Stimulating and fascinating

When parents think a child's interests are ‘stupid’ or worthless, the parent thinks less of the child.

When a child finds something stimulating and fascinating and the parent declares it worthless, the child thinks less of the parent.

zamunzo.blogspot.com/2011/06/problem-and-solution.html
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Overflow

Stop thinking about your own comfort for a while. If you become successful at attending to other people's comfort, their comfort will overflow all around you, and you will feel your success and that will be some of YOUR new comfort.

SandraDodd.com/change
photo (a link) by Sandra Dodd
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Parents can learn from children

Ren wrote:

As a child I was taught that fashion and all it entails was "wordly" and that Barbie stuff promoted low self esteem. Baloney! What promoted low self esteem was being told my interests weren't worthy.

—Ren Allen

SandraDodd.com/renallen
photo by Jayn Coburn

Togetherness

Pam Sorooshian wrote:

Bring the world to your children and your children to the world. Revel in what brings you together as a family. Watch tv and movies and listen to music and the radio. Laugh together, cry together, be shocked together. Analyze and critique and think together about what you experience. Notice what your child loves and offer more of it, not less. What IS it about particular shows that engage your child—build on that. Don't operate out of fear. Think for yourself and about your own real child. Don't be swayed by pseudostudies done on school children.

—Pam Sorooshian

SandraDodd.com/pam/howto
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Focus on learning

Some newbie unschoolers want to be part of the in-crowd, but they haven't figured out that it takes time and reflection and maybe being with their kids in a different way. When the focus is on learning, everything can be understood through that lens.

—Robin Bentley

SandraDodd.com/understanding
photo by Sandra Dodd

Choose a point, any point.

Parents new to unschooling tend to worry that some activities are good preparation for life, but others are frivolous and should be forbidden or discouraged. Life and thought and learning, though, depend on connections being made. And the more points of information about anything at all being made inside an individual, the more points there will be to connect.


SandraDodd.com/connections/jokes
photo by Sandra Dodd

Wonderful!

I was being interviewed and said that living with joy and wonder made life more joyful and... wonderful!

Living with wonder makes life wonderful.

SandraDodd.com/wonder
photo by Sandra Dodd