Showing posts sorted by date for query pressure. Sort by relevance Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by date for query pressure. Sort by relevance Show all posts

Sunday, September 8, 2024

Lessons and pressure won't help.

Each person who learns to read learns almost suddenly, at some point. It happens whether he's in school or not. Before that point, the words are scribbles. After that point, he sees a word and knows what it means, without sounding it out, without looking it up. The scribbles turn to words.
. . . .

Before a child can read, He Cannot Read. Lessons and pressure won't help. It's not making sense yet. One day the marks become words, IF he has not been pressured and shamed, rushed and blamed.

Some Thoughts About Later Reading
photo by Andrea Quenneville

Saturday, June 22, 2024

Unschooling's "educational supplies"

Unschooling's "educational supplies" are often toys, or things that kids in school would not want or need, because they have it at school, or because it's not "age appropriate." School is processing kids through an assembly line, and there is pressure to accept and then abandon various interests. Unschooling has a whole different operating system.

SandraDodd.com/screwitup
photo by Roya Dedeaux

Monday, February 26, 2024

Say yes when you can

My kids are great at delayed gratification, all of them. They have saved money, earned money, bought small things, and large things, waited for friends to visit, waited for holidays and parties, and because they're busy and secure people, they could always find something to do. But they were also generally sure that as soon as it WAS possible, they would do it, or have it. That's because they had lived their lives with parents who were their partners and who helped them, rather than thwarted or frustrated them.

Some kids get to 18 and they're sick and tired of waiting, and they don't want to wait anymore for ANYthing. Some turn to drugs, drinking, partying, charge cards, driving too fast... When parents have a choice of saying yes or no, and they choose 'no' because they think it's good for their child, they are putting that pressure and tension in the bank to gain interest.

Say yes when you can, especially if it's about something that will help your child learn. If you can't decide, think "Will he be happy and learn? Will this help with unschooling?"
2013, Sandra
of kids who were in their early- to mid-20s then

SandraDodd.com/no
photo by Holly Dodd
of herself wearing a top from the 1970s that I handed down to her, with an orchid plant rescued from a trash can

Tuesday, January 16, 2024

Nuturance

"To nourish" someone goes above and beyond food. "Good food" served with shame or pressure loses all its goodness, to a child. A loving relationship can last forevermore. Ice lollies and popsicles are gone in no time.

Let their memories of treats, and of meals, of childhood, and of parents, be warm and comforting.

Advantages of Eating in Peace
photo by Elaine Santana
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Monday, April 24, 2023

Safe and fed and warm

Pam Sorooshian:
Learning requires a sense of safety.

Fear blocks learning. Shame and embarrassment, stress and anxiety—these block learning.
Principles of Unschooling


Sandra Dodd:
So don't pressure, coerce or confuse your children.

Smile and laugh and provide.

Keep them safe and fed and warm and they will grow all sorts of ways.
Principles of Learning (chat transcript)
photo by Belinda Dutch

Saturday, November 19, 2022

Climbing mountains and baking pies

Cumbres and Toltec train, 2015
In response to someone saying her child would rather take the easy route than try something tough, Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

It's human nature to avoid what we feel is a waste of time, energy and resources.
It's also human nature to pour energy into what we find fascinating.

If someone is made to climb a mountain, they'll find the easiest path, and perhaps even cheat.

If someone desires to climb a mountain, they may even make it more difficult—challenging—for themselves if the route doesn't light their fire.

If it were human nature to go the easy route, I wouldn't be sitting here writing out a response! No one would write a novel. No one would climb Mt. Everest. No one would bake a cherry pie from scratch. No one would have kids.
—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/joyce/pressure
Photo by Sandra Dodd, of Holly Dodd riding a steam train restored and largely operated by volunteers. The easy route would have been for them to stay home and read books and watch movies about trains.

Tuesday, February 1, 2022

Fly when ready

The words are mine (Sandra Dodd's), but I was speaking rather than writing.
I’ve talked to kids who said they were so scared and stressed when they were 17, because they knew when they turned 18, their parents were going to start charging them rent, or throw them out, or if they didn’t go to the university, they should go to the military—all this huge pressure to get... to get out. You are done now; we're done.

So people hadn’t considered that they could totally avoid that, that that would be a natural offshoot of radical unschooling.

Keith and I did think, early on, we said what we are doing is inoculating our kids against the trait of some, or the fact of some kids leaving with the first person who says “Hey baby, you wanna live with me?” or “Oh, let’s go get a house”, or, you know, that sort of energy of young people luring other young people out and away, to other states, to other places, to dangerous neighborhoods. We said "It’s going to have to be a pretty good offer to beat what they have at home."

And so that becomes a safety factor too. If the children know that they can stay at home, then someone who comes and says, "Hey do you want come do something with me? Do you want to come live with me?"—it better be a good offer.

