"R" is for Reality

This image fills in the "R" on the spiffy nearly-new Learn Nothing Day logo.

People can't actually leave the planet and can't actually go back in time. The only place we can live is the here and now.

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Live with your children in the moment, and the moment is not in the past. Live with your child in the moment, in the world where you are.

SandraDodd.com/reality/

The photo adorned Better, kinder, stronger, in early 2020.
Thank you, Cass Kotrba.

Live here now

Live with your children in the moment, and the moment is not in the past.
Live with your child in the moment, in the world where you are.



SandraDodd.com/reality/
photo by Megan Valnes

Living where the future unfolds

Brie Jontry, to someone pining for the paleolitic good old days:

Over the past ten years or so there appears to be a resurgence of romanticizing "primitive" cultures, especially in regards to parenting and diet. While one of my favorite things in the world is to sit in front of a campfire and stare at the flames feeling a connection to the people who've come before me and found the same warmth and entertainment in the dancing flames, I think that cherry picking other cultures for their feel-good bits is not only blatantly ethnocentric but also detrimental to unschooling in the modern world.

Brie's writing continues, here: SandraDodd.com/reality/
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Here and now

People can't actually leave the planet and can't actually go back in time. The only place we can live is the here and now.

SandraDodd.com/reality
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Comfort and strength

I have comforted my "inner child" by comforting my own children. I have felt like a stronger, better person by being a stronger, better mom. Then it's not imagination, it's reality.

Helping them grow up whole helped me feel more full and whole myself.

Changing the present, healing the past, hope for the future
(from a comment I made there)
photo by Sabrina Peng
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An advance vision of homeschooling

I went to school. Most people reading this probably went to school. But most people reading this probably are not sending their children to school. Many of you are probably finding that your vision of homeschooling isn't exactly the same as the reality of your child's life at home. I know my own vision missed coming true. . . .I don't mind that my vision failed. The realities of longterm natural learning were not within the scope of my beginning-homeschooler imagination. If their lives had unfolded as I had predicted they would have been smaller and sadder. I'm very happy to report that their real, natural, unschooled lives are both bigger and happier than my imagination.

The quotes are the beginning and end of Books and Saxophones
photo of Holly and Veronique by Sandra Dodd
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What "is" isn't all.

Words, ideas, reality... it's fun to rearrange and examine what we see, and claim, and name. It's good, sometimes, when kids can do "real things"=—the things adults do. Useful things, maybe dangerous things. Historical things. Traditional methods, or modern high tech, or what was high tech in the industrial revolution. Science, history, language, technology, materials, mystery and manufacturing—revel in your knowledge and discoveries! Let life be exciting.

Most things are many things
photo by Sarah Dickinson

Finding joy

"Looking for joy doesn't mean living in la-la land. Quite the opposite. For me, it means being grounded in reality instead of fear, and connected rather than living parallel lives with my family members."

—Jen Keefe

SandraDodd.com/negativity
photo by Antje Bebbington
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Action, rethinking and healing

For me, the action/rethinking/healing all work together. I have comforted my "inner child" by comforting my own children. I have felt like a stronger, better person by being a stronger, better mom. Then it's not imagination, it's reality. Helping them grow up whole helped me feel more full and whole myself.

Changing the present, healing the past, hope for the future
(from a comment I made there)
photo by Sarah Dickinson

Be where you are

Parents complain about children living in fantasy worlds sometimes, and not growing up and facing reality. I think probably in every single one of those cases, it was the parental fantasy of what the child ought to be doing that was really the problem.


Make each moment the best moment it can be. Be where you are with your body, mind and soul. It's the only place you can be, anyway. The rest is fantasy.

The Big Book of Unschooling, pages 72 and 73
(79 and 80 of the 2019 edition)
photo by Holly Dodd

Now and then

Today I have seen two of my grown children. Keith saw all three, but not in the same place. We have three grandchildren. I saw two, today, but not at my house.

When your children are still young and with you, once in a while I hope you will look at them all, and maybe catch a photo. If you have one child who lives at home, breathe that in and know that it might not always be so.

Moving away or traveling, going to university, getting married, having children—those things are natural and fine. Time goes forward and people spread out. Today's reality is not what your younger self could have known. More waves of future will come along.

Find peace and appreciation and share it with your children.



