Mysterious everything

If you don't know what something is, another person probably does know.

If your child knows something you don't know, be glad of that! When you know something your child doesn't know, it might not be something he wants or needs to know. Calmly accept the mysteries of life.

SandraDodd.com/focus
photo by Sandra Dodd

Comforted and loved

Too many parents talk and talk to their kids, and ask them how they feel and ask them what they need. Learn to guess. Learn to provide in advance. Food is good to practice with. Soft, clean cleared-off beds are good to practice with. Clearing off space for video gaming is nice. Soon you start to think about heat, softness, clean clothes, toothpaste before it runs out, favorite foods when you shop. And then people feel heard and comforted and entertained and loved.

SandraDodd.com/quiet
photo by Holly Dodd

Bigger, better life

We make choices ALL the time. Learning to make better ones in small little ways, immediate ways, makes life bigger and better. Choosing to be gentle with a child, and patient with ourselves, and generous in ways we think might not even show makes our children more gentle, patient and generous.

SandraDodd.com/parentingpeacefully
Chrissy Florence

Bright clouds

Mix it up, with words and ideas. Be happily surprised.



SandraDodd.com/surprise/
photo by Robert Gottlieb

Reading and watermelons

When learning to read happens naturally, it doesn't look like school's reading lessons. It doesn't take years. It might take only days, but the tricky part is when those days will come. If you plant watermelons, picking at the leaves and threatening the vine will not get you a watermelon before one was going to naturally grow and mature. It's the same with children.

The quote is from page 86 (page 95, in 2019 edition)
of The Big Book of Unschooling
photo by Amber Stippy

Zippy and otherwise

Sometimes I get still. That's good, because sometimes I don't, and can't. If I were that zippy all the time, my body, mind and soul would probably wear out. . . . .

When I was younger and I would change, I thought something was wrong with me. I was under the mistaken impression that personality and mood should be constants. Life is better when I think of those fluctuations as tides, or as the weather of the soul.

"Cocooning and other stillness" (a blogpost from early December 2012)
photo by Sandra Dodd

Be more

I closed a talk recently with this:

Be brave, be calm, be happy.

Be braver, be calmer, be happier.

The first line was written on my paper. The second one, I added just then.

SandraDodd.com/being
photo by Sandra Dodd