Odd combos

The connection between humor and learning is well known. Unexpected juxtaposition is the basis of a lot of humor, and even more learning.

It can be physical, musical, verbal, mathematical, but basically what it means is that unexpected combinations or outcomes can be funny. There are funny chemistry experiments, plays on words, math tricks, embarrassingly amusing stories from history, and there are parodies of famous pieces or styles of art and music.

SandraDodd.com/playing
photo by Sandra Dodd, one day at Goodwill

Sharing

About kids sharing a computer:

The problem I see with measured turns is that the quality of game play is compromised. If someone sees the clock and that's when they have to stop, they won't play as thoughtfully. They're less likely to look around at the art or appreciate the music. If they're starting to read, they're less likely to take a moment to look at the text and see if they can tell what it says.

The benefits of game play will not come to full fruition if kids' time is measured that way, and they're not learning to share.

If they only have an hour, they will take ALL of that hour, just as kids whose TV time is limited will.

It they can play as long as they want to, they might play for five or ten minutes and be done. I've seen it in Holly, I saw it for half an hour in Marty.

Yes, Kirby wanted it more. He was older and it was his game system and he could play better. And so in exchange for me keeping the other kids away while Kirby was playing as long as he wanted to, he let them play as long as they wanted to, which was never as long as he did.

from "Helping Kids Share," SandraDodd.com/sharing
photo by Will Geusz, of his pets sharing

John Holt

John Holt's writing is different, and inspiring. He involved himself in schools and saw problems and successes from a different perspective than anyone else I've ever read.


John Holt had no children so he himself wasn't an unschooler, but he inspired others to do things differently from school, to avoid testing and rote learning. He encouraged people to respect children and to give them a great range of experiences and opportunities.

John Holt wrote about learning outside of schools, for about ten years. Since then, many families have raised children to adulthood without any school or schooling at all. I wish he could know Roya, Roxana and Rosie Sorooshian. I wish he could spend some time with Kathryn Fetteroll. How cool would it be if he could pop in for the day at a big unschooling conference in San Diego and meet a couple of hundred twenty-first-century unschooled kids all in the same place?

SandraDodd.com/johnholt
photo by Holly Dodd, of herself, taken with a camera that was new
when John Holt was teaching school.

A joyful process

Paula L / "Paulapalooza" wrote:

Okay, not all days will leave us feeling as if we are Julie Andrews spinning around on that mountain top singing "The Sound of Music," but so many of my days leave me with just that feeling.. . . .
I WILL NOT GIVE UP THIS KIND OF LIFE. 🙂

You know, I spent a good 30 of my 35 years in some type of structured setting, striving to please others and live up to their standards, which I convinced myself were my own. I feel that I will be detoxing from this for the rest of my life, and it's a joyful process. Living outside the box makes me a person at peace, a person people constantly observe as "always so happy." I used to be very good at "blooming where I was planted," which was of course not true happiness, and the strain inevitably showed. I am finally happy on my own terms, and the difference is obvious to me.

—Paula L

SandraDodd.com/day/paulal
photo by Sandra Dodd

Intentions matter.

Robyn Coburn wrote:

Intentions matter.

Guidance offered from the place of partnership and Trust has a different feeling, avoids rebellion, and is just plain less focused on the trivial. Guidance means optional acceptance instead of mandatory compliance. Guidance means parents being safety nets, not trap doors or examiners. Guidance facilitates mindfulness. Directives shut it down, and may even foster resentment instead.

The idea of Unschooling is for parents to be the facilitators of options, the openers of doors, the creators of environments of freedom, and the guardians of choice, not the installers of roadblocks and barriers. Unschoolers are making the huge and wonderful choice to renounce our legal entitlements to be the authoritarian controllers of our children's lives, and instead choose to be their partners.

SandraDodd.com/choice
photo by Sandra Dodd, inside a tile shop in Austin

What (a good) life is all about

Living mindfully and making conscious choices for clear reasons is what a solid, thoughtful life is all about.

SandraDodd.com/mindfulparenting
photo by Sandra Dodd

Make it plentiful

Once someone tried allowing her children to choose their own foods, and after a month she was ready to give up.

It's only been a month. It might take more than that for them to get as much candy as they feel they've missed in five or seven years. You scarcified it and made it valuable. Let them gorge. They'll get over it. If you don't let them have it now, they will continue to crave it, sneak it, and pack it in. Make it plentiful, and that will make it less desireable.

Please read all of this: "Economics of Restricting TV Watching of Children." It's by Pam Sorooshian, and will apply to food too.

SandraDodd.com/eating/control
photo by Sandra Dodd, at someone else's house

Announcement and request

The last time I had a "time out" blog I wrote "This is post 250 or so, and I was surprised the blog had lived that long. Nearly three seasons—almost a year."

