Peaceful Playing

Whatever you do, make it fun, interesting, comforting, memorable, unusual, familiar, nourishing, productive, or restful. If it can be three or four of those things at the same time, good job!


Precisely How to Unschool
photo by Sandra Dodd

Eating sugar

"I don't believe sugar is addictive. I believe some people naturally like sweets more than others and I believe our attitude about sugar, about any food, creates more problems than the food itself. I think one of the best things we can do to ensure a healthy attitude about foods for our kids is to not screw up their psychology with fear and guilt and dire warnings."

—Deb Lewis

The quote is the conclusion of a longer story by Deb Lewis here: SandraDodd.com/eating/sugar
photo by Sandra Dodd, of cupcakes by Julie Anne Koetsier

Sleeping when they're tired

We were active in La Leche League, and Keith and I both fell in love with being parents, and with the ideas we were learning there. We were active in a group that had many late-night parties and meetings, and campouts, so our kids were used to sleeping in different places, and falling asleep in our laps, or in a frame backpack either indoors or in the mountains under the stars. That helped us know without a doubt that children will sleep when they’re tired, and that it’s more important for them to be with their parents doing interesting things than to be home in bed simply because it’s 8:00 or 9:00.

From page 340 of The Big Book of Unschooling (page 381 of 2019 edition)
photo by Sandra Dodd

Learning to make peaceful choices

Schuyler Waynforth wrote some years ago:

It was hard not to turn to the quick solution that never solved anything and left everyone upset, me included, me, maybe the most.

But it was amazing to have to expand into the vacuum left by not having that blunt tool in my toolbox. Both Simon and Linnaea grew to trust me. It took less time than I expected.
. . . .My raging, my approach to problems didn't help anything.

I can remember talking about it, thinking about it, it was like a switch I could feel turning. I went from calm and in control to *switch* furious in no time at all. And I couldn't figure out how to not turn the switch on, to make the switch a thoughtful process. When it flipped the other day I felt it go and I stepped away and I turned it off. Most days I stop long before the switch goes. The thoughtful process was recognizing the grumpiness earlier in the day. Feeling a shortness that isn't normally there and doing things to respond to that like going for a quick breath outside or having a chocolate milk or a chai latte or something else that just ups my energy budget a bit. Taking five minutes to close my eyes and be still helps, too. Whatever works for you to buffer yourself is good. Come up with lots of little things.

—Schuyler Waynforth

SandraDodd.com/parentingpeacefully
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Moments

It's better to think of good moments or bad moments, rather than to curse a whole day with "this is a bad day."

SandraDodd.com/moment
photo by Sandra Dodd

Four steps to unschooling

Some people think they can read their way to unschooling, or that if they can win enough arguments about how learning works, that then they will be unschoolers. That's not how it happens.

If you do these four things, in this order, enough times, you might discover you are fully and confidently unschooling:

Read a little. Try a little. Wait a while. Watch.

SandraDodd.com/unschooling
photo by Sandra Dodd

When Holly wanted plums

Pam Sorooshian wrote this ten years ago:

I went to New Mexico and Sandra picked me up at the airport. We then went to three grocery stores, one right after another, because Holly (who was maybe 4 or 5 at the time) was really wanting some plums and the first couple of stores we went to didn't have any. She wasn't being terribly demanding or whiny or anything—just saying, "Mommy I REALLY would love to have a plum."


So we drove around—which was great because I got to see a bit of Albuquerque—and we got her some plums and she munched happily in the back seat while we talked. I was very impressed with Sandra's willingness to do this—most people would have thought it was MORE than enough to stop at even one grocery store because a child had a sudden urge to eat a plum. Most people would have just brushed off the child's urge (do we brush off our OWN urges like that?)

I thought then, and it has been confirmed for me on many occasions since, that when kids know that their parents are willing to go out of their own way to help them get what they want, that the kids end up usually more understanding and able to more easily accept it when parents don't give them what they want.

—Pam Sorooshian

SandraDodd.com/yes
photo by Sandra Dodd, of a chimney assortment in Linlithgow