Empower and enliven!

Anything you feel you "have to" do is entrapping and stiffling.

Something you *choose* to do can be empowering and enlivening.

SandraDodd.com/haveto
photo by Marty Dodd
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Peace rules

So what's the "rule" about peace?
There's not a rule about peace.

If you want to live peacefully, make the more peaceful choice.

SandraDodd.com/peace/noisy
photo by Marty Dodd, of found art—a peace symbol made of rocks on dry, cracked desert sand

Unschooling is...

Unschooling is creating and maintaining an atmosphere in which natural learning can flourish.

SandraDodd.com/definitions
photo by Sarah Dickinson
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Any and all

Unschooling allows free use of any and all bits of information, not just school's small set. A grid based first on cartoon characters or the history of ice skating can be expanded just as well as one built on a second-grade version of the discovery of North America and the made-up characters in some beginning-reader series. If the goal is to know everything, and if each person's internal "universe" is unique, then the order in which the information is acquired isn't as important as the ease and joy with which it is absorbed.

SandraDodd.com/checklists
photo by Robbie Prieto
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Reading and writing and monsters

Deb Lewis wrote:

He learned to read in part from watching Godzilla movies. Many of them were subtitled. I watched with him at first and read the subtitles to him but somewhere along the way he stopped needing me. . . . .

He was inspired to write partly because he wanted to rewrite bad screenplays. He rewrote the screenplays of several bad horror films when he was younger…

—Deb Lewis, at
Snobbishness vs. Godzilla

SandraDodd.com/t/godzilla
photo by Karen James
(I didn't have a photo of Godzilla,
but this is in Japan and looks spooky
Scooby-Doo style.)
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Looking forward to thinking back

Pam Sorooshian wrote:

There is no substitute for being authentically "there" for them—for genuinely trying to help them resolve problems. For putting your relationship with them at the forefront of every interaction, whether it is playing together or working together.

None of us are perfect—we'll all have some regrets. But with my kids 19, 16, and 13, I can now say that I will never say anything like, "I wish I'd let them fight it out more," or "I wish I'd punished them more," or "I wish I'd yelled at them more." I will only ever say that I wish I'd been more patient, more attentive, more calm and accepting of the normal stresses of having young children.

One interaction at a time. Just make the next interaction a relationship-building one. Don't worry about the one AFTER that, until IT becomes "the next one."

—Pam Sorooshian

SandraDodd.com/peace/becoming
photo by Sandra Dodd, of a 17th century dog

Your Own Certain Knowledge

Vague interest can turn to trust in others' accounts of learning and of parenting successes. Trust in those stories can give us courage to experiment, and from that we can discover our own proofs and truths to share with newer unschoolers, who might find courage from that to try these things themselves. Faith in others can only take us a little way, though, and then our own children's learning will carry us onward.


Some ideas become theories. A few theories might turn to convictions. Some early thoughts will be abandoned; others will gain substance. After much thought and use, what is left will be what you believe because you have lived it.

SandraDodd.com/knowledge
photo by Leon McNeill