Don't send the bill.

Change takes time. Don't send the bill. Don't "be nice" for two months and then say "I was nice and you weren't any nicer to me!" Be nice because being nice is better than not being nice. Do it for yourself and your children.


SandraDodd.com/betterpartner
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Knowledge and experience

You can't and don't need to "trust 100%."

You need to see the progress in your own children's life. Then it's not "trust." It becomes knowledge and experience.

SandraDodd.com/knolwedge
photo by Rippy Dusseldorp

An atmosphere of support

"Don't become emotionally invested in your child's choices. If you want to invest your emotions, invest them in creating an atmosphere where kids feel supported in trying what appeals to them AND turning down what doesn't."

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/choices
photo by Sandra Dodd

Character traits

Pam Sorooshian wrote:

Homeschoolers think a lot about learning—but they often focus on learning to read, write, do math, or learning science or history, etc.

Unschoolers tend to take that kind of learning for granted, it happens along the way. Instead, as we get more and more into unschooling, we tend to focus on things like kindness and creativity and honesty—all those character traits that will determine "how" their learning will be used in their lives.

—Pam Sorooshian

SandraDodd.com/nest
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Whirl and twirl

With extra energy, people can do two things at once. If one of those things is pattern-building and physical, that whole verbal part of the brain is still available. Working on patterns in silence allows one’s mind to whirl and twirl. Doing something non-verbal while talking has a special advantage: Silence is not awkward.

More on each end? Patterns in Silence
photo by Sandra Dodd
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More positive

In a world of choices, every choice that moves one toward positivity (hope, optimism, joy, sweetness, peace) and away from negativity (cynicism, anger, disdain, dismay, pessimism) is a solid step toward "better" (IF the person wants to be more positive).

In a world of partnership, when one partner is more positive, the partnership is more positive.

In a home with a mother, when the mother is more positive, the family's life is more positive.

SandraDodd.com/choices
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Notice and enjoy

"Notice how awesome your children are. Enjoy them, be grateful for your days with them and enjoy what they are enjoying. They will blossom in that light." —Debbie Regan

SandraDodd.com/nest
photo by Rippy Dusseldorp

Hear this

"I found early on      the less I talked           the more I was heard." —Karen James

SandraDodd.com/peace
photo by Colleen Prieto

More than "moderation"

Colleen Prieto wrote:

I hope I have instilled a sense of abundance, not moderation, in my 11 year old. I hope he will love, enjoy, think, create, eat, sing, play, read, watch, go, see, and do in whatever amount or volume makes him smile. I hope he will never look at an opportunity, or a person, or a cookie, and think "I'd really like to do that, or hang out more with him, or try that" and then stop himself because his goal is moderation rather than happiness.

—Colleen Prieto

SandraDodd.com/abundance
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Right now. Today.

Joyce Fetteroll, from a presentation:

Think in terms of creating a lifetime learner rather than creating a standard foundation or framework. If we give them the gift of confidence that they can learn anything they decide to, that there's no time limit to learning, no point when they're done, then we've opened every door possible for them.

Think in terms of right now. Today. Help them be who they are right now.

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/joyce/talk
photo by Sandra Dodd
(click it to enlarge; click that again for a close-up)

Simply seeing

Look at things others might not see. See their shapes, their backgrounds. Light changes. Wind comes. Things were once younger, smaller, newer. They will be older, different, gone.

See what's around you.

SandraDodd.com/being
photo by Sandra Dodd
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The ABCs of Unschooling

Mary G. wrote in 2002:

When parents first stop using a curriculum, they sometimes feel as if they are left with a big hole in their family's day where the textbooks and worksheets used to be. They know there must be thousands of ways to live a day, a week, a life on their own terms and with the unique recipes of unschooling. But where to start? And what exactly does an unschooler do all day?

Obviously each family's answer will be different. In fact, each person's answer will be different. But there are some wonderful resources, ideas, tools and activities that many unschooling families have used together on their journey of unschooled learning. Here is MY family's version of the ABC's of Unschooling.

A: arts & crafts, animals, acrobatics, acting, alphabet magnets, art galleries, art classes, Anime, archery, allowance, A&E, Animal Planet, American Girl, Aerospace Museums

B: board games, books, books on tape, bike riding, baby-sitting, balloon animals, Brain Quest, basketball, baking, building, beading, braiding, bubbles, Boy Scouts, baseball, bird watching, bowling, blocks, building toys, bugs

(Read much more at the link below.)

