Natural growth

An apple seed grows an apple tree. No person ever born knows more about how an apple tree should naturally grow than that apple seed, if it's left to grow naturally.

I'm old enough now that I've grown trees from transplanted saplings, and from seeds I planted myself. I cannot predict or control or affect what kind of tree it will become. What I can do is make sure it's watered and protected from damage by animals, foot traffic, and lawn mowers. If it has what it needs, it will grow as it should.

If a child has what she needs, she will grow as she should. I know how to mess a kid up, and have chosen to try not to do those things. I'm trying to let them grow as they should.

SandraDodd.com/musicroom
(Follow-up page for a 2009 conference)
photo by Amber Ivey

Better right away

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



Thoughts about doing better
photo by Sandra Dodd
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You don't need to break your bad habits

Leave the old habit to wither. Don't try to break it. Move to making better choices so that what you used to do and used to think will be left in the "choices I don't consider anymore" category.



SandraDodd.com/change
photo by Sandra Dodd

They learned and learned

Caren Knox wrote:

I undertook learning how to be a good unschooling mom, and in that learning, experienced some of the most powerful personal growth and healing I’d ever seen in myself. I learned how to be vulnerable with and genuinely present for my guys.

They learned — and learned and learned, without having to be subject to someone else’s imposed timeline of when to learn what, without being limited to staying in a building 6-7 hours a day, five days a week, without having to pretend to learn something to pass a test, without having their grades determine their path. They freely explored their interests, utilized their own strengths and perspectives, and learned, and, as adults, continue to learn.

—Caren Knox

Original, on facebook
photo by Ester Siroky

Kids are people

Except in the few obvious ways, I don't treat my children in a lesser way than I treat my husband. It has been crucial to our interactions as an unschooling family that the kids were people first, and kids only incidentally and temporarily.

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That was written nearly 20 years ago,when Always Learning was new
Now they're adults, so it was true! They were only temporarily children.
photo by Elise Lauterbach
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Helping relationships

Unschooling can help relationships in all kinds of ways. Broken relationships can harm unschooling in all kinds of ways.

Benefits of Unschooling when the Teen Years Arrive
photo by Daniel Moyer Artisan
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Gradually and sensibly

It's a Very Bad Idea to "start unschooling" before you know what you're doing. The more rules a family had, the more gradually and sensibly they need to move toward saying yes.

The happy ideas to go with that are at Gradual Change.
photo by Janine Davies

The best of bad dreams

I went to school for 15 years straight, and most summer sessions from 8th grade through university.

Beginning in the 4th grade, I had a nightmare the night before the first day of school every single time, and I came to count on it as a checklist. The first few were small and kind of standard, like I got off the bus in only my slip, or I had my house shoes on, or I didn't know whose class I was supposed to be in.


Over the years these dreams blossomed into extravaganzas of mishap, and they were always so real I'd wake up in a panic thinking I'd gotten off to such a horrible start the whole year would be a total disaster. Then I'd realize the whole year was still ahead of me and I'd get out of bed and do all the things right that had gone wrong in the dream.

The night before my first day as a classroom teacher I dreamed I didn't have a grade book or a pen. Next day I did. That one, my first checklist dream as an employed adult, made me start to wish for more.

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I wrote all of that in the early 1980s, before I had children. Checklist dreams have continued, or stress dreams where I had lost a child's shoes, or had forgotten to order a cake, or didn't have gas in the car.

If you can make checklists out of fears, worries, and stress dreams, and your life is better because you think "Well I won't let THAT happen," what a gift!
Use happy advantages wherever you can find them.

Disposable Checklists for Unschoolers
photo by Sandra Dodd

[P.S. for those who are good with numbers, and didn't like "15 years": I didn't go to kindergarten, and graduated from public school a year early. Four years of university, graduated in May 1974, turned 21 that summer. Then I taught for six years. I was quickly learning about learning!]

Warm food

Offering a child food instead of waiting for him to ask has been frowned upon by some people as being pressure. I think that's wrong.

Asking for cold pantry-food, or needing to ask someone to cook something isn't nearly as good as smelling food cooking, or seeing nicely-arranged food that's immediately available if you want it.

