How quiet can you be?

Some people are better than others at waiting, quietly, for another to make the next move.

If quiet doesn't come naturally to you, a starting place is to take one slow breath before you respond, or before asking a question that doesn't really need to be asked. From inside you it might seem like a long time, but from the outside it will not. During that breath, consider whether two breaths would help even more.

Practice, quietly
photo by Gail Higgins
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Images

Remember that things seem different different times to different people. My perspective when I'm stressed or sad will be colored by that. Things shift and change.

Live lightly.

Light and Lightness
photo by Belinda Dutch

Natural growth

An apple seed grows an apple tree. No person ever born knows more about how an apple tree should naturally grow than that apple seed, if it's left to grow naturally.

I'm old enough now that I've grown trees from transplanted saplings, and from seeds I planted myself. I cannot predict or control or affect what kind of tree it will become. What I can do is make sure it's watered and protected from damage by animals, foot traffic, and lawn mowers. If it has what it needs, it will grow as it should.

If a child has what she needs, she will grow as she should. I know how to mess a kid up, and have chosen to try not to do those things. I'm trying to let them grow as they should.

SandraDodd.com/musicroom
(Follow-up page for a 2009 conference)
photo by Amber Ivey
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Better right away

The second you have a positive attitude, even fleetingly, your life is better, right then.



Thoughts about doing better
photo by Sandra Dodd
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You don't need to break your bad habits

Leave the old habit to wither. Don't try to break it. Move to making better choices so that what you used to do and used to think will be left in the "choices I don't consider anymore" category.



SandraDodd.com/change
photo by Sandra Dodd

They learned and learned

Caren Knox wrote:

I undertook learning how to be a good unschooling mom, and in that learning, experienced some of the most powerful personal growth and healing I’d ever seen in myself. I learned how to be vulnerable with and genuinely present for my guys.

They learned — and learned and learned, without having to be subject to someone else’s imposed timeline of when to learn what, without being limited to staying in a building 6-7 hours a day, five days a week, without having to pretend to learn something to pass a test, without having their grades determine their path. They freely explored their interests, utilized their own strengths and perspectives, and learned, and, as adults, continue to learn.

—Caren Knox

Original, on facebook
photo by Ester Siroky

Kids are people

Except in the few obvious ways, I don't treat my children in a lesser way than I treat my husband. It has been crucial to our interactions as an unschooling family that the kids were people first, and kids only incidentally and temporarily.

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That was written nearly 20 years ago,when Always Learning was new
Now they're adults, so it was true! They were only temporarily children.
photo by Elise Lauterbach
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