Learning how to make decisions

Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

Some people, such as those who are naturally drawn to rules, who live under limitations accept the rules and stick to them. They live in fear and the rules are like talismans that will keep the boogeyman away. What happens when they are faced with new situations that they don't have rules in place for? People often extrapolate from the nonsense and extend the rules. But rational thought would reveal shoddy foundations for decision making.

If the reasons behind rules make sense, then there isn't a reason to make a rule. But people who follow rules aren't learning how to make decisions. They are only learning to follow someone else's rules.

If the reasons behind rules are nonsense, then people memorize nonsense and use that as a foundation for decision making.

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/joyce/logic
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Sometime I go EEEEEk.

EEEEEk.
What gets me more than the casual acceptance and recommendation of arbitrary limitations is the characterization of allowing children choices as "plonking a 3, 4, 5, 10 year old in front of the television/google."

Can you imagine ANYone "plonking" a ten year old in front of google? And what? Demanding he look something up? But I have seen kids that young have a BLAST with google and other search functions, about games, or YouTube, or NetFlix.

If they can look up game hints at ten, they will be able to look up building codes or disease treatments or various translations of Bible passages on their own anytime thereafter, given resources. Practicing on something that might seem "loose, easy and unnecessary" can *BE* what is needed for them to be competent, functional workers when they're older. And I won't say "when they're grown," because my kids were competent functional workers when they were mid-teens, every single one of them.

So when people who haven't had a child who is mid-teens disparages my knowledge in light of their paranoid theories, sometimes I go EEEEEk.

Sandra
2011

Plonking a child down in front of the television
is where I found it, but the original is here:
on Always Learning,
wherein the rant is all one paragraph.

photo by Sandra Dodd, of a granddaughter playing a game, a husband reading the news, and the TV was playing "Pupstruction" for another grandchild not appearing in that photo

Intelligent choices

Unschooling parents who have spent years giving their children freedom and options have learned that limitations create need while freedom creates intelligent choices.

SandraDodd.com/myths

SandraDodd.com/choice
photo by Cátia Maciel

Transformations

Choices have transformed our lives. Limitations do not transform lives. They limit lives.

SandraDodd.com/limits
photo by Sandra Dodd
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If you want to listen to me talking about transformations, here. "Something big starts to change."

Limitations

Sometimes limitations are physical. Sometimes they have to do with resources, weather, health, fears and random happenstance.

There are no guarantees, but appreciation and gratitude are better than any of their opposites.

Above and beyond limitations; underneath and through limitations
photo by Karen James
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You can't see everything

You can't see everything.

You can't be everything.

Limitations are real, and some limitations are time, patience, focus, knowledge, weather, health...

Knowing you can't be perfect, be better than you would have been if you were not aiming to be a better parent, better partner, and better person.

You can't see everything, but you can slow down and try to see more.

Thoughts about doing better
photo by Elise Lauterbach

Limit limitations

If you limit things, kids just want them more. If you wouldn't limit books or Lego-playing time, why would you limit the other things? Unless they really have choices they aren't really making choices.

Mindfully and Deliberately
photo by Renee Cabatic

Rich and full

Karen James wrote:

The most wonderful thing (to me) about unschooling is that we can support our children's growth, development, and learning in ways that embrace and nurture who they are as whole people with all their strengths and limitations. Our children can learn to live a rich and full life not in spite of where they fall short, but in celebration of where they find meaning and purpose and useful practice of skills they've come to own through a deeper understanding of who they are and what they care to spend their time and energy doing.

—Karen James

SandraDodd.com/karenjames
photo by Hema Bharadwaj

Free to behave nicely

My children are about as free as they're going to get, honestly. Always have been. Yet there are all these real-life limitations and considerations. They're free to ignore them. And the state of New Mexico (county of Bernalillo and City of Albuquerque) are not only free, but OBLIGATED, to protect other residents from any over-reaching acts of wild "freedom."