The Full Plate Club
photo by Jen Keefe
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Warm (not cold)

If every conscious decision is taken with the intention of getting closer to the way one wants to be, then in a "getting warm / getting cold" way, it's not nearly as distant as one might have thought. You never even have to leave your regular house, car, family. It's right where you are, only the thoughts are different.


May you have warm relationships, warm feelings, a warm home, warm food and a warm bed.

The top paragraph is a quote from SandraDodd.com/factors
photo by Sandra Dodd

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In 2011, this went out in January, during summer in the southern hemisphere. Greetings, readers in Australia and New Zealand! Have some warmth in a better season. I don't think Brazil or South Africa need much heat, and most other readers are equatorial or northerly.

The whole world could use the warm relationships and feelings, and I wish everyone good options!

What is needed?

There is personal growth in quietly providing what is needed. The world is made better by those who notice and attend to needs.

SandraDodd.com/service
photo by Gail Higgins

What ARE these things!?

In 2007 trying to talk someone out of using "screentime" for purposes of limiting a child:

When you're driving, the glass in front of you can be called a windscreen. Americans usually call it "wind shield." But is that screen time?


I think you should call things computer, tv, movie, etch-a-sketch. But even computer, sometimes I'm watching movies, sometimes I'm writing. Sometimes I'm reading e-mail or looking at my kids' MySpace. Sometimes I'm shopping. Sometimes it's research (quite a bit lately, reading in and about 16th century Bibles in English, early editions of The Book of Common Prayer). So I can't even call it "computer time" as though it's all the same thing.

Sometimes Kirby is playing World of Warcraft. It's partly keyboard, and partly talking to his team on a headset.
Sometimes he's playing Guitar Hero, with the guitar controller.
Sometimes he's playing stand-up-and-move Wii games.

Are those three "screen time"?


The original is about 2/5 of the way down at My 4 year old and the DVD player
Newer (post-MySpace) writings about screentime are at Screentime Index Page

photo by Belinda Dutch

Playful lives

My three children grew up around adults who played, not just putting on feasts and tournaments and buildingmedieval-looking camps, but also playing strategy board games and mystery games, having costume parties when it wasn't even Halloween, and making up goofy song parodies on long car rides.

Maybe because I kept playing I had an advantage, but I don't think it is beyond more serious adults to regain their playfulness.


SandraDodd.com/playing
photo by Elise Lauterbach
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Sharing time and space

Connections are the best part of learning, in unschooling, in life, for fun. But if it’s too noisy too often, a quiet moonrise over a lake will get all sound-polluted. And one person’s thoughts of beauty might be overrun by someone else’s free associations.

Gaze without speaking / Explore Connections
photo by Janine Davies

Easier to jump

Humor is a great warm-up for any thinking. If one's mind can jump to get a joke, it will be easier for it to jump to synthesize any ideas, to make a complex plan, to use a tool in an unexpected way, to understand history and the complexities of politics. If a child can connect something about a food with a place name or an article of clothing, parents shouldn't worry that he hasn't memorized political boundaries or the multiplication table.

SandraDodd.com/connections/jokes
photo by Janine Davies

Changes in the parents

I think the most common changes parents have reported are that they are happier and calmer, and have become clearer in their thought processes. The "reports" I hear are often in online discussions, so that might explain the latter. When people help each other work through confusions in thinking, writing becomes clearer.

Slack and other rare and priceless things
photo by Elaine Santana
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Thinking, feeling, living, learning

How are you thinking?
How are you feeling?

How you are thinking and feeling is how you are living and learning.

Sandra Dodd; March 7, 2007
not in an unschooling context, that first time

photo by Sandra Dodd

Relax, see, appreciate

If you hold on to all your old ideas and fears and images of learning, every bit of that builds a curtain of "what should be" and you can't relax, see and appreciate what is.

Unschooling:Getting it
photo by Elaine Santana

From the inside...

