Don't be cruel

On verbal abuse, one thing that has worked here is to remind them that it's their own reputation and self/soul that they're hurting when they're mean. If someone is cruel, it makes him a cruel person. It might hurt the other kid too, but it immediately hurts the one who was mean for meanness' sake. And it disturbs the peace of the others around them. If two kids are fighting, the third kid isn't having peace either.

SandraDodd.com/peace/fighting
photo by Sandra Dodd

(I lifted the title from an Elvis song; if you want to hear it, here y'go, and here's some history: Don't be Cruel.)

Let learning live

"I remember Sandra writing recently that if kids are interested, they're learning. I repeat that to myself, almost as a mantra. And I no longer worry that all they want to do is play."

—Genevieve Raymond

Learning to see differently
photo by Julie D

The original Julie D image disappeared, so this is a 2023 replacement, same photographer.

The tricky part

When learning to read happens naturally, it doesn't look like school's reading lessons. It doesn't take years. It might take only days, but the tricky part is when those days will come. If you plant watermelons, picking at the leaves and threatening the vine will not get you a watermelon before one was going to naturally grow and mature. It's the same with children.

SandraDodd.com/reading
The quote is from page 86 (or 95) of The Big Book of Unschooling.
photo by Sandra Dodd

Happier and calmer

I think the most common changes parents have reported are that they are happier and calmer, and have become clearer in their thought processes. The "reports" I hear are often in online discussions, so that might explain the latter. When people help each other work through confusions in thinking, writing becomes clearer.

"Changes in the Parents," page 268 (or 309), The Big Book of Unschooling
which links to SandraDodd.com/change
photo by Sandra Dodd

Sometimes, wait.

Sometimes attending to someone means giving them space and quiet and waiting until they have rested or calmed down or thought about what they want to say before you press them to listen or speak. Inattentive parents miss those cues sometimes.

from page 65 (or 70) of The Big Book of Unschooling
photo by Sandra Dodd

The openers of doors

Robyn Coburn wrote:

The idea of Unschooling is for parents to be the facilitators of options, the openers of doors, the creators of environments of freedom, and the guardians of choice, not the installers of roadblocks and barriers. Unschoolers are making the huge and wonderful choice to renounce our legal entitlements to be the authoritarian controllers of our children's lives, and instead choose to be their partners.

—Robyn Coburn

SandraDodd.com/choice
photo by Edith Chabot

Launched too far

With anything, if a family moves from rules (about food, freedoms, clocks, what to wear) to something new there's going to be the backlash, and thinking of catapults (or trebuchets, more technically, or of a rubber band airplane, or other crank-it-up projectile vs ...) the more pressure that's built up, the further that kid is going to launch if you let it go all at once.

SandraDodd.com/gradualchange
photo by Holly Dodd