Be open to learning

When something someone heard from a friend or read on a blog is stated adamantly as TRUTH, rational thought has been batted away. Some people have the fervor of conversion upon them, having heard that there is an easy way to SAVE their families from disease and death, to make their children smarter, and better behaved; to make themselves strong and beautiful into old age. It is partially fountain-of-youth stuff. It is partly an attractive excuse for controlling children (and spouses, sometimes).

The quote is from a page about food as a religion, but it's really about control
(being too easily influenced, and then trying to pass it on)
photo by Amy Milstein
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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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Smell your child's hair

Smell your child's hair. They say dogs can smell fear, but moms can smell love, or something, when they smell the top of a young child's head. Something biochemical happens, and something intellectual can happen.

A Loud Peaceful Home

Smell your Child's Head

Just Say No

Sandra Dodd, response in 2000 to: Can anyone explain to me "unschooling"?

It's like "just say no."

Just say no to school years and school schedules and school expectations, school habits and fears and terminology. Just say no to separating the world into important and unimportant things, into separating knowledge into math, science, history and language arts, with music, art and "PE" set in their less important little places.

Most of unschooling has to happen inside the parents. They need to spend some time sorting out what is real from what is construct, and what occurs in nature from what only occurs in school (and then in the minds of those who were told school was real life, school was a kid's fulltime job, school was more important than anything, school would keep them from being ignorant, school would make them happy and rich and right).

It's what happens after all that school stuff is banished from your life.

Several Definitions of Unschooling
photo by Catherine Forest

Use your words

Someone once wrote:
"In the past my kids have tended to expect to be waited on hand and foot."

I responded:
If you use phrases like "to be waited on hand and foot," you're quoting other people. That usually means the other person's voice is in your head, shaming you. Or it means you've adopted some anti-kid attitudes without really examining them. If you're having a feeling, translate it into your own words. It's a little freaky how people can channel their parents and grandparents by going on automatic and letting those archaic phrases flow through us. Anything you haven't personally examined in the light of your current beliefs shouldn't be uttered, in my opinion. Anything I can't say in my own words hasn't really been internalized by me. As long as I'm simply quoting others, I can bypass conscious, careful thought.

SandraDodd.com/phrases
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Elevation

Learning to live better with children makes one a better person. Being patient with a child creates more patience. Being kind to a child makes one a kinder person.


Simply put...
photo by Chrissy Florence

Live lightly with patience

1. Most dangers are temporary. 2. Even clear and lit-up things might cast a shadow. 3. Everything around you is exotic to someone else somewhere else. 4. Many beautiful things lack permanence.

SandraDodd.com/light
photo by Sabine Mellinger

Transcendental moment

Remember that your children will also experience flow.

If you interrupt them while they're playing Rock Band or drawing or spinning on a tire swing, you might be disturbing a profound experience. So interrupt gently, when you must. Treat them with the respect you would treat anyone who might be in the midst of a transcendental moment.

page 207 (or 240) of The Big Book of Unschooling, on Flow
photo by Sarah Dickinson

What is "natural"?

The other day on facebook, someone asked friends to share their most recent photo of nature. I looked through my photos, back two months, and though some were of the sky or mountains, there were buildings in the foreground. Those of plants were plants in the yards of humans.

Is a photo of a bird playing in a puddle more natural than a bird in a human-built birdbath? Is a bird's nest or a beaver dam more natural than a human's home?

For a long time, and still, some people have wanted to keep human life and thought far away and separate from animals, and to deny that we are related to other mammals, to other primates. I suppose it's human, and natural, to wonder where the line is between what is natural, and what is human.

SandraDodd.com/instinct
photo by Amy Milstein

Seasons, in and out

Seasons change, and yet it's the same old seasons, in the same old order.

People can change, but they're still people, who get excited about snow, and then frustrated with the same snow, and then tired of snow.

Snow is natural, and it's beautiful. It is natural for people to have short attention spans, to want to make things better, to see what could be, should be, might be, and to think about that instead of what *is*, in that moment. Accept that human nature, like snow, can be welcome, beautiful, irritating, and sometimes dangerous.

Be careful walking, and driving, and help others be safe.

SandraDodd.com/control
photo by Amy Milstein

Museum of the Random

I love thrift shops, charity shops, yard sales, flea markets, car boot sales. In The Netherlands, on the King's birthday, people are allowed to put things out in front of their houses, to sell. Then they need to wait a year. Albuquerque has an ordinance that says a family can have a garage sale or yard sale twice a year. Most people never do, and some have one nearly every week, so it all evens out.


