When choices come easily

The idea of "self discipline" isn't as helpful to understanding unschooling as the idea of making mindful choices is. It's similar to the difference between teaching and learning.

SandraDodd.com/teaching/

SandraDodd.com/control

If you think of controlling yourself, and of your children controlling themselves, it's still about control. If people live by principles their choices come easily.

SandraDodd.com/self-regulation
photo by Roya Dedeaux

The atmosphere of the house

by Joyce Fetteroll, from something longer on her site:

Our job is to create an atmosphere so they can feel good about helping, or an atmosphere that doesn't crush that feeling ... so that "work" feels good.

Someone was asked how they got their child to like broccoli. She answered, "I didn't do anything to make her dislike broccoli." That goes for everything. :-) Broccoli, writing, household tasks, astronomy, reading and so on. Don't do anything to make them dislike helping you.

—Joyce Fetteroll

Will they ever voluntarily help out?
photo by Renee Cabatic

Look at your child

Look at your child, more than at the game.

People go to therapy not about a video game, but the relationship between them and their parents.

—Sandra Dodd
at 1:37:10 in the July 20 "Self Directed" podcast:
(click here; option of podcast or video)

About Videogames—SERIOUSLY
photo by Karen James

A whole, happy human

Health is much more than input/output. You cannot, by a dietary chart, create a whole, happy human. It is possible, by dietary restrictions and by shame to take a potentially healthy person and make them sad and avoidant of those foods and the people who were providing them.

from a discussion on limiting food
photo by Sarah S.

Acts of caring

Pam Sorooshian wrote:

There are times in life that you won't feel like you can take care of others around you as well as you'd like. You need nurturing yourself and other people's neediness starts to be draining on you.

I've felt that, too.

But I've also found that if I focus more on "seeing" my kids with loving-eyes focus, consciously choose to pay attention to what I love about them, then I actually begin to feel more nourished and strengthened by them, and by the very acts of caring for them.

—Pam Sorooshian
(original)

Beauty
photo by Rippy Dusseldorp

Learn-Nothing-Day Eve

Learn what you need to learn before midnight. Have a great holiday and vacation! Hope it's smooth and peaceful, relaxing and restorative.

New Logo Credits (2020, new)
image created of photos by thirteen people, all credited at the link above.

Social obligations

Probably in every culture there are ceremonial and social meals. There are times when eating food with other people creates or strengthens bonds, or when sharing bread or a drink has spiritual significance. One taste of a wedding cake is better than turning down wedding cake altogether, because it's the ceremonial blessing of a marriage. If people are toasting with alcohol and you don't or can't drink alcohol (ever, or at that time), at least join the toast with water. To refrain from joining a toast is worse than an insult; it's like a public curse. One who pointedly fails to toast is standing up against the crowd and saying "I hope your project fails horribly" (or whatever it might be). So let your children know those things.

In the absence of a social obligation to eat at least a token amount, let your children choose not to eat if they don't want to. If the purpose of food is the sustenance of the body and the mind, then let that principle override schedules and expectations and traditions, most of the time. Your children will be more willing to eat to be polite if you only press it on rare occasions.


From "Social Obligations and Oddities," page 168 (or 190)
of The Big Book of Unschooling
which recommends SandraDodd.com/eating/humor
photo by Cátia Maciel