Responding directly

If we wait to see where a child's gaze falls, and wait a while for a question or comment to form, our observation and readiness to assist if needed, or to converse casually will be better than any pre-scripted lesson could ever be.

It will be personal, and real, and at exactly the right moment.

SandraDodd.com/wonder
photo by Chrissy Florence

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The post was used six years ago, too, but here is a new link to go with it:
SandraDodd.com/conversation

Consider saying 'yes' more

Clare Kirkpatrick, responding to a new unschooling mom in 2015:

Consider saying 'yes' more often. Don't just say 'yes' without thought 'because some unschoolers told you to'. But *consider* saying 'yes' more often—in each instance in which you would normally say 'no', ask yourself 'why not yes?' And really pick apart (in as appropriate a time-frame as possible) why you would say 'no'. Is it because a 'yes' would feel frowned upon by others? Is it because you've always said 'no'? If you find yourself saying 'no' to the same things time and time again, then do a bit more deeper work on that issue. There may be something getting in your way you need to unpick— some cultural conditioning; some unhelpful and possibly untrue ideas about children.

Don't put yourself under loads of pressure with this...just work on questioning your 'nos' and 'yesses' in more detail, more mindfully.

—Clare Kirkpatrick

SandraDodd.com/yes.html
photo of Kirby Athena Dodd with her grandpa, Keith,
Halloween 2020

Nurturing growth

Each tree grows from a single seed, and when a tree is growing in your yard what is the best thing you can do for it? You can nurture it and protect it, but measuring it doesn't make it grow faster. Pulling it up to see how the roots are doing has never helped a tree a bit. What helps is keeping animals from eating it or scratching its bark, making sure it has water, good soil, shade when it needs it and sun when it needs it, and letting its own growth unfold peacefully. It takes years, and you can't rush it.

So it is with children. They need to be protected from physical and emotional harm. They need to have positive regard, food, shade and sun, things to see, hear, smell, taste and touch. They need someone to answer their questions and show them the world, which is as new to them as it was to us. Their growth can't be rushed, but it can be enriched.

SandraDodd.com/growth
photo by Brie Jontry

Learning in all directions

Pam Sorooshian wrote:

Some kind of learning is happening all the time — but not all learning is good. Learning how to sneak food, learning that parents can't be trusted and counted on, learning to think of oneself in negative ways, all sad. Learning that life is boring, hard work, sucks, hurts, is unfair, also sad. Not what unschoolers are trying for.

Human brains are voracious and will feed on whatever is available. Unschoolers should be offering interesting experiences, ideas, stimulation, music, logic, conversation, images, movement, discovery, beauty, etc. Brain food in abundance. It requires effort. It requires attention to qualitative and quantitative aspects of learning. Depth and breadth — creating a lifestyle in which kids are offered the opportunity to learn a lot about some things and a little about a lot of things.

—Pam Sorooshian

SandraDodd.com/learning
photo by Colleen Prieto

To avoid learning...

If you want to avoid learning, it's best not to look, or read, or wonder.

Don't even click links.
photo by nobody; avoid photos

364 Days of Learning

Sandra, from a recorded interview:

When people who are running a school, charging money for people to send their kids there, where they will keep them there every day, like the law says, and they're reporting to the state, like the law says, to then equate themselves with what radical unschoolers are doing, it’s cheatery. They are cheating, They are trying to suggest that they can do in 180 days—whatever 6 times 180 is in hours—that they can take the state requirement of hours and create, in that time, what a radical unschooling family can create in 364 days of learning.

Amy:

My audio wasn’t being recorded properly at this point, but here I said something sort of snarky, like “You mean 363 days, because of 'Learn Nothing Day',” because apparently I don’t know how many days there are in a year, and Sandra said:

Sandra Dodd:

I took out the one already, it would have been 365.

Amy:

And we had a pretty good laugh about that. But eventually we got back to talking about the other benefits of unschooling—things that people don’t necessarily think of as "education."

SandraDodd.com/familybonding

Learn Nothing Day (July 24)

Doing enough?

Are you doing enough? Are your kids looking at you expectantly, or are they busy off doing something fun? Have they seen the cool touristy stuff in your town already? "Field trip" kind of stuff? Do you let them do it at their own pace, and "quit early" if they want to? Do they have things to play with and build with and draw on and mess with? Do they have opportunities (if they want) to ride bikes, skateboards, climb something, jump on things? Are you looking for opportunities for them to hear live music or see theatre? If you feel like you're not doing enough, do more.

SandraDodd.com/mha (an obscure page)
photo by Rippy Dusseldorp
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