A better emotional neighborhood

Good people make better parents. Better parents make better unschoolers. If some of your transitional energy is spent being a better person, your child's working model of the universe, which only he or she can build, will have a better foundation. It will be built in a better neighborhood, with cleaner air and purer water.

SandraDodd.com/issues
photo by Sandra Dodd

As good as a nap

An attitude of abundance and gratitude can be as good as a nap. Abundance Gratitude Change

photo by Sandra Dodd

One week of learning

One more week, and then stop. Learn Nothing Day is coming, July 24.

If you're new to unschooling, you might think this is easy. But if your life has progressed to the point that learning is woven into all your activities and you've learned to see it, this will take some planning and some effort.


School kids get half the year off, if you add up all the weekends and holidays. Before someone accuses unschoolers of not learning, they might want to know we have ONE day off, and here it comes. Good luck.

Learn Nothing Day, the blog
art by Holly Dodd and Sandra Dodd—it's a link
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Pretty cool.

Kids really can (and do!!) learn *so* much in the absence of school and teachers. They learn so very well when they are allowed the time to explore and examine, question and Google, ponder and wonder—and they learn even better when they have the support of parents and other such people as they go after and capture the skills and knowledge that they desire. Pretty cool.

—Colleen Prieto

SandraDodd.com/knowledge
photo by Sandra Dodd

La la la la, I'm not listening

Speaking or writing without thinking is a little like driving a car with a blindfold. Others get hurt, we get hurt, the car gets wrecked.

Speaking or writing without thinking is like operating a relationship with a blindfold, with ear plugs, going "LA LA LA LA, I DON'T HAVE TO LISTEN TO MYSELF!!" all the whole time.

How can one see her own child directly without hushing, pulling out the earplugs, and looking at him?

SandraDodd.com/ifilet
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Straight, meandering, twisting

Pam Sorooshian wrote:

Instead of thinking there are real interests versus momentary ones (as if those momentary ones are not also real or true), our time and energy are better spent encouraging and supporting the interests that our kids actually do have.

Picture a large piece of paper with circles of all sizes drawn all over it. Each circle represents an interest. A kid moves from circle to circle—they are like stepping stones. The child creates his or her own path by moving from one stepping stone to another. Some are part of a path that goes straight to some ultimate goal or achievement, others are part of paths that meander and let the person have a variety of experiences. Some are part of paths that twist and turn. Sometimes the kid sits on one of them for a really long time. Sometimes the path leads away from the current interest to something seemingly unrelated. And so on.

Looking back, we can often see the path pretty clearly. But we can't look ahead and know what the path is going to be.

—Pam Sorooshian

SandraDodd.com/flitting
photo by Chrissy Florence
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Lots of jobs you forgot about

"I was a picture framer for ten years before we moved to the US. I loved that job. I got to frame so many objects, including a snowboard, a wedding dress and a gun from the US civil war—first time I had ever held any of those items in my hands. I got to handle and look up close on many wonderful works of art, and hear so many stories about why different things were meaningful to different people. Children's art was some of my favourite to frame." —Karen James

This is just one of LOTS of stories on a page with a list of a couple of hundred jobs people can ease into by volunteering or on-the-job learning or by becoming certified while doing related work. Reading there will give you other ideas, and stories to tell, and friends to remember.

SandraDodd.com/jobs
foot-pedal self-portrait of Sandra and a quilt made by Lori Odhner,
and it's a link