SandraDodd.com/freedom/
photo by Sandra Dodd, but in Maine, not New Mexico
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Limiting limitations

There are arbitrary limits that parents just make up, or copy from the neighbors. Then there are limits that have to do with laws, rules, courtesy, tact, circumstances, traditions and etiquette.

SandraDodd.com/coaching
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Being more present will help.

When connection is good, parents see up close their children's needs, wishes, delights, hesitations, frustrations, joys, interests, ways, limitations and so on, and creatively support them there.

When connection is less good, parents sometimes see their children as needy, demanding or unreasonable, and focus on dealing with practicalities rather than on the child and her needs.

—Debbie Regan

SandraDodd.com/being
(but the quote is from an Always Learning post here)
photo by Colleen Prieto
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Transformation through choices

Choices have transformed our lives.
Limitations do not transform lives. They limit lives.



SandraDodd.com/limits
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Limitations

My children are about as free as they're going to get, honestly. Always have been. Yet there are all these real-life limitations and considerations.

from the transcript of a chat on "Freedom"
photo by Colleen Prieto, of a legitimate exception
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Natural Balance

If you limit it, they will want more.
If you "unlimit" it they will fill up and be done.

They can only make their own choices if they're allowed to make their own choices.
I don't think balance will come from limitations as well as some people wish it would.

I had a niece not allowed to eat sugar at all. NOTHING with sugar. A little hippie kid in the late 1960's, early 1970's.

She came to stay with us for a few days when she was six. We were keeping to her mom's rules about sugar.

We found her in the field, squatted over a 5-lb. bag of sugar, eating it with both hands like a monkey, as fast as she could before she'd get caught.

That wasn't balance.

Or maybe it was. It was the balance of all her deprivation.

My kids have come to their own balance with food, TV, activities, sleep, because they're allowed to make their own choices.

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The quote is from an online discussion in August, 2001, ten years ago. The story of the sugar was when I was 22 and in my first marriage, long before I had children with Keith.

A related link is SandraDodd.com/balance
photo by Sandra Dodd

Unschooling Philosophy

In the paperwork I filled out for a conference organizer, I was asked to describe my unschooling philosophy, and wrote:

I see unschooling as the ideal application of the 1960's and 70's "Open Classroom" methods, unlimited by school's schedules and physical limitations, but based in the research about human learning and optimal conditions for children's mental health and growth. In a rich, peaceful environment, learning happens all the time.



SandraDodd.com/interview.html
photo by Sandra Dodd, of a bird's nest in England

If/then and other happy logic

Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

Some people, such as those who are naturally drawn to rules, who live under limitations accept the rules and stick to them. They live in fear and the rules are like talismans that will keep the boogeyman away. What happens when they are faced with new situations that they don't have rules in place for? People often extrapolate from the nonsense and extend the rules. But rational thought would reveal shoddy foundations for decision making.

If the reasons behind rules make sense, then there isn't a reason to make a rule. But people who follow rules aren't learning how to make decisions. They are only learning to follow someone else's rules.

If the reasons behind rules are nonsense, then people memorize nonsense and use that as a foundation for decision making.

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/joyce/logic
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Stand with your child

In a discussion about limitations and choices, Joanna Murphy wrote:

People want to look at these issues as though there are only two options: free rein or limit. Black or white thinking. There is a whole world of conversation and relationship with your children between the two extremes.And that's where unschooling lives—a child exploring their world in connection with a parent.


Are you going to be a parent who enlarges your child's world and helps them to find their own power and hone their decision making and critical thinking abilities, or will you be a parent who limits and closes down your child's world and imposes your own ideas of right and wrong?

Stand WITH your child to navigate these issues, not in their way. The more you let them make important decisions, the more they will think them through and strive to make good ones for themselves.

—Joanna Murphy

Joanna Murphy, from Building an Unschooling Nest
photo by Sandra Dodd
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(in French)