Reflections and shadows

This is a photo of a concrete pad at our house, between a wall and a car. It won't look like that now, but one day it did, from reflections and shadows, from lights and surfaces interacting.

The effects of different factors on lives and situations can change appearances and perceptions. Life keeps moving, and we can miss things by not looking, not noticing.

Days and moments can flow too quickly, too loudly, exhaustingly, for parents, and for growing kids. Try to appreciate the lights and shadows and patterns.

SandraDodd.com/wonderor SandraDodd.com/factors
photo by Sandra Dodd
The swirls are reflections from the car windows. Stripes are light through a slat gate. Row of spots is sun through the decorative top row of the cinderblock wall.

People, writing, improvement (really)

Writing to real people for real purposes improves writing in real ways.

There are some people who haven’t been born yet who will, someday, read things Jo Isaac wrote, and other people here. It might be hard for them to find it, or it might not be. But good ideas, written well, can outlive the writers.

SandraDodd.com/realwriting
photo by Karen James

Gather and glean

I've always felt strongly that unschooling should be about the ideas and not about the individuals. No one book, website, speaker or conference should try to be (nor be expected to be) everything for anyone, but unschooling parents should gather and glean what they can from all the real world around them. We don't need to all agree, or all be on the same list or at the same conference for families to learn and grow with unschooling.

SandraDodd.com/speakingLnL
photo by Karen James

Extraordinary doings

Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

It helped me think more clearly about unschooling when I realized unschooling isn’t something kids do. Unschooling is something parents do. Unschooling is *parents* creating a learning environment for kids to explore their interests in.

Unschooled kids aren’t doing anything out of the ordinary. They’re merely doing what comes naturally. They’re doing what all animals with lengthy childhoods do. They learn by doing what interests them in an environment that gives them opportunities to explore.

Unschooling is parents doing something extraordinary. It’s deliberately creating an environment where kids are supported in pursuing their interests.

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/unschoolingis
photo by Rosie Moon

A Respected Child

I really believe unschooling works best when parents trust a child's personhood, his intelligence, his instincts, his potential to be mature and calm. Take any of that away, and the child becomes smaller and powerless to some degree.

Give them power and respect, and they become respected and powerful.


This is a good one to read in context: How to Raise a Respected Child
photo by Sandra Dodd

How to help

About how to help kids follow their interests:

Sometimes help is just encouragement or acknowledgment, but sometimes it might need to be transportation or procurement or something physical.

SandraDodd.com/focus
photo by Megan Valnes (of Holly Dodd)

All fun and games

An angsty mom wrote:

I know in the nitty gritty of my heart, I'm not okay with a life philosophy that centers on "if it's fun I'm here, and if it's not, I'm gone."

Joyce Fetteroll responded:

Don't think of what we're talking about as fun, then. Think of it as joy. Or fulfilling. Or satisfying.

Even the most joyful life isn't all peaches and cream. Sometimes it rains when we wanted it sunny. Sometimes a friend cancels when we wanted to do something together. Sometimes accomplishing something means working through a period of frustration.

Life will naturally throw lemons at us fairly regularly. But what we don't need is to squirt life with artificial lemon juice to prepare us.

—Joyce Fetteroll

There's more: Life can't be all fun and games
photo by Karen James

Learning by watching

Problem:
My son spends a lot of his time playing video games. I have accepted that this is his passion... and maybe very well play a part in his career path. but lately he's also been watching videos of other people playing video games on YouTube! Please help me see a reason that this is not just a waste of time... I know you'll have a good way to look at this latest passion.

An idea:
Musicians watch videos of other musicians. Athletes watch videos of other athletes. Chess players have even been known to watch other people play chess with something approaching awe and rapture. Woodworkers watch woodworking shows. Cooks watch cooking shows. Dancers watch better dancers and learn like crazy!

[and there was more, ending with...]
Don't worry about what kids choose to do. Make sure they have lots of choices, and don't discriminate between what you think might be career path and what might "only" be joyful activity and self-expression, or what might seem to be nothing more than relaxation or escapism. Let them choose and be and do.

