| Something people need for Christmas is patience, sweetness and a little more attention than you think you have time for. Slow down just enough to look more closely at each person in your house, or in your video feed, or who sent you a card or note. If you can't give them more of yourself directly, think kindly of them. Maybe do something helpful for someone else, in their honor. Many people are not where they would like to be this week, and those who see each other might not hug and kiss. If you can make things better and not worse, that is a profound gift. |  |
 It's glorious that his mom got a photo of it. I'm grateful that she let me share it here with all of you. 🎵And glory shone around.🎵 |
It means to live as though school didn't exist. It means live outside of, far from, without thought of school.
Learn in ways that work naturally and holistically, where the learning has to do with life, and is living, and being.
See learning as your priority, and you will begin to see it more and more.
 | Someone had written, of unschooling: "It sounds like it takes an enormous amount of trust in everything to allow this process to happen." I responded: "It takes a little trust, and desire, and willingness, to take one step. It gets easier as you go. No one can take all of the steps at once." No one can, or should, have trust in everything. Try things out. Think carefully, and observe directly. Practice! |
Coercion creates resistance and reduces learning.
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Soft, hard, lasting, fleeting, solemn or sweet—the nature of "real life" can be shifty. Be soft, and lasting, and sweet as well and as often as you can be. |
Get witnesses.That's one reason people join support groups and confess to their friends what they're doing, because you've told somebody what your intention is.
You've told them what your problem is and what your intention is and now you have witnesses and for some people that helps. Sometimes it needs to be an imaginary witness, sometimes it needs to be a real witness. But maybe, if it will help you, imagine that the friend that you most want to impress is there and would you do it if they were there.
I know the argument, that there is no peace until all have peace, but that is a big old fallacy and foolishness. There never has been universal peace and never, ever could be.
| How will they learn to read? In school or out, every child learns to read in his own way, as he figures it out. Different people read different ways. Some are more visual, and some are sounding out letters, and some are reading groups of words.
Reading is complex, but teaching rarely helps. Until a child's brain and body are mature in various mysterious ways so that he can process the visual information and connect it to the language inside him in a manner that completes the puzzle for him, he cannot read, whether he's in school or not. Some children are three, some are thirteen, but shame and pressure never help. |
Feed them. Water them. Love them. Wait.
Unschooling advice—or deschooling oneself—does not change just because the kids get older: *Get closer to your child.*
Eliminate those degrees of separation that have started to grow fearful roots in you! When that happens, *you* actually start to *create* that divisiveness and separation in your relationship, by listening to your fear over the needs and interests of your kid. Do not let that monster in! Shine the light on the scary cobwebs and dark stuff.
Even within one breed, there are personalities. Even within one family, some kids are very "with It" about interpersonal realities, and others a little more clue-free.
Still It seems kind and respectful to assume the best when possible, and people can be pleasantly surprised.
If we treat all dogs (and children) as "bad dogs," they will probably respond In that way, too.
