Peace and excitement

Enjoy quiet moments, but be ready to jump.

Sometimes you're a calm, safe place, and other times you're an action hero, to your kids and maybe to others. Rest when you can, but keep your shoes near.

Unschooling: Getting It
photo by Sandra Kardaras-Flick

Cycles

Yesterday I posted about how I got my kids into grocery stores, from parking lots, safely.

While seeing whether the quote had been used before, I found a similar report, with this comment, from me:

Sometimes I would say "Hold on to something! I'm going to hold on to Marty!" so that it wasn't just a thing 'kids had to do,' but was a safety condition of crowdedness.

Now that I'm older, I still sometimes want to hold on to one of my kids when we're out, but now it's because I'm safer if they help me. Holly has held my hand crossing streets just this year, and she's 21. Marty and Kirby have helped me down stairs and off of steep curbs.

It's not just for children.

I need even more help now, nine years later. Sometimes I help a grandchild or two.
Hold on to something (third comment)
photo by Brie Jontry, 2016, before a Halloween party
She and Holly were irritating maids, and I was a scraggly cat.

Hold on principle

Instead of having a rule that kids had to hold my hand in a parking lot, I would park near a cart and put some kids in right away, or tell them to hold on to the cart (a.k.a. "help me push", so a kid can be between me and the cart). And they didn't have to hold a hand. There weren't enough hands. I'd say "Hold on to something," and it might be my jacket, or the strap of the snugli, or the backpack, or something.

Toddlers
photo by Gail Higgins

Learning feels good.

Learning feels good. It is satisfying and intrinsically rewarding. Irrelevant rewards can have unintended side effects that do not support learning.

Principles of Unschooling, by Pam Sorooshian
photo by Dan Vilter (who originally preserved Pam's writing)

Healing children from the past

"By being kind to them I've healed a lot of hurt from my childhood. I don't know how it works, but it does."

—Betsy S.

the kindness, the respect, the sparkle
photo by Nina Haley

Thoughts about stability

There are some bugs that are born in my yard and might live there their whole lives. Or they might move to the neighbors'. When we buy firewood, we usually import some bark beetles, unintentionally.

The birds we feed in front don't stay all year. Because there are lizards, a roadrunner visits sometimes.

There are worms in the compost bins. Some are descendants of worms I bought, from Florida, by mail, but other bigger ones voluntarily come up from the New-Mexico ground into the compost each summer.

For many years, there were three kids growing up here. Many of their friends visited, and ate, and slept. Now they're all off in other houses.

Is there no stability in the world?

I try to be a stable, solid factor, but I'm changing, too. Keith, that father of my children, that friend of so many years, is still here. I will be kind to him while he is, while I can.

Understanding Unschooling
photo by Sandra Dodd

Shadows and reflections

The effect something has can be fleeting or long lasting. This praying mantis landed on a car so clean, in front of a photographer so quick, that we can see its shadow and its reflection now for years to come. There are the clouds of that moment, also reflected.

I don't like feeling that my actions or reactions could have longlasting effects. It can't be helped, though, so I try to remember to choose where to land and how long to sit there, and to be careful with my words and actions, which might cast shade, and could reflect (well, or badly).

A Better World
photo by Gail Higgins
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Another praying mantis shadow here in 2014