Make it plentiful

Once someone tried allowing her children to choose their own foods, and after a month she was ready to give up.

It's only been a month. It might take more than that for them to get as much candy as they feel they've missed in five or seven years. You scarcified it and made it valuable. Let them gorge. They'll get over it. If you don't let them have it now, they will continue to crave it, sneak it, and pack it in. Make it plentiful, and that will make it less desireable.

Please read all of this: http://sandradodd.com/t/economics. It's by Pam Sorooshian, and is "Economics of Restricting TV Watching of Children." It will apply to food too.

SandraDodd.com/eating/control
photo by Sandra Dodd, at someone else's house

Announcement and request

The last time I had a "time out" blog I wrote "This is post 250 or so, and I was surprised the blog had lived that long. Nearly three seasons—almost a year."

That post is here: https://justaddlightandstir.blogspot.com/

This will be post 583, I think. And I'm writing for a similar reason. I'm gearing up to leave home for a long time. My speaking schedule will be linked below, but I'm going to be gone for two weeks, to Massachusetts and then Oregon, speaking; I'll be home just a couple of days and then go to Europe; I'll come home and be here long enough to do laundry, sleep, and re-pack, and then go to Sacramento. That's daunting.

The likelihood that I will come up with 90+ original and clever blog posts in that time is small and I want to avoid the stress, so I think some of the summer's posts might be "greatest hits." Maybe you could think of it as an oldies station, with stuff you can sing along to! I hope you will forgive re-runs, if you see any.

There are new readers, though. There are 989 Feedburner subscribers (receiving the posts directly by e-mail) and others subscribing by other sorts of blog feeds and notices, so I can confidently say "over a thousand readers." Thank you! For the new readers, it will be all new.

ANOTHER THING: If you see an older post with a missing photo, please e-mail me a link to it so I can repair it. I moved some things and if some of the photos hadn't been properly labelled as having been used, they might be in a new folder and the link will be broken. I can repair them easily, if I know about it. Thanks for helping me clean up errors you might find! For instance, yesterday's post lead to a page with something by Alex I had marked as 2011; that was a typo for 2012. A reader let me know. Thanks, Dina!

The photo is Kirby, Jill Parmer and me, last month in Albuquerque. I hate to send something without a photo. :-)

photo by Addi Davidson, with my camera

Greater parental involvement

Living by principles rather than rules, neither "never" nor "always" is true. Living by rules of "never," less thinking is required. When there's less thinking, there's less learning. Living by principles requires more thinking, and greater parental involvement. That leads to more learning AND to better relationships.

That quote is the end of something longer,
at SandraDodd.com/misconceptions
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Live now

Pay attention to now. Live today. . . . .
Don't have so much of past and future in your head that you can't live now.

SandraDodd.com/refresh
photo by Heather Brown

The best moment

Make each moment the best moment it can be. Be where you are with your body, mind and soul. It's the only place you can be, anyway. The rest is fantasy. You can live here clearly, or you can live in a fog. Defog.

The Big Book of Unschooling, page 73 (or 80)
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Not everything, but something

"We can't magically afford everything—but very often we can afford something."

—Pam Sorooshian

SandraDodd.com/generosity
photo by Sandra Dodd
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To be whole...

Ren Allen wrote:

One definition of "heal" in the dictionary is "To become whole and sound; return to health." What a gift we can give our children if we can just allow them to maintain their wholeness in the first place, allow their spirits to take their own form without all the constraints that traditional parenting and schooling place upon a human being.

To be whole, to be sound, balanced, joyful, curious...these are the things I wish for my children. The focus on academic topics and grades seem so irrelevant when contrasted to the really important tools for this life's journey.

Ren Allen, from the exchange at Mindful Parenting
photo by Sandra Dodd
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