Count to one.

Because a test score is never ignored, tests affect the relationship between parent and child, and many unschoolers want to preserve their child’s journey to adulthood unmeasured, uncompared, and whole.  It might seem crazy from the outside, but the disadvantage of testing is real.

SandraDodd.com/thoughts
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Learn

Learning isn't just for children!



Thinking Sticks
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Happy and humming

The parents don't need to know what the child is learning in order for learning to be happening.

If a child is bored and agitated, she's not learning. If she's happy and smiling and humming and engaged with what she's thinking, seeing, hearing, tasting, touching or smelling, then she's learning.

Sandra Dodd, on the Always Learning discussion September 2012
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Whole people, now

Your children are not works in progress. They are whole people, now and from the day they were born. If you can try to see that, rather than think people are not finished until they're finished, it might help you.

SandraDodd.com/respect
photo by Sandra Dodd, of Adam Daniel picking out a souvenir shirt
at the Rattlesnake Museum in Albuquerque
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Don't live there.

I've been a teacher. From that point of view the world IS most definitely revolving around years and semesters, school districts, standardized test schedules, federal title monies, school bus contracts, cafeteria funding, library cuts, parking-lot pavement... all kinds of stuff that has nothing much to do with kids, their hearts, spirits and ideas. Shuck it away. Don't live there.

SandraDodd.com/interview
photo by Sandra Dodd of a carousel at a carnival in Leiden
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The whole of life itself

The better we handle the trust given us by a child, the better people we are, and the better the child's young life, adulthood and old age will be. We're not just dealing with little children. We're dealing with the whole of life itself, which will outlast us all. We are dealing with joy and with eternity.

The quote is from something I wrote in 2004. There is Music.
SandraDodd.com/christmas04
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Be that kind of person

Be the kind of person you want your child to be.

Nurture your own curiosity and joy.

Find gratitude and abundance.

Explore. Make connections, on your own.

Sandra Dodd, on Unschooling, for the Do Life Right Teleconference 2012
photo by Holly Dodd
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