photo by Olga Degtyareva, while visiting Stone Town
Sunday, January 23, 2022
Natural residents of Earth
photo by Olga Degtyareva, while visiting Stone Town
Saturday, January 22, 2022
Step thoughtfully
People can ruin their lives with unschooling if they don't know where they're going. If they just intend to make a bunch of wild decisions and mill around, it won't work. Their kids will end up needing to go back to school, and being clueless kids in school. So it's almost that big a project. You will have to take hundreds of thousands of steps. And so it's better to take a step thoughtfully, knowing what direction you're going, than to thunder around yelling, "I'm an unschooler! I'm an unschooler!" and not get anywhere.
So I think they need to understand the direction they're going, and why. And they can get there a lot faster and a lot more whole, and with a lot more peace and understanding, if they will Read a little, try a little, wait a while and watch.
I was speaking, not writing. You can listen (at 15:15), or read the transcript.
photo by Sandra Dodd, in Golden, New Mexico, March 2020
(the last time I left town)
Friday, January 21, 2022
Soft, peaceful, relaxed mom
"I'd just like to share that I have also relaxed my militant attitude..."I'm glad to hear that you are relaxing! I bet if your daughter could choose between a Militant Mom and a Soft, Peaceful, Relaxed Mom she would prefer the latter over the former. 🙂
photo by Rippy Dusseldorp
Thursday, January 20, 2022
The best friend you can be
Instead of "You're the parent, not their friend," substitute, "Be the very very best friend to them you can possibly be."
—Pam Sorooshian
photo by Sandra Dodd
Wednesday, January 19, 2022
Lively ideas; living language
Without becoming too critical or cynical, maybe consider, with your children sometimes, changes in knowledge (the platypus, Mars, Pluto, leeches, volcanic activity and virgin sacrifice compared to global warming's medicine men; anything smaller than an atom?), or geography ("Four Corners" has been in the wrong place all these years; the U.S.S.R. is still on maps in some public places) or spellings ("plough" or "plow"? wooly or woolly?).
Play lightly with these ideas. There's no advantage to getting huffy or angry about it. Just see it as the reality it is. People learn. People change their minds. Knowledge grows. Evidence is reclassified. Language is alive. People who are alive are changing and learning. You can resist that or you can ride it with gusto.
photo by Sarah S.
Tuesday, January 18, 2022
Moments to years
"As we get older and our kids grow up, we eventually come to realize that all the big things in our lives are really the direct result of how we've handled all the little things."
June 4, 2007
Always Learning
photo by Jihong Tang
Monday, January 17, 2022
Eye contact and communication
Non-verbal communication doesn't get enough credit. I used to be one of the people who thought babies couldn't communicate, or that pets couldn't, until I got older, had a baby, and started paying better attention to different ways to communicate.
Perhaps these animals wanted food, or were curious about visitors. Sometimes my cat wants food, or to be scratched or picked up, or put down, or let in, or let out.
Sometimes a child doesn't know what she wants, but she feels uncomfortable. If she looks at you, see if you can tell without asking what it is she might be thinking. I have tried things like offering food or water, singing, getting up and watering plants, or picking up toys, to see if she wants to help (or watch, in the case of pre-mobile children).
Too often, I talked. I began to see that my questions or verbal guesses weren't always the best responses.
photo by Ester Siroky