Controversial topic

When a family stays together, and when the marriage is improved and solidified, it's not just good for the children. It's good for the grown children, and grandchildren. It's better for holidays and family events, for estate planning and inheritance. It's better for being able to leave photo albums out, and photos of children with their parents still out on the wall, without trying to revise history to keep from offending new wife, new husband, girlfriend, boyfriend. It's better for casual stories like "Remember when we went to White Sands?" It's less likely that a story will need to be abandoned midway or trailed away from because someone who was there, and fun, is now estranged from the family.

I didn't know, years ago, that unschooling could strengthen a marriage. I did know that a good marriage would strengthen unschooling.

---

SandraDodd.com/positivity
photo by a waiter, with my camera, 2011

---

P.S. Why is that controversial?

I have been criticized, over the years, for encouraging people to be kind and compassionate to partners or spouses. I have also been thanked by people whose marriages became stronger because of those ideas, or by the use of unschooling principes in general.

Although I am sympathetic to people whose marriages have failed for reasons beyond their control, there are divorces that could have been avoided, and there are relationships still in the future that could benefit by being bathed in sweetness and patience, humor and positivity.

More and more learning

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

Gradually you will notice more and more learning, and soon it will be happening all the time!

Sandra Dodd, on Unschooling, from the Do Life Right Teleconference 2012
photo by Sandra Dodd

Discernment

Control implies one KNOWS the right answer and if he's not "out of control" or "lacking self control," there will be no choice; he will control himself.

Decision making requires lots of data and thought and freedom and discernment.

SandraDodd.com/control
photo by Holly Dodd

Energy, focus and choices

Don't look for rules. Look for "better." Some days you won't have the energy to do your best. So find ways to have more energy, to focus, to make choices that lead you toward what you want to do, what your children need, what benefits your family most.

Make the Better Choice
photo by Rosie Moon

Do the nice things.

I think the role of a partner is not to train the other person, not to shame the other person, not to find a time to say "I told you so."

If you just do the nice things, that's what good partners do.

The Importance of Partnership
photo by Rippy Dusseldorp

Getting warmer

Once some firewood yielded a surprise.

Think of love, and think of warmth. Remember warm love past, hope for warm love in the future, and help provide warm love now, if you can.

The world is irritating and frustrating these days. I try not to irritate or frustrate others. When I succeed, that makes their moments better, and mine too.

Getting warm (2011)
photo by Kelly Halldorson

Live Lightly

Lighten up.

Live Lightly.

Real Learning
photo by Sandra Dodd

See also:
Light on light; Sources of light; and Sun, or Moon, or Fire

Music as healing

[T]his little ukulele has done for me what none of the stuff that I did as a child ever did, nor what my ranting and raving about my school experiences did. It has let me see how much I enjoy making music. And I enjoy the intellectual pursuit of the skill of making music. ...

So that's part of how I heal from school damage. I enjoy my life doing things that I couldn't do through school.

—Schuyler Waynforth

The quote is part of longer writing about school and music
photo by Sandra Dodd (of Schuyler, with a different ukelele)

"Me-their-age"

Each time I do something sweet for one of my children, it benefits them, and me now, and me-their-age.

about being positive and recovering from childhood hurts
photo by Karen James

Prevention and healing

Jenny Cyphers wrote:

"Every time I prevent something damaging happening to one of my children, it's like healing a little bit of me. Every time I help my children achieve something wonderful, it's a little bit like healing that little girl that would've like that to happen for me! I love gifting my kids with that! It helps make me a better person to give my kids something better!"

—Jenny Cyphers
(original)

Other posts about Healing
photo by Cathy Koetsier

With patience and with gratitude

We can't change what happens to people, life is unsure, and we're all getting older. Please continue to help encourage others to use unschooling's peaceful principles to make life sweet and good while we have it. We can't live as we are forever, but we can try to live with fewer regrets, and with patience, and with gratitude.

Be as good as you can be as often as you can be.

Like real life
photo by Cátia Maciel

Goop, fire, snowballs

When one person says "I like science" and another says "I don't like science," I remember school science textbooks that had geology, astronomy, chemistry, botany, biology, agriculture and physics all in one book. . . . . There are many fun things to do and explore that could be called "science," but why not just call them skate boards or miniature golf or basketball or piano or water play or rescuing wounded birds or making goop or collecting rocks or swimming or drawing pictures of clouds or taking photos in different kinds of light or growing corn or training a dog or looking through binoculars or waiting for a chrysalis to open or making a sundial or making a web page or flying a kite or chasing fireflies or building a campfire or finding out which planet that is by the moon on the horizon, or wondering why snowballs take so much snow to make, or how a 4-wheel-drive truck works.

