A variety of good things

Without choices, they can't make choices. Without choices they can't make good choices OR bad choices. In too many people's minds, "good" is eating what parents say when parents say (where and how and why parents say). That doesn't promote thought, self awareness, good judgment or any other good thing.

Food Choices (and lots of them)
SandraDodd.com/eating/idea
photo by Sandra Dodd, in Pune, in India

Peace is all about choices

If you want to live peacefully make the most peaceful choices. Peace is all about choices. Choose to breathe consciously. Choose understanding over ignorance. Choose to make choices. Choose awareness over oblivion. And make choices based on the principles you live by.

SandraDodd.com/choices
(Thanks to Heather Newman for quoting me, May 22, 2011.)
photo by Sylvia Woodman

Choices can abound

Choices can abound. Parents can arrange life so that their children have choices all the time, and learn to see their own actions as choices rather than "have to's," but none of them can give their children "the freedom" to do as they wish at MY house. Nor in a shop, nor a public place. Certainly not in a national park, or museum, or church. . . . .

Parents who tell their kids that they can give them "freedom" might be talking about the relative freedom of being out of school rather than in. Once they're in the normal real world, though, continuing to promise freedom isn't as helpful, nor as relationship building, as finding ways to give them choices.

Freedom/Choices/Empowerment/Respect
photo by Amber Ivey

No bad choices? But...

Without choices, they can't make choices. Without choices they can't make good choices OR bad choices.

SandraDodd.com/options
photo by Sandra Dodd

Peace and love and food

Without choices, they can't make choices. Without choices they can't make good choices OR bad choices. In too many people's minds, "good" is eating what parents say when parents say (where and how and why parents say). That doesn't promote thought, self awareness, good judgment or any other good thing.

Food is for health and sustenance. Eating with other people can be a social situation, ranging (on the good end) from ceremonial to obligatory to courtesy. There's no sense making it hostile or punitive.

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Food Choices (and lots of them)
SandraDodd.com/eating/idea
photo by Sarah S.

Peace is all about choices.

If you want to live peacefully, make the most peaceful choices.

Peace is all about choices.

Choose to breathe consciously.
Choose understanding over ignorance.
Choose to make choices.
Choose awareness over oblivion.
And make choices based on the principles you live by.

SandraDodd.com/peace
photo and art by Marcia Simonds

Children reach for food

Because of La Leche League and natural weaning, and the idea that children will reach for food when they want some, so you don't have to schedule and spoon it into them, it was easy for me to see the smallest seedling-root beginnings of how our culture creates the eating disorders they bemoan. Letting kids decide what THEY think is good and bad, instead of labelling things good and bad in advance for them, allows a child to think spinach is wonderful but donuts are kinda yucky.

Without choices, they can't make choices. Without choices they can't make good choices OR bad choices. In too many people's minds, "good" is eating what parents say when parents say (where and how and why parents say). That doesn't promote thought, self awareness, good judgment or any other good thing.

Food is for health and sustenance. Eating with other people can be a social situation, ranging (on the good end) from ceremonial to obligatory to courtesy. There's no sense making it hostile or punitive.

SandraDodd.com/foodproblems
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Choose to choose.

Once someone complained making choices was too hard. I wrote:

Making a choice is a matter of choice and just doing it.I don't think it requires willpower to realize that a person can make a choice.

Think of two choices. Choose the best one.

Next time think of two choices (maybe the choice from the time before and a better one). Choose the best one.

If you do that several times a day, soon you'll be doing it countless times a day.

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Make choices. Make choices that move you toward being more at peace with your child.

"Getting irritated," Always Learning, 2007
photo by Jill Parmer
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Surprising changes

Sometimes deschooling works best when there are surprising (maybe even shocking) surprises, or stark refutations of what the mom has “guaranteed will happen,” or is positive can ONLY happen—that having candy out all the time will make kids throw up, have cavities, get fat. The stories of kids in the presence of the same old bowl of candy asking for vegetables and fruit are important stories to share.

Choices can’t happen without choices, and choices don’t happen well with a mom hovering around and predicting negative outcomes. Lots of people have reported that their experiences with food, and unschooling, changed everything. Seeing kids learning about food, and making choices about food, made other choices seem to make total sense.

from Always Learning, 05/07/19
photos by Ester Siroky (mushroom basket) and Elise Lauterbach (mushroom golf)

Food Freedoms

Because of La Leche League and natural weaning, and the idea that children will reach for food when they want some, so you don't have to schedule and spoon it into them, it was easy for me to see the smallest seedling-root beginnings of how our culture creates the eating disorders they bemoan. Letting kids decide what THEY think is good and bad, instead of labelling things good and bad in advance for them, allows a child to think spinach is wonderful but donuts are kinda yucky.