That post is here: https://justaddlightandstir.blogspot.com/

This will be post 583, I think. And I'm writing for a similar reason. I'm gearing up to leave home for a long time. My speaking schedule will be linked below, but I'm going to be gone for two weeks, to Massachusetts and then Oregon, speaking; I'll be home just a couple of days and then go to Europe; I'll come home and be here long enough to do laundry, sleep, and re-pack, and then go to Sacramento. That's daunting.

The likelihood that I will come up with 90+ original and clever blog posts in that time is small and I want to avoid the stress, so I think some of the summer's posts might be "greatest hits." Maybe you could think of it as an oldies station, with stuff you can sing along to! I hope you will forgive re-runs, if you see any.

There are new readers, though. There are 989 Feedburner subscribers (receiving the posts directly by e-mail) and others subscribing by other sorts of blog feeds and notices, so I can confidently say "over a thousand readers." Thank you! For the new readers, it will be all new.

ANOTHER THING: If you see an older post with a missing photo, please e-mail me a link to it so I can repair it. I moved some things and if some of the photos hadn't been properly labelled as having been used, they might be in a new folder and the link will be broken. I can repair them easily, if I know about it. Thanks for helping me clean up errors you might find! For instance, yesterday's post lead to a page with something by Alex I had marked as 2011; that was a typo for 2012. A reader let me know. Thanks, Dina!

The photo is Kirby, Jill Parmer and me, last month in Albuquerque. I hate to send something without a photo. :-)

photo by Addi Davidson, with my camera

Greater parental involvement

Living by principles rather than rules, neither "never" nor "always" is true. Living by rules of "never," less thinking is required. When there's less thinking, there's less learning. Living by principles requires more thinking, and greater parental involvement. That leads to more learning AND to better relationships.

That quote is the end of something longer,
at SandraDodd.com/misconceptions
photo by Sandra Dodd

Live now

Pay attention to now. Live today. . . . .
Don't have so much of past and future in your head that you can't live now.

SandraDodd.com/refresh
photo by Heather Brown

The best moment

Make each moment the best moment it can be. Be where you are with your body, mind and soul. It's the only place you can be, anyway. The rest is fantasy. You can live here clearly, or you can live in a fog. Defog.

The Big Book of Unschooling, page 73 (or 80)
photo by Sandra Dodd

Not everything, but something

"We can't magically afford everything—but very often we can afford something."

—Pam Sorooshian

SandraDodd.com/generosity
photo by Sandra Dodd
__

To be whole...

Ren Allen wrote:

One definition of "heal" in the dictionary is "To become whole and sound; return to health." What a gift we can give our children if we can just allow them to maintain their wholeness in the first place, allow their spirits to take their own form without all the constraints that traditional parenting and schooling place upon a human being.

To be whole, to be sound, balanced, joyful, curious...these are the things I wish for my children. The focus on academic topics and grades seem so irrelevant when contrasted to the really important tools for this life's journey.

Ren Allen, from the exchange at Mindful Parenting
photo by Sandra Dodd

Blending and mixing

Rather than sorting things out with your children, try to keep blending and mixing. Religion leads to history, to geography, to clothing, to fashion, to business and imports to transportation to law. Law leads to ethics to medicine to religion. Any of those "leads to" points could lead to a dozen OTHER destinations, so even with a list that short, it starts to blanket time and space. Don't resist those weird tangents; jump on them and ride.

SandraDodd.com/subjects
photo by Sandra Dodd, at Taco Bell in a mall in Bangalore
(click it to see another Taco Bell sign from that day)
__

Hear what you say

Saying what one means rather than using phrases without thinking is very, very important.

Hearing what I say as a mom is crucial to mindfulness.

SandraDodd.com/mindfulofwords
photo by Sandra Dodd

Too good to be true?

"It sounds too good to be true, but it isn’t. Being connected is better than being controlling. Being interested is better than being bored. Being fun is more fun than not being fun!"

—Melissa Wiley

SandraDodd.com/quotes
photo by Sandra Dodd

Surprising changes

When my firstborn son was four and we decided not to enroll him in kindergarten that fall, I thought I could foresee the future. I knew unschoolers. I knew alternative education. I knew it could be really fun, and good. What happened over the next nineteen years surprised me. Because of unschooling, I changed. My husband changed. The way we interacted with the world and other people changed, all for the better. Our relationships with all three of our children surpassed any of our imaginings.

---

The text was the written introduction to a talk I gave in 2009. There is no recording of that day, but this one, later the same same year, is similar: Transformations (sound file, photo, and notes there).

The photo is by David Jio, of a light too bright to see directly, and the more-detailed shadow/projection of what it really looks like. That light is has been in our front room for years. Sometimes a very intense thing can hardly be perceived directly, but the effects and afterimages can be examined.

