When everything is new

What do babies want? They want to learn. They learn by touching and tasting and watching and listening. They learn to be gentle by people being gentle with them, and showing them how to touch hair nicely, and to touch cats and dogs gently. They want to learn which foods taste good. They want to learn how to walk, but you don't need to teach them. They'll want to know how to go up and down stairs at some point. They will eventually want to know how to get things off shelves and out of boxes. They will want to see what else is in the house, and in the yard, and you can help them do that safely.

A baby doesn't want to look at and touch the very same things day after day after day any more than you would want to watch the same movie every day for a year, or sit in the same place in your house all the time. Sing different songs with him. Play different finger games. Change what he can see in the bedroom sometimes.

The quote is from page 59 (or 64) of The Big Book of Unschooling
photo by Sandra Dodd

Growing in confidence together

My confidence as a parent has come from seeing the growth and the robust emotional health of my children. Some of their confidence seems to come from knowing that they have confident parents taking care of them. We grew in our confidence together, as partners, and as a team.


As a link, I would like to offer a July 2006 blogpost from the last day all three of my kids were teens. It has photos from the first time they left home all together without a parent, the last time they left together as teenagers, and a photo of the family. Nearly five years have passed, and the confidence only increases.
Three teens! I have three teens!

The quote is from page 290 (or 329) of The Big Book of Unschooling
photo by Sandra Dodd, July 2009
when Kirby and Marty were already in their 20's

Humor as a warm-up

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 Holly Dodd
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Elvis, Barbie and Rebellion

I started to name this post "Elvis," but up popped "Elvis, Barbie and Rebellion." When I went to search my other blogs to see why that was happening, I found "Elvis, Battle of New Orleans, Pinky and the Brain, Cavemen."

Those two sets of words, separated from their origins, are more interesting than what I had originally intended to write about Elvis. I invite you ponder for a moment what I might have been thinking.

If you get tired of that, you are welcome to explore the first one and the other one, at your leisure.
photo by Holly Dodd herself

Look back at progress

[One day in 2006,] I dropped an egg on the floor. Just fumbled it, splat, and I looked at it. I remembered the first time I ever spilled anything and remained really calm. It was baby bathwater, when Kirby was just six months old or so. We were due to a meeting (LLL? Probably, or some appointment) soon, and I had given him a bath and had him all dressed to go, and wanted to pour the tub out. In moving it from the kitchen table over to the sink (a short distance at our old house—nobody who's recently been to our new house should bother to envision) it bent and like two or three gallons of soapy water went all over the floor.

I didn't cuss myself out, didn't stomp or yell or ANYthing. I just looked at it and thought the floor needed to be cleaned anyway, and I threw some rags or towels down on it so it wouldn't get away, and figured I'd clean it up better later. I never felt shame or embarrassment or frustration or the feeling that life isn't fair or that I was stupid. That was new to me, and I was 33.

A week and some ago, I dropped an egg calmly and realized it had been 20 years since I had to get angry and emotional over making a mistake like that.

SandraDodd.com/factors
photo by Sandra Dodd

Unschooling as recovery

I rarely think about the sad parts of my childhood, because I've been able to share in the happy parts of my children's childhood.

The quote is from the AlwaysLearning discussion list.
photo by Sandra Dodd, and you can click it
to see it larger, if you want to
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Epiphanies

Ah-HA!

I recently saw how far I've come.

I knew that. Now I *know* that.

I am pretty sure I understand now!

Those quotes are from a collection of just a few of the unschooling epiphanies reported over the years. Not one of them is anything akin to "Yeah, I read that, but..." They're not about reading at all. They're about seeing, about realizing, about having acted in a new way after months or years of the percolation of ideas through a mind and heart open to learning.

SandraDodd.com/gettingit
photo by Sandra Dodd
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