Something very special

Sylvia Woodman wrote:

"One of my favorite things of all times is watching my children concentrating. I see it when Gabriella draws. I see it when Harry games or practices Taekwondo. The kids have friends over this week and I've spent more than a little time hanging out in the room with them watching them focus on their games—both together and apart. I feel like I'm in the presence of something very special, almost holy."

— Sylvia Woodman

SandraDodd.com/being
photo also by Sylvia Woodman, 2013; text 2018

Things change

Being a child's partner rather than his adversary makes the balance of knowledge unimportant. Nowadays my children drive me around, help me out, read small print and get things off high shelves. For many years, I did those things for them.

SandraDodd.com/partners

SandraDodd.com/balance

Learning first, and partnership and being present close after, and all the other things flow in around it.


Part of a longer response to an odd question: The other things flow in around it.
See also "Snapshot" on this blog
photo by Karen James

Fascinating and charming

My kids don't mind following rules when they join clubs or attend meetings in places with rules. The gaming store where they play (and where Kirby came to work after a while) has a language rule. They can say "crap" but nothing else of its sort or worse. There's a 25-cent fine. If they don't have a quarter they do pushups. But because of that rule, families go there that wouldn't go if it had the atmosphere of a sleazy bowling alley. (It has the atmosphere of a geeky gaming store.)


I think one reason they don't mind following rules is that they haven't already "had it up to here" with rules, as kids have who have a whole life of home rules and school rules. They find rules kind of fascinating and charming, honestly. When Holly's had a dress code for a dance class or acting class she is THRILLED.

Maybe also because they haven't been forced to take classes or go to gaming shops (?!?) they know they're there voluntarily and part of the contract is that they abide by the rules. No problem.
Seeking joy
photo by Sandra Dodd, July 2005
and the writing is older than that

Play. Joke. Sing.

I was once asked:

Since unschooling is a lifestyle, how can a family wanting to embrace these ideals begin the process? What encouragement would you offer?

Part of my 1998 response:

Play. Joke. Sing. Instead of turning inward and looking for the answer within the family, within the self, turn it all inside out. Get out of the house. Go somewhere you've never been, even a city park you're unfamiliar with, or a construction site, or a different grocery store. Try just being calm and happy together. For some families, that's simple. For others it's a frightening thought.

Try not to learn. Don't try to learn. Those two aren't the same thing but they're close enough for beginners. If you see something *educational* don't say a word. Practice letting exciting opportunities go by, or at least letting the kids get the first word about something interesting you're all seeing.

---

The "Try not to learn" idea inspired Learn Nothing Day ten years afterwards (and ten years ago, now).

SandraDodd.com/interview
photo by Holly Dodd

in French

Comfortably and happily

Just like ALL learning, learning how to live comfortably and happily are really wonderful things. It takes a focus on turning away from what you know you don't like and turning towards something else—that something else that creates happy learning and living. Unschooling really is a shift in thinking and then acting on it.

—Jenny Cyphers

SandraDodd.com/unschool/definition
photo by Colleen Prieto

Click on by

Nothing; take a break.

not a good day for a link

Look and see

If you're traveling or if you're in a familiar place, the things you see are viewed though your own windows, or doors. You see through your own eyes, and experience. *You* see.

The world you see where you are today will not be what you could see ten years ago, or twenty.

What your child sees and what you see will probably be different, and continue to change.

Keep looking.

SandraDodd.com/awareness
photo by Ester Siroky

Safe, respectful and empowering

Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

Unschooling is the opposite of both authoritarian and hands-off parenting. It's neither about creating rules to remote parent nor about letting kids jump off cliffs. It's about being more involved in kids lives. It's about accompanying them as they explore, helping them find safe, respectful and empowering ways to tackle what intrigues them.

—Joyce Fetteroll
2009

SandraDodd.com/balance
photo by Sandra Dodd

Full, curious, free life

So what is unschooling? It's learning by living life. It's living a full, curious, free life with parents who support, encourage and help their kids pursue what interests them (while making opportunities available to expand their interests).

Unschooled children learn as a side effect of doing.

—Joyce Fetteroll

JoyfullyRejoycing.com/first-questions
photo by Diana Jenner

❖

See everything

When parents see how and what their children are actually learning instead of just scanning for the half dozen school-things, unschooling will make sense to the parents. If you wait for school to congeal from a busy life, you'll keep being disappointed. If you learn to see everything instead of just school things, unschooling will start working for you. When you see it you will believe it.

