Australia

Naturally sweet

Jo Isaac wrote:

[Benton] explores the evolutionary basis behind children's food choices—for example, babies and toddlers have an innate preference for sweet and salty flavours and avoid bitter and sour tastes. This is explained as reflecting an evolutionary background where sweetness predicts a source of energy, whereas bitterness predicts toxicity/poison.

He also discusses the evolutionary mechanisms that might explain why children avoid new foods (termed neophobia), particularly in toddlers. In our evolutionary past, avoiding new foods had survival value if it discouraged eating items that might have been poisonous, particularly at the stage when a child was beginning to walk. Benton stresses that "Parents need to understand that neophobia is normal."

—Jo Isaac
(PhD, Biology)

More here: SandraDodd.com/eating/research
photo by Cátia Maciel

Making children smile

Joyce, in response to someone who wrote "I want to scream":

If you could choose between making your children smile and making them cry or be angry with you, which would you choose?

If you could choose to do something for someone who made you angry and cry or someone who thought you were the bee's knees who would you help?

—Joyce Fetteroll

She wrote more, of course... SandraDodd.com/chores/scream
photo by Jo Isaac

Native thoughtfulness and competence

If we've been conditioned to believe that children are unworthy and inferior but we consciously step away from that place and see the wholeness in our children, then one of the easiest things to see is the lack of wholeness in ourselves. It can be frightening.

When we see the level of thoughtfulness and competence a small child can have when he hasn’t been belittled or discouraged or shushed, we can start to think that if we undo the discouraging, belittling and shushing voices inside of us, we might regenerate our own native thoughtfulness and competence.

Mindful Parenting / SandraDodd.com/rentalk
photo by Jo Isaac (a wedge-tailed eagle)

Talking to strangers

Jo Isaac, when her son was seven years old:

Kai's self-confidence surprises me all the time. He is happy to go talk to strangers anywhere, and teenagers. On his first day signing up for soccer Kai took a ball to a teenager and asked him if he wanted to play with him and Brett (my husband). That totally floored my husband, who couldn't have imagined going up to a strange teenager when he was seven, let alone asking them to play soccer with them (the teenager did play with them, they had fun).

—Jo Isaac

Note from Sandra: As a "grown" teen himself, Kai travelled from Australia to Thailand for an explore, and came back safely.

SandraDodd.com/surprise
photo by... by elimination, perhaps by Huxley, or James.
Maybe by Sam.

Okay, I've named some NOT in the photo. I wasn't there, but here's who's in:
(standing:) Kai, Karl, Kes, Adam, Polly
(seated:) Jo, Julie and Janine.

Planning, resources and intention

Sylvia Woodman wrote:

Unschooling is not "doing nothing." It takes planning, and resources, and intention. I think it felt more like work in the earlier years while I was still doing the bulk of my Deschooling. (Don't get me wrong there are still things that "catch me by surprise" in my thinking even now! But it's not as constant.) But at some point, there was a shift. A Leveling Up. Unschooling became less of the way we were educating the children and more of the way we lived our lives. It wasn't one thing that we did. It was a million tiny choices (and not so tiny choices) that led us to where we are today.

—Sylvia Woodman

SandraDodd.com/doitwell

and the quote is also at SandraDodd.com/levelup/
photo by Jo Isaac

The smallest things

"Everything you do now, when your kids are young, matters. All the little kindnesses matter, every little moment of sweetness between you, every time you choose to be thoughtful of the smallest things."

—Deb Lewis

SandraDodd.com/youngadults
photo by Jo Isaac

Wonderful and unexpected

"It's wonderful how parenting this way heals parts of our own past unexpectedly."

—Jen Keefe

The quote is from a story of memories affecting parenting, and vice versa, here: SandraDodd.com/sleep/memories
photo by Jo Isaac

More important

Melissa Raley wrote:

My daughter asked me to play a computer game with her and I told her that I "had" to clean the kitchen first. I got halfway between the computer and the kitchen, stopped, turned around, went back, told her I was sorry that the kitchen could wait, and played her game with her. She was so happy that I didn't care if the dishes rotted in the sink! 🙂 She only played for about five minutes but, I know that it will stick with her, that I found HER more important than the housework.

—Melissa Raley

SandraDodd.com/chores/relationship
photo by Jo Isaac

Raised up

With "make the better choice," the quality of the options gradually is raised far and away from the original starting-place options.

SandraDodd.com/levelup
photo by Jo Isaac, of a barking owl