Contentment is Peace

For learning to happen in ANY situation, safety and some peace are required.

Can there be too much peace? For learning, yes. Learning requires mental arousal. If an environment is so still and barren that one's curiosity isn't sparked, then people might be closer to a state of sleep than of excited curiosity. Life can be too dull and quiet for learning to spontaneously happen.

Can there be too little peace? Yes, and in many ways. There can be too much noise, stimulation and chaos. So finding the balance place and the comfort level is part of creating a peaceful home.

Peace is a prerequisite to natural, curious, intellectual exploration.

What is peace, then, in a home with children? Contentment is peace.

Is a child happy to be where he is? That is a kind of peace. If he wakes up disappointed, that is not peace, no matter how quiet the house is or how clean and "feng shuid" his room is.

Peace, like learning, is largely internal.

SandraDodd.com/peace/noisy
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Messages from your stuff

My maiden name was Adams, and I remember being taunted by kids singing the theme song to The Addams Family TV show, but that line "Their house is a museum where people come to see 'em" stuck with me always. When I go to other people's houses I love to see what they have. The things they've chosen to keep, or collected over the years, teach me a good deal about those people themselves—their interests, their history, their sense of humor, and philosophy.

From Your House as a Museum,
written in 1999, before I so carefully avoided the word "teach."

Photo by Sandra Dodd, of a display
at the Bryn Athyn Church School; not my art;
not my "museum" sample, but it was fun to see.
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just a second

The sunset came into my yard this way for just a few moments. I could have missed it. I have missed most sunsets in my life.

You will miss much of your child's life. Try not to miss too many moments.

It only takes a second to do better.

Getting It
sunset photo by Sandra Dodd

Results of Unschooling

I can't really speak to any "end results," because they're still growing and experiencing the newness of many firsts in their lives. If there is ever an "end," the results won't matter anymore. But as long as life continues, the results unfold.

Are my children better friends and better employees because of the freedom they had? It seems so. What kind of managers will they be when they're in positions to make decisions about other people's employment?

When they marry will they be good partners? Would that be an "end result"? What kind of parents will they be?

What kind of neighbors will they be? How will their long-term health be affected by their early freedom to make their own choices? Will they be more or less likely to be binge eaters, substance abusers, or hypochondriacs? When they're old, will they still be active and interesting? Will their early freedoms affect their geriatric physical and mental health? I don't know, and probably won't be around to see.

In this window of time, though, I am satisfied. The peace and joy with which they live attests to the success of our attachment parenting and unschooling. Our lives are entwined and growing. The end result of twenty-one years of parenting as mindfully and as peacefully as I could is that I am content with the outcome. Someday I might report on the end result of twenty-five or thirty years of parenting, as life burgeons on.

SandraDodd.com/magicwindow, 2007
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Playing for real

Playing with words makes them come to life.

The history of England, of math, of writing, of counting... all clued above and in all the histories of words. Any portal into the universe is as real as any other. If an interest in language or butterflies or patterns or water creates connections for that person to anything else in the world, that can lead to EVERYTHING else in the world.

A parent cannot decipher the whole world for her child, but she can help him begin to decipher it.

SandraDodd.com/etymology
photo by Sandra Dodd, of a sign in The Mercer Museum
in Doylestown, Pennsylvania
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There goes the darkness

One of my guiding principles is that I want my children's worlds to be sparkly.

There goes the dull and the darkness. Easily not chosen, not an option.

Sparkly Unschooling
photo by Sandra Dodd
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What we hoped to accomplish

A couple of times recently I said that Keith had once said of what we hoped to accomplish by unschooling: "We wanted them to grow up undamaged."

Tonight I looked for the exact quote. It is this:

We wanted our children to become thoughtful, intelligent, undamaged adults. —Keith Dodd

SandraDodd.com/quotes
photo by Sandra Dodd