The world changes slowly

The world changes slowly, but it tends to stay changed! Flight was not possible before balloons. Food storage and transportation were difficult before canning and refrigeration. Without today’s wealth of books, videos and online information, home learning would be much more difficult. We can live in the light of our shared knowledge and ideas, in freedom and with confidence, at the cutting edge of education’s future.



SandraDodd.com/thoughts
photo by Sandra Dodd; a hot air balloon visible out our back gate

A better way

When a parent is very needy, they might need extra help to get to the stable spot where they can parent their children thoughtfully. I don't know a better way than for them to move quickly toward unschooling.

SandraDodd.com/doit
photo by Sandra Dodd

Don't bring school home

From a newspaper article twelve years ago:

Whatever the long-term plans are, Dodd has some advice for those considering home-schooling or even the more radical step of unschooling:

"Don't rush. This is a hard but crucial piece of advice. Rush to take him out of school but don't rush to replace it with anything. Bring your child home, don't bring school home. You don't even have to bring their terminology and judgments home. You can start from scratch, brush off the labels, and find your son where he is. Forget school. Move to life."


SandraDodd.com/media/ABQjournal
photo by Sandra Dodd
__

Cursive! Foiled Again

Years ago my granny complained that I didn't know how to use a fountain pen or milk a cow. I never learned to use a slide rule, either. I did learn to type on a manual typewriter with a blank keyboard. Things change. I don't know how to send text messages, though I do finally own a cellphone. My kids all are whizzes at it.

The quote above was written in 2007. I can text now, awkwardly.

Yesterday at the Apple store, getting a battery replaced in Holly's MacBook, the guy handed me a charge-card reader and said "Sign with your finger." Luckily, I've been playing Draw Something all week, and have been writing with my finger on an iPad, so I just did it. No stylus, but "sign with your finger."

SandraDodd.com/cursive
photo by Sandra Dodd
__

---

When this first went out, it said "without a blank keyboard." I had fumbled the phrase when I first wrote it, and I fixed it on the webpage, but had pasted the original here. I guess I started to write "without the letters on the keys." In summer school, when I was fourteen, I took a typing class and got to 42 words per minute. I'm faster now, but can still type in the dark, without looking at what's on the keys. My current keyboard has the letters a, s and e worn through. They light up from below, at night. Others notice and ask how I can type, but I don't look at the keyboard.

So because of that, I worry about people who aren't "touch typists"—how can they type? Well, turns out they can type on miniature keyboards, with thumbs or index fingers; they can type from phone-number pads; they can type on flat screen pictures of keyboards, just as well as they can on "a real keyboard." My prediction of what they "need" to know how to do is as antiquated as my granny's was of me.

Sometimes more is better

Leah Rose wrote:

I've been thinking about that saying "All things in moderation." Next time someone says it to me, I think I might just ask them: "Do you mean we should have joy in moderation? Should we have peace in moderation? Kindness in moderation? Patience in moderation? Forgiveness? Compassion? Humility?"

Honestly, I used to think it sounded like a very wise and balanced philosophy. Now, the more I think about it the less sense it makes.

—Leah Rose

SandraDodd.com/focus
photo by Sandra Dodd

Sweetness in teens

Once upon a time, in 2006...

A story slightly involving allowance, but a snapshot of how kids who aren't desperate for money can act:

Two of Marty's friends were going to pick him up to go run around, but they ended up staying here. Then another friend came over to see all my kids. Then a friend of Kirby's from work came over. I hadn't met her before. She was nice. So my three (14, 17, 19) plus four more (17-21) were all having a great time laughing and looking at stuff on Kirby's computer and around our house, and Marty's big Lego Viking village, and so forth.

They decided to go out for ice cream and then to see "Over the Hedge." I asked Holly if she needed money, and she didn't. (She saves her allowance up.) Every other person there has a job. Outside of Kirby possibly having an interest in the girl from work, there were no couples. Two of those kids do have steady others, but didn't bring them over. So it was four teenaged girls, four teenaged boys, no romantic tension (unless Kirby and new-girl; didn't see any).

And here's the big success part. They asked Keith if he wanted to go. I didn't know they had, when Marty came and asked me if I wanted to go. So they would have taken me, or Keith, or both of us, with them.

We separately thanked them and declined and found out later they had asked us both. Pretty sweet!

We didn't "teach them" to invite their parents to the movies. One advantage of our not going was that then they could fit into the big van and didn't have to take two cars.

SandraDodd.com/math/allowance
photo by Sandra Dodd,
whose kids are not teens anymore, but are still sweet,
of a movie theater in Austin, unrelated except for the movie part

Sometimes be quiet and wait

Very often parents find themselves in a situation where they might not see a way to make things better, but they could easily make things worse.