I have some wonderful things with good stories, bought off a little table at a casual local fair at a hill fort in Cambridgeshire in 1979. From a yard sale in Colorado Springs in 1970, I got a Chinese Checkers board made of wood, with a set of marbles I still have. But even the names of the places are exotic and collectible: Wandlebury. Colorado Springs (called more locally "C-Springs" or "the Springs").

When digital cameras came along, I bought fewer things and spent less money for other people's used treasures. As museums and ever-changing collections, they are wonderous. Unlike "real museums," if you love something, you might be able to buy it! But you can probably pick it up and examine it, even if you don't take it home.

SandraDodd.com/museum
photo by Sandra Dodd, at Family Thrift, not far from the house,
a shop to benefit programs for veterans of the Vietnam War

Practice, quietly...

Sometimes parents talk too much.

Practice being quiet.

SandraDodd.com/quiet
photo by Robbie Prieto
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...in a small pond

"Big fish in a small pond" is a phrase used to belittle someone's confidence, sometimes, but there ARE small ponds, and they DO have important aspects!

Find joy in letting people be as big as they are, right where they live.

Thoughts on Growth
photo by Kes Morgan-Davies

Artsy collections

This photo is of home decorating, artistry, collecting and storytelling. Everything in the picture has a story. Some might be "found it," or "made it," but those stories would involve where, and how, and when.

Not everyone can arrange a collection interestingly or harmoniously. One of the greatest forms of artistry is arranging a display of paintings in a museum, or organizing a gift shop so that the visit itself seems a gift.

But wait! Look at the duck shadow! Beauty pops up wherever you see it.
Tree of Knowledge Motif is an example of an online collection.
photo by Colleen Prieto

Naturally capable

A very basic tenet of unschooling: Surround the child with a swirling, wonderful, exciting, stimulating and rich environment and the child is naturally capable of learning from it.

—Pam Sorooshian
(almost a direct quote)

SandraDodd.com/babytalk
photo by Roya Dedeaux
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Defog

Make each moment the best moment it can be. Be where you are with your body, mind and soul. It's the only place you can be, anyway. The rest is fantasy. You can live here clearly, or you can live in a fog. Defog.

The Big Book of Unschooling, page 73 (or 80)
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Courage and reason

"Once a fear has created a movement, it's easy to cynically say, 'Follow the money.' And it's not that fear hasn't been created then exploited to make money. But sometimes it begins with a circle of fear and comfort that supports the fear. Only later does it lead to money."

—Joyce Fetteroll

The quote is from
SandraDodd.com/foodfear
but two other nice destinations are Becoming Courageous and Logic
photo by Ester Siroky

Lights!

There is something special about light, when it's dark. Small illumination is a great dark space can be beautiful. A camp fire, or a candle flame. A torch or flashlight. Neon, or the lit-up name of a store. A traffic light in a rural place. The familiar porch light of a favorite house. Fireworks.

Appreciate casual light shows. Maybe create a bit of light, for its special beauty.

SandraDodd.com/light
photo by Amy Milstein

A safer home

Deep breaths change everything, for a few moments.
...When a parent learns to calm herself, or himself, many things happen. The home becomes safer. The parent becomes more reliable and more trustworthy. The children can make more choices without fear.

When a parent can learn to take one deep, calming breath while deciding what to do, the parent becomes wiser and more patient.

When a person knows how to calm herself, she can help others.

When children learn how to calm themselves, because the parents have helped them, because the parents understood how to do it, the children have more personal range and power, because they will be more reliable and trustworthy and able to maintain their calm, thoughtful, rational minds.

SandraDodd.com/breathing
photo by Gail Higgins

P.S. It doesn't work every time, but without practice, it won't work any time.

A new view

Deschooling means dismantling the overlay of school. Gradually (or just all of a sudden, if you have that ability) stop speaking and thinking in terms of grades, semesters, school-days, education, scores, tests, introductions, reviews, and performance, and replace those artificial strictures and measures with ideas like morning, hungry, happy, new, learning, interesting, playing, exploring and living.

SandraDodd.com/interview
photo by Cathy Koetsier

Buying time and peace

A mantra like "We're going to try this for now" can buy you time and peace, both internally and externally.

Cautions (chat transcript)
photo by Sarah Lawson
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Ages and stages

Yesterday I bent over and picked an inch-tall tumbleweed sprout from a crack in a sidewalk. It was a tiny bit of community service.