SandraDodd.com/mha
photo by Sandra Dodd

More joyful ways to live

Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

The first step is finding something that's better than what you have.

The second step is wanting to change.

The third step is figuring out how to change.

So, as you read along, you may wonder why I suggest that parents basically make life more difficult for themselves. The reason is because I believe it leads to a much better place. And that better place is a more joyful life for our children and our families.

—Joyce Fetteroll

Children and media discussion
photo by Janine Davies

A grid over which to lay other things

If someone knew almost nothing in the world but trivia relating to popular music for the past 100 years, that would make a HELL of a good grid over which to lay other things. And I don't think a thorough knowledge of pop music (in any culture or language) over this particular past hundred years, which saw the proliferation of recorded music available in homes, the advent of radio broadcasts, movies with music, television variety shows, transistor radios, cassette players in cars, CDs, iPods and cell phones that store a ton of music could help but create a timeline of the culture. Wouldn't songs from Marx Brothers or Fred Astaire movies remind people of The Great Depression? Can anyone hear big-band swing music and not also think of the hairdos and costumes? Does "Boogie-Woogie Bugle Boy" not remind anyone of WWII? Knowing some of the context of Gene Autrey and Roy Rogers brings up LOTS of stories about where those songs were first heard.

The lyrics of some of the songs make specific mention of historical events, and that could help dating things, too, if a person were trying to figure out what came first.

Any hobby delved into deeply becomes another portal to the whole world—real and imagined; past, present and future.

"Trivial" connections are real
video from Young Frankenstein, 1974
Directed by Mel Brooks
Written (in part) by, and starring, Gene Wilder

What do trees, cats, and people need?

What does a tree need for its leaves and twigs to develop more?
What does a cat need for its brain to develop more?

They need a lack of abuse. They need water and food, sunshine. The cats can use things or people to play with, and people or other cats to groom them, pet them, lie down next to them sometimes. The tree might need to be less in the shade of other trees for optimal growth, or might need not to be where the wind is banging their branches against a cliff or building or fence or something.

If you think of people as the natural, biological beings they are, rather than as school kids who either are or are not in school, things become much clearer.

Synapses & Brain Development

Longer version here, with some Pam Sorooshian commentary

photo by Jo Isaac

How unschooling works

Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

Schooling works by pouring expertly selected bits of the world into a child. (Or trying to, anyway!)

Unschooling works by the child pulling in what he wants and needs. It works best by noticing what the child is asking for and helping him get it. It works best by running the world through their lives so they know what it's possible to be interested in. . . . .

Real learning travels the child's path of interest, from one bit of information that interests them to the next. Real learning is self testing by how well it works in the situation the child needs it for. Real learning is about understanding enough to make something work.

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/joyce/how
photo by Roya Dedeaux

Persuasion and explanations

A person can only "refuse" what is demanded, maybe, the same way a child can only rebel against something that is required arbitrarily. Because if the mom can explain persuasively why she thinks something should be a certain way, the others might understand, and choose that for the reasons stated, not because the mom said so.

SandraDodd.com/rebellion
photo by Elise Lauterbach

Choices yes; "freedom," maybe not

If I "give my children freedom" in a situation, it's because I had some leeway or rights myself. I cannot "give them freedom" that I don't have.

Some unschoolers become confused on that, and they begin to frolic in the "freedom" that they are pretty sure some stranger online granted them, and that unschoolers have inalienably from God, bypassing all forms of government and the limitations of wallboard. And so if an unschooling family is up at 3:00 a.m. playing Guitar Hero, they seem mystified that the neighbors have called the landlord.

I'm exaggerating. I hope I'm exaggerating.

SandraDodd.com/freedom/limits
(where there's more of that)
photo by Roya Dedeaux

Conversations and insights

Shan Burton wrote:

If he had a bedtime, we would have missed our 2:00 am chat about My Little Pony, Doctor Who, Star Trek, Shakespeare, cellular peptide cake with mint icing, the two Queen Elizabeths, the nature of cats in general and ours in specific, word play, fan fiction, Lord of the Flies, specism (like racism and ageism), Harry Potter, and Heinlein.