SandraDodd.com/seeingit
photo by Ester Siroky

Learning is learning

Learning is learning whether or not it's planned or recorded or officially on the menu. Calories are calories whether or not the eating is planned or recorded or officially on the menu.

—Pam Sorooshian

SandraDodd.com/unschool/moredefinitions
photo by Robin Bentley, of exotic German... (not French fries, but something)
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Learning effortlessly

Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

School is to unschooling as foreign language class is to learning to talk. The first is orderly, thorough, hard and hardly works. The second is chaotic, random, effortless and works like a charm."

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/definitions
photo by Sandra Dodd

To begin with...

Until a person stops doing the things that keep unschooling from working, unschooling can't begin to work.

SandraDodd.com/doit
photo by Sylvia Toyama

Enough to share

Energy is shared, and that's how unschooling works. Whether I'm excited about something new, or my children are excited about something new, there's still newness and excitement enough to share.

SandraDodd.com/balance
photo by Chrissy Florence

Important little things

"Listen and watch when they want to show you something. It might seem like a little thing to watch what your child wants to show you, but it’s important to them and it matters to them! The little things are the big things!"

—Laurie Wolfrum

Trust can grow
photo by Roya Dedeaux

Descriptive and unlimited

I think that an unschooler's checklist should look more like the five senses and past/future than like "science, history, language, math, maybe-music-art-physical education."   Because that model is prescriptive and limiting.  And the other is descriptive and unlimited.

SandraDodd.com/checklists
photo by Sandra Dodd

Finding yourself with your children

Being where you are, in a mindful way, with the potential and the tools to be still and know it, is the portal to a better life. Call it what you want to, finding yourself with your children will put you in a good place.



Finding
yourself
with
✵

---

SandraDodd.com/being/healing
photo by Sandra Dodd

Into her world

Karen James wrote:

Helping facilitate a good experience is different for each person. It depends on what they are interested in and why. It depends on how they want to explore whatever it is.

Bring some of her interests into her world, not by suggestion, but by learning enough about her interests to be able to converse about whatever-it-is. Maybe even try it yourself. Find places or folks to visit where those interests are practiced, where she might have a dabble too. Maybe she'll want to dive deeper. Maybe not.

—Karen James

Being your child's PARTNER, not his adversary
photo by Amber Ivey

A better tongue twister

Any better's better than no better.


Ideas, Quotes and Affirmations
photo by Robin Bentley

Familiar and unfamiliar

If everything is unfamiliar, it's hard to think about what it is at all. If everything is too familiar, it can escape notice and conscious thought.

Learning happens best at the edge, where something familiar has a difference. Something is not the same, in an otherwise understandable scene.



Angle
photo by Ester Siroky

What and Why?

The when is now, the who is you,
the where is where you are.

The remaining questions are
what are you doing, and why?

If you don't know what you're doing, it might be good to relax and reconsider. Start fresh, and with purpose.

If you don't know why you're doing what you're doing, that could be reason enough to take a break.

SandraDodd.com/5ws
photo by Lisa J Haugen

Side benefits

My world's pretty cool. It has become gradually cooler since I had kids and have tried to figure out how to make THEIR worlds cooler. Mine got the side benefit of what I learned about how to help keep them happy.


Shared fun
photo by Sarah S.
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Count slower

Someone said one time that she counts to ten and then she's still mad so what should she do, and a couple of people said "Count slower."

Angrily holding one's breath and counting to ten in a hostile fashion isn't the "count to ten" that's recommended. Breathing to ten is way better.

Breathing can be done in an overt, hostile "I'm breathing so I won't hurt you" passive-aggressive way, too. That cancels it right out.

The quote is from an online chat, but a good link is SandraDodd.com/breathing.
photo by Destiny Dodd, of sunlight coming in the top of a cavern

Roots might show

Conditions aren't always ideal. Parents have histories, kids have genetics, sometimes it's summer and sometimes it's winter. You might live in the desert, or a rainforest.

Where you are, when you can, do some cool things.

SandraDodd.com/appletree
(Apple Tree analogy, and the nature of wholeness)
photo by Joyce Fetteroll
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A little big deal

Perhaps you have seen lots of fireworks—professional, big shows that cost tens of thousands of dollars. If so, $20 worth of little fountain fireworks might seem lame.