The wind is blowing here, and all the big tumbleweeds will pass through chain link fences, or barbed wire, and scatter themselves into thousands of seeds. It happens every year.

A tiny baby hardly resembles adult forms, or the changes that take place in old folks. Where you are now is young compared to where you'll be later. Those changed old folks are always saying you will miss having those young children, and I found it to be true. It also irritated me for someone who was sleeping in a quiet, clean home to tell the baby-sticky, frazzled younger me that these were good days I would miss.

"Truth" is irritating, when we're sprouts, sprigs, teens, new parents, but just as the winds blow, people express the wisdom they gained as they aged and discovered that they missed having children in the house, as those other older older-folks had told them that they would.

"Results" (a half-random link)
tumbleweed photo by Holly Dodd
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Positivity from dark days

I have had a rough month. I hope yours was better! How can we know what is "rough" and what is "better," though, without considering the range of possibilities, or the variations in our own lives, at least?
March 31 is my wedding anniversary. People might read this afterwards, but in 2019, it's 35 years. And if you read this in 2019, my husband has been in the hospital since March 3. He had three cardiac arrests in one day. He's recovering well, though, which is statistically unexpected. It's easy for me to see this month as "bad." But is that fair? Keith is alive, and is in rehab getting his strength back, and telling me which bills to pay when, and from which account.

There are others reading who are grieving, or afraid, displaced, in dispute with a co-parent. Find the light moments, and the laughter, with your child. Be as soothing as you can be, because soothing them will also soothe you.

Be sweet; be well.
Comparisons and judgments
photo by Amy Milstein

One deep breath leads to another one.

When I was younger I lived too much in my head and would look through the lens of what should be, or could be, or might be, instead of stopping for two seconds to consider what actually, at that moment, was. If I'm not careful I can be cranky before I know I'm tired, and head-achy before I know I'm hungry.

Now, while I'm taking stock of how and where I am, I take a deep breath while I'm considering it, and that one deep breath leads to another one, and no matter where I started, I'm better already.

SandraDodd.com/clarity
photo by Sandra Dodd, of a "dripping rainbow"
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Gentle touch

When you touch them gently, you're experiencing gentle touch yourself.



SandraDodd.com/chats/being
photo by Sandra Dodd
in 2011; info in comments there

Shimmery reflections

It can't be helped, and it's really fine, that different people in a family remember things a bit differently, or have different emotions around a situation. Something might be a big deal to one or two family members, and not even be remembered by others.

My sister and I learned, when my dad died, that our relationships with him were very different, and both true and valid. We were in our early 20s, and each of us had fond memories of our dad that didn't involve the other at all, and some frustrations, similarly unrelated.

Even self-reflection can be different at different times. Things I used to be proud of look different, years later. Some decisions I was stressed about and unsure of as they unfolded look quite noble, now, from a distance.

SandraDodd.com/perspective
photo by Gail Higgins

Waking up happy

If my children wake up in Albuquerque, happy to be who and where they are, I hope they can maintain that feeling every day until they wake up in the middle of the next century and look out—I don’t care what they’re looking at, whether it’s the Alps, the Rio Grande, the back of their own filling station or the White House Lawn—and they’re still happy to be who and where they are. Who could ask for more than happiness? Don’t wait. Get it today and give it away.

SandraDodd.com/president
The quote is from an article written in 1996. My kids won't make it to the middle of the 22nd century. The oldest was nine when I wrote that. He's been waking up in Austin for most of four years now, where he moved for a job he loves.

original 2011 post, with a couple of comments
photo by Sandra Dodd, of a little bit of a sunrise in Albuquerque
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The good stuff

There are probably things in your house that would fascinate your children but you haven't thought to offer or they haven't found the good stuff yet. Consider interesting things you have that might be of interest for being old, foreign, specially made or obtained under special circumstances:

ornaments
dishes / pots /molds
silverware—even one old piece you know something about
egg beater
flour sifter
can openers (“church keys”)
old bottles or other containers
old clothes from the 60's or 70's
recordings—reel to reel, 45's, 78's, 8-tracks
manual typewriter
push mower
pre-transistor radio

More of that list, and the parent article are at SandraDodd.com/museum
photo by Holly Dodd
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Unexpected differences

A different approach to life yields a very different set of results.

A tiny change of course
photo by Ester Siroky

Protect the peace

One of my main principles has been that it's my job to protect the peace of each of my children in his or her own home insofar as I can. I'm not just here to protect them from outsiders, axe-murderers and boogie-men of whatever real or imagined sort, but from each other as well.

