The family in the world

Unschooling is creating and maintaining an environment in which natural learning can thrive.

The environment isn't just the physical home. It's the relationships within the family, and their exploration of the world outside the home. The emotional environment is crucial.

Sandra Dodd, on Unschooling, at the Do Life Right Teleconference 2012
Their site is gone, but here is a video and transcript of my presentation
photo by Sandra Dodd
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See your child

See all that is good about your child.

SandraDodd.com/respect
Holly Dodd, self portrait in a gas cap
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Deeply loved

The quote is from Schuyler Waynforth. The image is by Holly Dodd.

"Look for ways to connect with them. There are biological ways. Smelling their heads is amazingly connective.

"Sometimes it's hard, just staying still, just watching, just being with babies. But it won't be long..."

—Schuyler Waynforth

SandraDodd.com/bonding
Artist trading card by Holly Dodd, October 2012

Three children

Writing from early 2002,then 2012:

And now I have three children who are 10, 13 and 15. They have never been to school. They have never had a math lesson. But today Holly asked me to help her with 7/18 plus 5/18, for a video game she was playing. Kirby has a job and will do his income taxes soon for the second year. Marty was discussing odds and probability earlier with three other teens and his little sister.

Ten years and some later, Holly's about to turn 21, Kirby has done his taxes for years, and all three have taken math classes as young adults, for fun.

SandraDodd.com/unschoolingworks
photo by Sandra Dodd, of three fleeting flowers
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Skills and talents

Knowing what's good about other people doesn't need to diminish your own self confidence. It will increase it, I think, to realize that you are surrounded by others who have skills and talents you might have need of.

SandraDodd.com/humility
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Economics

Pam Sorooshian wrote:

When you only allow a limited amount of TV, then the marginal utility of a little more tv is high and every other option looks like a poor one, comparatively. Watching more TV becomes the focus of the person's thinking, since the marginal utility is so high. Relax the constraints and, after a period of adjustment and experimentation to determine accurate marginal utilities, the focus on TV will disappear and it will become just another option.

—Pam Sorooshian
from "Economics of Restricting TV Watching of Children"

SandraDodd.com/t/economics
(in French: Limiter le temps passé devant la télé – le point de vue économique )
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Meet in the moment

Here is the deal, about unschooling:

Unschooling works the same way for any child, regardless of his particulars. Each child is met in the moment by a partner interested in making his day safe and interesting and in helping him do things he might like to do. If one wants to spin around for half an hour while another wants to take a radio apart and put it back together, that's not a problem.

from The Big Book of Unschooling, page 70 (or 77), which leads to

Seeing Children Without Labels

photo by Sandra Dodd
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