"What about socialization?"

Sometimes when people ask “What about socialization?” I say "What do you mean?"

And I wait patiently for them to think of a response.

Usually the question is asked by rote, the same way adults ask stranger-children "Where do you go to school?" Most people just blink and stammer, because they don't even know what they meant when they asked it.



SandraDodd.com/socialization
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Helping grandparents

Meredith wrote something in April 2011 about what the grandparents want...

It's helpful to keep in mind that one of the big things grandparents want is a sense of connection with their grandchildren. When kids aren't in school, that can feel awkward - what the heck do you say to a child other than "what are you doing in school?" Especially if you only see him twice a year? It can leave extended family members stymied. So it helps a whoooole lot to feed them useful information and conversation starters in the form of something grandparents usually like anyway - pictures and stories of their grandkids. Keeping a blog or sending regular notes (via facebook or plain old snail mail) goes a long way in that regard. And! they get to see their beloved grandchildren happy and adventurous, which can help to reassure them on that score.

Unschooling can come across as some kind of weird cult if you try to explain it from a theoretical side first. Start with happy kids living rich, full lives and school starts to seem less of an issue.

—Meredith Novak

"How do you respond to family members?"
photo by Sandra Dodd, of Dodd kids and paternal grandmother, early 1990s

Describing unschooling

Rippy wrote:

If parents of school children ask, I usually say our homeschooling is pretty eclectic. I may give certain examples such as visiting interesting places, doing experiments, playing 'learning' games, reading stories, having conversations of events that happened in the past, talking about famous people, making things, hanging out with friends, etc. Sometimes I share with them a detailed description of an interesting day that we've had, especially if it has impressive signs of learning that they will recognize.

—Rippy Dusseldorp

SandraDodd.com/response
photo by Kelvin Dodd

Enthusiasm and clarity

The best thing for ANY unschooler is to move quickly toward becoming so confident that you can easily explain what you're doing, with enthusiasm and clarity. Don't muddle along.

Do it!          really GET it!

SandraDodd.com/school/say
photo by Shan Burton

Rebuilding yourself

"The other day Linnaea commented that she thought she and Simon would have struggled at school. I replied that I thought everyone struggled a bit with school, but they would have figured out their way in time. What I didn't say was how I don't know if I would have grown into the parent I am today, the generous and joyful parent that I am, if I hadn't chosen unschooling. I think it is possible to be a generous and joyful parent with schooled children, but it is harder to rebuild yourself in the ways that I feel I have done, slowly, incrementally, with unschooling."

—Schuyler Waynforth
in a passing discussion

SandraDodd.com/schuylerwaynforth
photo by Sandra Dodd
of old stairs in France,
on a day I was with Schuyler

Another step; another

Those who divide the world into academic and non-academic will maintain rules, bedtimes, chores even though they might not be "having lessons" in history, science, math or language arts.

So the history of "radical unschooling" came from someone saying "Well we're not that radical," and me saying "well I am."

I think if people divide their lives into academic and non-academic, they're not radical unschoolers.

I think unschooling in the context of a traditional set of rules and parental requirements and expectations will work better than structured school-at-home, but I don't think it will work as well for the developing souls and minds of the children involved.

And those who are not radical unschoolers would look at that and say "What do their souls have to do with unschooling?"

It has to do with philosophy and priority.

What do you believe is the nature of man, and the duty of a parent?

What do you believe hinders a child, or harms the relationship between a parent and a child?

Real actual unschooling
photo by Cathy Koetsier

Compassion for passions

Kelly Lovejoy, on the thoughts that help parents to deschool:

What are your passions? HOW did you learn to do those things? In a classroom?

Two of my passions as a child were dogs and horses. Dogs and horses are NOT taught in any grade, middle, or high school *I* know of. But I wanted to learn everything I could about them. My parents gave me dogs and horses. They bought me books and paid for me to take riding lessons and dog obedience classes. They paid for dog and horse shows and equipment. My passion threw me into reading every book I could find (there were no videos back then—nor "Animal Planet").

By twelve I could identify every breed of dog and horse that I had ever seen or read about and tell you how it was developed, where, why, and by whom. I spent every weekend and every afternoon at a dog show/horse show/event/trial or just hanging around the stable or kennel. I asked thousands of questions and "got my hands dirty." Many of my friends were adults with the same passions. Training, breeding, grooming, showing, husbandry—all of these things I learned because I was consumed by them!

But, of course, dogs and horses are NOT school subjects—and are completely unimportant in the school world. What if I had waited for a teacher to come along and say, "Today we are learning all about dog and horses"? Not only would I have waited all my life, the teacher would only have given me a "taste" of the subject!

OH! And you *can't* make a living with dogs and horses—right?

Stage one is often referred to as DEschooling. It's the period of time we need to give ourselves in order to "step away from the box" of school and school-think. Ask yourself why and how you learned your passion: whether it was music, cooking, flying, gardening, or long-distance running. Or even more "academic-like" passions, like Shakespeare, chemistry, World War II, or a foreign language. When you are comfortable with how learning happens by indulging in passions and making connections in your learning, you are quickly heading towards stage two.

