A world that is kinder

"As I've gotten older, I focus more and more on kindness. I want to be kind, I want my children to be kind and I want them to be in a world that is kinder." —Jenny Cyphers

SandraDodd.com/virtue
photo by Sarah Elizabeth Douglas

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I wrote this when I was frustrated, so it's not as poetic as some:

Kids have their whole childhoods to learn to tie shoes, wipe ass, make a sandwich. Parents do NOT have that whole childhood to slowly mosey over toward being a little closer to unschooling. If you don't do it soon and well, it will be too late to do it at all.

SandraDodd.com/doit
photo by Ester Siroky

Flowing thoughts

What you know can be added to, or amended, but rarely deleted. Some things are best not learned, which is why it's so important to be careful what you say and how you say it (and to drive carefully, and all that). Some people do try to encapsulate ideas or experiences and forget them. Sometimes other memories are shut off along with that. That’s a good reason for analyzing traumatic events and sorting through instead of trying to encase them. Too many "do not enter areas" in your mind will slow down connections, and also will inhibit the biochemicals that help make learning fun and easy.

SandraDodd.com/connections
photo by Ester Siroky

Still

Still: quiet, calm; without motion, at rest, not moving from a place, not disturbed; moving little or gently; silent; not loud; secret; unchanging, undisturbed, stable, fixed; not vehement, gentle
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"Still" has meant those things for a thousand years. Longer. Still.

Be with your child, still.

Wiktionary is where I got the Old English definition
photo by Gail Higgins

This is better.

"This is better. It’s just better." —Jen Keefe

To read about what Jen found that was better, her writing is queued up here:
Becoming the Parent You Want to Be
photo by Heather Booth
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More and more connections

Each idea, object, concept, person, song, motion—anything you can think of—has personal associations for you. You have an incalculable mass of connections formed in your brain and will make more today, tomorrow, on the way home, and in your sleep.
SandraDodd.com/connections
photo by Ester Siroky

One interaction at a time

One interaction at a time. Just make the next interaction a relationship-building one. Don't worry about the one AFTER that, until IT becomes "the next one."

—Pam Sorooshian

SandraDodd.com/peace/becoming
photo by Meryl Rosenfeld Ranzer