Responsibility

Mainstream advice often reminds moms not to worry, that kids will be just fine. Kids are resilient. Kids won't remember.

For purposes of helping people see how unschooling can work, advice that seems (though perhaps it wasn't intended) to say that moms shouldn't worry or feel responsible seems headed the wrong direction.

SandraDodd.com/responsibility
photo by Roya Dedeaux

Unscheduled togetherness

Sabine Mellinger wrote:

This is my 15 year old son with his dog.

I was looking at this picture and thinking about how one of the most beautiful parts (and unexpected effects) of unschooling is the time it allows to live life. You can’t schedule moments like these. This is true for questions asked, discussions had, problems solved together, laughing together and being sad together. Life happens and to be able to enjoy it in the moment is magical.

—Sabine Mellinger

SandraDodd.com/moments
photo by Sabine Mellinger

Gratitude and abundance

If unschooling parents can move away from hatred and fear, and toward gratitude and abundance, their children's lives are profoundly better. (And the parents' lives are, too.)

SandraDodd.com/negativity
photo by Colleen Paeff

The value of input

When someone wrote, "We don't value TV, we live our values by not having one," I responded:

I value input, information and learning. I've seen immeasurable learning in my kids and others from things they have seen in movies, on TV, in online videos, heard on the radio, read in magazines, picked up in conversations with others, heard in public presentations or from tour guides or from books. To eliminate some part of that input out of fear would have made my children's world smaller.

SandraDodd.com/connections/
photo by Karen James

Positive and beautiful

Alex Polikowsky wrote:

Fear of electromagnetic waves? What if I tell you they are everywhere and that even earth has it?? (hey I am a huge Aurora Borealis aficionado!!)

Living with all this fear is not fun and it is anxiety inducing. Anxiety is a terrible state for you or your child to live in. Learning thrives when there is peace and safety.

Feeling unsafe because your library has wifi and making life about the dangers around is a soul sucking way to live for your children and for yourself.

Surround yourself with all that is positive and beautiful including amazing wifi!

—Alex Polikowsky

SandraDodd.com/radiation
photo by my neighbor, Linda G., visiting Iceland

Thinking more clearly

This picks up in the midst of something, but endure the first two sentences and it will make sense.

'How do "we"' is a problem. The person is asking (I think) whether WE will support HER limiting her child. Each of us acts after consideration of what we know and believe, what our priorities are, what other factors (partners, grandparents, home-owner/landlord, religion, local laws)... But I acted with and toward my children as a partner in the way, in each moment, that seemed sensible and helpful to me, as much as was in my power in that moment. If I didn't do great, I would plan to do better in future moments. If I was happy with my actions, I'd try to remember what I was thinking so I could do that again in the future. But there wasn't a "we" except me and the child I was dealing with.

SandraDodd.com/radiation
photo by Colleen Prieto

Seeing unschooling more clearly

An interviewer asked

"What are the essential components for unschooling to flourish?"

I responded:

Perhaps it’s more process than component. Parents must deschool themselves. Gradually, but not TOO gradually, they should examine the schoolish ideas and assumptions that come up in them, and see if they can lay them out to dry. They can file them away as school memories, and as outdated assumptions, or as tools that could hamper unschooling’s success.

Even if parents were to create the richest physical environment and a schedule for their kids that involved being home plenty, and going out into the interesting world often, if the parents are looking at the children through school-colored glasses, it will not become unschooling.

Interview by Luna Maj Vestergaard, in early 2023
photo by Linda Wyatt