Learning directly

How can a baby learn about his food if he doesn't get to smell it, see it, touch it?

SandraDodd.com/babies/hands
photo by Cátia Maciel

For now...

There it is, for now. Later it won't be.

See it, love it, be grateful, and then accept the changes, with grace.

SandraDodd.com/acceptance
photo by Roya Dedeaux

Like working a puzzle

Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

Picture learning like piecing together a massive jigsaw puzzle.

With natural learning kids plunge into the puzzle wherever it seems interesting to them. They fit the pieces together here and there working all over the puzzle. They won't go in any particular order. They'll stick with one spot or jump about depending on what's most interesting to them. They'll stumble over new and interesting things. They'll see old things in unfamiliar places giving the unfamiliar places a sense of familiarity as well as intrigue.

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/joyce/talk
photo by Sandra Dodd

Following the herd?

Sometimes people follow a group, they "follow the herd."

Can't that be a legitimate decision to make?

It's good to know where they're going, and why, and what the alternatives might be.

Finding choices and options for yourself and your children is good when it's possible.


Making the Better Choice: SandraDodd.com/betterchoice
photo by Ester Siroky

Learning social skills

Jihong Tang wrote (as part of a longer list):

Socialization and social skills. I think it should be one of the top reasons to homeschool. I see with my own eyes how my children develop their social skills by watching how I talk on the phone, interact with people and explain to them what to expect and how to behave under different circumstances. It has been a subtle and slow process until one day I noticed they used the same language I used and mimicked how I conducted myself at special occasions. I would say having an adult modeling in the real world makes a big difference.

—Jihong Tang

SandraDodd.com/whyunschool
photo by Cátia Maciel

Not the best choice

Sometimes I want to whine. Sometimes I do. It never helps.

When making a conscious decision about how to respond or how to react, it will be rare that whining will be the best choice.

SandraDodd.com/betterchoice
photo by Elise Lauterbach

Going forward

Janine Davies wrote:

Respectful parenting and parenting for social change is where my main focus is now, and of course radical unschooling is all those things and more. For me, that all begins and ends with being a good mum in the eyes and minds of my children, and going forward being remembered as a kind respectful and happy mum—someone they could trust implicitly, and who was their partner and friend.

Hopefully they will then carry that forward to how they treat their children, regardless of what the current trend is, or fears they have, or the current scaremongering circulating. Even if they don't have children of their own, my hope is that they treat and speak to all children that they come in contact with throughout their lives with the same respect and kindness that they afford their partners and friends, and that they treat them like the people they are.

—Janine Davies

SandraDodd.com/janine/success
photo by Jihong Tang
(her son's painting, left)

Peace and love and food

Without choices, they can't make choices. Without choices they can't make good choices OR bad choices. In too many people's minds, "good" is eating what parents say when parents say (where and how and why parents say). That doesn't promote thought, self awareness, good judgment or any other good thing.

Food is for health and sustenance. Eating with other people can be a social situation, ranging (on the good end) from ceremonial to obligatory to courtesy. There's no sense making it hostile or punitive.

---

Food Choices (and lots of them)
SandraDodd.com/eating/idea
photo by Sarah S.

People they trust

Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

The best way for introverts to learn to socialize is with the people they're comfortable with: their family. And then whatever friends they feel comfortable with.

Then when they're older and their desire to get something from a group is greater than their discomfort of being in a group, they'll have the skills they picked up from people they trust.

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/introvert
photo by Janine Davies

Variable speed

Sometimes it's good to rush along a trail. Other days, even a slow stroll might be too much.

It's okay not to follow every trail you see, and it's fine to look at a photo of a path and use your imagination, without going anywhere.

There will be paths, options, and surprise destinations all along the way.

SandraDodd.com/choices
photo by Ester Siroky

Self-defending ideas

I wish I could tell everyone that if there's some part of Sandra's site they think they "don't need" to read, READ IT FIRST. Read it twice.

Your bad ideas are trying to defend themselves by tricking you.

—Virginia Warren

How to read SandraDodd.com
photo by Cass Kotrba

OOPS

OOPS! I'm so sorry an unfinished post went out! I'll finish it for tomorrow.

Here are some pictures of cats (click for more!)

 
 

A bit magical

Moments of quiet focus, and photo evidence of those, are both a bit magical.

SandraDodd.com/peace
photo by Ester Siroky

Special effects

Art made of light and shadow—look for it at your house, in stores, restaurants, in friends' houses, too!

SandraDodd.com/light
photo by Sarah S.

Rainbows and shooting stars

Though I've seen some beautiful rainbows, and some doubles, I have missed more than I've seen. That can't be helped.

