Same sun

The sun I see today will be the same sun you all see. In Maharashtra, in East Sussex, in New Mexico, the horizon is different but the sun is the same.


Children learn by playing, asking questions, trying things, watching and thinking. The house, objects and the other people are different, but unschooling works the same way.

SandraDodd.com/substance
photo by Pushpa Ramachandran

The way to be

The way to be an unschooler is to change the way you see and think, so that you can change the way you act and react.

problems with unschooling lists
auto-generated word cloud with words from some posts here

Building the foundation

Caren Knox wrote:

In addition to this time being short, and precious, you are building the foundation of natural learning in your home. Learning flows when needs are met, connections are strong, and kids can absolutely trust their parents, and know their parents are there for them. Some of the core values of natural learning are trust, support, joy, and freedom. You are putting up scaffolding for years and years of learning by the choices you make now.

—Caren Knox

"Are we stuck?"
photo by Gail Higgins

Pressure-proof

Give your kids so much love and self-confidence that peer pressure will mean nothing to them. They will be pressure-proof.

Detox
photo by Holly Blossom

Intense learning

I was just telling a young (22) friend the other day that my kids were always the most exhausted not after a day of physical activity, but after a day of intense learning. If they saw things they had never seen, got to do something they’d never done, met new people and played and talked, they slept like rocks. But those days might not have looked like something to write a transcript about.

Sometimes the most intense learning of all looks like play. And that is central to what makes unschooling work.



Chat with Sandra Dodd on Mommy Chats, 4/25/07
photo by Kinsey Norris

Learning and peace

Peace and calm help learning. Stress and pressure never help learning. If you set your priority on learning and peace, it makes other questions easier.

Peace and calm
photo by Sandra Dodd

Information to consider

I don't care if people disagree with me. I wouldn't want anyone to agree with me blindly, nor disagree blindly.

Nothing personal to me—I just want to present information for people to consider.


That was written in the mid 1990s, in an online workshop
about detoxing oneself from schoolishness.
It is preserved here: SandraDodd.com/detox
photo by Sandra Dodd
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