Debbie Regan wrote:

"From the outside, unschooling may look like no chores, no bedtimes, no education, no discipline, no structure, no limits, etc. But from the inside, it's about learning, relationships, living with real parameters, partnership, navigating turbulence, making connections, joy, curiosity, focus, enthusiasm, options, following trails, fun, growing understanding, opening doors..."

—Debbie Regan

the original
photo by Kathryn Robles
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The beginning of paths

Karen James, in a comment once:

"Question everything"...I love it! As a kid I was told I asked too many questions! As a parent, questions are the beginning of paths to places we have yet to visit, and are so exciting for that reason!

—Karen James
in response to this

SandraDodd.com/patterns
photo by Jo Isaac

Being the same

Even when it's not as clear as you're used to, the sun is as bright as can be behind the clouds.

It's the same sun.

Even when it's not as clear as you're used to, love is as bright as can be behind fear and frustration.

It's the same love.

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Today, be present and patient.


SandraDodd.com/being
photo by Beth Fuller

Doors might stay closed a while

We can't see how today will affect tomorrow. There are gates and walls that might have beautiful things on the other side, but there's no hurry to know.


Skills—mad skills, normal everyday skills, abilities, aptitudes, intelligences
photo by Sandra Dodd

More and more cheerfully

You should help him pick up his toys, and the more cheerfully you do that, the more cheerfully he will help you.

Generosity
photo by Meredith Dew

Breathe and smile

Who you are, no one else can be.

Who you are now is not who you were before. Who you are today is not who you will be tomorrow.

Breathe and smile and step toward your future.

SandraDodd.com/gratitude
photo by Elise Lauterbach
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Bigger and smaller

One of the easiest things is to try to keep something the same size all the time. It's easy to try, not easy to accomplish. People and their surroundings change. What was cozy can seem too small. The size of a problem, or a thought, a dish or a bathtub, can seem to change depending on circumstances, and on what you're thinking when you look at it. Children grown and change.

Still unschooling endures, and Zann Carter, who took this self-portrait, wrote "to me unschooling is as positive as unchaining, unbinding, unleashing, unfolding, unfurling, unlimiting...."

Zann's beautiful writing helped many people understand unschooling, when the ideas were newer.

Unfolding, unfurling
photo by Zann Carter

Limit limitations

If you limit things, kids just want them more. If you wouldn't limit books or Lego-playing time, why would you limit the other things? Unless they really have choices they aren't really making choices.

Mindfully and Deliberately
photo by Renee Cabatic

Right there, right then

Pour kindness and generosity out, and there will be more kindness and generosity right then.

SandraDodd.com/resentment
photo by Chelsea Leigh Thurman
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Being means being

Pushpa Ramachandran wrote about being with her child:

“Being” with her means being mindful...

“Being” with her means being available to play...

“Being” with her means being emotionally available...

“Being” with her means being connected. In body, spirit and mind. Connection translates to being curious about something that she might have found. Connection translates to trying to find more things that might tie into something that she might have liked before. Connection could translate to being excited about a bug or a thread or a cartoon. It means creating a life that is full of rich experiences, some of which might be jumping in puddles, or holding a snake. Others might involve just going grocery shopping or scrubbing the kitchen floor. The idea of connection at the core, I think, is to feel alive, rejoice in her feeling alive and live those moments together.

—Pushpa Ramachandran

Estar con los hijos (translated by Ana Paulina Maya, in Colombia)

Being with my child
photo by Pushpa Ramachandran

Needs all met!

I often think back to the things I learned in La Leche League, from readings and other moms. If you nurse a child a long time does it make him dependent on the mom? Seems to be the opposite. If you hug a child every time he wants a hug, does it make him want a hug-a-day for life? You WISH!

The more they get, the less they need.

Quote from a very-early online chat for homeschoolers,
late 1995 or early 1996, SandraDodd.com/detox
photo by Elaine Santana

A living, breathing thing

Unschooling lives (is alive; breathes; functions) where the learning is happening. The learning is supported and fed by the relationships between the parents and children.

Not changing (where unschooling is compared to fire)
photo by Ester Siroky

What's important?

Debbie Regan wrote:

What is important for your family—peace? joy? doing fun things? well-being? growing and learning? comfort? delight?...