If I planned in advance to show someone else a rainbow, I couldn't guarantee a sighting.

Friends travelled from New Mexico to Finland to see Northern Lights, and failed to spot any.

Even during meteor shower times, you might miss them all.

And so?

Consider each sighting a blessing and a tiny miracle. Count the things you saw, and not the things you missed.

SandraDodd.com/wonder
photo by Theresa Larson

Clean and clear

For unschooling to work, the relationship of the parent to the child needs to become so clean and clear that the parent is being, and not just acting. This might involve physical posture, but also thoughts and feelings, reactions and clarity.

Posture (or the earlier original Posture)
photo by Nicole Kenyon

Safe, busy and happy

Be with your kids and make sure their lives are safe and busy and happy.

SandraDodd.com/youngchildren
photo by Cátia Maciel

Doors

We are here now. We have been other places in the past. We will be in surprising places in the future.

SandraDodd.com/abundance
photo by Sandra Dodd

Freedom and approval

When we're tempted to say "no," and we have that little internal conversation about "Why not?" that can be healing. When I'm there, I think of my mom saying no, and then I picture her having been open enough to say yes more, and I picture my childhood self having a thrill of freedom and approval. There was some freedom, and some approval, but I can imagine up a lot more of it, and shower it on my children.

SandraDodd.com/rentalk
photo by Cátia Maciel

Be with your child

Jenny Cyphers wrote, of a parent getting up and going to do something with or for a child:

It feels infinitely better for my spirit when I do that too. It's easy to get caught up in one's own self thought. If I let a day go by, or hours, in that mode, at the end of the day, I find myself thinking that I should've, would've, could've, and once again, I'm in that mode. To just go and be with my kids as soon as I recognize that mindset, I avoid all the guilty afterthoughts of what I should have done better. So, I not only avoid the guilt complex, I get to relive all the fun and wonderful moments that I intentionally sought after.

It seems that unschooling, for me, is a compilation of all those moments of being with my kids instead of doing something else. It's fun to go out of your way to do cool things with your kids and seek out opportunities, but the real stuff seems to happen in those moments that could just go by within each and every day.

—Jenny Cyphers

SandraDodd.com/being
photo by Sandra Dodd, at Alex Polikowsky's farm

Parenting reflects back

It's a gift to have children to help us have an excuse to have a sort of do-over on behalf of our moms.

For me, it seems like a gift to me and my mom both, if I can do better than she did. She would have liked to have done better, too, so I can do it for her.

I get some healing benefit either way.

SandraDodd.com/healing
photo by Ester Siroky

The sun will be there

I usually forget to look at the sunset, but sometimes I notice the change of light, out the window from where I'm sitting.

Sometimes a sunrise or a sunset is beautiful, but why? The symbolism varies. The colors might be different, and the effect won't be the same on different individuals, but it is the same old sun.

Let it soothe you and give you hope, when you happen to see those changes of colors and light as the sun appears, or as your part of the world starts to pass into darkness, just until morning. Take a breath and be grateful. Be grateful for the breath, for the gratitude, for being.

SandraDodd.com/gratitude/chairs
photo by Theresa Larson

On-the-job learning

Life. People can live lives, even little kids live lives, without preparation, learning on the job, as they go. They can learn while doing real things with real happiness and real success.

SandraDodd.com/connections/cocktail
photo by Sandra Dodd

Being nicer

The further I got from cynicism and pessimism, the more they jumped out at me when I heard them.

It's easy to be mean.
It's harder to be nice.

Moments and Mindfulness
photo by Keith Dodd

Our touchstone was learning.

Our touchstone was learning. Learning happens. We looked for new experiences for our kids, when we could. We didn't have much money when they were little, but there were free things to do in our city, and fun things to do at our house.

Peace and fun and learning, in various permutations, got us a long way.

Learning happens.
photo by Colleen Prieto

Slowly and sweetly

Sudden change confuses kids, they don't trust it, they assume it's temporary, and so their behavior reflects that. And it robs parents of the joy of gradually allowing more and more, as the parents learn more and more. You could have said "okay" and "sure" hundreds of times instead of "whatever you want" one time, and the gradual change would have been a joy.

SandraDodd.com/gradualchange
photo by Karen James

Be a soft place

We wanted to protect them from trauma and frustration. That's not always possible, but it was a goal. We tried not to be the source of trauma and frustration.

SandraDodd.com/nest
photo by Sandra Dodd

Patient and loving

Radical unschooling works the same way for every child. Pay attention to what he's interested in. Don't force things. Find interesting items and situations, be patient and loving, and learning will happen. The more it happens, the more it will continue to happen.

