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

Acceptance

Unschooling and relationships work better when one partner accepts the other's interests, hobbies and ways of being.

SandraDodd.com/acceptance
photo by Karen James
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How much?

Unschooling doesn't need to be expensive, but anyone choosing unschooling simply to save money is making a mistake. If parents don't want to spend any money on games, toys, museums, out-of-town trips, books, or whatever it is the kids might be interested in, then unschooling will not work at their house.

One doesn't need to be rich to unschool, but it takes dedication and focus, creativity and resourcefulness.

SandraDodd.com/unschoolingcost
photo by Jihong Tang

Things are connected

Jen Keefe wrote:

I’ve found it fascinating (I don’t use that word lightly) how many different things are connecting for me, as an adult, through learning to unschool well. I didn’t understand how things connected from school. Wars, geography, fractions, the Russian language... it was all individual stuff. I moved dutifully from one stand alone period to the next trying to do the bare minimum work not because I was lazy or stupid but because none of it *made sense*.

Now, daily almost, I’ll watch or read or hear or be talking about something and I’ll think "oh my gosh! That’s connected!" Or, "That’s why that happened there."

—Jen Keefe

SandraDodd.com/jenkeefe
photo by Kristin Cleague

Even simpler

From some questions after a conference:

Q: When your child asks about something, for example "How do you write this letter?" do you focus on that until they are bored and let them bring it up again, or do you work on it over the course of days, weeks, months, until they are satisfied?

This was a written question, so I didn't get to ask whether by "letter" a piece of correspondence was meant, or a single figure. Same answer for both, though. I would just answer the question, sketching one example, and then see if the child wanted more information or not.

But if a single was meant, this morning (9/8/02) Holly asked me "What's the best way to make a 'q'?" I wrote four different ways, not knowing what she was asking. She was wanting the plainest printed "lower case" letter. So she picked the one that best matched the lettering she was doing, and she was happy. Total "lesson," fifteen seconds.

SandraDodd.com/questions
photo by Holly Dodd

Learning-and-living jobs

Some mainstream families press their teenaged children to get jobs, and shame them if they fail, while putting conditions on when and where they can work. The result is that getting a job was just one more "do what the parents make you do" situation, and the jobs aren't fun; they're an extension of school and of parental control.

When teens or young adults have chosen to have a job without desperation for money, and when they are accustomed to learning all the time and living joyfully, they are a different sort of employee.

SandraDodd.com/jobs/bigbook
gif by Holly Dodd

"It's fun."

Sandra, in 2003:

I don't use the word "unschooling" except when I'm talking to homeschoolers.

When I'm talking to relatives or people at the grocery store or whatever, I say "We homeschool." Or more often, "Our kids don't go to school."

IF they seem interested, or if they make one of those canned-conversation responses like "Oh, that must be a lot of work," or "Oh, I could never to that," I just smile and say "It's fun. We mostly just have a lot of fun." or "We don't use a curriculum, we just learn from everything around us."

So within the inside of the inside of discussions with homeschoolers, I'm definitely an unschooler, but there's no advantage I've found in using that term with people who only want a one-minute "hi, how are ya? cute kid" conversation.

SandraDodd.com/school/say
photo by Roya Dedeaux

Things started happening...

"Intellectually, I got unschooling all the way from the very beginning. The part that took more time was relationships and wholeness. When I got THAT, that is when things started happening in the direction that made unschooling work great!"

—Jenny Cyphers

SandraDodd.com/gettingit
photo by Cally Brown

Be more

I closed a talk recently with this:

Be brave, be calm, be happy.

Be braver, be calmer, be happier.

The first line was written on my paper. The second one, I added just then.

SandraDodd.com/being
photo by Julie Daniel
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The link in yesterday's post didn't work, but it has been repaired here:
Accepting and Supporting**Sorry**

All or nothing or...

Should people live in the water in the middle of the ocean, or should they live on land as far as possible away from an ocean?

Quickly! What's your answer?


This was a trick question just designed to make you think. But people really do ask the same kinds of questions of themselves sometimes. In some people's heads, "Don't believe everything you read" turns into "Don't believe anything you read."

In the middle are things like "Believe things that make sense and seem to work after you've thought about them and tried them out," and "Don't believe something just because you read it, but wait for it to be confirmed by other more trusted sources, or by your own research or observance."

By thinking in extremes, "There is more than one truth" becomes "All things are equally truthful." Just because there are many truths doesn't mean there's no such thing as nonsense.

SandraDodd.com/balance
The last bit was a paraphrase, to be courteous,
of the original statement from a few years before which was
"Just because there's more than one truth
doesn't mean there's no such thing as bullshit."

photo by Sandra Dodd

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

Being all the good ways

"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

Negotiations, commerce (not bribery)

I think we were discussing offering an older child money to read to a younger child, or to play with them at their level; kind of an occasional in-house mother's helper situation. Someone asked about bribery; my response follows. —Sandra

How do you go about it without it feeling like/being bribery? I'm guessing it is in attitude and wording, but I can't imagine a way to word it that it doesn't sound like bribery to me...? Thanks for the idea!