What can you do to enhance what's important—more flexibility? more listening? more engagement? more calm? more kindness? more fun ideas? more soft places? more interesting/happy options? more generosity? more creativity?...

—Debbie Regan

SandraDodd.com/nest
photo by Eleanor Chong
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Lot of choices

I used to remind my kids [that] I had a moral and legal obligation to clothe them appropriately, and I didn't have the option to ignore that. I could give them lots of choices, but within the bounds of what was appropriate to the situation and the weather and the laws.

When a family starts talking about "ultimate" freedom or total freedom, or any of that, they just haven't thought about it very clearly.


from "Always Learning," in 2011
photo by Sarah S.
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Surrounded by generosity

Pam Sorooshian wrote:

When I get up and get a glass of water for my child, while I'm filling the glass, I imagine that cool water going into their mouth and down their dry throat and how cool and sweet that feels to them—how their thirst is being quenched. And I very very often give them the glass along with a kiss on the top of the head or at least a smile.

Being generous in a zillion little ways surrounds the kids with generosity. That's the environment I wanted to create.

—Pam Sorooshian

SandraDodd.com/generosity

(the original writing was on facebook)
photo by Sabine Mellinger

Cool! Lucky.

I don't look at the state's requirements. I look at my child's opportunities. And I think the moment that the light is on in his eyes and he CARES about this tiny bit of history he has just put together, that he wants me to say "YES, isn't that cool? I was much older when I figured this out. You're lucky to have great thoughts late at night."

Late-Night Learning Comments
photo by Sandra Dodd

Learning by looking

"When my son was little, we would go to the zoo and try to show him the animals—any animals. His attention was on the lights, grates and plumbing of the zoo! He observed these everywhere we went, no matter the place!"

—Karen James

Little Things, where Karen left that comment in 2010
photo by Sandra Dodd

Before long, it was most of the time

What helped me, when I had babies, was breathing before I spoke or before I decided, and eventually, taking a breath when I felt my thoughts get zippy-fast. I didn't always do it, but increasingly, many times a day, I did. Before long it was most of the time. That was growth. That was good.


I wrote that as a comment at Growth is Good.
photo by Kayla Wenzel

Every leaf is for real

"Practice" is the actual doing of a thing. Some people practice patience, therapy, medicine, or Buddhism.

Sometimes a person will use the word "practice" when it would be better to use "experiment" or "drill" or "train." In that "experiment" or "work until it's right" way, trees never "practice" making leaves. Every leaf is for real.

And so it is with learning. "The practice of learning" is actually doing it.

Each bit of learning is real learning.



Holly Dodd photo

Responsible for, and to

You are responsible for the child, but also responsible to the child.

—Marina DeLuca-Howard

A teen boy out with his mom—what's "the secret"?
photo by Sarah Elizabeth

Open to the moment

Sometimes it's hard to know whether to look at the flower or at the leaves or at what might be in the darkness behind, or up at the sky, or to turn around and ignore the flower completely. There might be a bird in a nearby tree, or an interesting sound coming from a window.

Plans change. It can be good, upon occasion, to just listen and look and explore. Sometimes it's fine to just see a flower and not say a word about it.

We could call those moments restless confusion and indecision, or we could consider ourselves being open to the moment, in a state of wonder and curiosity.

Keep a positive light on what's outside you and within you, and your world will be a better place.

Being present in the moment
(Text is repeated from 11/19/10, but other details changed.)
Photo by Gail Higgins

Everything is bumpy

Today's text is taken from my FB memories yesterday, things written by others:

2010: "I wish people who think unschooling is about doing nothing could know that it's about everything!"

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2011: "I have enjoyed reading Sandra Dodd's Big Book of Unschooling. It has been my "go to" book that helps me to get over some bumps in the road."

Sandra Dodd's Big Book of Unschooling
photo by Sandra Dodd

The photo is from 2013, when Joyce Fetteroll and I visited Marta's family in Portugal, and spoke there. It's a Moorish castle near Sintra, built in the 8th century, captured and claimed by the first Portuguese king in 1147. It was in the same "memories" set.