SandraDodd.com/peace/fightingcomments
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Slowly amazing

Schuyler Waynforth wrote:

It is amazing that the epiphanies seem to come so frequently in this life. The other day I was baking a cake and David got back from the grocery store and had to deal with the leaking coolant on the car and needed help putting the groceries away. I was up to my elbows in batter and asked Simon and Linnaea if they could help.

They both came in and put all the groceries away and went back to what they were doing. It was so sweet, so not coercive, so not eye-rolling. Just this generous gift of service. It came with an epiphany, an underscoring of these unschooling side effects that I see and read about from other people.

As you say, the proof is in the living! The rightness, the evidence, the closeness, the joy, those are all found in this life. You can read about them, but to experience them you have to get down on your hands and knees and play and hang out and tell stories and cuddle and talk and share and be willing to listen and to apologize and to work to make it better. And if you can do that without any other intention than enjoying being with them, without any ulterior motives, it plays out in ways that nothing else that I've ever seen does.

—Schuyler Waynforth

SandraDodd.com/confidence
photo by Sandra Dodd
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What proof do you have?

A response to this question:
What proof do you have that it is working? How would you suggest parents reassure themselves that this path is providing everything their children need?

Well starting at the end, there is no path that will provide everything for a child. There are some [paths] that don't even begin to intend to provide everything their children need. Maybe first parents should consider what it is they think their children really need.

As to proof of whether unschooling is working, if the question is whether kids are learning, parents can tell when they're learning because they're there with them. How did you know when your child could ride a bike? You were able to let go, quit running, and watch him ride away. You know they can tell time when they tell you what time it is. You know they're learning to read when you spell something out to your husband and the kid speaks the secret word right in front of the younger siblings. In real-life practical ways children begin to use what they're learning, and as they're not off at school, the parents see the evidence of their learning constantly.

SandraDodd.com/interview
photo of a kaleidoscope (and Holly) by Holly

Holly was six when the response above was written,
and nineteen when she took the photo.
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Time Out

Time out, please. I have tried to keep up here as though everything is normal, but I've missed a couple of days, and had more re-runs than usual. Tonight I'm too tired, but will share two things. #1 is this photo of me and baby Kirby Athena, taken by her dad yesterday; and #2, that her only grandpa, who is also my husband, has been in intensive care for two weeks. Today he's better than he has been, but it has not been steady improvement over the two weeks.

I might miss a few more posts in the coming days, or share more of the "greatest hits" or special forgotten posts from the past eight-and-a-half years.

Be happy with your families, please! Be grateful for all good things.

photo by Kirby Dodd, the Elder

A path over water

Parent and child, crossing water, smiling.

This image, or any one like it, is inspiring. For anyone, of any age, bridges can seem a little magical.


Another bridge post
photo by Ester Siroky

Experts

Pam Sorooshian, in a 2009 chat/interview, wrote:

Every time someone starts thinking they should do something because someone else said it was a good idea, they should stop. And they should think right then about their own child and about whether it is a good idea for that actual real child. When people call themselves experts, warning lights should probably go off.

Real expertise shows itself by the good ideas, the modeling, the understanding you get from them. Real experts don't need to call themselves experts or promote themselves as such.

—Pam Sorooshian

SandraDodd.com/chats/pamsorooshian
photo by Sandra Dodd
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All these connections

Farming, vocabulary, art, colors, geography, botany, shapes, textures, joy, comfort, gifts, humor, lunch.

Most things are many things.

SandraDodd.com/connections
photo by Roya Dedeaux
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Be afraid of fears, maybe

Joyce Fetteroll, on unfounded fear:


It's natural to want to be safe rather than sorry. In fact it's natural to listen to fears. Evolutionarily speaking if an animal runs when frightened but is wrong, nothing is lost except dignity. If an animal doesn't run when frightened but there is something wrong, they're dead. We're wired to listen to our fears.

But these warnings aren't about known dangers like earthquakes in LA or tornados in Oklahoma. This is about protecting your kids from shadows that might be dragons.

So while your family hunkers down behind dragon-proof walls, your kids' friends will all be out playing happily as though dragons don't exist.

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/radiation
photo by Karen James
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Thinking...

Read a little, try a little, wait a while, watch.

SandraDodd.com/readalittle
photo by Colleen Prieto\

Be where you are

This is a great illustration of principles over rules. What is the purpose of a fence? Of a tree?

It could also represent the intermingling of interests and needs in a partnership.

Then I thought it was more like openness to experience, and the willingness and adaptability to change a plan.

photo by Sylvia Toyama