Some people are newer to the world. A child who hasn't seen so many fireworks might be thrilled by a few fountains. Honor their excitement. Share it. You're creating a memory of peace and light, if you do it well.



SandraDodd.com/respect
photo by Sandra Dodd
(a lame photo of something that was making a nine-year-old girl very happy)

Steps toward "better"

By making the better choice, you step away from the worse choice.


SandraDodd.com/choicees
photo by Ester Siroky

Grace and joy

People who resist or reject joy will be rejecting the best tool they could have used to unschool well, to have longterm relationships with others, and to age gracefully.



Joy
photo by Amy Childs

Those flowers bloomed.

I have saved this, text and images, from something Janine Davies posted:

Kes has loved the film Wall-E since he first saw it, age 3. ❤️

He has watched it over and over ✨

When his snow boots didn’t fit him this winter and we bought him new ones, he said, “I’m going to grow a flower in my boot just like in Wall-E.”

He planted seeds in both boots back in early spring and today those flowers bloomed. 🌼🌼💛💛

---

The plant from Wall-E

SandraDodd.com/peace
top photo by Janine Davies, 1 July 2018

Past voices

Let the past inform your decisions. Let the past be a little angel on your shoulder, but don't let the voices in your head tell you what to do. It might be time to tell the voices in your head "enough."


Voices in your head
photo by Karen James

Generosity pays

I have known children with nearly nothing who suffer preventive deprivation by parents who don't want to spoil them, who are bullies away from home and always clamor to have their way, to be first, to have more. I have known children who are given their way, an opportunity to be first, and more than they ask for, and they are fine with going second, with sharing, or with giving up the best seat to someone who just really wants it.

There is no magical prevention for bad attitude, but if parents are modeling a bad attitude with their own unreasonable selfishness or arbitrary system of denying children, they should expect their children to show arbitrary selfishness to others.

SandraDodd.com/spoiled
photo by Sandra Dodd
__

Touch and calm presence

The more touch and calm presence parents can give a baby, the better, and if they can maintain that as children get older, it might turn into unschooling.

Quote matches Infants, Babies, Toddlers—source material for German translation of some of my writing published March 2018 as Sei ihr Partner, nicht ihr Gegner

photo by Ashlee Dodd
__ __

Maintain and replenish

If you think you haven't done enough for your children lately, do more. The richer and safer your children's environment,the more interesting and open to input and entertainment and encouragement, the more learning will happen, whether you're at home or in the car or on another continent.

Maintain and replenish your children's learning environment.

SandraDodd.com/nest
photo by Sandra Dodd
__

Brighter than I am

One time my neighbor's tree was brighter than the sky.

Sometimes my kids are brighter than I am. The older they get, and the older I get, the more often they outshine me in many ways. I do not mind one bit.

SandraDodd.com/abundance
Photo by Sandra Dodd, in November 2010

What is not a clock?

I do love clocks and calendars and the history of time measurement, but it is good to remember that we are not clocks, and our children are not clocks.


The clock is not hungry
photo by Sandra Dodd, of a sundial in Chichester

Artsy imaginings

Art, arrangements, sculpture—any art—is based on a vision or a mental image. Viewers interpret that, and respond, sometimes with thought, words, or responsorial art of some sort. Then someone will see that art, or comment, or review, and reference it somehow.

These are connections, sometimes wordless, and that is learning, even when it's far from facts and figures.

Writey-Drawey
Art about Art
photo by Heather Booth
__

Hearing yourself think

Hearing what I say as a mom is crucial to mindfulness.

If I don't notice what I say, if I don't even hear myself, how can I expect my kids to hear me?

If I say things without having carefully chosen each word, am I really communicating?

SandraDodd.com/mindfulofwords
photo by Eileen Mahowald

One layer, and another....

Like layers of an onion someone can understand unschooling, and be calm, and then discover... Oh! I could extend these principles to my spouse.

For people with young children, it will be about just the surface of an onion. Maybe that's the concreteness of it. "How can you recognize an onion when you see one?"


Text is a smoothed-out quote from Becoming an Unschooler
photo by Ester Siroky

Power

"I want my kids to feel empowered, so I empower them."

—Jenny Cyphers

SandraDodd.com/jennycyphers/
photo by Rippy Dusseldorp