Science and the larger idea of Changing Facts
photo by Sandra Dodd

Selflessly and sweetly

With a child, being his partner and not his adversary means that situations are not going to involve one of you winning at the other's expense. There doesn't need to be a winner and a loser, when a choice is made. Try to see that in your marriage and in your family. Make decisions that benefit your family, your home, and your children. Do that selflessly and sweetly, and your own life will be sweeter.

Gradually easier
photo by Gail Higgins

"What paths we will follow..."

"Watching my son follow his interests and learning about his world in the process has been an enlightening experience for me. I have a new confidence in children's curiosity and their drive to learn and explore. As I write, Trevor is developing a a new interest in sharks and I can only anticipate what paths we will follow and what we will learn. Who knows where it will take us?"

—Amy Kagey, about dinosaurs,
but there were monsters, too

Learning With Dinosaurs
photo by Tessa Onderwater

Happiness is better

"Being happy has never diminished my partnership, and being miserable has never enhanced it."

—Beth Fuller

SandraDodd.com/quotes
photo by Rippy Dusseldorp

Choices can abound

Choices can abound. Parents can arrange life so that their children have choices all the time, and learn to see their own actions as choices rather than "have to's," but none of them can give their children "the freedom" to do as they wish at MY house. Nor in a shop, nor a public place. Certainly not in a national park, or museum, or church. . . . .

Parents who tell their kids that they can give them "freedom" might be talking about the relative freedom of being out of school rather than in. Once they're in the normal real world, though, continuing to promise freedom isn't as helpful, nor as relationship building, as finding ways to give them choices.

Freedom/Choices/Empowerment/Respect
photo by Amber Ivey

Flow, sparkle, joy

Unschooling should be better than school; if it's not, the kids would be better off in school. Any unschooler who wants to do just the bare minimum of what she "has to do" to be considered (by whom!?) an unschooler is NOT unschooling well or right. It needs energy, activity, interactivity, flow, sparkle, joy.

other "better than school" posts and sparkling ideas
(quote from 2014, preserved here]
photo by Nina Haley

Math without numbers

In thinking of mathematics, I operated on the assumption that our children might be more pattern-oriented than I am (spatial and logical intelligences) and that they might be more word-dependent than my husband. We provided games involving patterns–board games, video games, dice, cards, and singing games–and played them with the children. One of the most memorable games was Bazaar, a game with exchange rates and values but requiring no numbers or reading. (In Germany there is a similar game called Bierbörse.) Math was a fun part of the fabric of life. It was the structure of games and of music and of Lego and Ramagon. We talked about proportion and perspective in art and construction, but only in words, not with numbers. They found patterns; I found patterns, and we shared them without me saying "this is mathematics."

Games     /     Geography without maps
screenshot by Holly Dodd, of the game FlipPix

Fly when ready

The words are mine (Sandra Dodd's), but I was speaking rather than writing.

I’ve talked to kids who said they were so scared and stressed when they were 17, because they knew when they turned 18, their parents were going to start charging them rent, or throw them out, or if they didn’t go to the university, they should go to the military—all this huge pressure to get... to get out. You are done now; we're done.

So people hadn’t considered that they could totally avoid that, that that would be a natural offshoot of radical unschooling.

Keith and I did think, early on, we said what we are doing is inoculating our kids against the trait of some, or the fact of some kids leaving with the first person who says “Hey baby, you wanna live with me?” or “Oh, let’s go get a house”, or, you know, that sort of energy of young people luring other young people out and away, to other states, to other places, to dangerous neighborhoods. We said "It’s going to have to be a pretty good offer to beat what they have at home."

And so that becomes a safety factor too. If the children know that they can stay at home, then someone who comes and says, "Hey do you want come do something with me? Do you want to come live with me?"—it better be a good offer.

Recording and transcript: SandraDodd.com/familybonding
photo by Karen James

Look, now, today

Look at the immediate benefits of your decisions.

Look for the good parts of today.

Look for the value in this moment.

"Success"
photo by Sandra Dodd

Nothing you "have to" hate

Try not to hate anything more than you "have to," and once you get to thinking more positively, you might find there's is nothing you have to hate.