The ABCs of Unschooling
photo by Sandra Dodd

When life is easier...

Meredith wrote on Radical Unschooling Info:

Learning depends on the perspectives and experiences of the individual. That's the heart of unschooling—that learning isn't something you can control from the outside.

What you can do "from the outside" is to work to improve another person's experience. You can be kinder and sweeter and more helpful. You can make his or her life easier. When life is easier, learning is bigger, broader, more expansive. There's no magic to that! When you aren't focused on meeting basic needs, you can explore more complex needs. When you aren't hungry, you can focus on things more interesting than hunger. When you aren't arguing with someone about what you "should" eat, you can explore the far more interesting questions of what appeals to you and why, and in what combinations.

—Meredith Novak

SandraDodd.com/maslow
photo by Sandra Dodd (of party food
not so easily made, by Teresa and Laurie for a reception)

Dressing up

Costumes, make-believe and juxtaposition touch on art, real life, and being in the moment.

Peace and Beauty
photo purchased from fiverr
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Scaffolding

"Learning flows when needs are met, connections are strong, and kids can absolutely trust their parents, and know their parents are there for them. Some of the core values of natural learning are trust, support, joy, and freedom. You are putting up scaffolding for years and years of learning by the choices you make now." —Caren Knox

SandraDodd.com/nest
photo by Sandra Dodd

Fiddle around

Pattern tiles, magnets, puzzles, kits and other such fiddlin'-around stuff are good for children and adults both. They create opportunities for parents and children to interact in wordless or talkative ways, as suits the moment.

(Or you could go play miniature golf.)

SandraDodd.com/wishlist
photo by Sandra Dodd
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The light gets brighter

In the beginning, unschooling can seem like a long, dark passage, but you will start to see the light and soon the darkness will be behind you.

SandraDodd.com/random
photo by Sandra Dodd

Do, Do, Don't.

If you feel you should be doing more for your child, do more. If you feel you should be being with your child more, do that. If you feel you should be doing more with school and schoolishness, back away from that. That is NOT your child.

From the closing comments, Always Learning Live, Rochester MN, June 1, 2014
photo by Sandra Dodd

Not just luck

"[It helps to] recognize how lucky I am that I get to do this life. I know that it's not just luck, it's a lot of work and thought and reading and breathing and patience and curiosity and exploration."

—Schuyler Waynforth

SandraDodd.com/gratitude
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Shockingly efficient

Julie Daniel owns a company that advises people on efficiency and productivity. I interviewed her and asked whether unschooling had seemed inefficient. Her husband works with her, and she quotes him:

When I first started to explore unschooling one of the things I found very exciting was how amazingly effective and efficient it is. My husband, James, says it is 'shockingly efficient'. There isn’t any of the wasted effort that goes along with trying to entice someone to pay attention to something that they don’t care about. We notice what Adam is interested in and we think about what else he might find interesting and we provide opportunities to explore those things.

Mostly when people think about being 'organised' they think about structure and predictability. For me the point of being organised is to achieve a particular objective. I actually really like that I don’t need to have a lot of structure to achieve the goals of exploring cool things, learning about the world and having fun. Of course some of the basic organisational skills that I have learned do come in handy, like knowing where to find things that I’ve saved and keeping track of our calendar so we know where to be and when. But in terms of Adam’s learning I don’t feel the need for structure and predictability because I can see how incredibly efficient his natural learning process is.

—Julie Daniel

The Efficiency of Unschooling (interview)
photo by Julie Daniel
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The beauty around you

"Look at what you have, not what you do not have. If all you focus is in negative things that is all you will see. If you always look for the positive slowly you will, more and more, see the positive and the beauty around you and that will become who you are."

—Alex Polikowsky

SandraDodd.com/alex/optimism
photo by Sandra Dodd

Knowing peace

The more local and personal peace there is, the more peace there will be in the world.
. . . .
If we raise the level of peace our children expect, they will know what peace feels like.

Read what Esther Maria Rest wrote, at http://sandradodd.com/parentingpeacefully.html#esther.
photo by Colleen Prieto
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Be very engaged

"I made my marriage very important to me. I chose to be very engaged in my marriage as a part of raising children."

—Schuyler Waynforth

SandraDodd.com/spouses
photo by Sandra Dodd

A world of input

There is an artistic motif known as "the tree of knowledge." I don't know how old it is, but there are also artists' trees known as "tree of life" and sometimes they're very similar.. . . .