Recording and transcript: SandraDodd.com/familybonding
photo by Karen James

Monday, September 13, 2021

Without pressure, without shame

I believe that if children learn happily, without pressure and without shame, that they will continue to do so for the rest of their lives.

Why Radical Unschooling?
photo by Rippy Dusseldorp

Thursday, March 25, 2021

Nurturance

"To nourish" someone goes above and beyond food. "Good food" served with shame or pressure loses all its goodness, to a child. A loving relationship can last forevermore. Ice lollies and popsicles are gone in no time.

Let their memories of treats, and of meals, of childhood, and of parents, be warm and comforting.

Advantages of Eating in Peace
photo by Elaine Santana
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Monday, February 22, 2021

Temporary beauty



Be ready to discover temporary fragile beauty.

SandraDodd.com/pressure
photo by Sarah Dickinson
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Sunday, November 29, 2020

Figuring out how to read

How will they learn to read?

In school or out, every child learns to read in his own way, as he figures it out. Different people read different ways. Some are more visual, and some are sounding out letters, and some are reading groups of words.


Reading is complex, but teaching rarely helps. Until a child's brain and body are mature in various mysterious ways so that he can process the visual information and connect it to the language inside him in a manner that completes the puzzle for him, he cannot read, whether he's in school or not. Some children are three, some are thirteen, but shame and pressure never help.

Answers to the Most Repeated Unschooling Questions of All Time
photo by Chris Sanders

Monday, July 6, 2020

Warm food

Offering a child food instead of waiting for him to ask has been frowned upon by some people as being pressure. I think that's wrong.

Asking for cold pantry-food, or needing to ask someone to cook something isn't nearly as good as smelling food cooking, or seeing nicely-arranged food that's immediately available if you want it.

The Full Plate Club
photo by Jen Keefe
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Tuesday, May 19, 2020

Dabble and Play


When kids are playing games, musical instruments, with toys—any sort of play—it's good to remember that there is a range from just looking at the game pieces, or seeing how an instrument feels or sounds, all the way to longterm obsession.

Nowhere along that continuum is parental pressure helpful. Because you can't be sure what they're thinking or learning, try not to be thrilled or critical about the way they're playing.

What's Happening? (the problem with expectations)
photo by Sophie Larcher

Thursday, November 14, 2019

Pressure-proof


Give your kids so much love and self-confidence that peer pressure will mean nothing to them. They will be pressure-proof.

Detox
photo by Holly Blossom

Tuesday, November 12, 2019

Learning and peace

Peace and calm help learning.
Stress and pressure never help learning.

If you set your priority on learning and peace, it makes other questions easier.
Peace and calm
photo by Sandra Dodd

Sunday, April 21, 2019

Read, try, wait and watch


Read a little. Try a little. Don't do what you don't understand.

Wait a while. You probably won't see an immediate change. But don't pull your plants up by the roots to see if they're growing. That's not good for any plants or for any children. Be patient. Trust that learning can happen if you give it time and if you give it space.

Watch your own children. Are they calm? Are they happy? Are they curious and interested in things? Don't mar their calm or their happiness with arbitrary limits, or with shame, or with pressure. Be their partner.

SandraDodd.com/video/doright
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Sunday, May 6, 2018

Intensity and focus


Pam Sorooshian wrote:

Is unschooling right for everyone? My answer is, "It depends." I think ALL children can learn and grow and thrive as unschoolers. But I also think it takes an intensity and focus on living life with a great deal of gusto on the part of unschooling parents. Unschooling parents work hard. For example, they must develop a very high level of sensitivity to their children to know what to offer, when to support, when to back off, how busy they want to be, how much solitude they need, when to nudge them a bit with encouragement, when to get more involved, and so on. AND parents need to be able to always have their kids and their interests in the back of their minds, thinking always about what would interest them; bringing the world to them and bringing them to the world in ways that "click" for that particular child. And it takes a great deal of trust that the child will learn without external pressure.
—Pam Sorooshian

I LIVE THEREFORE I LEARN: Living an Unschooling Life
photo by Cathy Koetsier

Thursday, August 31, 2017

Poised and confident

I expected my children to learn, and they did. What surprised me was their ease at dealing with people of all ages, from younger children to adults. They made eye contact and shook hands from an early age. They're poised and confident.


SandraDodd.com/interviews/momlogic2010
the photo is from 2007, and is a link

P.S. I know kids are different; the statement above was about my kids.
Kids who aren't so at ease can benefit from being at home without pressure.
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Monday, April 3, 2017

Learning happily

I believe that if children learn happily, without pressure and without shame, that they will continue to do so for the rest of their lives.

Why Radical Unschooling?
photo by Chrissy Florence
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Monday, February 27, 2017

Ease up, to help


Try to ease guilt and expectation and pressure. Those don't help the family unit.

SandraDodd.com/eating/dinner
photo by Hannah North