Being glad

Sometimes when my kids were little I would express a positive thought aloud. "I'm glad we can afford to go out to lunch sometimes," or "I'm glad we have a car and enough gasoline to go to the mountains!" Or "I'm glad our cats are nice."

And don't do it to train them. Do it because it's true. It will be uplifting, in that moment to kind of put a blessing on it.

from the January 2013 chat on gratitude
photo by Amber Ivey

A wonderful, surprising abundance

Megan Valnes, when her daughter was younger, wrote:

Today, while making my older daughter's bed, I was reflecting on the very act itself. The girls have a bunk bed and Lila's is on the top, so I have to climb up there and she has about 20 stuffed animals--it's what I would have used to think of as a pain. Instead of feeling overworked and underpaid as I made her bed, I found myself taking extra care to make her bed very nicely because I know how good it feels to sleep in a freshly made bed. I tucked the sheets and blankets in tight and cleaned off any food crumbs. Thinking of my sweet girl, I made the bed as perfectly as I thought she would like. Her stuffed animals are placed in their special places and her bed looks very cozy and inviting. Even if she never mentions it (which I doubt she will), I feel good knowing she will appreciate the gesture.

Is this the abundance everyone talks about? This fullness of heart that I no longer think of making beds as a chore, but as an act of service and gratitude? The feeling was such a wonderful surprise!

—Megan Valnes

SandraDodd.com/service
photo by Cass Kotrba

Plain old playing

When it's in season, if it's available and conditions are right, mud is glorious.

If you don't have mud, but you have a sandbox and a hose, that's good too.

Remember some of the basis of learning by feeling and touching—textures, effects, the excitement of messiness—and try to be generous and patient. Childhood is brief.

Playing
photo by Roya Dedeaux
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Same for swans

Life has some inconvenient realities. Be happy anyway! Admire the beautiful birds, but watch your step.

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Reality as an environment for unschooling

Seeing and avoiding Negativity (and poop)

photo by Sandra Dodd, at Oakley Court, on the bank of the Thames, near Windsor

If you give a kid a camera...

Kes's mom wrote:

It’s the shadow of a piece of seaweed on a chalk stone. He took the photo because he spotted that it looks like a mermaid 🧜🏼‍♀️ (a steam punk mermaid perhaps). Taken at Holywell beach, Eastbourne.

Sandra says:

That's on the south end of England, halfway between Brighton and Hastings, for those whose map of England comes from history and literature. (← That was me, until I got to go and run around there some.)

The rock above the chalk mermaid is flint. There are medieval churches built of flint. It was mined, underground, by stone-age people.

Connections
photo by Kes Morgan-Davies

Flex your make-believe

Let children play, and build, and imagine. Encourage disguises and humor and moments of sweet escape. Welcome them back from their adventurous "journies" and elsewheres.

Be with your children, but don't expect their thoughts and emotions to always be with you.

Flex your make-believe.

Imagination, by Deb Lewis
photo by Elise Lauterbach
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Learning by being

If you touch your child gently, softly, lovingly, he is more likely to be gentle with others. He will have learned not from words, but from his own lived experience, from your example, how to touch gently.

more on touching gently
photo by Janine Davies

Helping casually

No one needs an assembly line to make a single item, nor to educate a single child. Rather than seeing the curriculum and then trying to wrap that around your child, or insert all the parts, it works better to see your child and help him learn as part of a busy life, considering occasionally whether maybe you should introduce other topics into his life, or introduce him to other people, places and things. This can be done casually, though, and doesn't need to be scheduled or methodical.

page 121 of The Big Book of Unschooling (page 110 in first edition)
photo by Chelsea Thurman
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Three little things

Today, three times, do something a little bit better.


Are you cutting an apple? Slow down and do something unexpected, something artsy. There might be an animal outside (or inside) you could offer the scraps to.

If you're asked to help someone, add a sweet gesture or a kinder word.

If you succeed and it helps, do it again tomorrow.

Uplift
photo by Amber Ivey
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Every bit of all the bits

Unschooling allows free use of any and all bits of information, not just school's small set. A grid based first on cartoon characters or the history of ice skating can be expanded just as well as one built on a second-grade version of the discovery of North America and the made-up characters in some beginning-reader series. If the goal is to know everything, and if each person's internal "universe" is unique, then the order in which the information is acquired isn't as important as the ease and joy with which it is absorbed.

The time will come in your unschooling when you will forget to use checklists, but it won't matter. The child's internal grid will already have given them the need to know what things feel, smell and taste, and what they used to be or will be, and whether it's different in other places. Connections will continue to be made throughout their lives. The universe inside will grow larger and the universe outside will become clearer with every new experience.

