Gradual progress

If you decide how you want your home to be, and then make choices that get you nearer to that, things will get gradually better.

If you don't decide, or if you don't think of it many times a day when you make small choices, and decide how to act and react, then things won't get better.

Not every step will be forward, but if most of them are, then you'll make progress.

SandraDodd.com/moment
photo by Sandra Dodd

Bounty

"The more you look for bounty the more you will find it."

—Schuyler Waynforth

SandraDodd.com/schuylerwaynforth
photo by Sandra Dodd
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A better partner

Because you become a better partner, that partnership works better.

SandraDodd.com/partners/child
photo by Sandra Dodd; carving by Keith Dodd
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"What about structure?"

What about structure? People ask how, if a child is not pressed to live a structured school life, will he cope with "the real world" and its demands? One of my recent responses is here:

It doesn’t take ten years of practice for a kid to learn how to show up on time, and if they’re interested in doing something, they’ll probably get up early! All my children and very many more I’ve known have excelled in structured situations because they were there by choice and they weren’t sick to death of structure. They thought it was fun, when it was their option to be there or not.

Sandra Dodd Interview (Part II) on Rashmie Jaaju's "Mommy Labs" blog
photo by Sandra Dodd
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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.)
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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