The same but different

Some things are the same at a distance, or when the details are unimportant.

Up close, even things that are "the same" can be very different.

What you're doing, what people think you're doing, what you wish you were doing, all might be very different. By careful comparison and contrast, we can clarify our vision. Save the effort for things you care about, though.

Comparisons
photo by Cass Kotrba, who wrote
"These beets I grew are such beautiful colors! I have never seen a white beet before. They came from a beet mix from Seed Trust."
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Go forth and soak it in

To understand what Unschooling is, it helps to understand what it is not. It can also help to see some of the best examples.
. . . .
Explore! Decide you want to learn, go forth and soak it in, sort it through, spread it around to dry.

—Sandra Dodd

SandraDodd.com/comparisons
photo by Cathy Koetsier, of a river rat
click to enlarge

Beyond compare

Unschooling is the ultimate individualized learning situation, and comparisons are unnecessary.

SandraDodd.com/pam/reasons
photo by Rippy Dusseldorp

Rejoice

Connections and parodies, comparisons and contrasts—learning is all about seeing what is like what, and how an image, idea or object can apply or fit where.

Don't be afraid of happy connections and rearrangements. Rejoice!

Webs, nets, connections
Robbie Prieto's nativity scene, once upon a time;
photo by Colleen Prieto, his mom

Good judgment

Without "judgment," how on earth can someone "use good judgment"?

SandraDodd.com/chats/comparisons
photo by Sandra Dodd

Same but different

Some things are the same at a distance, or when the details are unimportant.

Up close, even things that are "the same" can be very different.

What you're doing, what people think you're doing, what you wish you were doing, all might be very different. By careful comparison and contrast, we can clarify our vision. Save the effort for things you care about, though.

SandraDodd.com/comparisons
photo by Sandra Dodd

Beyond compare

Unschooling is the ultimate individualized learning situation, and comparisons are unnecessary.

SandraDodd.com/pam/reasons
photo by Rippy Dusseldorp

Some good comparisons

It can be healing for parents to think back to their own sorrows and then to their own children's freedom from those experiences.

SandraDodd.com/freedom/from (What unschooled children will not know)
photo by Sandra Dodd
of a sculpture in Old Town
Albuquerque

Becoming solid

When people first come to unschooling, when they want to be unschoolers, they're basing this on something they read that resonated, or someone they met that they'd like to be more like, which is the way I came to it, but I don't think it will really stick, and be solid in that family or in that person's way of being—in their behaviors and their thoughts—until they see that in their own children. Until you're doing it not because you think it will work, or because you've heard it will work, or read it will work, but because you've seen it work.
. . . .Until people get to that point in unschooling, they could relapse. They could easily forget that they wanted their kids to be more like someone else's kids.

But once they get to the point where their confidence in unschooling is not faith in other people, but certain knowledge, direct experience of their own children learning and being at peace, and of the parents learning to see the natural learning that happens when kids just draw for hours, or just play video games for hours, or ride their bike, or play with the dog—when they start seeing those things as equal in learning value, to things that look academic, then it's hard to relapse from certain knowledge.

20:45 in the sound recording of the interview at this link
photo by Emma Marie Forde
P.S. By the time you get to that point, you probably won't want your kids to be different, but the comparisons are normal before deschooling, and can fade as unschooling ideas permeate and pervade.

Individualized learning

Unschooling is the ultimate individualized learning situation, and comparisons are unnecessary.

SandraDodd.com/pam/reasons
photo by Holly Dodd

Embrace curiosity

Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

Some people hold onto the fear that kids need schoolish math to learn math. They need to experience their kids learning math by living life to pry those virtual textbooks from their mind's grasp.

But some people are so damaged by math in school, the idea that they don't ever have to do math with their kids because kids will learn math by living life is like a great weight lifted.

That's not good either! For unschooling to flourish we should embrace a curiosity about the world—and the world includes relationships, comparisons and other uses of math.

Unschooling is *much* harder than school at home because it takes a great deal of self examination and change in ourselves to help our kids and not get in their way!

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/math/phobia
photo by Denaire Nixon

Positivity from dark days

I have had a rough month. I hope yours was better! How can we know what is "rough" and what is "better," though, without considering the range of possibilities, or the variations in our own lives, at least?
March 31 is my wedding anniversary. People might read this afterwards, but in 2019, it's 35 years. And if you read this in 2019, my husband has been in the hospital since March 3. He had three cardiac arrests in one day. He's recovering well, though, which is statistically unexpected. It's easy for me to see this month as "bad." But is that fair? Keith is alive, and is in rehab getting his strength back, and telling me which bills to pay when, and from which account.

There are others reading who are grieving, or afraid, displaced, in dispute with a co-parent. Find the light moments, and the laughter, with your child. Be as soothing as you can be, because soothing them will also soothe you.

Be sweet; be well.
Comparisons and judgments
photo by Amy Milstein

Knowing differences

"Compare and contrast," in school assignments, could have been called "tell how these are the same but different."

Here is a view through an old fence into some pens, in Maine. This isn't what old fences look like in New Mexico. I recognize it as a wooden corral, but they might not even use that term in Maine. It is the same, but different.


Our vocabularies, our understandings, our ability to think clearly—all can be expanded by considering "same but different" about animals, ideas, children, houses, music, stories, clothing, clouds... Don't dismiss children's questions, nor your own, with "it's just the same." It's probably just as different.

SandraDodd.com/comparisons
photo by Sandra Dodd
(and here was one in New Mexico)
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