Disposable Checklists
photo by Cass Kotrba

Peace, joy and learning

It’s not so simple and straightforward as any one educational or parenting or political theory would like people to believe. But still, no matter what else the parents believe or deny, the tone and mood they set make a difference, for good or ill. . . . .
It will come back to peace, joy, learning, and parenting as directly and as sweetly as possible.

Natural patterns
The quotes are lifted out of context from SandraDodd.com/nature.
photo by Gail Higgins, in the southeastern U.S.
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Springtime (southern hemisphere)

The internet makes the big world small. We can see new photos from a future day or an opposite season.

The internet allows unschoolers to get ideas from others on other continents.

Bigger, friendlier world
photo by Jo Isaac, in south east Australia

Framing the sky

From inside the house, windows frame the sky. That can be beautiful.

Outside, you might be where trees, or mountains make a border for a cloud show.

Perhaps you see the sun set on water, or desert plants. Maybe familiar buildings are what the sun goes behind, from your point of view.

Don't forget to look, sometimes, at the beauty you can view nearby.

The abundance of possibilities
photo by Janine Davies, in the south east of England

Morning every moment

At your house it will be morning again within 24 hours, but it could be morning in your heart any second.

Somewhere in the world it is morning every moment. Somewhere, light is dawning.

When people begin homeschooling, that's a big bright morning, but you can have as many mornings as you need. If you want to change the way you're being or thinking, just do it. Don't wait for another year, another month, another day.

Good morning!

SandraDodd.com/morning
photo by Pippi Howard, of a flower in Santa Fe
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Relax

Sleeping is natural and necessary. Help children feel good about sleeping.

Sleep When You're Tired
photo by Colleen Prieto

Adoration

Moms and dads are big characters in other people's lives. How's your acting? How is your being?

You're famous in your family.

Don't disappoint your fans!

Better memories
photo by Cass Kotrba
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Balancing gently

I called this "balancing gently," but I'm not sure there's any other way to do it.

People don't need to enact each extreme to find a resting place. Because we have the ability to imagine, and remember and to plan, here is an idea. Think of what too much noise would be—too much talking, too much background noise, too many wind chimes, too many power tools.

What would be too much silence? No running water, no bird song, no fan, no one to ask you questions, at all.

Too much talking can be as harmful as no talking at all. Approach the balance from the quiet side.

When to say how much about what
photo by Janine Davies

Being gentle

Children whose parents are gentle will understand what that's good for.

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

It's better for the cat, if you do that.

SandraDodd.com/pets
photo by Amber Ivey

Safe inside

If it happens that there are dangerous things outside the house, try to keep the inside safe and comfortable.

Happy, safe and comfortable
photo by Gail Higgins

Peace where you are

Resting is fine. Waiting can be good. Stretching out at home and being still might be the best response to much of life. Find some peace and calm wherever you are.

SandraDodd.com/calm
photo by Karen James

Flexible uses

Creativity and intelligence are seen in the ability to use a tool or an object for something other than its intended purpose. If you see your child (or your cat) doing something "wrong," set rules aside long enough to consider principles.

Sleep is important. Curiosity leads to discovery and to new connections. Shade can come from things other than trees or roofs.

Let your mind leap and frolic.

CONNECTIONS: How Learning Works
photo by Belinda Dutch

The joys that come

We can't control or contain the world, but we can appreciate the joys that come.

Gratitude
photo by Sandra Dodd

What lights them up?

Caren Knox wrote:

The most effective thing I did to help my sons be their whole, individual, unharmed selves was to support, encourage, and enrich their interests, choices, and enjoyments - even when I feared that their choices might have negative repercussions, or their choices made me feel uncomfortable.            . . . . Look at your kids, watch your kids. What lights them up? Do & support more of that. —Caren Knox

original, on facebook
photo by Amber Ivey

Unschooling Discussion 2020

New discussion, on Facebook, as of August 1
Unschooling Discussion 2020
[Still there as an archive. —Sandra, 2021]


photo by Sandra Dodd

Piecemeal and serendipitous

"Every person's learning about the world will be piecemeal - so it might as well be serendipitous and interest based."

—Cally Brown
(original, on facebook)

SandraDodd.com/history
photo by Ester Siroky (while visiting Tuzla)

Closer to peace

We can't live in "how will I survive this?" time nor can we live well by pining for that past we've already lived through. The best way to get through must be to do a better thing. If a conscious thought about time passage comes, think of what will be an improvement, and make that choice, however tiny, however slight.