It's something I would never have known I was missing out on, and I love these conversations and insights, and how they change as he grows.

—Shan Burton

SandraDodd.com/latenightlearningcomment
image by mudpuppycomics (dot com)

School Days

One wonderful thing in unschooling is realizing you don't know whether it's a school day or not. It is evidence of deschooling.

Don't forget school days completely, though, because you can plan outings when the museums and playgrounds are empty. There won't be a crowd at the cinema.

Old information has new purposes.

SandraDodd.com/unexpected
photo by Cátia Maciel
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New and better

Lean, one choice at a time, one conscious thought at a time, until your choices and thoughts are solidly in the range where you want to be, and you no longer lean that other way so much.

Your new range of balance will involve better choices and options than your first attempts did.

Sandra, from a talk on being partners
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Soothing touch and gaze

Once someone wrote that babies had no experience and no way to communicate except "frustrated cries, screams and babbling."

I responded:

There is touch. There is gaze. Have you never just looked into the eyes of your child, communicating? Have you not touched them soothingly, and felt them touch you back sometimes? They can tell the difference between an angry look and a gentle look.

SandraDodd.com/babytalk
photo by Destiny Dodd, I think

Will they learn...

QUESTION: But I wonder how we are preparing them for adulthood then?

Joyce Fetteroll's
ANSWER: How did you prepare your newborn to be a toddler? How did you prepare your toddler to be a 6 yo?

They learn what they need now. The nows just naturally keep coming along and the kids end up where they are today already knowing what they needed last year and acquiring what they need for today.

---

I love Joyce's answers. My own to such questions has usually been "Does high school prepare people for adulthood? Does a university degree teach them everything they need to know?"

Will they learn all they need to know?
photo by Karen James
(of water on an artichoke)

As kids deschool...

Kids who haven't been to school are different, but here is
Joyce Fetteroll's advice for helping kids deschool when needed:

The best thing you can do while they're deschooling is let them play. And help them play. Make play dates. Make sure they have things they enjoy playing with. *Be* with them. Find out why they enjoy something so much. When they feel free—rule of thumb is one month for each year they've been in school, starting from the time when you last pressured them to learn something—be more active about running things through their lives: movies, TV shows, books, places to go: ethnic restaurants, museums, monster truck pulls, walks in the woods, funky stores ....

Look for the delight in life and it will infect your kids. 😊 As long as it's *honest* interest and delight! If it's fake interest to get them to pay attention to something you think would be good for them, they're going to notice and avoid it. It's the tactic they've been awash in since kindergarten: "Learning is Fun!"

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/joyce/deschooling
photo by Cátia Maciel

Live, see and think

Unschooling isn't another version of a curriculum, that will take four hours a day. Unschooling is a different way to live and to see and to think.

SandraDodd.com/seeingitcomments
photo by Julie T

Easier lives for children

I would like to discuss unschooling in ways that it can apply to anyone and everyone.

I'm concerned only with what makes children's lives easier, not what makes their mothers feel more important or martyrly or special. SandraDodd.com/martyr

---

Nothing has ever made me feel better about me than the feeling that I was being a good mom. SandraDodd.com/peace/mama

photo by Roya Dedeaux

Yourself and the world

People don't become really good at unschooling without changing the way they see themselves and the world.

---

To hear it: SandraDodd.com/radio

To read it: Living Unschooling

If you have the book Natural Born Learners, turn to page 199 for a longer version.

photo by Erika Ellis

Emulation

The people I respect most have become little voices in my head, and I "consult" them when I'm making decisions in their specialty areas. I have friends who are more patient than I am, more generous with time, and I think of them clearly and try to emulate them when I am making choices in those areas. Some cook better and are more organized, and I think back to things they have said, or to things I have seen them do, or I try to induce in myself the presence and mood they have when they're cooking or straightening. I don't want to be them, but I want to be more like them in the ways they have that earned my respect.

