Trained like a cat

I had a friend when my kids were single-digit ages. After she hung out with our family a while, she decided she would unschool just like we did. Before long she explained to me her liberal total-unschooling policy on her son's reading. He was eight or nine. She told him he could read any book he wanted to, as long as he finished any book he started.

Quicker than training a cat not to get on the table, she trained him not to start any books at all.

SandraDodd.com/finishwhatyoustart
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Right here

Holly Dodd wrote a warm memory:

I am seven years old. I am sitting comfortably with a convenient, safe place to rest my face. Safe. On my father's lap . . . Knowing it is not only ok, but expected of me, to fall asleep. Right here where I already am. My dad will tuck me in when he is done holding me, and it will hardly be my business.

SandraDodd.com/sleep/memories
photo by Holly Dodd
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Success and measures

Be careful how you define success, lest what is not success become failure.

Don't let your goal be so small that the rest of the universe is to be avoided.

SandraDodd.com/success
photo of some onion plants, by Sandra Dodd
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Confident, mindful parents

Frank Smith said in his book Learning and Forgetting that to learn to do or be something, one should hang out with those who already had and valued that ability. So if you want to become a confident, mindful parent, hang out with confident, mindful parents. A conference is the perfect place to do that.

I have a collection of expressions of regret, from parents who stalled about really making a change in their parenting and homeschooling. It's "If only..." (SandraDodd.com/ifonly) They say, in various ways, "We should have made this change sooner."

Some people have said that they will go to a conference when their kids are older. It can happen that their kids end up in school because the parents couldn't figure out how to homeschool well on their own, and they gave up. Had they gone to a conference, they might still have their kids home today.

from "Little Tools for an Epic Life," by Sandra Dodd
photo by Sandra Dodd

Little adjustments

Solve problems before they become problems. (Part of being present!) Notice the direction things are heading and change things. Don't let them get hungry, tired, testy to the point where they're hitting or destroying things. Food. Naps. Go home. Put on a video. Draw one away to do something totally different.

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/being/healing
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Better is better.

Approach "better."

But "better" is unmeasurable. Too much measuring, too much counting.
Better is perceptible.
Better is a relief.
Better is better.

Arguing with "better is better" is saying that better is not better.
Worse is certainly not better.

From notes for a talk given August 2, 2012.
photo by Sandra Dodd

Decision time

Decision time isn't about what you will do next year or for the rest of your child's life. Decision time is about what you will do in the next five seconds. I recommend getting up and doing something sweet for another person, wordlessly and gently. Never send the bill; make it a gift you forget all about. Do that again later in the day. Don't tell us, don't tell them, just do it.

SandraDodd.com/change
photo by Sandra Dodd
(I posted part of that quote in April 2011, also with a lawn photo.)
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