Thinking about this concept though, in light of my children's never having gone to school, has brought lots of thoughts welling up in me about our culture's worship of books, both in what's good and understandable about that attitude, and also of the ways it has been and continues to be harmful and unreasonable in light of Howard Gardner's writings about multiple intelligences and of the "information age," which gives even non-reading children access to a huge world of input.

SandraDodd.com/bookmotif
image inked in by Sandra, but black-and-white art is from an old bookplate
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I'm not guessing.

I'm confident. I'm not guessing unschooling can work, I know. I've also seen how it can fail, through my correspondence and discussions with so many other homeschooling families. I'm not hoping that kids can still get a job without fifteen years of practice bedtimes; I know they can. (And they would've been "practicing" for the wrong shift anyway.) I don't conjecture that kids can learn to read without being taught, I know. It's happened at my house, in three people's lives.

SandraDodd.com/confidence
photo by Sandra Dodd
P.S.
Just because it *can* work doesn't mean that a family can't fail. If you're going to unschool, do it well. Find your own confidence. Help is available.
SandraDodd.com/help

What kind of peace?

How can peace help learning? Is peace always a subset of "peace and quiet"? Is quiet always peaceful? What is the value of a peaceful environment to unschooling and how can parents help to create and maintain that? What kind of peace are we after and how can we get some?

---

Sometimes just asking the questions can be helpful, but if you want to hear a free sound file of me talking about that sort of thing, here:
SandraDodd.com/bignoisypeace
photo by Caroline Lieber
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Best and highest good

Everything is turned to its best use and highest good insofar as we’re able.

SandraDodd.com/why
photo by Sandra Dodd

Science experiment, festival, and a game

Once there was a little discussion on facebook where I said that Learn Nothing Day was like a game, and you join in by showing you know how it works. In response to a question, then, about whether it's a holiday or a game, I wrote:

Well... it's a holiday when people demonstrate what they've learned about learning by attempting not to learn, which is kind of a science experiment and kind of a festival and sort of a game. More than one thing is happening.

Learn Nothing Day is July 24
photo by Sandra Dodd, on a carousel in Austin, Texas

Two-way change

Unschooling is more than just the absence of school. As we change, our perceptions change, and the perceptions of others toward us changes.

SandraDodd.com/change
photo by Brie Jontry

What is choice?

Someone was writing about what she "had to" do.

My response (saved by Schuyler Waynforth; thanks!):

You are inviting powerlessness into your life and keeping it there by using that phrase.

You wrote -=-how freeing it was to realize we didn't have to KEEP UP-=-

How much more freeing to think "we can choose not to keep up." It might seem to you the same thing, or the other side of the same coin. But coins' sides are NOT the same.

Choice is not the other side of a "have to" coin. It is the antidote to a have-to poison. Choice dissolves the roof and ceiling of a have-to cell.

SandraDodd.com/haveto
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Happy choices

I did my time in and around school, and learned things painstakingly and grudgingly that my children later learned while laughing and playing and singing. I have guarded my children's freedom and given them happy choices that I didn't have.


SandraDodd.com/schoolinmyhead
photo by Sandra Dodd, of Marty in the 20th century
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A time and a place

[Riding in a car] is a great time and place for humor, news, and deep conversation.

SandraDodd.com/truck
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Roses and different directions

People need to start and go, but they don't have to race at breakneck speed or never look back. "Going" sometimes just means going one step and smelling the roses! Sometimes the most important steps are those where you're still standing in the very same place, but looking a different direction!

Sandra Dodd, July 2003 discussion
photo by Sandra Dodd

More and better

The question "What do I have to do?" is a world apart from "What can I do?" "What am I allowed to do?"
. . . .
My kids have been really good employees wherever they worked because they were not trained to just do what they had to do and to just do as little as they had to do.

---

Small bit transcribed from talk I gave in August, 2010
called Unschooling: How to Screw it Up
(you can listen to it at that link)

photo by Sandra Dodd, which is related only by theme

Embracing and supporting

Colleen Prieto wrote:

"For me I think the biggest applications of unschooling in terms of my marriage are the ideas of embracing and supporting other people's passions and interests—not just my child's, but my husband's too. And accepting people for who they are, not trying or wanting to change them or 'fix' them. Valuing everyone in our family for who they are and working together to meet everyone's needs. Unschooling is good for marriages."

—Colleen Prieto

SandraDodd.com/betterpartner
photo by Joyce Fetteroll, of Marta's family
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Picture it clearly

One easy way to decide how to be is to picture clearly what would make things worse, and then not do that.

