Any old thing

Ronnie Maier described strewing beautifully:

"Strewing involves making a wonderful variety of resources available to your kids with no expectation or requirement that the resources ever be used. These can be books, toys, or supplies left casually on tables or in bathrooms or presented quietly or with fanfare directly to your child. They can be posters hung on walls, craft or music or gaming activities that *you* start, Web pages left open on the computer, magazines subscribed to, alternate driving routes taken, etc. It is SO fun to do, and it creates an environment of discovery and fun in your house. The things you strew can be in support of interests your son has expressed or about just any old thing you think of."

SandraDodd.com/strew/how
photo by Sandra Dodd

Not so many rules

"Rules within the home tend to be entirely for the children to 'follow,' whereas Principles apply to everyone in the family, and to other people with whom we all interact. Principles are ideas like Kindness, Safety, Respect, Honesty."

—Robyn Coburn

SandraDodd.com/robyn/rules
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Ideaflow

I was studying education in the early 1970’s, having wanted to be a teacher since first grade. The university was a hotbed of radical new thought about learning, spirituality, the value and valuing of the human life and spirit. I was in my late teens, and eager to take my turn at trying to change the world. We read all the then-current discussions of classroom failure—James Herndon, A.S.Neill, Jonathan Kozol and John Holt—and I lived and breathed in their hopeful vision of the future of free schools and open classrooms. I taught hard, and after six years I quit. I never did quit learning, though.

Newer John Holt books were waiting for me fifteen years later, when my firstborn son was expressing his distaste for organized activities and formal learning.

While I was making him little medieval costumes and taking him to feasts and tournaments where I set him down to play with his collection of could-have-been-medieval wooden and clay and metal toys, he being part and parcel of that ongoing work of performance art which is the Society for Creative Anachronism, I started to think that maybe school wasn’t going to benefit a child who was resistant to group control and already surrounded by learning opportunities which my distant impersonal gurus of education would have approved. Homeschooling seemed part and parcel of the respect for individuals and the attachment parenting which had flowed so freely from my previous experiences.

SandraDodd.com/HippieShirt
photo by Sandra Dodd
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The full plate club!

"The empty plate club," referring to kids who successfully clean their plates, sounds so sad.

"Full plate" sounds much more nurturing.

SandraDodd.com/eating/grapes
the image is a painting by Pierre Mignard in the 1640s

Wishes

Jenny Cyphers wrote:

I wish things for our family had been different earlier than later, but it is what it is. Unschooling really helped make us better people. I can't even imagine, or rather I can, how different things would be with our relationships with our kids if they'd been in school all these years. Kids absorb the good and the bad. Unschooling really focuses on the good, and that's, well, GOOD! —Jenny Cyphers

"If Only I'd Started Sooner..."
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Bully-proofing?

QUESTION:

I worry that if our child does not go to school that he will be vulnerable to bullying when interacting with school kids at activity clubs like soccer or scouts.

RESPONSE:

School kids are vulnerable to bullying both at activity clubs and at school. The idea that practice with being bullied helps people to avoid bullying doesn't seem true. Do abused women stand up to abusers better than women who have not been abused?

With my kids, their tolerance for nonsense from other children was very low, and because they never had to be in a class or club, but it was always their option to leave, it made a huge difference. They knew they could stay if they wanted, or go home if they would rather.

Much of bullying happens because humans need a hierarchy to interact. They don't behave well in "equal" groups of equally inexperienced people their own age. First, they need to learn from older and more experienced people. And if they have no leaders or experts in the group, then bullying and gangs can develop, because people seem to have a need to know their "rank" in a group.

I think bullying is a natural side effect of people feeling powerless, and of not being in the regular world where people do have different ages and different levels of experience in a situation.

SandraDodd.com/musicroom
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Pattern blocks and deep thoughts

Of things to do that encourage conversation:

I have discovered the motherlode of two-for-ones, of tools for inspiring and sustaining conversation. I suppose you have some of these things, or might want to put them on your wish list. My favorite is pattern blocks. There are some hardwood blocks stained in a few bright colors, available for $25 at educational supply stores and upscale toyshops. They are mesmerizing. We bought a second set after a while so we could fill the table with one big mandala pattern after another. And over those blocks my children have told their secret dreams, and we have discussed art and math, manufacturing, stain and paint, we have laughed and been silent.

While the blocks were still out our children have dazzled visiting adults with their dexterity and artistic sense, then they’ve wandered off and the visitors have talked to me, while making patterns with blocks, about things that might have been hard to discuss if we were sitting facing one another. They’ve discussed their fears and love lives and embarrassments, and made some really great patterns.

Leaning on a Truck
scan of blocks by Sandra Dodd; they're bigger in real life
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