How do places of business get people to go to work without "bribery"?
How do you get an auto dealer to give you a car without bribery?

If someone's supposed to do something anyway and holds out on you until you pay them or give them something, that's a bribe. If something is not someone's job or someone's property and they negotiate for an exchange, that's commerce, not bribery.

There are some truisms that are spoken without real examination and I think the very vague rules against bribery of children are right up top there.

SandraDodd.com/bribery
photo by Cátia Maciel

A little success story

Kerryn wrote:

There have been fleeting moments of seeing unschooling at work in our house. I would love to share them with you all.

Just this evening the children were watching a Fred Astaire movie (we'd been talking about dancing/old movies etc for a while and happened upon a dvd yesterday) and a scene was showing a college student talking about 'passing'. My 9 year old said "What's passing?" My 5 year old said, "Silly, it's passing, you know, going past something."

I see this as a little success story. They've forgotten or have become unaware of grades, tests, and performance. Another step in our deschooling journey.

—Kerryn
Australia

Reports of "Seeing It"
SandraDodd.com/seeingitcomments
Photographer unknown; adults looking at a musician, child dancing, at an Always Learning Live event in Albuquerque. Perhaps this is one of Lydia Koltai's children. I'm sorry I don't know who took it.

The heart and mind of the parent

Robin Bentley wrote:

Radical unschooling (and the "radical" means "from the root") is all about mindset and changing beliefs and relationships for the better. Some people approach it from letting go of "academics" first, trying to see learning in everything. But if beliefs about learning and kids and partnership are changed first, then unschooling will proceed more smoothly. The real work is done in the heart and mind of the parent.

—Robin Bentley

SandraDodd.com/change
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Try joy.

Perhaps happiness shouldn't be the primary goal. Try joy.
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Enjoyment—that word itself is hardly used. Enjoyment is seen nearly as a sin for some people. "You're not here to have fun, you're here to work." Why can't work bring joy? Any tiny moment can be enjoyed: the feel of warm running water when you wash your hands; light and shadow on the floor; pictures in the clouds; the feel of an old book. If you see an old friend, that can bring pure, tingly joy for which there are no words.

SandraDodd.com/joy
photo by Theresa Larson

Happy to see the day

When people insist that "all unschooling is" is just homeschooling without a curriculum or without lessons, I don't disagree. They should take it out and put it on billboards. Lobby to get it into the dictionary. Whatever. But when families come to ask how they can make unschooling work, it does no good to say "Just don't have a curriculum. See ya!" It takes layers of understanding, it takes recovery from school, and a desire to have a relationship with a child in which learning is flowing and easy. It takes working to create an atmosphere in which children and parents wake up happy to see the day.

—Sandra Dodd, in 2004
fourth post on this legacy page

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SORRY the link above didn't work in e-mail; I've restored it, I hope!

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SandraDodd.com/nest
photo by Vlad Gurdiga

I'm not guessing.

I'm confident. I'm not guessing unschooling can work, I know. I've also seen how it can fail, through my correspondence and discussions with so many other homeschooling families. I'm not hoping that kids can still get a job without fifteen years of practice bedtimes; I know they can. (And they would've been "practicing" for the wrong shift anyway.) I don't conjecture that kids can learn to read without being taught, I know. It's happened at my house, in three people's lives.

SandraDodd.com/confidence
photo by Sandra Dodd
P.S.
Just because it *can* work doesn't mean that a family can't fail. If you're going to unschool, do it well. Find your own confidence. Help is available.
SandraDodd.com/help

Play is the work of childhood

PLAY is the work of childhood. Play IS the work of childhood. Play is THE work of childhood. Play is the WORK of childhood

original text (format and all)
by Cathy Koetsier
photo by Janine Davies

If mathematics is easy for a person...

Disclaimers: Unschooling doesn't ensure mathematical ability.

I wrote this before Marty got a degree in economics. They were 18 or older before taking any classes, and only needed to pay for the books.

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My kids all caught up with formal math in a semester or two of community college. Marty did up to calculus. Kirby only took one class but makes use of math all the time in his work and play, and is good with money and loans and banking and all that practical life stuff.

Holly took three classes, I think. Maybe two. Liked it; it wasn't difficult. There were people in class with her bemoaning the difficulty, and they had been in school for twelve years or more, taking math classes.

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That was written in 2014. Their paid employment and their hobbies, since then, have involved some or all of logistics, statistics, financial accounting, coding/programming, inventory and cash handling. What they learned in class was the notation used to communicate mathematical ideas "on paper" in our culture.

Some of their facility might have been inherited genetically from their mathish dad. That's fair, too.

SandraDodd.com/math/schoolmath
photo by Shawn Smythe Haunschild