Safety and communication

My children have no reason to dodge or manipulate..., because Keith and I haven't concocted any made-up arbitrary rules and their accompanying punishments. With safety and communication as principles and priorities, we've had safe, communicative kids.

page 46 (or 50) of The Big Book of Unschooling
photo by Sandra Dodd

P.S.: That probably only works only if you begin very early.
__

"I told him already."

Not lately, but once upon a time...

...When the triangles come up on Math Arena, I have to think "isosceles" and then look for one (or "right" or "equilateral" or "obtuse" or whatever). Holly doesn't have to.

So my strewing plan was this: The next morning I would wake up early, make tea, and get out the geoboards. We have three. I would set up three basic triangles. When Holly got up and noticed these out, I would point at the hypotenuse on the right triangle. Either she would say "huh!" and "Would you make Malt-o-Meal?" and it would be over, or she might ask "And what are these other two?" Maybe it would be a couple of days of playing with triangles and maybe it will be one little "huh!"

That was my whole plan. I was going to be fine with however minor or glorious it was, because I knew she would have something to tie it to in her head, another dot to connect, and all that internal triangulation would be more valuable than any vocabulary study and formulaic recitation we could do.

But what happened was that I forgot to check back on my geo-board kid-trap. When I remembered in the early afternoon, Marty and Holly were working on fancy designs with colored rubber bands, and making "how many triangles?" puzzles for each other to count triangles within triangles. I came over and said, "That is a hypotenuse," and I pointed right at a green rubber hypotenuse. Holly said, "I know, I told him already." Not only had I missed my big chance to review it with her, she (at twelve) had already explained it to her brother (the fifteen year old).

SandraDodd.com/dot/hypotenuse
photo by Julie Daniel, of Adam, also not recent
(I couldn't find a geoboard photo)

Unexpectedly...

Gail Higgins, an unschooling mom, wrote of this photo: "Opossum staredown. Surprise photo op 😀"


It reminds me of those unexpected moments that pop up in any parent's life. Unexpectedly, someone is looking at you expectantly. It could be one of your children, your partner, a relative, a neighbor, a friend or a stranger.

Confidence in unschooling principles will make those moments increasingly easy to deal with. After becoming an unschooler, one can respond as an unschooler. It does take a while.

As Gail's confidence in her photographic skills increases, she can respond as a photographer, when surprises come along.

SandraDodd.com/becoming
photo by Gail Higgins
__

Bright and sparkly

Jenny Cyphers wrote:

Intellectually, I got unschooling all the way from the very beginning. The part that took more time was relationships and wholeness. When I got THAT, that is when things started happening in the direction that made unschooling work great!

The way I see it, often, is that there are multiple facets that make unschooling work best. The two biggest facets that go hand in hand for me are the absence of school and school think, combined with real working relationships with my kids. People can go and do one or the other and not let them overflow into each other, but it won't be as bright and sparkly, with the facet analogy.

—Jenny Cyphers

SandraDodd.com/gettingit
photo by Karen James

Do more

If you think you haven't done enough for your children lately, do more.

Maintain and replenish
photo by Janine Davies

Helping one another grow

Of her birth family, Rippy wrote:

My family used to regularly travel to India to a Sikh ashram where we were encouraged to examine our thoughts and words. The philosophy there was that helping one another grow into more loving, mindful people is one of the greatest acts of service one can do.

—Rippy Dusseldorp Saran

Kinder and More Compassionate

Webs, nets, connections

The terms "web" and "net" have both been commandeered by the internet. The idea of a grid or web or matrix to represent the connections involved in learning and memory is a good one, though—of many "dots" connected in all directions.

The photo here is of the two-dimensional web—very flat—of a garden spider, outside my house this week. Black widow spiders make a web that's three-dimensional, but has no pattern. We have those in our yard, too.

The webs on which our own mental models of the universe are based are more complex—with past and future, emotion and theory, alternative stories and secondary theories. We have sounds and songs, scents and tastes to remember, and can sort things by temperature or texture, in our minds and imaginations.

Rejoice in the random!

SandraDodd.com/random
photo by Sandra Dodd
__