Playing, hanging out, listening

Schuyler Waynforth wrote:

You start by learning about your children. You start by playing with them. By hanging out and listening to them. By starting with them. The more you know about them, the more you know about what interests them, the more you see them and hang out with them, the easier it will be for you to find things that interest them. Don't start by looking at the wider world and trying to force it upon your children. Start with them.

—Schuyler Waynforth

SandraDodd.com/howto
photo by Cátia Maciel
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Partners, not adversaries

If you can start dismantling all the adversarial parts of your relationships, there won't be things to complain about. Neither you nor your children will be complaining.

SandraDodd.com/battle
photo by Nina Haley

Learning and experiencing

Parents can't guarantee safety and health for their children. And unschooling is about learning and about experiencing the world, not about living to be 100 instead of 95.

SandraDodd.com/fears
photo by Nicole Kenyon

Attractions and fears

[Warnings can become attractions.]

It seems what will cause a kid to watch a show he doesn't want to watch is parental disapproval. If he's been told it's too scary, too adult, or forbidden, his natural curiosity might cause him to want to learn WHY. My kids, with the freedom to turn things on or off, turned LOTS of things off, or colored or did Lego or played with dolls or action figures during "the boring parts" (often happening to be the adult parts—what did they care?) and only looked back up when happy music or light or dogs or kids got their attention again.

SandraDodd.com/t/whatif
photo by Alex Polikowsky

Health and happiness

"Happiness is good for health! If something that makes a kid happy is deemed unhealthy by a parent, it will create stress and division. That kind of stress is NOT healthy. That kind of division works against the kind of relationship between parent and child that makes unschooling awesome!"

—Jenny Cyphers

SandraDodd.com/eating/peace
photo by Sylvia Woodman
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Sleeping in shifts

From a page with notes, links and thoughts about the history of human sleep and what might be natural, Sandra's words:

I like the sentinal theory. I’ve often thought that teenagers’ propensity to stay up late might have been very useful in “the old days” (caves, camps or castles) because they could keep watch while they talked to each other. And their sleeping in the daytime while others are awake is seen as sloth in modern days by too many people, but I think as long as they get sleep, it shouldn’t matter so much what time it is.

What about sleep? sleep in history and culture
SandraDodd.com/sleep/outside
photo by Sandra Dodd (and it's a link)

An abundance of comfortable choices

Sandra Dodd, writing with newly-adult kids, two of whom were still at home:

I didn't expect so much contentment. And my kids are not staying home because they have to. And they're not going to school or working because they have to. We're all reaping what we sowed, without knowing it would turn into such an abundance of comfortable choices.

SandraDodd.com/privilege
photo by Sandra Dodd