Without choices, they can't make choices. Without choices they can't make good choices OR bad choices. In too many people's minds, "good" is eating what parents say when parents say (where and how and why parents say). That doesn't promote thought, self awareness, good judgment or any other good thing.

SandraDodd.com/eating/idea
Image by Holly and Sandra

Choose choices

"Children have to be taught to self-regulate." That "rule" is parroted by non-thinking parents with great regularity. It can be replaced with "I would like to help my child make thoughtful choices."

If you think of controlling yourself, and of your children controlling themselves, it's still about control. If people live by principles their choices come easily.. . .When you hear or say "They will self-regulate," think to yourself: "They will learn to make choices."

SandraDodd.com/self-regulation
Quote is from page 56 (or 61) of The Big Book of Unschooling.
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Choose Choices (...repeat)

"Children have to be taught to self-regulate." That "rule" is parroted by non-thinking parents with great regularity. It can be replaced with "I would like to help my child make thoughtful choices."

If you think of controlling yourself, and of your children controlling themselves, it's still about control. If people live by principles their choices come easily.. . .When you hear or say "They will self-regulate," think to yourself: "They will learn to make choices."

SandraDodd.com/self-regulation
Quote is from page 56 (or 61) of The Big Book of Unschooling.
photo by Sandra Dodd
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This post first appeared in May 2013.

A thousand or three choices

If there are a thousand choices, or even three choices, how do you choose? Some people like to live without choices, so they can say "I had no choice."

So how do you choose? You decide where you want to go before you decide to turn left or right, don't you?

Just like that.

The way to know the right direction is to identify the wrong direction.

How to Screw Up Unschooling

original, on Always Learning, April 2009
photo by Karen James
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Thoughtful choices are better

Arbitrary rules will never be better for unschooling, nor for any relationship, than thoughtful choices will be. Unschooling parents must gradually learn to make thoughtful choices themselves and give their kids the opportunity to make choices.

The quote is from an interview
but here's a link to
Making the better choice
photo by Sandra Dodd

Many small choices

If the mom can practice and appreciate making many small choices, she can more calmly accept changes and experimentation and what might seem inconstant or random in the child’s choices. He might want to try things. He might not be in an adventurous season and might want the same thing every day for a year. But he will be learning, if he’s allowed to feel his own body’s responses without someone telling him what he is feeling or should be feeling.

SandraDodd.com/trust
photo by Kirsten Cordero

"Finish what you start." NO, wait...

Once someone wrote in an unschooling discussion:

"I just have one concern. I want my children to finish what they start."

I responded:

If you start a book and decide you don't like it, will you finish it?
If you start eating a dozen donuts, and after you're not in the mood for donuts anymore, will you finish the dozen?
If you start an evening out with a guy and he irritates or frightens you, will you stay for five more hours to finish what you started?
If you put a DVD in and it turns out to be Kevin Costner and you don't like Kevin Costner, will you finish it anyway?
The only things that should be finished
are those things that seem worthwhile to do.
When I'm reading a book, I decide by the moment whether to keep reading or to stop.

Even writing this post, I could easily click out of it and not finish, or I could finish it and decide not to post it. Choices, choices, choices.

Wanting your children to learn to ignore their own judgment in favor of following a rule is not beneficial to them or to you. It will not help them learn.


SandraDodd.com/finishwhatyoustart
photo by Sandra Dodd
of a fat black widow in the back yard (and its shadow)
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Is it worthwhile?

When choices come easily

The idea of "self discipline" isn't as helpful to understanding unschooling as the idea of making mindful choices is. It's similar to the difference between teaching and learning.

SandraDodd.com/teaching/

SandraDodd.com/control

If you think of controlling yourself, and of your children controlling themselves, it's still about control. If people live by principles their choices come easily.

SandraDodd.com/self-regulation
photo by Roya Dedeaux

Softer and Safer

The Parenting Peacefully page has something at the bottom about making better choices. This can move you from wherever you are to wherever you want to be. It will take dozens or thousands of choices, and sometimes you'll be hungry or angry or tired and might speak or act in a way you didn't choose—that just popped out—but if you see it as a single moment, a single incident, and put THAT in with the bad examples, you can be a softer, safer element in your child's life and in your own.


SandraDodd.com/choices
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Options and choices

If the parent finds ways to present options and choices and the children can say "Yes, more!" or "No more now," then each child will learn every day.

Seeing Children without Labels

Choices
photo by Julie D
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