A message to your grandchildren

Your children are developing a holographic internal image of you, complete with voice and emotion. The things you do and say are being recorded for posterity; make them sweet and good. What you choose to say and do now will affect what your children say to their children, and what your great grandchildren will hear after you're long gone.

Live like you're their last hope.

SandraDodd.com/phrases
photo by Julie D

Learning and fun

The separation of learning and fun is the only thing that keeps learning from BEING fun.

SandraDodd.com/random
photo by Kathryn Dubay

Unschooling breathes life into learning

"Unschooling is not an easy educational and lifestyle choice. It takes energy and dedication to do it well. But it is absolutely a viable alternative to the conventional system—even more so with each passing year. It focuses on each person as an individual and breathes life into the concept of lifelong learning. It also calls for developing strong relationships with your children—relationships that will last far beyond their compulsory schooling years. It's life."

—Pam Laricchia

http://sandradodd.com/hsc/interviews/paml
photo by Holly Dodd

For now

I learned early on to say, "This is what we're doing for now," or "It's working now. If it stops working, we'll do something else."

Unschooling and Yoga Philosophy – An Interview with Sandra Dodd
in that podcast, at 9:36 on the counter
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Growing slowly, incrementally

Schuyler Waynforth wrote:

The other day Linnaea commented that she thought she and Simon would have struggled at school. I replied that I thought everyone struggled a bit with school, but they would have figured out their way in time. What I didn't say was how I don't know if I would have grown into the parent I am today, the generous and joyful parent that I am, if I hadn't chosen unschooling. I think it is possible to be a generous and joyful parent with schooled children, but it is harder to rebuild yourself in the ways that I feel I have done, slowly, incrementally, with unschooling.

—Schuyler Waynforth
in a passing discussion

SandraDodd.com/schuylerwaynforth
photo by Sandra Dodd
of old stairs in France,
on a day I was with Schuyler
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Light and happy

One of my intentions from way back, before unschooling came around in our lives, was to keep the tone of the house light and happy.


The quote was from a chat, but this is a good match: SandraDodd.com/happy
photo by Sandra Dodd of a place in Leiden, in The Netherlands
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The Past, the Future and Now

If you're living in the past, that's a problem for now.

If you're living in the future too much—
       in the future that you're imagining,
       in the future that you're predicting,
       in the future that you would like to imagine you can control,
       in the future that you'd like to imagine you can even imagine,
              that's a problem.

So it's good to aim for living in the moment in a while way—your whole self, not separated from your past or your future, but also not really over-focussed on it.

If you bank on the future, literally, that's a good idea. Savings is a good idea. I'm not saying not to have life insurance or things like that—that's great. But banking on it figuratively can be a big problem.

SandraDodd.com/listen/london2011 (at 10:15 in the sound file)
photo by Sandra Dodd of layers of ice that formed in buckets of colleced rainwater in which hulls of bird seed had fallen, pulled out of the buckets, for fun