—Kelly Lovejoy

from "Stages of Unschooling"
SandraDodd.com/kellylovejoy/stages
photo by Cathy Koetsier

Rich, full lives

Meredith Novak, years ago, on communicating with relatives who ask about unschooling:

It's helpful to keep in mind that one of the big things grandparents want is a sense of connection with their grandchildren. When kids aren't in school, that can feel awkward - what the heck do you say to a child other than "what are you doing in school?" Especially if you only see him twice a year? It can leave extended family members stymied. So it helps a whoooole lot to feed them useful information and conversation starters in the form of something grandparents usually like anyway - pictures and stories of their grandkids. Keeping a blog or sending regular notes (via facebook or plain old snail mail) goes a long way in that regard. And! they get to see their beloved grandchildren happy and adventurous, which can help to reassure them on that score.

Unschooling can come across as some kind of weird cult if you try to explain it from a theoretical side first. Start with happy kids living rich, full lives and school starts to seem less of an issue.

—Meredith

SandraDodd.com/relatives/responding
photo by Cátia Maciel

Your happy, whole heart

Someone asked me, "Are the unschoolers more successful and clever? And do they have more chance to find good jobs as adults?"

I wrote:

I can't say. Even if most were, your own kids might not be. Even if most weren't, your own kids might be.

If what you do is better than school, for your kids, keep doing that. If school would be better than what you're doing, for your kids, in their real lives, then do that.

If you're going to unschool, do it wholeheartedly and happily.

SandraDodd.com/screwitup
photo by Janine Davies

Being very careful

Y'know when people say "Don't try this at home"?

Homeschoolers can do the same kind of damage school does, if they are not Very Careful not to.

Some Thoughts about Later Reading
photo by Sarah S.

Those cookies are not really sad or damaged, but I don't have many somber photos in the stash! They are ACTing.

Hopefulness, good and true

Probably [doubters and critics] are sincerely concerned for your children, so try to be grateful for that, or at least to understand it.
. . . .
The nicest thing to say might be "Thanks, I'll think about it." If they say he might need some type of school, you could say yeah, someday he might. I liked to tell people that things were going well, but if that changed we would do something different. That gave them hope, and that was good for all of us. And it was true.

What Can I Say to Doubters and Critics?
photo by Gail Higgins
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Learning leaps and lingers

School creates the illusion that learning is a smooth curve, divided into hours, units, terms, years. Sometimes unschooling parents look for that.

Often, learning happens suddenly, like a flash. A person "gets it" or makes a connection between two things. It's fine to rest for a few days after that!

Folklorists who study traditional ballads say "A ballad leaps and lingers." Later, films did that, too. Though many ballads are ancient-old, they are a bit like movies. They might start in the middle of an action scene, or with a mysterious dilemma. A scene might be portrayed in great detail, and the next scene pick up six months or three years later in the story. Learning can be that way.

Doing something "in fits and starts" means there are stretches of quiet nothing, and then suddenly things are happening. Then nothing, again, for a while. Learning is like that.

In the novel Shogun, the character Mariko says early on:

We have a saying that time has no single measure, that time can be like frost, or lightning, or a tear, or siege, or storm, or sunset, or even like a rock.

Try not to measure.

The learning Curve of Unschoolers
photo by Karen James

Something worth listening to

Robyn Coburn shared this story in 2006. That was fourteen years ago. Jayn turned 21 this week.

---

Recently I annoyed someone (stranger at a kid's birthday party) whose first question on hearing that we homeschool was "How do you get her to listen to you?" by instantly replying "I try to say something worth listening to."

I thought she meant listen in general. She got this look of utter irritation on her face and started on about what a discipline problem her 7yo son was and how much more difficult it would be to have to keep his attention on school subjects and make him work at home. What she was really asking was "How do you make your daughter do her work?"

The paradigms we live under are so broadly apart from the mainstream that even the language doesn't cross over—we use the same words and have different meanings.

Yet of all the children at the birthday party Jayn was the one who came up to me a couple of times just to give me a quick kiss and say what fun she was having.



You can read more by Robyn here: Robyn Coburn
and see some of the Barbie tableaux that Jayn was making in the days mentioned at Barbie in Romeo and Juliet

photo by Jayn Coburn, years ago

Always?

When people ask me "are you always going to homeschool them?" I say (very truthfully) "I don't know. It depends on them. I'm willing to, but if they decide they would rather go to school, that's fine."

The only people who have ever been unhappy with that response are those who are rigidly, defiantly homeschooling with a vengeance.

SandraDodd.com/choices
photo by Cathy Koetsier

The words are something I wrote in January 1993,
that popped up this week, 26 years later.

Just Say No

Sandra Dodd, response in 2000 to: Can anyone explain to me "unschooling"?

