Friends

Friends might be siblings or cousins or neighbors, or might be in other towns or states or countries.

Skype and gaming can help them stay in contact.

If parents can find some opportunities to host or to visit, they should remember that the children will be learning from and with each other, while they gain fond memories. Consider it an expense of unschooling, to visit friends.

SandraDodd.com/socialization
photo by Rippy Dusseldorp
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Sweet healing

It will help you heal from your childhood, to be a good mother. Seeing your own child's bright eyes when you do something sweet can heal the child inside you who would have loved to have had someone do that to, for, with her, years ago.

SandraDodd.com/healing
photo by Chrissy Florence

The flow of history

What is new now might be an antique before your children are grown.

Try to ride the gentle flow of time and progress.

SandraDodd.com/being
photo by Amber Ivey

Travel interesting paths

Even in the long term, unschooling is not about the completion of a project at all. It’s about becoming the sort of people who see and appreciate and trust that learning can happen. And who can travel with children, not just drag them along or push them along, but who can travel with children along those interesting paths together not until you get there, but indefinitely.


And for beginning unschoolers that sounds also a little esoteric, a little foofy. And not solid. They want to know what do I do when the kids wake up in the morning? So, the beginning information is very often, “What do I do?” But the information that will get people from the beginning to the intermediate is why. "Why do we do this?"

SandraDodd.com/parentschange
photo by Elise Lauterbach

The quote is from a new podcast of Pam Laricchia interviewing me.
I tweaked the quote just slightly, capitalizing "even"
and using "unschooling" rather than "it."
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Quietly, just look

Look quietly. At least once a day, just look quietly.

Shhhh
photo by Colleen Prieto
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Do it!

"That's how unschooling works. By living life as if it were an adventure. As if you only had a limited amount of time with that child. Because that's the way it IS."

—Kelly Lovejoy

SandraDodd.com/doit
photo by Chrissy Florence
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How you see them

"Unschooling is all about how parents are seeing their kids."

—Jill Parmer

SandraDodd.com/attitude
photo by Brie Jontry
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Aiming for learning

"Aiming for freedom can send radical unschoolers down some dangerous and goofy paths. Aiming for learning, exploration, discovery, peacefulness, and connectedness is much more helpful to radical unschooling."

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/learning
photo by Colleen Prieto
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Half a lifetime ago...

Marty was fourteen. By the time this is read, he might be older. But he was fourteen, it was Saturday, and I was playing something on Neopets.

Marty came in and said, "Mom, you know what I really need?" I didn't know. Had I been pressed to guess, I might've thought maybe he wanted the new Nickelback CD, or maybe a hamburger, or to win the lottery. Though his question had been more hypothetical, mine was real:

"What?"

"A map of the New Mexico Territory when Arizona was a part of it."

I might never have guessed that one, so I'm glad he told me.



As I post this quote and photo, Marty is 28 now and still loves maps.

Read the rest of "What Marty Really Needed": SandraDodd.com/martymap
photo by Sandra Dodd

Changes

You may pass through the same door again, but you will be different each time.

Where you are right now will never be exactly the same again.

SandraDodd.com/growth
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Not everything, but something

"We can't magically afford everything, but very often we can afford something."

—Pam Sorooshian

SandraDodd.com/unschoolingcost
photo by Janine Davies
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Dividing is divisive

Collen Prieto wrote:

I was thinking the other day about husbands and chores and how many people I've heard say that it shouldn't be their job to pick up after their husband. I never thought of picking up my husband's things as being my cleaning up after him—I've only thought of it as cleaning our house. Does it matter whose laundry or dishes they are? Does he shovel only his own side of the driveway and leave me to climb snowbanks to get to my side of the car? Dividing things yours-and-mine, even socks, in one's internal thoughts doesn't seem to add much happiness.

—Colleen Prieto

Chores, Serving others as a gift, tales of kids helping out voluntarily
(a chat transcript)
photo by Janine
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Find your options

Pam Sorooshian wrote:

Lots of people go through their whole lives never feeling like they had choices in many many areas of their lives in which they really did. Just like it is useful for unschoolers to drop school language (not use the terms teaching or lessons or curriculum to refer to the natural learning that happens in their families) it is useful to drop the use of "have to's" and replace it with an awareness of choices and options.

How we think—the language we use to think—about what we're doing, matters.

