An apple seed grows an apple tree. No person ever born knows more about how an apple tree should naturally grow than that apple seed, if it's left to grow naturally.
I'm old enough now that I've grown trees from transplanted saplings, and from seeds I planted myself. I cannot predict or control or affect what kind of tree it will become. What I can do is make sure it's watered and protected from damage by animals, foot traffic, and lawn mowers. If it has what it needs, it will grow as it should.
If a child has what she needs, she will grow as she should. I know how to mess a kid up, and have chosen to try not to do those things. I'm trying to let them grow as they should.
SandraDodd.com/musicroom
(Follow-up page for a 2009 conference)
photo by Amber Ivey
Leave the old habit to wither. Don't try to break it. Move to making better choices so that what you used to do and used to think will be left in the "choices I don't consider anymore" category.
SandraDodd.com/change
photo by Sandra Dodd
Caren Knox wrote:
I undertook learning how to be a good unschooling mom, and in that learning, experienced some of the most powerful personal growth and healing I’d ever seen in myself. I learned how to be vulnerable with and genuinely present for my guys.
They learned — and learned and learned, without having to be subject to someone else’s imposed timeline of when to learn what, without being limited to staying in a building 6-7 hours a day, five days a week, without having to pretend to learn something to pass a test, without having their grades determine their path. They freely explored their interests, utilized their own strengths and perspectives, and learned, and, as adults, continue to learn. —Caren Knox
Original, on facebook
photo by Ester Siroky
Except in the few obvious ways, I don't treat my children in a lesser way than I treat my husband. It has been crucial to our interactions as an unschooling family that the kids were people first, and kids only incidentally and temporarily.
That was written nearly 20 years ago,when Always Learning was new
Now they're adults, so it was true! They were only temporarily children.
photo by Elise Lauterbach
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It's a Very Bad Idea to "start unschooling" before you know what you're doing. The more rules a family had, the more gradually and sensibly they need to move toward saying yes.
The happy ideas to go with that are at Gradual Change.
photo by Janine Davies
I went to school for 15 years straight, and most summer sessions from 8th grade through university.
Beginning in the 4th grade, I had a nightmare the night before the first day of school every single time, and I came to count on it as a checklist. The first few were small and kind of standard, like I got off the bus in only my slip, or I had my house shoes on, or I didn't know whose class I was supposed to be in.
Over the years these dreams blossomed into extravaganzas of mishap, and they were always so real I'd wake up in a panic thinking I'd gotten off to such a horrible start the whole year would be a total disaster. Then I'd realize the whole year was still ahead of me and I'd get out of bed and do all the things right that had gone wrong in the dream.
The night before my first day as a classroom teacher I dreamed I didn't have a grade book or a pen. Next day I did. That one, my first checklist dream as an employed adult, made me start to wish for more.
I wrote all of that in the early 1980s, before I had children. Checklist dreams have continued, or stress dreams where I had lost a child's shoes, or had forgotten to order a cake, or didn't have gas in the car.
If you can make checklists out of fears, worries, and stress dreams, and your life is better because you think "Well I won't let THAT happen," what a gift!
Use happy advantages wherever you can find them.
Disposable Checklists for Unschoolers
photo by Sandra Dodd
[P.S. for those who are good with numbers, and didn't like "15 years": I didn't go to kindergarten, and graduated from public school a year early. Four years of university, graduated in May 1974, turned 21 that summer. Then I taught for six years. I was quickly learning about learning!]
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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If every conscious decision is taken with the intention of getting closer to the way one wants to be, then in a "getting warm / getting cold" way, it's not nearly as distant as one might have thought. You never even have to leave your regular house, car, family. It's right where you are, only the thoughts are different.
May you have warm relationships, warm feelings, a warm home, warm food and a warm bed.
The top paragraph is a quote from SandraDodd.com/factors
photo by Sandra Dodd
In 2011, this went out in January, during summer in the southern hemisphere. Greetings, readers in Australia and New Zealand! Have some warmth in a better season. I don't think Brazil or South Africa need much heat, and most other readers are equatorial or northerly.
The whole world could use the warm relationships and feelings, and I wish everyone good options!
