Experiences

For good or ill, your experiences create you, change you, become part of you.

If a child will be molded or affected by his experiences, then unschooling parents need to provide great experiences. NEW experiences Repeat experiences. Surprising experiences. Comforting experiences.

SandraDodd.com/flow
photo by Sandra Dodd

From Faith to Confidence

When people start unschooling, it's often very tentatively. After a while, instead of telling stories of what they've heard other people did, they have stories of what their own kids have done, learned, seen, known.

That's one kind of learning.

Sometimes people start unschooling and they're doing more chattering than looking, and more asserting than questioning (not chattery questioning, but soul questioning). It's not as good a beginning, and at some point they do start really observing their children, and really thinking about the why and what of learning.

SandraDodd.com/nest
photo by Sandra Dodd

Sunrise and family

Those who went to school (and that's over 99% of those reading this) have based half their lives, give or take a decade, on school's rhythm and labels and categorizations. When things like "the school year" are as much a part of a culture as "family" and "sunrise," it's a radical departure to consider that maybe one of those three is unnatural. For many people, it disturbs the fabric of their lives. Some people's life-fabric is already kind of rumply, or they hated school and are glad to consider alternatives, but for those orderly folks who have life all neatly arranged in their heads, who do more accepting than questioning, unschooling is a disturbing thing.

SandraDodd.com/interview
photo by Sandra Dodd

Pure gold

"So I invite you to try a little bitty bit of unschooling: say yes more. Not about everything all the time and not at random—question your "Nos" and "laters", your "have tos" and "shoulds" and rethink some of those. Find more options, more ideas, more ways to say yes. Just that. And life with your children gets sweeter and more peaceful. That's pure gold."

—Meredith Novak

SandraDodd.com/meredithnovak
photo by Julie D
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When you choose...

About how to take advice in unschooling discussions:

We can tell you what will help and what will hurt, but we can't give you any guarantees (except that hurt always hurts).

SandraDodd.com/philosophy
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Choose gratitude

Gratitude is about abundance. Resentment is about paucity. Choose gratitude. It is a choice.


page 185 (or 213) of The Big Book of Unschooling
bread pudding and photo by Sandra Dodd

Clearer and larger

Unschooled children can organize their knowledge in free and better ways. They never need to feel they are through learning, or past the point that they can begin something new. Each thing they discover can be useful eventually.

If we help provide them with ever-changing opportunities to see, hear, smell, taste, feel, move and discuss, what they know will exceed in breadth and depth what any school's curriculum would have covered. It won't be the same set of materials—it will be clearer and larger but different.

SandraDodd.com/seeingit
photo by Julie D
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