JoyfullyRejoycing.com/joyfulnutshells.html
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Patient, attentive, calm and accepting

"None of us are perfect; we'll all have some regrets. But with my kids 19, 16, and 13, I can now say that I will never say anything like, 'I wish I'd let them fight it out more,' or 'I wish I'd punished them more,' or 'I wish I'd yelled at them more.' I will only ever say that I wish I'd been more patient, more attentive, more calm and accepting of the normal stresses of having young children."

—Pam Sorooshian
whose children are now 29, 26 and 23,
and who became a grandmother day before yesterday

SandraDodd.com/peace/becoming
I'm guessing Roya or Cyrus might have taken that photo; I don't know.
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Respect your kids

"Respect your kids. Too many adults DEMAND respect from kids without showing any respect in return. Doesn't work." —Lyle Perry

How to NOT Screw Up your Kids
photo by Karen James

Enough to share

Abundance in one person provides benefits for others. A child with all the trust he needs can trust others. A child with all the time he needs can share that time with others. One who has freedom won't begrudge freedom in others.



How to Raise a Respected Child
photo by Sandra Dodd

Choice makes a big difference

Plain milk tastes WAY better if it's your choice than it does when it's plain because someone else wouldn't let you put chocolate in it.

How to Raise a Respected Child
Como criar a un niño respetado
art by Laura Mascaró

A good mom

Nothing has ever made me feel better about me
than the feeling that I was being a good mom.



SandraDodd.com/peace/noisy.html
photo by Sandra Dodd

Gradually cooler

My world's pretty cool. It has become gradually cooler since I had kids and have tried to figure out how to make THEIR worlds cooler. Mine got the side benefit of what I learned about how to help keep them happy.



I don't know where I wrote that, but someone saved it.
Have a randomizer: SandraDodd.com/random
photo by Sandra Dodd
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It doesn't hurt to think about it.

In response to questions from critics…

Some things I've said:

"This is working for now. If it stops working, we'll do something else."

"Thanks. I'll think about that." (Or you could say "We thought about that," or "I think about that all the time.")

Mostly people want to know you heard what they said, and that you have thought about what they're suggesting. It doesn't hurt to say that you have, or that you will.

SandraDodd.com/school/say
photo by Julie D
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Helping one another grow

Of her birth family, Rippy wrote:

My family used to regularly travel to India to a Sikh ashram where we were encouraged to examine our thoughts and words. The philosophy there was that helping one another grow into more loving, mindful people is one of the greatest acts of service one can do.

—Rippy Dusseldorp Saran

Kinder and More Compassionate

Don't bother

Pam Sorooshian's description of a talk she plans to give:

Unschoolers don't bother with lesson plans, curriculum, assignments, tests, grades, workbooks, homework, or other academic requirements because we have discovered that children who grow up in a stimulating and enriched environment, surrounded by family and friends who are generally interested and interesting, will learn all kinds of things and repeatedly surprise us with what they know. If children are supported in following their own inclinations, they will build strengths upon strengths and excel in their own ways whether those are academic, artistic, athletic, interpersonal, or whichever direction that particular child develops.

Pam Sorooshian, for the Free to Be unschooling conference
in Phoenix, September 2014.
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Avoid struggles

"Struggling with a disorder" is not as good as living with choices and looking up instead of down. Find ways to relax, rather than to struggle.

Peace for Unschoolers
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Better at understanding

For all the "be gentle" that parents give their babies about how to touch cats and dogs, the parents themselves aren't always so gentle. Over the years of having children grow up around our dogs and cats I became more compassionate toward the pets. Having learned to communicate with and to understand non-verbal babies, I was better at understanding "non-human-speaking" animal companions.



SandraDodd.com/pets
photo by Sandra Dodd

Meditation?

Caren Knox, in response to a request about how to meditate:

When the boys were younger, I'd sit when I could, but I noticed that thoughts of "needing" to meditate were pulling me away from the moment *with them*. So I'd get centered in that moment, breathing (three deep breaths is magical), noticing sounds, smells, where my body was. Momentary, but being able to be in the moment changed and flavored the next moment, and shifted it toward peace."

—Caren Knox

SandraDodd.com/breathing
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Changes happen.

Changes happen in us and around us.

Our children grow. We grow. Old things fall away. New things appear.

SandraDodd.com/change
photo by Sandra Dodd

Patterns and angles

What you see every day can be seen in a different way.



SandraDodd.com/checklists
photo by Sandra Dodd