Movement and Life

All around you is life. People, plants, animals, moving and growing. Thoughts, feelings and relationships, alive and changing. Remember that your child is, every moment, in various states of wakefulness, emotion, hunger/satiation, comfort, and those states change.

Click below to see the image above in a different way:

A Joyful Attitude

A joyful attitude is your best tool.

It seems lately that more and more people want to know exactly HOW to unschool, but the answer is not what they expect. Looking back at these stories, in light of others like them, the best recommendation I can make is to open up to the expectation of learning. It helps if the parent is willing for a conversation to last only fifteen seconds, or to go on for an hour.

Remember that if your “unit study” is the universe, everything will tie in to everything else, so you don’t need to categorize or be methodical to increase your understanding of the world. Each bit is added wherever it sticks, and the more you’ve seen and wondered and discussed, the more places you have inside for new ideas to stick.

A joyful attitude is your best tool. We’ve found that living busy lives with the expectation that everything is educational has made each morning, afternoon and evening prime learning time.



Late-Night Learning
photo by Holly Dodd, downtown Albuquerque

Destinations

A different approach to life yields a very different set of results.

You don't have to turn 180 degrees from the way you would have lived before you decided to parent differently. At first it might seem pretty close. But as you move further from the starting point, you will see what a difference a tiny change of course made.

Extremes

See if you have a dial in your mind that says "everything" at one extreme and "nothing" at the other. It's impossible for anyone to do everything or nothing. Maybe label it "too much" and "not enough" instead, and try for the midpoint. Replace any on/off switches in your mind with slide bars or dimmers!"

SandraDodd.com/balance
(Thanks to Katherine Anderson
for quoting that on Always Learning!)

Finding yourself

I was asked recently, "When do you find time for yourself as an individual?"

When children are very young, their lives ARE the mother's life. The more time the mother spends with the child when he's young, the easier it will be for him to separate freely on his own. It goes against some of the assumptions of traditional parenting (although it might not in India, and my comments might be too western here), to suggest that fulfilling all of a child's needs will make him more INdependent, but when a child is needy and feels ignored, he will be more demanding, not less.

As my children got a little older, I found other families to trade time with. Their kids would play at my house while the mom shopped or something, and she would reciprocate. If a mother is encouraged to look for more and more time without her children, though, it can make her feel unhappy thinking she's doing something wrong and should "find herself." Rather than encourage mothers to feel they have lost their individuality, I've found that helping them become the sort of parents they're proud to be can make them feel much better than outside interests might have. As children get older, mothers have more time, until someday the children are grown. People say it and hear it all the time, I know, but when they're little it seems it will never happen, and when they're older, it seems it took no time at all.

The more people one's children know and trust, the easier it will be for the parents to find some separate time, but I don't think time apart should be a high priority.

The graph was created for this article:
SandraDodd.com/howto/precisely

"How should parents teach?"

Each family should live a rich life of thoughtful exploration.

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. Exploring new places is good too, even if they're in your own neighborhood. Taking a different route or going to a different shop will spark learning in a child.

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The writing above was in response to a question from a reporter,
and it seemed worth sharing.
photo by Holly Dodd
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Eating

Food and stress should never go together if it can be avoided.  My suggestion for today is:  Lighten up.     

Even if you feel that you've overcome all your prejudices and fears about where, when and how children MUST eat, there might be a few lingering concerns. Let one go. Maybe let two go. One way to think about it is that they will live for a long time and what they eat this week doesn't matter much, or they won't live much longer, in which case what they eat this week doesn't matter at all.

SandraDodd.com/eating/peace
photo by Sandra Dodd
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