—Pam Sorooshian

SandraDodd.com/haveto
photo by Sandra Dodd
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The world changes

Even without anyone trying, the world changes. Ironically, we try to make the world better, and on the same day can feel sad that things are different.

We change. Our children change. Trees and buildings and cars change.

Miss the past gracefully. Accept changes with sweetness.

That will make the world better.

SandraDodd.com/change/
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Own the good stuff

If parents retain ownership of their children's learning,
the children cannot learn on their own.


What I've just said above is / will be / has been misinterpreted to mean the parents should throw up their hands, back off, and not say a word. That's not what I mean at all. Possibly the very same interactions can occur, but the balance of power and responsibility can change by changing the phrasing and definitions.
Own joy management, or trust-earning or something.
SandraDodd.com/parentalauthority
photo by Janine Davies
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Peace and joy

Bring her home, surround her with peace and joy. Don't fight with her. Just love her. There is much more at stake here than her "education."

—Pamela Corkey

SandraDodd.com/deschoolingcomments
photo by Chrissy Florence
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Trust and respect

Trust and respect go together. Someone who is trustworthy will be respected.



SandraDodd.com/trust
photo by Julie D.

Casual and alert

Casual and alert are better than intense and hurried.


Time and money (chat transcript)
photo by Colleen Prieto, whose son loves birds and graveyards
There's another photo, down a bit, here.

Sharper 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.

—JoyceFetteroll

SandraDodd.com/english
photo by Sandra Dodd

Brave and calm

Be brave,      be calm,           be happy.

Becoming Courageous, by Deb Lewis
photo by Sandra Dodd

Sparkly and flowing

Sometimes it's fun to try to think with fewer words.

Unschoolers can move toward "better" by making better choices.

Imagine a way to be. What about clean, moving water?

When you choose activities, responses, thoughts and moods could you choose things more sparkly and flowing?

SandraDodd.com/feedback
photo by Maria Wong
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Adult things

Kids blossom and get bigger from doing adult things because they want to, instead of kid-things they have to do because they're small.

SandraDodd.com/chores
photo by Donna Anderson
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Nurture and share

Be the kind of person you want your child to be.

Nurture your own curiosity and joy.

Find gratitude and abundance in your life.

Explore. Make connections, on your own.

Share those with your children when they're interesting.

SandraDodd.com/video/doright
photo by Sandra Dodd
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If you can...

Sometimes the thing to do is just to go to sleep.



SandraDodd.com/sleep
photo by Holly Dodd

The best answers

It's hard to explain unschooling, partly because the best answers are "it depends," followed by questions for the parents to consider while they're making their decisions.
. . . .
Getting unschooling is a process. There will be more to get once you're comfortable with the new understandings and behaviors.

Other factors
photo by Abby Davis
Getting It

Radiation

"Radical" means from the roots—radiating from the source. The knowledge that learning is natural to humans can radiate forth from that point in every direction.

SandraDodd.com/terminology
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Live in the learning

"Child-led, 'wait til they ask'" isn't the way radical unschooling works. It's a way for unschooling to fail, if the parents are twiddling their thumbs waiting for the child to lead, or ask to learn something.

SandraDodd.com/unschool/marginal
photo by Karen James, of stained glass by Ethan James

Learning about learning

For the parents, deschooling is learning about learning.

SandraDodd.com/hsc/radical
photo by Colleen Prieto

Whole, thinking, seeing

Children have been whole, thinking, seeing beings since the day they were born. Assisting them to learn and to find their strengths and to explore the world and its possibilities is preparing them for their unseen futures.

Mommy-labs Interview, October 2012
("Children" replaces "they," to allow the quote to make sense out of context.)

photo by Janet Rohde Buzit
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Happy surprises

Let everyday things bring joy.


Mystery thing
Surprises and discoveries
photo by Janine

Finding art

It's fun to be on the lookout for art in unexpected places. Sometimes people purposely make art and hide it, for kids to find.

Find art wherever you are.



SandraDodd.com/art
photo by Hinano
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"I hope you don't mind"

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

---

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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Grand and simple

Of natural learning, Ren Allen wrote:

By choosing to unschool, I am giving my children the ability simply to enjoy the journey rather than to seek some unknown destination that falsely promises an end product. My children’s lives are their own; their dreams and passions belong to them, and in gathering the bits that matter, they are showing me that natural learning is grand and simple all at once. The light that emanates from them awes me to silence.

—Ren Allen

Crystallized Learning
photo by Lydia Koltai