—Sandra Dodd
from longer writing here

Future Grandparents
and/or
SandraDodd.com/voices
photo by Cathy Koetsier

Fitting dinner into the day

It's not uncommon (historically) for children to eat first, and separately, and food kids like, and then for the adults and teens and guests to eat a little later, at leisure, and not have to worry about whether their food is something the kids would like.

I have more energy in the morning but I don't always want to use it thinking about dinner. When I do, I do better. 🙂 If I start bread and put something out to thaw, or better yet mix up a casserole or put something in the crock pot—at least a sauce or something easy like ground beef or chicken in barbecue sauce—then dinner is easy and if plans change, the thing that was started earlier can go in the fridge. . . . .
We've never made our kids wait for dinner. If they're hungry, they can snack.

—Sandra, when kids were still home

SandraDodd.com/eating/dinner
photo by Sandra Dodd

Not the same choices

Happy, supported, trusted kids don't make the same choices as unhappy, controlled kids.

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/eating/sugar
photo by Sandra Dodd

Mixtures, swirls and solutions

"Yesterday" in 2004:

I still see "subject areas" everywhere, but I haven't taught those categories and prejudices to my children. Science has much more to do with history than geology has to do with microbiology, but in school geology, biology, astronomy and physics are all "the same thing," and history is different altogether. Yet the best parts of history involve the knowledge cultures had and how they put it to use, whether in shipbuilding or iron tool use, medicine or communications.

Holly asked yesterday about when people discovered the world wasn't flat. I told her there was no one date or century because people discovered different things at different times, and some were shushed up when they said the world was round, or that the sun didn't orbit around the earth. I also told her, "Ask your dad, because he's really interested in the history of science."

I noticed when I said it that I had "named subject areas," but I didn't feel too bad. She's twelve, and reading, and after all "the history of science" was never part of my schooling. A science teacher wasn't certified to teach me history, and vice versa. Only outside of school did I figure out that scientific discoveries were history, and that music was science, and that art was history.

SandraDodd.com/schoolinmyhead
photo by Kelly Halldorson

Snakes and wild berries

When a science-minded kid loves to take the dog down by the river and look for wild berries and snakes, some parents say, "My kid just wants to play. He's not interested in learning. He'll never learn science just playing."

Each little experience, every idea, is helping your child build his internal model of the universe. He will not have the government-recommended blueprint for the internal model of the universe, which can look surprisingly like a school, and a political science class, a small flat map of the huge spherical world, a job with increasing vacations leading to retirement, and not a lot more.

SandraDodd.com/seeingit
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Confident and at peace

"jbantau" wrote:

For the first time, in what seems like my entire life, I am not terrified. Up until now, I have been wielding my alarm and anxiety like a sword and shield battling against the world. I thought that's what I was supposed to do. Isn't that what a good parent does? I thought that fear was a parenting tool that told you how to keep your children safe. I felt that letting go of that fear meant that I was a bad parent. My paranoia had spilled into every part of our lives.

—jbantau

SandraDodd.com/fears
(quoted with a link to the full original there)
photo by Colleen Prieto

Sweet, special moments

Joanne Lopers wrote:

There is something oh so sweet about a child doing something without being asked.

Vega who is 8, cleaned out our fridge one day because he saw it needed it. Dutch 6, came over on his own to help bring in plates from outside. He hated helping out when I used to make a big deal out of it. These small instances happen more and more often and are very special moments for me.

—Joanne Lopers

Kids Helping Voluntarily
SandraDodd.com/chores/tales
photo by Roya Dedeaux

Another casual part of life

To call some food "junk" is an artificial division. When food is given the status of a religion (the place where sacrifices are made to ensure a positive outcome and long/eternal life), then there IS the necessity of a devil/Satan/"the dark side."

When food is just another casual part of life, kids will choose melons over biscuits/cookies and chocolate eggs sometimes.

When a child is loudly, ceremoniously and with a big happy-face NOT ALLOWED to be in the presence of the devil/sweets, then if and when he is lured by that satanic force, he will either resist out of fright instilled by his loving mother, or he will succumb, indulge, and be one giant step away from his mother—morally, emotionally and dietarily.