Learning will happen
photo by Karen James

Points for your team

Points can be gained for your partnership, by what you do today, and the way you do it, and the thoughts you have while your child is so near. Contribute to the bank of good memories. Be present, and good.

SandraDodd.com/better
photo by Roya Dedeaux

Momentum

Parenting can seem repetitive, but the parents can be getting better at it, stronger, more determined, as they get chances to do better than before.

Food, clothes, the car, beds, baths, hair, shoes, over and over and over?

Try to think of each time as just *this* time. Be kind, generous, and sweet, knowing that you are making up for some other moment when you were maybe cranky or distracted.

SandraDodd.com/happy
photo by Sandra Dodd, a carousel in Minnesota

Choices, priorities and locations

Laying "have to" on our kids, or on ourselves or on outsiders is less useful and healthy than looking at rights and choices and priorities and locations.

Can you jump on the bed?

Depends whose bed, which bed, where, when. Is someone sleeping? Is it an antique? Who owns this bed?


SandraDodd.com/etiquette
(original, in a discussion on facebook)
photo by some realtor, once,
in a house that's now Holly Dodd's

Discover and do and be

"Conventional wisdom" (those truisms that too-often aren't true) says "children need limits," and that good parents have lots of limits (the more limits the better the parent). We've all seen (and some have been in) families where stifling limits caused the very problems they were expected to prevent. But without a counter-mantra to "children need limits" it's easy for parents to fear that it must be true or people wouldn't keep saying it.

If by "limits" people mean "safe boundaries," sure! If by "limits" people mean "someone to watch and care," absolutely! But what people usually mean by "limits" is parents who say "no / don't / stop / forget it / when you're older."

When unschoolers discuss limits they're often discussing arbitrary limits, trumped up to make the parents feel good, or used as magical talismans to guarantee that their children will be creative, healthy and safe. What creates much more magic is to help children discover and do and be.

SandraDodd.com/limits
photo by Brittany Lee Moffatt

Small changes

Each person knows when she's happier and when she wishes things were a little better. If small changes of attitude can make more happy moments than before, that benefits everyone involved.

SandraDodd.com/happy
photo by Roya Dedeaux

Learn to see everything!

"How will they learn everything they need to know?"

Do the best of the high school graduates know everything they need to know? No, and at some point, ideally, they start learning on their own. Some fail to get to that point, though. Unschooled kids have a head start. They know how to find what they need to know, and they have not been trained to ignore things that won't be on the test.

When parents see how and what their children are actually learning instead of just scanning for the half dozen school-things, unschooling will make sense to the parents. If you wait for school to congeal from a busy life, you'll keep being disappointed. If you learn to see everything instead of just school things, unschooling will start working for you. When you see it you will believe it.


SandraDodd.com/seeingit
photo by Ashlee Junker

*Be* with your children

Rippy wrote:

I learn every day how to have a better partnership with my children and spouse, how to connect, inspire, trust and help. And now that I have learned how to read without my emotions interpreting the emails for me, the message is consistently the same - be loving, gentle and sweet with your children, *be* with your children, live joyfully.

—Rippy Dusseldorp

Learning to read [about Unschooling]
photo by Rippy Dusseldorp

Lifelong learning from TV and video

Respect your children's interests and viewing. Think of your own childhood memories.

Calling something crap has never given anyone joy, but Bob the Builder has.

Remember
photo by Meredith Dew

Love, overflowing

Karen James wrote:

Attachment parenting, then unschooling, showed me that I'm a better person than I ever believed. I'm capable of compassion I didn't know existed. I have a sense of humour that isn't belittling or unkind, but can bring relief to uncomfortable situations. I have so much love for Doug and Ethan, that it has begun to overflow and fill my own cup. My world is hopeful, even in difficult times. I still struggle a fair amount with inner critics, but I'm learning. And, I've learned, I love learning.

—Karen James

There is more at SandraDodd.com/change
photo by Karen James

Warmth

You know the game of finding something in which other players will say, "You're getting warm," or "You're getting cold"? You need to get warmer and nearer and closer. You don't need absolute peace; you need more peace. You don't need to live in perpetual peace; you need to live with more peace.

SandraDodd.com/gettingwarm
photo by Amber Ivey

Life as Show-and-Tell

People with collections have collections of stories. Objects have origins, and connections. If you ask people about their things, they will tell you stories about themselves.

Most people think of "exploring" as going to new places, but exploring ideas, music, foods, games and each other's experiences and stories, within a family or group of friends, creates an environment of learning.

The first paragraph is new today.
The second paragraph is here.
photo by Sandra Dodd