Choices add up

Small moments of peace and calm can add up to contentment. Gratitude and acceptance contribute to satisfaction. Having a warm home isn't an absolute, and it's not magic. It's the accumulation of positive choices that create a nest for humans (and their significant animal others).

SandraDodd.com/nest
photo by Roya Dedeaux

Peace and confidence

"If you answer every question with honesty you never have to be nervous about the next question because you already know the answer. Take the chance of being uncomfortable for those few minutes of honesty. It's worth the discomfort for the peace and confidence and integrity it will build in you."

—Deb Lewis

SandraDodd.com/integrity
photo by Belinda Dutch

Calmly confident

Stay at the playground. Play with sand and water. Find seeds. Sit in the shade, and in the sun. Set ice in the shade and in the sun. Write with ice on a sunny sidewalk. If there's a brass plaque at the park you can set a piece of ice on it when it's hot and get the letters in reverse, melted into the ice. Don't talk about WHY those things happen unless the kids ask. Just let it happen. They'll figure it out.

Once they get the hang of figuring those things out, they'll be able to figure out harder things. If they practice on cheap and easy stuff (ice is great—in the bathtub for floaty-toys, crushed ice for snacks...), they'll be calmly confident about figuring out increasingly harder things.

SandraDodd.com/substance
photo by Nina Haley

Richly and joyfully

Unschoolers don't "just live." They live large. They live expansively, and richly and joyfully. Those are the things that make it work.

SandraDodd.com/quotes
photo by Rippy Dusseldorp

Don't let this happen to you

When The Lego Movie was new, I was watching Australian TV in some public place and I wrote:

A movie reviewer on the Australia Broadcasting Company, giving a just so-so review of The Lego Movie, explained herself to the other reviewer by saying "My inner child was buried long ago."

Don't reject the playful, hopeful parts of you thinking that it's the mature thing to do. A person can't be whole if part of her was buried long ago.

SandraDodd.com/wonder can expand on that
(but here's the original, on my facebook page)
photo by Gail Higgins

Experiencing progress

In a longer description of her family's change from organized homeschooling to unschooling, a mom named Julie wrote:

I got angry about something and I yelled at one of the kids. I shocked myself!! It sounded so horrible, not to mention unnecessary. And weird. I realized it sounded weird because it isn't something I do very often and although I felt bad for yelling, it felt good to know that it was the first time in a long time.

—Julie

Enjoying My Kids
photo by Gail Higgins

Stepping outside

If you can leave the schoolish building your own mind has built, that has "academics" sorted and stacked against old walls with bad memories, you can see the light of the real world outside.

How Elvis Appears to Unschoolers
photo by Ester Siroky