Limits

"Conventional wisdom" (those truisms that too-often aren't true) says "children need limits," and that good parents have lots of limits (the more limits the better the parent). We've all seen (and some have been in) families where stifling limits caused the very problems they were expected to prevent. But without a counter-mantra to "children need limits" it's easy for parents to fear that it must be true or people wouldn't keep saying it.

If by "limits" people mean "safe boundaries," sure! If by "limits" people mean "someone to watch and care," absolutely! But what people usually mean by "limits" is parents who say "no / don't / stop / forget it / when you're older."

When unschoolers discuss limits they're often discussing arbitrary limits, trumped up to make the parents feel good, or used as magical talismans to guarantee that their children will be creative, healthy and safe. What creates much more magic is to help children discover and do and be.

SandraDodd.com/limits
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Economics of restrictions

Pam Sorooshian wrote:

What's your favorite thing to do? Watch movies? Read a book? Garden? Go to Disneyland? Why don't you just do that all the time and nothing else? I mean — if it is your favorite, then doesn't it give you higher utility than anything else? Why do you ever stop doing it?

The answer is that as you do more and more of something, the marginal utility of doing even more of it, goes down. As its marginal utility goes down, other things start to look better and better.

When you restrict an activity, you keep the person at the point where the marginal utility is really high.

—Pam Sorooshian

Economics of Restricting TV Watching of Children
photo by Sandra Dodd

Relationships

Unschooling can help relationships in all kinds of ways. Broken relationships can harm unschooling in all kinds of ways.

Benefits of Unschooling when the Teen Years Arrive
photo by Sandra Dodd
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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
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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

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
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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
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