Listen, learn and trust

Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

*Listen* to what she says with an open mind. Don't listen with an ear tuned to your ideas of what she should be thinking or should not be thinking. Listen to *her* ideas. Don't impose your "right" way of thinking on her. Don't lead her to your "right" way of viewing the world. Listen to her growing understanding. Trust that she's a thinking being and her ideas will change as she gains experience with the world. Trust she'll value kindness if who she is is treated with respect and kindness. Trust that she'll want to step on your ideas if you show her that's what you do with people who don't have the same ideas as you do.

—Joyce Fetteroll

Joyce wrote that on the Always Learning discussion list on July 22, 2010.
photo by Sandra Dodd
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A softer, clearer person

When you begin to see learning from new and interesting angles, you yourself are learning about learning (in addition to all the things about bugs or food, bridges or clouds or trains that you're learning with your children, or when they're not even there). Your softer, clearer vision of the world makes you a softer, clearer person.

from page 192 of The Big Book of Unschooling, "Personal Change"
photo by Sandra Dodd, of a long-disused pigeon coop in France

Learning is all connections

Learning is all connections— associations, patterns, and relationships.

SandraDodd.com/connections
photo by Sandra Dodd, in Tissington
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A busy, enriched and enriching life

I used to assume that people would begin with a busy, enriched and enriching life, but not everyone was making the same assumption or starting from the same place. Some said "We're unschooling, starting now," and then watched the kids to see when they were going to take control or direct their own learning.

Choices in an environment maintained with learning in mind are different from choices in a quiet, boring place. If I were a kid, my choice in a quiet, boring place would be to go to school.

Make your unschooling sparkly and joyful.

—Sandra Dodd

The text above is from a 2009 commentary on a 1996 article at SandraDodd.com/schoolchoice.
photo by Sandra Dodd, of a spooky fortune-telling machine (click it)

The history of now

What has changed? Some once-important products are long gone. Modern construction becomes historical architecture even while people are living in it. Clothing styles "come back." Musicians "cover" older songs. Movie costume and make-up can reflect the time movies are made even if the costumes are supposed to depict centuries past. Readers can look at the science fiction of 50 or 100 years ago with nostalgia for what people used to believe might make future sense.

People make their own connections, involving cars, hair, maps, science, language, furniture, food and humor, so a rich life provides the materials for learning history.

SandraDodd.com/history
photo by Sandra Dodd
(clickable link)
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Your child's friend

Pam Sorooshian, on being a child's friend:

There is nothing wrong with wanting to be your child's friend. Do what it takes to earn their friendship—be supportive and kind and honest and trustworthy and caring and generous and loyal and fun and interesting and interested in them and all the other things that good friends are to each other. Be the best 40 year old friend you can be (or whatever age you are).


People use "I'm the parent, not a friend," as an excuse to be mean, selfish, and lazy. Instead, be the adult in the friendship. Be mature. You've BEEN a five-year-old and your child has not been a forty-year-old, so you have an advantage in terms of long-term and wider perspective. Use that advantage to be an even better friend. You know how to be kinder and less self-centered and you know how beneficial it is to put forth the effort.

—Pam Sorooshian

SandraDodd.com/friend
photo by Sandra Dodd, of six-year-old Adam and his mother and friend, Julie

Perspective

The same person can see the same thing more than one way. With practice, you can see things different ways without even moving. In terms of thought, perspective is no more than "seeing" something from a new angle.

SandraDodd.com/checklists
photo by Sandra Dodd