Choice makes a big difference

Plain milk tastes WAY better if it's your choice than it does when it's plain because someone else wouldn't let you put chocolate in it.

How to Raise a Respected Child
Como criar a un niño respetado
art by Laura Mascaró

A good mom

Nothing has ever made me feel better about me
than the feeling that I was being a good mom.



SandraDodd.com/peace/noisy.html
photo by Sandra Dodd

Gradually cooler

My world's pretty cool. It has become gradually cooler since I had kids and have tried to figure out how to make THEIR worlds cooler. Mine got the side benefit of what I learned about how to help keep them happy.



I don't know where I wrote that, but someone saved it.
Have a randomizer: SandraDodd.com/random
photo by Sandra Dodd
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It doesn't hurt to think about it.

In response to questions from critics…

Some things I've said:

"This is working for now. If it stops working, we'll do something else."

"Thanks. I'll think about that." (Or you could say "We thought about that," or "I think about that all the time.")

Mostly people want to know you heard what they said, and that you have thought about what they're suggesting. It doesn't hurt to say that you have, or that you will.

SandraDodd.com/school/say
photo by Julie D
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Helping one another grow

Of her birth family, Rippy wrote:

My family used to regularly travel to India to a Sikh ashram where we were encouraged to examine our thoughts and words. The philosophy there was that helping one another grow into more loving, mindful people is one of the greatest acts of service one can do.

—Rippy Dusseldorp Saran

Kinder and More Compassionate

Don't bother

Pam Sorooshian's description of a talk she plans to give:

Unschoolers don't bother with lesson plans, curriculum, assignments, tests, grades, workbooks, homework, or other academic requirements because we have discovered that children who grow up in a stimulating and enriched environment, surrounded by family and friends who are generally interested and interesting, will learn all kinds of things and repeatedly surprise us with what they know. If children are supported in following their own inclinations, they will build strengths upon strengths and excel in their own ways whether those are academic, artistic, athletic, interpersonal, or whichever direction that particular child develops.

Pam Sorooshian, for the Free to Be unschooling conference
in Phoenix, September 2014.
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Avoid struggles

"Struggling with a disorder" is not as good as living with choices and looking up instead of down. Find ways to relax, rather than to struggle.

Peace for Unschoolers
photo by Sandra Dodd
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