Monday, January 2, 2012

What if a parent is afraid?

Part of my response to a request for advice to fearful parents:


Turn away from the school and look directly at your children. Look at them as individuals, rather than as students, or third graders or eight-year-olds. Look at their potential, their interests, their sweetness, and find ways to preserve and nurture those.
. . .

Don't do school. Do life as though school didn't exist. Live to learn; learn to live. If after really trying it as hard and as honestly and fully as you can for an extended period of time you can't get it to work, then you can always go back to a curriculum.

School has already taken twelve or more years of your freedom and individuality. You don't have to let it take your adult life as well. You don't have to let it have your child.

SandraDodd.com/interviews/successful
photo by Sandra Dodd
__

Sunday, January 1, 2012

Party

"There is no such thing
as a waste of a party."
—Holly Dodd
12/30/11

Quote from Holly during a panel at the ALL Unschooling Symposium
photo by Sandra Dodd

Saturday, December 31, 2011

Nuttiness is relative

Deb Lewis, writing in 2006, referring to 1999:


Spending time with Dylan made it hard for people to make an argument that he was missing something by not going to school. He was bright and articulate and lively. "But when he gets older," they started saying, "he'll need to go to school for the important subjects."

About this time some homeschooling kids were winning spelling bees and geography bees. Some public school kids were shooting up their classrooms. Suddenly, keeping a kid out of school didn't seem as nutty as it had a few years before.
—Deb Lewis

SandraDodd.com/deblewis/years
photo by Sandra Dodd
__

Friday, December 30, 2011

Trust and curiosity

Unless their joy and curiosity are snuffed out, your children will have interests and, if you're lucky, obsessions and hobbies. How negative do you want to be about those? Try to decide in advance so you're being mindful and aware when they show you their painted rocks or their plastic soldiers or their hip-hop video collection.

They will trust you as long and as far as you are trustworthy.

SandraDodd.com/focus
photo by Sandra Dodd
__

Thursday, December 29, 2011

High, low or average... (Don't ask.)


Of all the things I believe strongly, one that has changed my life as profoundly as any one other belief is my personal knowledge that test scores can and do (can't fail to) affect the treatment a child receives at his parents' hands. High scores, low scores, average scores—no matter. Parents cease to treat the child as his original, known self and color him soul deep with that number.

My life would have been different. My husband's life would have been different, without those 5th and 8th grade ITBS scores. I venture to say without even knowing who is reading this that your life would have been different, and specifically I believe your life would have been better, had not you been branded with a number on your "permanent record" (there's a big mean scary joke, the "permanence" and important parts) as a young innocent ten or thirteen year old full of potential, at some unknown point on a learning curve that might soon be at its settled-out level, or might just be beginning.

SandraDodd.com/testing/tests
photo by Sandra Dodd
__

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

It may seem weird, but...


I had been unschooling for years before a few people suggested on a message board that requiring kids to do chores could be as bad as making them do schoolwork. I perked up immediately, and everything they said has proven true at our house. The first principle was "If a mess is bothering you, YOU clean it up." Another one was "Do things for your family because you *want* to!"

It was new to me to consider housework a fun thing to be done with a happy attitude, but as it has changed my life and because it fit in so well with the other unschooling issues, I've collected things to help others consider this change as well.

In the same way that food controls can create food issues, forcing housework on children can cause resentments and avoidances which neither get houses clean nor improve the relationships between children and parents.

Also, studies of separated identical twins have shown that the desire and ability to clean and organize has more to do with genetics than "training."

SandraDodd.com/chores
photo by Sandra Dodd
"That's a rad picture; I think I was eleven." —Holly
__

Live in a different way

Someone else's question, and part of my answer:

As much as I read,... I seem to slide right back into schoolish ways. How long does it take to really break that bad habit?

Forever.

If you think of it in negative terms ("bad" and not just "break" but "really break"), you will just sit in that negativity, frustrated, forever. You will feel there had to be a winner (you) or a loser (you) and you will be angry with yourself.

The change you need is to live a different way. Step out of the grumpy dark into the calm decision-making choose-joy light.

SandraDodd.com/change
photo by Sandra Dodd
__