SandraDodd.com/peace/fightingcomments
The quote isn't from there, but the information could be helpful.

photo by Sandra Dodd, of rain, in India, on a beautiful surface
with pebbles between some sections, and grass between others

Some road leading somewhere

Deb Lewis wrote:

"Our town is small and we've been to the museums here more than once but we still find new things to do here. A new store opened so we checked it out and talked to the owner. The radio station moved from the residence of the owners to a building downtown and we took a tour. The mom-in-law of my employer got a bunch of fancy chickens and we drove out to see them. She showed Dylan a coffee table book about chickens. She showed us her little sun room where she grows orchids.

"There's always something to do, someone to talk to, some road leading somewhere."



SandraDodd.com/strew/how
photo by Sandra Dodd of a road splitting in Owslebury; the left goes to Longfields

Like your life

Peace can be just contentment—to be happy where you are, to like your life.


SandraDodd.com/peace/noisy
(the quote is from the sound file at the bottom)
photo by Sandra Dodd

All the time

Pam Sorooshian wrote:

Learning happens all the time. The brain never stops working and it is not possible to divide time up into 'learning periods' versus 'non-learning periods.' Everything that goes on around a person, everything they hear, see, touch, smell, and taste, results in learning of some kind.

—Pam Sorooshian

SandraDodd.com/pamsorooshian
photo by Sandra Dodd, of a sunrise in Bangalore
with a kite flying (a bird they have there)

Interesting byways

Ronnie Maier wrote:

What matters is that they are bright, happy, interesting, accomplished, engaged and engaging. Unschooling doesn't only work for kids of "above-average intelligence," or kids whose parents are teachers, or kids who can recite the alphabet while twirling a baton, or any other limiting factor.

Unschooling works because the unschooled individual has the time and support to follow the interesting byways that lead to real learning.

—Ronnie Maier

SandraDodd.com/socialization
photo by Sandra Dodd, of a lost-and-found potato
__

Positively better

The second you have a positive attitude, even fleetingly, your life is better, right then.

SandraDodd.com, any page
photo by Sandra Dodd, a library in Bangalore

Joyfully health-filled

"It's often more helpful to kids when parents step back from focusing on the kids' health and focus on their own. Focus on being joyfully health-filled rather than grimly health conscious."

—Meredith Novak

SandraDodd.com/meredithnovak
the quote is from the middle of this Always Learning post
photo by Sandra Dodd

Better, kinder tools

Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

Someone said that principles can be summed up in one word. Rules can't. I'm not sure if I can always do that but it's a helpful distinction to get someone started on figuring out the difference.


For instance a principle might be kindness. A rule is "Don't hit your sister." If there's a principle of treating each other kindly then there isn't a need for a rule that says "Don't hit." "Don't hit," only says "Don't hit." Kids do pick up that it doesn't say don't pinch, don't poke until she cries, don't pull hair ... But as a child is helped to find better (kinder) tools to use to get what they want and their understanding of kindness grows it's understood that anything that hurts someone is unkind so there isn't a need to spell out every hurtful thing that kids aren't allowed to do.

—Joyce

SandraDodd.com/rules
photo by Sandra Dodd

Maintain and replenish

If you think you haven't done enough for your children lately, do more. The richer and safer your children's environment,the more interesting and open to input and entertainment and encouragement, the more learning will happen, whether you're at home or in the car or on another continent.

Maintain and replenish your children's learning environment.

SandraDodd.com/nest
photo by Sandra Dodd

Up out of the hole

Starting toward this kind of peaceful parenting is like starting down in a hole. There are rumors that it's brighter over the hill, but other people are trying to keep you in the hole with them, in the hole where you've always been.

SandraDodd.com/negativity
photo by Joyce Fetteroll

Hearing what we say

Hearing what we say can change us.



"If I let him..."
photo by Sandra Dodd

Puzzles without pressure

Jigsaw puzzles are wonderful, and you can get them at yard sales and thrift stores for less than a dollar. Greeting cards cost $2 now, but you can get a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle for 50 cents and so what does it matter if it might have a piece or three missing? Cheaper than a greeting card. Work it and throw it away.

While you’re working it, the picture on the box will inspire questions, stories, ideas, tangents. The shapes of the pieces will remind people of other connections in their lives. Except for those toddlers who eat puzzle pieces, puzzles can involve people of all ages together. There are some on the market now with big pieces at one end, medium in the middle, and small for the rest. Some bright parent thought THAT up. They’ll be coming soon to a yard sale near you.


SandraDodd.com/truck
That was written in 1999; greeting cards can be $4 and $5 now, and used puzzles might be $2.

image by Sandra Dodd, made with a scanner (pieces set face down)