Healthier and happier

Not only are our food choices healthier but since I have stopped controlling sleep and chores and T.V. watching and video games our family is healthier and happier. It didn't happen overnight but it's been like this long enough that I can't imagine our lives any other way.

—Gail H.
years ago

That's the end of something longer, at
SandraDodd.com/eating/sweets
"True Tales of Kids Turning Down Sweets"
image by Jen Keefe

Happier and wiser

If you start looking at choices instead of "have to's" you will be happier IMMEDIATELY. And wiser.

SandraDodd.com/haveto
photo by Roya Dedeaux

Don't finish the bad things.

Please don't buy into the "you have to finish what you start" stuff.

If you started screaming or spanking, would you press yourself to finish just because you had started, or wouldn't you pride yourself on your ability to stop and change course as SOON as you saw it wasn't good?

If someone starts a course of poison, it's better to throw the remaining pills in the trash than to finish it all just because you started.

SandraDodd.com/finishwhatyoustart
photo by Holly Dodd
in Albuquerque

No Bad Days—and fewer bad moments

I had only been online a couple of years when someone on AOL wrote one of the best things ever, and it changed my life the moment I read it. She said she didn't think of a day as "bad," as she didn't want to condemn or write off a whole day. She said she would just think "I had a bad moment."



SandraDodd.com/badmoment
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Less nutty now

Deb Lewis, writing in 2006, referring to 1999
(first posted here in 2011, and more true in 2022)


Spending time with Dylan made it hard for people to make an argument that he was missing something by not going to school. He was bright and articulate and lively. "But when he gets older," they started saying, "he'll need to go to school for the important subjects."

About this time some homeschooling kids were winning spelling bees and geography bees. Some public school kids were shooting up their classrooms. Suddenly, keeping a kid out of school didn't seem as nutty as it had a few years before.

—Deb Lewis

SandraDodd.com/deblewis/years
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Rainbow connections

If you can't connect ponies, rainbows, unicorns, Kermit, joy and immersion, read at the link below. But I suppose you could, with a little thought, connect all those things one way or another.

SandraDodd.com/mlp
photo by Amber Ivey
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Dreams

Peaceful sleep and sweet dreams can come from gentle parenting.

SandraDodd.com/peace
photo by Holly Dodd, of Albuquerque, from a high point in a neighboring town