A better friend

"One of my epiphanies as a parent actually came when I realized I was not being as good a friend to my own kids as I was to my adult friends. Changing that made a world of difference."

—Lyla Wolfenstein

SandraDodd.com/quotes
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Things and places

I like museums, but if you can see the whole world as a museum, your life will light up!

If you can see art in normal, functional things, your life will lighten up!


SandraDodd.com/mystery
photo by Sandra Dodd, of a dam and some tumbleweeds
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Incidentally...

"Learning is often incidental. This means that we learn while engaged in activities that we enjoy for their own sakes and the learning happens as a sort of 'side benefit'." —Pam Sorooshian

Principles of Unschooling
photo by Chrissy Florence

Much better!

There are no "violent video games." Kids are sitting on a couch in their parents' home pushing buttons on a remote control. That's not hurting them or anyone else. (Or young adults are home sitting and pushing buttons, instead of being out drinking or vandalizing something.)

In every single case of real-life violence anyone can think of, wouldn't it have been better if the perpetrator had been home on the couch than out causing trouble? 🙂

SandraDodd.com/violence
photo by Sandra Dodd

Gradual and constant improvement

Those who really want to unschool well should probably read something every day or three, from my site, or Joyce's or somewhere. Waiting until there's a problem and asking a narrow question will not be as good as gradually and constantly improving one's understanding to the point that there aren't many problems.

SandraDodd.com/search
(Those who read here every day might be okay,
but you might want to follow the link, too.)
photo by Megan Valnes

Social interactions

If you turn 180 degrees away from the myth and fantasy of how many friends kids have at school, and look at the real world in which you plan to live, things will look different.

Find people to visit, find places to go where other people will be. Begin to see people as people, rather than as pre-schoolers or school-age, or second grade. Just practicing that will take you MUCH nearer to peace about interactions with other people.


SandraDodd.com/socialization
photo by Janine

Quiet courage

Deb Lewis wrote:

There was a study...that found babies could quickly learn the names of objects they found interesting but not of objects that didn’t interest them. And if they heard only the name of a boring object but could see an interesting object, they attached the name to the interesting thing.

Unschoolers have been thinking about the importance of interest to learning for years.

—Deb Lewis

from "Becoming Courageous", by Deb Lewis
photo by Abby Davis
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