Actual paths, and other choices

I love the potential in this photo. There is too much to explore, but the options are up, down, through, around. It reminds me that we live in the moment that connects the past and the future.

The world is too big for anyone to see everything. History will never all be discovered or known. The best we can do for ourselves and our children is to view their surroundings with wonder and curiosity. We can help them experience small things and large, old things and new.

SandraDodd.com/decisions
photo by Sukayna
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Learning, not being taught

Weeding out terminology we would prefer not to mean improves thinking.
. . . .
Every time someone says "taught" or "teach" they can slip back into the whole school thing and be seeing the world through school-colored glasses. If they do what it takes, mentally and emotionally, to recast their reports and then their thoughts in terms of who *learned* something, then they can start to see the world in terms of learning.


The last holdout for some people is "he taught himself..." but maybe that should be the FIRST to go. Teaching comes from someone WITH skills or knowledge passing them on to those without them. If I taught myself to play guitar, I would have had to have known how first.
. . . .

I learned from everything around me, from trial and error, from watching others and asking questions.

The information was being sucked in by me, not pushed in by me or anyone else. I didn't PUT the information inside me, I drew it in.

SandraDodd.com/control
photo by Sandra Dodd, of bricks with Florida on the other side
Learning not to teach

Where learning abounds

Unschooling should be rich, flowing and mindful living where learning abounds. Too many people see "living" as nothing more than the absence of death. Let's encourage sparkly, bubbly, warm and effusive lives.

SandraDodd.com/sparkly
photo by Elise Lauterbach
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The weather of the soul

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
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Seeing, thinking, asking

In a discussion in which a very religious mom wrote that she would someday help her daughter navigate her beliefs, I responded:

What she believes won't be something that needs to be navigated. It will evolve as people answer her questions, and she sees and thinks and asks more questions.

SandraDodd.com/religion
photo by Ester Siroky
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Effects and perspective

Here are some thoughts on effects and perspective.

The sun shines on, and in some ways, through me. I have a shadow. There are rays I can't perceive. I can produce some Vitamin D, with a bit of sunlight. I don't need to know anything, or think about it, for the sun to do what the sun does.

I can have an effect on other people. Some are aware and thinking about it, taking in ideas or words or emotions.

I'm easier to avoid than the sun is, for most people, except for my children. Your children are in your sphere, in your world, a part of your life.

What you do shines on, and sometimes through, your children. You affect them, and others can see the effect.

SandraDodd.com/nature
photos by Sandra Dodd
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Peace and joy and love

Children need peace and joy and love. If the parents are going to be their sole providers in this home environment of learning, they need all the peace and love they would need from their parents and they need all the peace and love they were going to get from their teachers.

When a family is very negative, with a very cynical parent, they’re sacrificing the chance that maybe the teacher would have been happier than they are. So they need to be twice as peace-and-love as they might have been if they weren’t unschooling.

Changes in Parents
photo by Pushpa Ramachandran
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