Accept contagion

Negativity is contagious. Joy can be contagious, unless one is wielding the sword of negativity, protected by the shield of cynicism.

Don't defend your negativity.

Allow yourself to be infected with other people's joy.

"Happiness Inside and Out"
photo by Sandra Dodd, of flowers growing on drainpipes and ledges in Staines, in Surrey, in 2012
__

Who resists learning?

Pam Sorooshian, on her daughters' experiences in college:

Unschooling seemed to have given them HUGE advantages in college. They were, frankly, shocked at the poor preparation and attitudes of most other students. Other students seemed to them to be "going through the motions," but were not really interested in learning.

It is hard to explain, but all three of my kids and all of their unschooled friends who have gone to college have repeatedly tried to articulate that there seemed to be "something wrong" with so many of the other students and that they seemed actually resistant to learning. The unschooled kids were there because they wanted to be there, first of all. They knew they had a choice and that makes a big difference. A sense of coercion leads to either outright rebellion, passive resistance, or apathy and my kids saw all of those playing out among the majority of their fellow students.

That quote is the middle of something longer that's here: SandraDodd.com/college
The photo is of Roya Sorooshian, and I don't know who took it.

---

Notes:
1) Pam Sorooshian has been a college economics professor longer than she has been a mother.
2) "College," in American terminology, is the early years of what is called elsewhere "university." Sorry for the difference in English-speaking-countries' disconnect on this. In the British system, "college" is what would be our last two years of high school, in a way, sort of; sorry.

Parental improvement

Sometimes parents are needy, and unschooling can help. They can feel fulfilled by being a present, focused, direct parent.

I've gained a lot of happiness from being a good parent. Not "better than," but as good a parent as I could figure out how to be. Better than I would have been if I hadn't focussed on that.

SandraDodd.com/peace/becoming
photo by Holly Dodd
__

Happiness helps

Happiness helps learning. Biochemically, joy is better than dismay. Optimism is better than negativity.
SandraDodd.com/negativity
photo by Sandra Dodd

Pleasant and safe

I think putting a child out for turning 18, or 20, or 21 is as arbitrary as putting a child in school for turning five.

If home isn't pleasant and safe, a young adult will leave with just anybody. If "anything is better than home," that creates a dangerous situation.

The quote is from a discussion on facebook,
but here's a cousin-link: SandraDodd.com/youngadults
photo by Sandra Dodd
__

Ouija Book

In The Big Book of Unschooling I mentioned on one page that if someone had randomly opened the book to that page, that...

Well there are two such mentions:

If you've turned to this page in random Ouija-Book fashion, welcome! If you arrived here methodically, page-by-page, you won't be surprised at what I'm about to say.

and on another page

Or maybe you've turned randomly to this page without reading anything else and you don't know what I'm talking about. This wasn't a good first-random-page. Maybe flip again, and come back to this page later.

One of the moms who bought the book that first day said she had randomly turned to one of those pages, and was amused by seeing that note.

Don't stay too long.

     Read a little.
           Try a little.
               Wait a while.
                    Watch.

SandraDodd.com/bigbook/random
photo by Sandra Dodd

New life

When a child’s life is full of sights, sounds, tastes, smells, textures, people and places, he will learn. When he feels safe and loved, he will learn. When parents begin to recover from their own ideas of what learning should look like (what they remember from school), then they begin a new life of natural learning, too.

Interview published 8/22/12
photo by Sandra Dodd of backyard birdfeeders
__