SandraDodd.com/negativity
SandraDodd.com/haveto
photo by Lydia Koltai

Doing and thinking

Learning to see learning is a process. It's part of deschooling, for the parents.

When learning starts to show, in its natural state, you will see that children are processing what they do and what they think about what they've done. They'll be making connections to everything else in their history and surroundings, to other experiences and imaginings.

When unschooling begins to really flow, the process of learning is the processing of experiences and connections.

SandraDodd.com/learning
photo by Nina Haley

Fear doesn't have a stick

June 2018, a mom wrote for a public group that fear was assaulting her. In a conversation on the side, she used the term again: "sometimes fear assaults me."

I responded:

Fear doesn't hit you with a stick in a dark alley.
Don't use the word "assaults."
It's too dramatic and it makes you a victim.

An additional problem, though, is that it also treats "fear" as something outside herself, that comes toward her and assaults her when she least expects it.

Maybe ALL the negative words are doing that—personifying, or anthropomorphizing, an emotion as an external enemy. So some would say "it's just semantics," but it's a map of one's emotions that ranges outside the body and builds bad guys, I'm thinking.

"Just semantics" is a big problem

---

SandraDodd.com/battle
photo by Ester Siroky

Over and over and often

You don't need to control yourself to keep yourself from being controlling. 🙂

Make generous, kind choices, over and over, as often as you can.

SandraDodd.com/battle
photo by Nina Haley

A houseguest, or your child

Being new to the world, and you being his host (and partner), any light you can shed on the mysteries of the world, and any clues you can give him on what's likely to happen and what's expected of him would be good for all concerned. Advise him what might happen at a wedding reception, or a birthday party, or at a place he's never been to before. Show him how to eat a new food he hasn't seen. Help put him at ease if he's nervous. Provide him all the coaching and reassurance he wants, and no more than he wants.

SandraDodd.com/guest
photo by Rippy Dusseldorp

Consider ideas

Consider ideas. If something makes sense, good. Use the idea. Remember where you got it. Be honest.

Live your life in such a way that you're not ashamed if someone quotes what you said, or tells something you did.

Growth is good
photo by Gail Higgins

Be more, do more

Pam Sorooshian wrote:

I'm not saying to prepare a lesson on cactus or coconuts or pineapples. I'm saying that if you're not already an interesting person with interesting information to share with your children, then you'll have to make an effort to be more interesting. The way to do that is to develop your own sense of curiosity, wonder, fascination, and enthusiasm.

It might have to seem a little artificial, for a while, if it isn't natural to a parent to just "be" this way.

—Pam Sorooshian

SandraDodd.com/wonder
photo by Cathy Koetsier

Natural residents of Earth

So how do unschoolers learn geography? Better than I did in school. They learn it with flexibility and a lack of awareness of having "learned geography." They learn it from games, movies, satellite photographs, globes, the history of ships and airplanes, of cloth and houses, of the Okinawan karate and of Roman bathhouses. Their model of the universe is better than mine was when I was their age. Their confidence is better than mine is now! They are learning about THEIR planet. I felt like an unwelcome guest here, when I was "just a kid." They feel like natural residents of Earth, and they do know their neighborhood.

SandraDodd.com/geography
photo by Olga Degtyareva, while visiting Stone Town

Step thoughtfully

If somebody said, "I want to walk to Santa Fe from Albuquerque," it matters which direction they go. It matters that they have water. It matters if they know how they're going to go. You can die between here and Santa Fe—it's a frickin' desert.

People can ruin their lives with unschooling if they don't know where they're going. If they just intend to make a bunch of wild decisions and mill around, it won't work. Their kids will end up needing to go back to school, and being clueless kids in school. So it's almost that big a project. You will have to take hundreds of thousands of steps. And so it's better to take a step thoughtfully, knowing what direction you're going, than to thunder around yelling, "I'm an unschooler! I'm an unschooler!" and not get anywhere.

So I think they need to understand the direction they're going, and why. And they can get there a lot faster and a lot more whole, and with a lot more peace and understanding, if they will Read a little, try a little, wait a while and watch.

---

Extras with Sandra Dodd
I was speaking, not writing. You can listen (at 15:15), or read the transcript.

photo by Sandra Dodd, in Golden, New Mexico, March 2020
(the last time I left town)

Soft, peaceful, relaxed mom

Sylvia Woodman, responding to a mom who had written:

"I'd just like to share that I have also relaxed my militant attitude..."

