Inside the learner

Nothing on paper is learning.
Nothing recited is learning.
Nothing in a conversation is learning....

Learning is putting information together in one's own head so that it makes new and different sense. It always and only happens inside the learner.

SandraDodd.com/learning
photo by Cathy Koetsier

Open, joyful, fearless

If you want to unschool, life is better lived around learning, and relationships. Living in a relaxed home, where at least one parent is open to and joyful about all the world has to offer, will do more for a child's well-being than any amount of fear or control of foods a parent perceives as harmful.

—Lisa J Haugen

SandraDodd.com/food
photo by Sandra Dodd (in India, a while back)

Helping teens

Written when Holly Dodd was 18 (2009), of when she was in her mid-teens:

Holly has had a few jobs. One was working at a skateboard and clothing store in a mall a few miles away. One was working at a flower shop just a few hundred yards away; she walked. But the shop had another shop on the air base, and sometimes she worked there, so she had a base pass and a key to both shops. When Holly's jobs require driving, we let her use a car. Some of her school-attending friends are told they can't get a job unless they buy a car first. It seems to be a way for the parents to say no and then blame the kids for it.

Some mainstream families press their teenaged children to get jobs, and shame them if they fail, while putting conditions on when and where they can work. The result is that getting a job was just one more "do what the parents make you do" situation, and the jobs aren't fun; they're an extension of school and of parental control.

When teens or young adults have chosen to have a job without desperation for money, and when they are accustomed to learning all the time and living joyfully, they are a different sort of employee.

SandraDodd.com/jobs/bigbook
photo by Cathy Koetsier

Appreciating, or enjoying

Pam Sorooshian:

What do I regret? EVERY minute that I spent worrying over whether the house was clean. That would be my biggest regret. THAT was wasted worry. And there were bad times between myself and the kids over it. I'd get angry that they weren't helping enough. I wish I'd learned earlier about how to enjoy taking care of household stuff and let it go when it didn't get done.

The other day a 15 year old girl wrote on her facebook that she was miserably doing dishes because that was her chore this week. I am going to talk to her about dishes. Because I have learned to LOVE doing the dishes. I don't DO them without enjoying it. I either enjoy it or don't do it. Appreciate or enjoy or at least feel pleasant - I don't have to be deliriously happy . So - sometimes they don't get done. But usually they do. And nobody in my house ever has bad feelings about dishes anymore.

Sandra Dodd:

So if I were a hostile critic of your airy-fairy lifestyle, and said "What does this have to do with unschooling," what's the quick kind of answer others here might use when it happens to them?

Pam Sorooshian:

If we believe kids are born with an innate urge to learn, that they don't need to be forced to learn, then, logically, that should not apply to just reading, 'riting, and 'rithmetic, but also to all other aspects of life.

Turns out, the more that unschoolers have expanded their understanding of how children learn, the more we've discovered that, indeed, they DO learn best without coercion.

SandraDodd.com/chats/pamsorooshian
photo by Cátia Maciel
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Respected and supported

Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

When kids know their parents are on their sides, when parents help them find safe ways to do what they want to do, then kids do listen when we help them be safe.

When kids feel respected, when they've experienced a lifetime of their desires being respected and supported to find safe, respectful, doable ways to get what they want, kids won't push the envelope into craziness. That behavior just doesn't make sense to them.

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/partners/child
photo by Roya Dedeaux

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