How much can one child understand?

Parents can make a big difference by helping children work through their thoughts and theories without scoffing or criticizing. Awareness of this pattern of development can help parents avoid expecting young children to think in ways of which they are incapable, and avoid holding children responsible for "understanding" or "agreeing to" things they can't really comprehend.


Some parents will say, "I explained it and he said he understood." What probably happened was the child heard "blah blah blah blah, okay?" and said "Okay."

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photo by Sandra Dodd
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Leeway and Freedom

[W]hen their whole real life is this, is natural learning, is making choices about real things in their real lives, and having the leeway and the freedom to say "I don't really like this. I'd like to do something different," and for the adults around them say "Ok let's figure out how we can do that," it makes a whole different kind of person. I never knew how much damage school did until I saw some kids who hadn't been.

SandraDodd.com/video/sandra2
photo by Sandra Dodd

John Holt

Deb Lewis wrote a wonderful summary review of John Holt's book Teach Your Own, and her intro is this:

Teach Your Own was published in 1981 and reads like some of the really meaningful discussions on unschooling lists and forums on-line today. Holt has written commentary around and expounded on ideas in letters from parents who were reading and writing to Growing Without Schooling magazine, which he began publishing in 1977. Teach Your Own will give anyone familiar with the unschooling lists a sense that John Holt would have loved these on-line discussions. E-mail lists are very much like what John Holt was doing all those years ago via snail mail.

SandraDodd.com/holt/teachyourown
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Little things

As we get older and our kids grow up, we eventually come to realize that all the big things in our lives are really the direct result of how we've handled all the little things.

—Pam Sorooshian

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clickable photo by Sandra Dodd

Unexpected skills

Joyce Fetteroll's daughter Kathryn has played electric guitar for years now, but here is something Joyce wrote at the beginning of all that:

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Kat (who's 14) is taking guitar lessons for the first time. Her teacher was impressed that she could read and play the notes without looking at the fret bar and wondered how she could do that if she'd never played before. Kat replied "Three years of playing video games!" She said he laughed.

—Joyce

SandraDodd.com/joycefetteroll
photo by Sandra Dodd

Tangents

The tangents are the good parts.

Real Learning
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Everything we do

Unschooling has had an incredibly positive impact on our lives, and not only in an educational aspect, but in everything we do. It's changed the way we live, the way we think, and the way we look at the world in general.

—Lyle Perry

SandraDodd.com/lyleperry
photo by Sandra Dodd