I'm glad to hear that you are relaxing! I bet if your daughter could choose between a Militant Mom and a Soft, Peaceful, Relaxed Mom she would prefer the latter over the former. 🙂

—Sylvia Woodman

Soft and Sweet
photo by Rippy Dusseldorp

The best friend you can be

Instead of "You're the parent, not their friend," substitute, "Be the very very best friend to them you can possibly be."

—Pam Sorooshian

Friendship in Families
photo by Sandra Dodd

Lively ideas; living language

Without becoming too critical or cynical, maybe consider, with your children sometimes, changes in knowledge (the platypus, Mars, Pluto, leeches, volcanic activity and virgin sacrifice compared to global warming's medicine men; anything smaller than an atom?), or geography ("Four Corners" has been in the wrong place all these years; the U.S.S.R. is still on maps in some public places) or spellings ("plough" or "plow"? wooly or woolly?).

Play lightly with these ideas. There's no advantage to getting huffy or angry about it. Just see it as the reality it is. People learn. People change their minds. Knowledge grows. Evidence is reclassified. Language is alive. People who are alive are changing and learning. You can resist that or you can ride it with gusto.

Fact/Fallacy/Opinion
photo by Sarah S.

Moments to years

"As we get older and our kids grow up, we eventually come to realize that all the big things in our lives are really the direct result of how we've handled all the little things."

—Pam Sorooshian
June 4, 2007
Always Learning

Pam Sorooshian
photo by Jihong Tang

Eye contact and communication

Non-verbal communication doesn't get enough credit. I used to be one of the people who thought babies couldn't communicate, or that pets couldn't, until I got older, had a baby, and started paying better attention to different ways to communicate.

Perhaps these animals wanted food, or were curious about visitors. Sometimes my cat wants food, or to be scratched or picked up, or put down, or let in, or let out.

Sometimes a child doesn't know what she wants, but she feels uncomfortable. If she looks at you, see if you can tell without asking what it is she might be thinking. I have tried things like offering food or water, singing, getting up and watering plants, or picking up toys, to see if she wants to help (or watch, in the case of pre-mobile children).

Too often, I talked. I began to see that my questions or verbal guesses weren't always the best responses.

SandraDodd.com/babies
photo by Ester Siroky

Cocooning at home

Some children have seasons of wanting to cocoon at home (some adults, too). Sometimes an unschooled child will go through a year or two of not wanting to go out. And some, as Connie describes so well above, are inclined to be inward-looking.

I think in Howard Gardner's intelligence theory, this might perhaps involve more intrapersonal intelligence than average. But there are artists and writers who prefer a great deal of time alone, too.   And even among those with kinesthetic intelligence, there are some who prefer hiking, climbing or skiing. There are those who practice sleight-of-hand and juggling for many hours alone. There are musicians who play a thousand hours in private for every hour they might share with others.

When such children are in school, they find ways to make themselves invisible if they can. The advantages of being home are abundant for those with such inclinations.

Time for Solitude
photo by Gail Higgins

Relax back into learning

The way kids learn openly and honestly from the world around them can be hampered if parents have not deschooled well. If parents are still attached to school or schoolishness, if parents have prejudices or places they don't want to examine, they can't be as good at unschooling as parents who relax back into learning.

I've seen many families succeed, I've seen some wander off because it's not easy, and I've seen some fail.

---

I'm sorry the links didn't work, in the e-mails.
They should here, now.

---

Deschooling is the best next stop
though the quote came from a rougher place
photo by Colleen Prieto

Empty your cup

Sandy Lubert, from a presentation she gave:

As we deschool ourselves, we must empty our cups of all the preconceived ideas, concepts, expectations and methods that prevent us from embracing unschooling. This seems like a simple thing to do, but it can be quite difficult in practice. At first we think we have emptied our cups but as we drink, we often detect a residual, schooly taste. And sometimes, even a little residue can curdle the whole pot of tea. So, it’s important to have a "clean receptacle," as it were, in order to taste the true essence of unschooling life.

—Sandy Lubert

Sandy Lubert on Unschooling and deschooling, and changes...
photo by Sandra Dodd

One easy step

Thinking of "better choices" instead of "RIGHT choices" is an easy step to a world of other easy steps.


Make the Better Choice
photo by Jen Keefe

Soft, grateful, gentle

When you wake up, think. Am I glad to be here? Is this a good moment? If so, breathe and smile and touch your child gently. Be soft. Be grateful. Find abundance. Gently.

SandraDodd.com/battle
photo by Sarah S.