It's like "just say no."

Just say no to school years and school schedules and school expectations, school habits and fears and terminology. Just say no to separating the world into important and unimportant things, into separating knowledge into math, science, history and language arts, with music, art and "PE" set in their less important little places.

Most of unschooling has to happen inside the parents. They need to spend some time sorting out what is real from what is construct, and what occurs in nature from what only occurs in school (and then in the minds of those who were told school was real life, school was a kid's fulltime job, school was more important than anything, school would keep them from being ignorant, school would make them happy and rich and right).

It's what happens after all that school stuff is banished from your life.

Several Definitions of Unschooling
photo by Catherine Forest

The clock isn't hungry

Perhaps "eating by the clock" has roots in European manor houses filled with servants, where the lady of the house got to choose the times of meals (within the narrow window of what was considered right and proper). In more modern times, eating by the clock has to do with factory lunch breaks and with school bells.

Don't be the clock's mother. Don't watch the clock to see if it's time to eat. Watch your child. Or watch the clock to see if it's time to offer another snack, but don't let the clock say "not yet" or "Must EAT!"

It isn't good parenting or self control for an adult who has reproduced to be looking to a mechanical device to make decisions for her. Clocks are great for meeting people at a certain time, but they were never intended to be an oracle by which mothers would decide whether to pay attention to a child or not. Your child knows whether he's hungry. You don't. The clock doesn't either, never did, and never will.

from page 163 of The Big Book of Unschooling (page 182 of newer editions)
photo by Sandra Dodd

Actually seeing it

Q:  How can families transition from more traditional methods of education to an unschooling approach?

A:  Unschooling involves seeing the world in a different way. Sometimes formal homeschooling families do some deschooling, but when switching to unschooling, more and different deschooling is needed, especially for the parents who have been involved in school and teaching and defending schooling for probably 20 or 30 years. The kids will be ready to unschool before the parents, usually.

It would help to be in contact with other unschoolers at playgroups or on the internet, and to meet unschooling families with children of various ages. It's difficult to imagine it, so it's easier to actually see it.

This new way of seeing the world involves seeing music in history, and science in geography, and art in math, and not talking about it. The last part is the hardest part.

I don't mean never talk about it. I mean don't say "Oooh, look! Science!" Once a person knows science is everywhere, and everything is connected to everything else, there will be nothing to talk about except the topic at hand, or where they're going or what they're seeing. The learning will happen without being labeled and sorted out. The labeling and sorting can prevent learning.

SandraDodd.com/successful
photo by Ester Siroky
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Fascinating and charming

My kids don't mind following rules when they join clubs or attend meetings in places with rules. The gaming store where they play (and where Kirby came to work after a while) has a language rule. They can say "crap" but nothing else of its sort or worse. There's a 25-cent fine. If they don't have a quarter they do pushups. But because of that rule, families go there that wouldn't go if it had the atmosphere of a sleazy bowling alley. (It has the atmosphere of a geeky gaming store.)


I think one reason they don't mind following rules is that they haven't already "had it up to here" with rules, as kids have who have a whole life of home rules and school rules. They find rules kind of fascinating and charming, honestly. When Holly's had a dress code for a dance class or acting class she is THRILLED.

Maybe also because they haven't been forced to take classes or go to gaming shops (?!?) they know they're there voluntarily and part of the contract is that they abide by the rules. No problem.
Seeking joy
photo by Sandra Dodd, July 2005
and the writing is older than that

Step back and think

I did an odd thing, when Kirby was five. I consciously decided not to use the names of "subject areas," ever. Whether he liked something or not, I wasn't going to tell him it was "history" or "math" or "science." Each of those is made up of dozens, hundreds of interests and unrelated topics.

In school, kids decide to declare that they like or hate "science," when really geology has very little to do with psychology or surgery. Same with "geography." Would someone who "likes geography" because he's fascinated by maps and mapping necessarily care about the major production of different regions of the world, or traditional costume of Afghanistan?

But as an unschooling mom, I think it's important for the parents not to say "I don't like... (maps/science/costume/psychology), because if you have fears and prejudices left over from school, it's a good thing to do whatever internal work you need to get over that, so you can answer your children's questions without showing (and maybe passing on) an aversion.
SandraDodd.com/subjects
photo by Ester Siroky
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Open and supportive

Three sentences pulled from longer writing by Joyce Fetteroll:

Mom can hold strong beliefs AND open the world to her kids so they feel free and supported in deciding what's right for them—even if it's counter to what mom believes.

*What* that belief is doesn't matter. The belief could be war is evil. The belief could be school is bad. Let's say you believe school is toxic. Many people here would agree with you....

Don't stack the deck so that your beliefs drown out anything else they might want to explore.

—Joyce Fetteroll

What's above is slightly misquoted, but the meaning is the same.
Go to SandraDodd.com/poison to see what I changed, and those words in context.
Similar title: Open and sensible
photo by Janine Davies
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