Avoiding regret, contributing joy...
time will flow as it will,
but we can move closer to peace.

original writing, a bit longer, at Time is Inconsistent, June 2017
photo by Cass Kotrba

Right here, again

Holly Dodd wrote a warm memory:

I am seven years old. I am sitting comfortably with a convenient, safe place to rest my face. Safe. On my father's lap . . . Knowing it is not only ok, but expected of me, to fall asleep. Right here where I already am. My dad will tuck me in when he is done holding me, and it will hardly be my business.

I left out the middle. There is more at: Sleep-related memories
photo by Holly Dodd
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Here! Present.

Live in the moment, and the moment is not in the past.
Live in the moment, in the world where you are.

Thinking this way or that

I think in words. My husband thinks in patterns. So people think more of emotions or colors, or of biological needs.

When I don't know what something is, I can't think of it in words. Sometimes that will happen—one's usual mode or "setting" isn't available, or isn't working! Think about how you think.

Something can be beautiful even if you don't know what it is.


SandraDodd.com/mystery
photo by Nina Kvitka

Knowledge / Acknowledge

In your home are homey things, and some were gifts, or were found, or inherited. In your kitchen, something was made by hand, or found in an attic, maybe. There might be a favorite bowl, or a cup with a story. We have one special spoon. I like the hand towels. I got tea for my birthday.

Who showed you how to scramble eggs? When did you learn to bake? What do you think about how to arrange your refrigerator?

Is there flexibility in there? Are there more reasons to laugh than to fear?

Be open to happy memories and gratitude for your knowledge and equipment.

Gratitude for Common, Simple, Homey Things
photo by Holly Dodd (in the reflection) of Sandra (behind the spoon)
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P.S. If anything above brought up sad or stressful memories, consider rearranging the cabinet that contains the voices in your head. Here's help: SandraDodd.com/voices

Quick! They're gone!

Older moms say "Appreciate your kids. They'll be grown before you know it." Younger moms think it's rude, and wrong, and can hardly endure the endless days of damp, stinky babies and toddlers, and messy, destructive, needy three and four year olds, and... Life is made of stages that can seem long. I've had young children and felt sticky and crowded and exhausted. I've had teens I started to miss before they were gone. Wherever you are, breathe and be patient and loving.

SandraDodd.com/patience
photo by Ester Siroky

Combinations

Artistry and creativity can be practiced and expressed in sweet, homey, temporary ways. Unfamiliar combinations of familiar things are the basis of much art, science, and humor.

New combinations
photo by Amber Ivey
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Art credits for LND 2020

Photo credits:
(Links lead to the Just Add Light and Stir post in which the art appeared first.)

L — Amber Ivey
E — Jihong Tang
A — Alex Polikowsky
R — Cass Kotrba
N — Shonna Morgan

N — Vlad Gurdiga
O — Karen James
T — Lisa Jonick
H — Holly Dodd
I — Nina Haley
N — Brie Jontry
G — Gail Higgins

D-A-Y — Janine Davies


Concept and offer of a remake: Holly Dodd
Outlined letters: Sandra Dodd— ("Similar to last time but different," Holly instructed)

Learn Nothing Day

click to enlarge
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credits tomorrow

Learn Nothing Day starts at midnight

Learn Nothing Day begins circling the world soon, from one midnight to another, from New Zealand through Australia, Singapore and Malaysia, India, Kuwait, Moldova, South Africa, western Europe... a little lull across the Atlantic to Brazil, while the others wake up and see how well they can do at not learning for just one day. A holiday. Un-"School break."



New Art from Rotterdam, 2018
new photos underlaid by Saskia Ruder
click to enlarge
Dear reader:
If you are near the areas listed above and I left you out, let me know.

Thoughts can lift you up.

I can breathe and be still and not be knocked down by thoughts. Thoughts can lift me up. I can turn down the volume. I can switch channels.

Too much noise
photo by Vlad Gurdiga

Up with choices!

When a child has come up from infancy with choices, she won't be desperately grasping for evidence of personal power and autonomy when she's older.


SandraDodd.com/foodproblems
photo by Sarah S.
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Good, healthy, nice, different

"Remember that unschooling is not just not taking the kids to school. It is building a good relationship with them, a healthy relationship with them, and creating a nice environment for them, different from school. So that is part of our responsibilities as unschooling parents—to heal ourselves." —Alicia Gonzalez-Lopez

Deschooling with Alicia Gonzales-Lopez,
interviewed by Pam Laricchia, March 2020 (44:25)
photo by Elise Lauterbach

Grateful and kind

Be grateful for opportunities to be kind to your children.

A font of "yes!"
photo by Elaine Santana
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