Other solutions

"If you're trapped by have to's then there are no other solutions. If you recognize that there are other solutions then you can free up your thinking to allow them to come."

—Joyce Fetteroll

"There are just things we have to do" (on Joyce's site)
photo by Sandra Dodd

Progress toward joy

Some of the things that help people be confidently in the moment, feeling satisfied and content are:

• Breathing
  
• Gratitude
  
• Happy thoughts
  
• Fondness
  
• Acceptance

At first it might be relief and not joy, but as relief is a step away from fear, more relief will be progress toward joy.

The Big Book of Unschooling, page 275 (or 318)
photo by Holly Dodd

Counting and measuring

Measuring, weighing and counting can be fun!

Try not to measure, weigh or count relationships or learning, though. Learn not to keep count in the areas of knowledge or effort or interest.

Give, give, give
photo by Sandra Dodd
__

As big as the world

Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

If you look at school and curriculum objectively rather than the fonts of knowledge they're touted to be, it's easier to see how hugely limiting they are.

Kids are stuck inside memorizing facts about life and the world from someone predigested facts about it.

Unschooled kids are out in the world learning as humans are designed to learn: by gathering in what they observe and pulling understanding from it.

Schooled kids lives are limited. Unschooled kids lives are as big as the world around them. And with the internet and TV, that's practically infinite!

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/joycefetteroll
photo by Sandra Dodd

Safe place

If your relationship with your child is about you leading him along with you instead of pushing him away, you will be his safe place.

Make yourself his safe place.

SandraDodd.com/safety
photo by Sandra Dodd

Play with words

Playing with words makes them come to life.

The history of England, of math, of writing, of counting.... Any portal into the universe is as real as any other. If an interest in language or butterflies or patterns or water creates connections for that person to anything else in the world, that can lead to EVERYTHING else in the world.

---

A parent cannot decipher the whole world for her child, but she can help him begin to decipher it.

SandraDodd.com/etymology
photo by Sandra Dodd, in a park in Bangalore

What makes things wonderful

The most common use of the word "wonder" these days is to express a question in a way that isn't likely to be answered, as in "I wonder when this tree will blossom?" It's also used to play with very young children with peek-a-boo games. "I wonder where Holly is? Where could she be? There she is!"

The deeper meaning of the word is what makes things wonderful. Full of wonder. Some adults are afraid of "wonder," though, because it involves relaxing into not understanding. It requires acceptance that one does not know. At its core, it is acceptance of and admiration for the mysterious and the hidden. It is taking joy in the revelation of simple things for which there are no words.

Similar page, SandraDodd.com/wonder
(though the quote is from page 279 (or 322) of The Big Book of Unschooling)
photo by Sandra Dodd
__