There is personal growth in quietly providing what is needed.
The world is made better by those who notice and attend to needs.
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SandraDodd.com/service
photo by Gail Higgins
In 2007 trying to talk someone out of using "screentime" for purposes of limiting a child:
When you're driving, the glass in front of you can be called a windscreen. Americans usually call it "wind shield." But is that screen time?
I think you should call things computer, tv, movie, etch-a-sketch. But even computer, sometimes I'm watching movies, sometimes I'm writing. Sometimes I'm reading e-mail or looking at my kids' MySpace. Sometimes I'm shopping. Sometimes it's research (quite a bit lately, reading in and about 16th century Bibles in English, early editions of The Book of Common Prayer). So I can't even call it "computer time" as though it's all the same thing.
Sometimes Kirby is playing World of Warcraft. It's partly keyboard, and partly talking to his team on a headset.
Sometimes he's playing Guitar Hero, with the guitar controller.
Sometimes he's playing stand-up-and-move Wii games.
Are those three "screen time"?
The original is about 2/5 of the way down at My 4 year old and the DVD player
Newer (post-MySpace) writings about screentime are at Screentime Index Page
photo by Belinda Dutch
My three children grew up around adults who played, not just putting on feasts and tournaments and building medieval-looking camps, but also playing strategy board games and mystery games, having costume parties when it wasn't even Halloween, and making up goofy song parodies on long car rides.
Maybe because I kept playing I had an advantage, but I don't think it is beyond more serious adults to regain their playfulness.
SandraDodd.com/playing
photo by Elise Lauterbach
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Connections are the best part of learning, in unschooling, in life, for fun. But if it’s too noisy too often, a quiet moonrise over a lake will get all sound-polluted. And one person’s thoughts of beauty might be overrun by someone else’s free associations.
Gaze without speaking / Explore Connections
photo by Janine Davies
Humor is a great warm-up for any thinking. If one's mind can jump to get a joke, it will be easier for it to jump to synthesize any ideas, to make a complex plan, to use a tool in an unexpected way, to understand history and the complexities of politics. If a child can connect something about a food with a place name or an article of clothing, parents shouldn't worry that he hasn't memorized political boundaries or the multiplication table.
SandraDodd.com/connections/jokes
photo by Janine Davies
I think the most common changes parents have reported are that they are happier and calmer, and have become clearer in their thought processes. The "reports" I hear are often in online discussions, so that might explain the latter. When people help each other work through confusions in thinking, writing becomes clearer.
Slack and other rare and priceless things
photo by Elaine Santana
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How are you thinking?
How are you feeling?
How you are thinking and feeling is how you are living and learning.
Sandra Dodd; March 7, 2007
not in an unschooling context, that first time
photo by Sandra Dodd
If you hold on to all your old ideas and fears and images of learning, every bit of that builds a curtain of "what should be" and you can't relax, see and appreciate what is.
Unschooling:Getting it
photo by Elaine Santana
Debbie Regan wrote:
"From the outside, unschooling may look like no chores, no bedtimes, no education, no discipline, no structure, no limits, etc. But from the inside, it's about learning, relationships, living with real parameters, partnership, navigating turbulence, making connections, joy, curiosity, focus, enthusiasm, options, following trails, fun, growing understanding, opening doors..." —Debbie Regan
the original
photo by Kathryn Robles
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Karen James, in a comment once:
"Question everything"...I love it! As a kid I was told I asked too many questions! As a parent, questions are the beginning of paths to places we have yet to visit, and are so exciting for that reason!
SandraDodd.com/patterns
photo by Jo Isaac
Even when it's not as clear as you're used to, the sun is as bright as can be behind the clouds.
It's the same sun.
Even when it's not as clear as you're used to, love is as bright as can be behind fear and frustration.
It's the same love.
Today, be present and patient.
SandraDodd.com/being
photo by Beth Fuller
We can't see how today will affect tomorrow. There are gates and walls that might have beautiful things on the other side, but there's no hurry to know.
Skills—mad skills, normal everyday skills, abilities, aptitudes, intelligences
photo by Sandra Dodd
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