Positively trustworthy

Unless their joy and curiosity are snuffed out, your children will have interests and, if you're lucky, obsessions and hobbies. How negative do you want to be about those? Try to decide in advance so you're being mindful and aware when they show you their painted rocks or their plastic soldiers or their hip-hop video collection.
They will trust you as long and as far as you are trustworthy.

SandraDodd.com/focus
photo by Eva Witsel
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Generous and kind

You don't need to control yourself to keep yourself from being controlling. Make generous, kind choices, over and over, as often as you can.

SandraDodd.com/battle/
photo by Hannah North

Stance and viewpoint

If there is a method to unschooling it's certainly not a simple one. It involves changing one's stance and viewpoint on just about everything concerning children and learning. That's not "a method." That's a life change.

SandraDodd.com/unschool/definition
photo of "the rock house" (small, at 10 o'clock), from Sandia Tram,
by Sandra Dodd

That voice

"Be their support system. I want so much for my kids to grow up and hear that mommy voice in their head saying positive supportive things, not tearing them down, but encouraging them—and especially not a voice to be resisted." —Pam Sorooshian

SandraDodd.com/choice
photo by Sandra Dodd

Ease up, to help

Try to ease guilt and expectation and pressure. Those don't help the family unit.

SandraDodd.com/eating/dinner
photo by Hannah North

Lovely things

Ren Allen wrote:

Plato said: "The most effective kind of education is that a child should play amongst lovely things."

While I agree wholeheartedly, I think he should have said "The most effective kind of education is that PEOPLE should play amongst lovely things." Learning is for always. Playing amongst lovely things has the power to heal lives, heal families and liberate people. That's really what unschooling is in a nutshell—playing with lovely things, ideas, people and places. We say "living is learning" but "playing is learning" too.

—Ren Allen

SandraDodd.com/rentalk


photo by Janine

When children choose foods

A mom named Evie wrote:

"Everything I've read about has really happened. The first couple of days, my youngest ate nothing but Twinkies and Spider-Man snacks. Then, amazingly enough, he got up the next morning and asked me for grapes for breakfast. You could have knocked me over with a feather! It truly didn't seem possible until I experienced it for myself."

—Evie

How does it balance out?
photo by Julie van der Wekken