SandraDodd.com/eating/junk
photo by Tammy
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Curiosity and flow

In early 2008, sharing some interesting connections that had happened at our house, I wrote:

That all 'just happened,' but it happened because we've been building up to it with our whole lives and our whole style of communicating and living together in a constant state of open curiosity.
. . . . Once you start looking for connections and welcoming them, it creates a kind of flow that builds and grows.

SandraDodd.com/connections/example
Photo by Cátia Maciel
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What is not a clock?

I do love clocks and calendars and the history of time measurement, but it is good to remember that we are not clocks, and our children are not clocks.


The clock is not hungry
photo by Sandra Dodd, of a sundial in Chichester
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Patterns and dots

Find, consider, value connections.

Notice, contemplate, appreciate patterns.

SandraDodd.com/connections
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Your child as a person

"Just a reminder: your kids are whole people. They're having experiences even when you're not there. They learn with you and without you."

—Holly Dodd

(I told Holly, "Say something I can quote in Just Add Light.")

SandraDodd.com/holly
photo by Julie D, of Holly and Adam
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Peace and change

When this was first published, November 18, 2014, the intro was:

The story quoted below is from nine years ago and involves a sixteen-year-old.

Marty is twenty-five now and is getting married in a couple of days.

Today, in 2025, I update it:

The story quoted below is from 20 years ago, and involves a sixteen-year-old.

Marty is 36 now, and is moving with his wife and two children to Anchorage, Alaska in six days.

Marty has an orthodonist appointment at 10:30 this morning, and works at noon. He has gone to ortho alone, and has taken Holly before. I asked yesterday if he wanted to go alone or me take him. He wanted me to go. He asked me to wake him up an hour before. He likes at least an hour before, and usually an hour and a half.

I forgot to wake him up, but I heard his alarm go off at 9:31 (and remembered I had forgotten).

He was tired and I offered to put a fifteen or twenty minute timer on and come and get him, but he said no, he wanted to get up.

There is a snapshot moment in the "don't have to" life of a sixteen year old boy.

I'm not saying that every child given leeway will be Marty.
I'm saying that every person who claims that leeway will inevitably cause sloth is proven wrong by Marty.

SandraDodd.com/sleeping
photo by Sandra Dodd, of Marty, a different morning in those same days

Writing (without writing)

People with younger kids who "are not writing," think again. Are they joking with you and others? When they ask questions, do they think a bit so they can word the question clearly? Are they starting to choose one word over another, for some dramatic or emotional or humorous or feelings-sparing reason? Writers need to do those things.

When they answer questions about a movie they've seen, do they take their audience into consideration? Who wants the short version, and who wants the long one? Who would rather hear about the characters than the action sequence? Writers need to think of those things.

Seeing Writing
SandraDodd.com/writing/seeing
(with samples of unschoolers' writing)
photo by Rosie Moon

Unschooling and other marvels

My Favorite things about Unschooling

• You can do it at home!
• Your kids are there!
• It makes all of life a peaceful learning lab.

Unschooling is a subset of homeschooling. Unschooling is the radical, philosophical end of homeschooling. Unschooling is living a rich life and letting learning drop into your lap and into your ears and mind while you laugh and listen to music and play games. Unschooling is seeing the magic in every day, and the joy in yourself and the people around you. If your children don't go to school, why should you bring school home? Be free! There is nothing in school that isn't also in the real world. (And if there IS, why would you be needing to know it if it doesn't exist outside?) Use primary sources, not textbooks. Look at real nature, not photos of nature in a book.

SandraDodd.com/marvel
"Unschooling and other Marvels"
photo by Laurie Wolfrum

Something very different

"Unschooling seems to be able to move through the teen years that are so difficult for most parents with fewer difficult moments. Unschooling is doing something that is very different from other kinds of parenting."

—Schuyler Waynforth
March 29, 2014
Gold Coast symposium

More by Schuyler
SandraDodd.com/schuylerwaynforth
photo by Sandra Dodd