Being online is good because...

If time spent here keeps you from poking and prodding and pushing your kids, that's good.

If time spent here gives you confidence to unschool that will save you TONS of money and energy and worry and heartache and interpersonal repair, that's good.

If you took a course on unschooling and had to go to class a time or two a week, with commuting time, and reading and paper-writing time, and if it cost what a college class costs in tuition, but you could just do THIS instead, that would be good. (And hey! It's true!)

SandraDodd.com/lists/justification
photo by Sandra Dodd, of the mailbox out front

Hooks to hang Hamlet on

Sometimes it's even easier if the humor comes first and the "real" information later. Someone who has seen Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, the Simpsons episode about Hamlet, and the Reduced Shakespeare Company's little Hamlet will have many hooks to hang the real Hamlet on, if and when they see it.

SandraDodd.com/connections/jokes
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Change the world

If by "change the world" a person means "make the world better," then step #1 must be to decide right then not to make the world worse.


Accidents sometimes make the world worse, and carelessness, and flukes of weather and acts of God. But if a personal decision makes the world worse, then what?

There are different levels of "oops"—didn't know, didn't think, forgot, didn't care, was pisssed off or drunk, was furious and wanted to do damage... What can be undone? What can be atoned for?

The world starts to get better when people stop making it worse, and a person's life starts to get better when he consciously decides to do what is better instead of what is worse in any given moment.

Philosophy, or That's what it's all about!
photo by Sandra Dodd

Atmospheric conditions for unschooling

Think in terms of creating an atmosphere of wonder where people are genuinely curious about life and where there are intriguing things to be curious about.

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/joyce/talk
photo by Joyce Fetteroll

Use your words

Someone once wrote:
"In the past my kids have tended to expect to be waited on hand and foot."

I responded:
If you use phrases like "to be waited on hand and foot," you're quoting other people. That usually means the other person's voice is in your head, shaming you. Or it means you've adopted some anti-kid attitudes without really examining them. If you're having a feeling, translate it into your own words. It's a little freaky how people can channel their parents and grandparents by going on automatic and letting those archaic phrases flow through us. Anything you haven't personally examined in the light of your current beliefs shouldn't be uttered, in my opinion. Anything I can't say in my own words hasn't really been internalized by me. As long as I'm simply quoting others, I can bypass conscious, careful thought.

SandraDodd.com/phrases
photo by Sandra Dodd

Tons of yes

Some advice on going gradually:

Just like getting lots of gifts instead of one big one, if you say "sure," "okay," "yes" to lots of requests for watching a movie late or having cake for breakfast or them playing another half hour on the swings and you can just read a book in the car nearby, then they get TONS of yes, and permission, and approval. If you throw your hands up and say "Whatever," that's a disturbing moment of mom seeming not to care instead of mom seeming the provider of an assortment of joyous approvals.

SandraDodd.com/freedom/to
photo by Sandra Dodd
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An unschooling high

Some years ago, this enthusiastic story was written by a mom named Alexandra:

Today I had an unschooling moment.

We had movie and tv restrictions before, and gave them up after reading here. Today, we were driving somewhere, and went down a road near where the tide comes in (we live near the Bay of Fundy), and after renting The Lizzie McGuire movie last week, and seeing the state of the tide, naturally I burst into "The tide is high..."!!—joined happily by my three daughters.

Sometime after the nth rendition of that song all together, I thought, here we are doing something happily all together, and from that space, anything can happen, questions, answers, laughter, silence. Thank you Lizzie McGuire, thank you people of the unschooling.com message board, I'm not the kind of girl who gives up just like that....

(end of quote)

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Just today I was interviewed and mentioned all the writings that were lost when that message board was taken down, and AOL's forum before that, and the user group I used to access when *Prodigy was new. So many ideas, so much writing, poofed away. And I said that's why I wanted to collect and preserve writing now. Thank you, readers, for your appreciation of my hoarding at SandraDodd.com.

SandraDodd.com/list
photo by Sandra Dodd
The song was part of the credit sequence of that movie, and you can watch and hear it here: Lizzie Mcguire the Movie: The tide is high (and this version was by an English girl group called Atomic Kitten)