Thoughts on growth
photo by Lydia Koltai

Cats, for real

For fun, today, maybe think about the nature of cats. There are pet cats, acting-and-modelling cats, folklore and humor about cats, fantasy cats, cartoon cats, imagery, song, and story of cats. Wild cats, musical cats, cool cats. Thinking about what IS a cat will help with thinking about the "is"ness of all other things.

SandraDodd.com/reality
photo by Brie Jontry of painting by Noor JontryMasterson
who also created the cat art here: SandraDodd.com/art/

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Following happily

There's great peace and beauty in a child who is happy to follow a parent, wherever the path is leading.

Human development and reality tend toward that period of life coming to an end, someday, so appreciate it when it's happening, and be understanding when paths diverge.

SandraDodd.com/being
photo by Cátia Maciel

Same for swans

Life has some inconvenient realities. Be happy anyway! Admire the beautiful birds, but watch your step.

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Reality as an environment for unschooling

Seeing and avoiding Negativity (and poop)

photo by Sandra Dodd, at Oakley Court, on the bank of the Thames, near Windsor

Confident and independent children

Jihong Tang wrote:

I was told by being with them all the time, by saying yes most of the time, by not setting the boundary (in a traditional sense), by parenting without punishment, I would have clingy and spoiled kids. The reality is quite the opposite: they are very independent and well adjusted.

The simple truth: we just spend lots of time together and have lots of shared experience and memory. That makes big differences. It is 365x24x60x60 shared moments (31,536,000 seconds a year).

—Jihong Tang

SandraDodd.com/why
photo by Sandra Dodd

Full and whole

I have comforted my "inner child" by comforting my own children. I have felt like a stronger, better person by being a stronger, better mom. Then it's not imagination, it's reality.

Helping them grow up whole helped me feel more full and whole myself.

Changing the present, healing the past, hope for the future
(from a comment I made there)
photo by Sandra Dodd

Lively ideas; living language

Without becoming too critical or cynical, maybe consider, with your children sometimes, changes in knowledge (the platypus, Mars, Pluto, leeches, volcanic activity and virgin sacrifice compared to global warming's medicine men; anything smaller than an atom?), or geography ("Four Corners" has been in the wrong place all these years; the U.S.S.R. is still on maps in some public places) or spellings ("plough" or "plow"? wooly or woolly?).

Play lightly with these ideas. There's no advantage to getting huffy or angry about it. Just see it as the reality it is. People learn. People change their minds. Knowledge grows. Evidence is reclassified. Language is alive. People who are alive are changing and learning. You can resist that or you can ride it with gusto.

Fact/Fallacy/Opinion
photo by Sarah S.

Paleolithic unschooling?

Would you rather live in the stone age, or live now?

(Hint: You don't actually have a choice.)

Brie Jontry, responding to someone who said unschooling was the closest to paleolithic, and that unschooling has worked for countless generations:

Paleolithic families had Internet and Netflix and PS3s? Did they have park days and YouTube? Were their parents distinctly turning their backs on the dominant culture and letting them learn in ways that felt kinder and gentler? Were they, in many cases, living at significantly lower income levels so one parent could stay home, at least part-time?

Unschooling is nothing at all like paleolithic life.

Unschooling has worked for a generation or two, but it hasn't been working for countless generations. That kind of thinking might get you all bound up in confusion as your son gets older and more aware of the modern world, and it may hinder your own ability to define what it is your family is actually doing.

—Brie Jontry

Brie's response was longer, and a little scary (in good ways):
SandraDodd.com/reality
photo by Karen James

Lovable and respectable

(Warning people away from "unconditional love," I wrote:)

Probably the idea started, in the 1950’s, with Carl Rogers’ phrase "unconditional positive regard."

If you’re a big fan of "unconditional love," consider backing it back to "unconditional positive regard" to help clarify and ground you for the real world.

Unconditional Positive Regard (at wikipedia)

Also, try to respect your male partner if you have one. He’s probably doing some good for you even if it seems like he’s not giving you unconditional love. And the difference between "love" and "respect" is about language anyway. Try to be lovable AND respectable, whether or not you have a partner or an audience, because it makes you a better person. Try to be trustworthy and dependable.

Being a better person will make you a better parent.

“Deserve” is a problem.

The SandraDodd.com/deserve link followed that, but the quote is from a longer post, "Love and Respect," in the archives
photo by Janine Davies

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Note to clarify, years later: I think that in a long-established relationship with any other adult, raising children, that love and respect are intertwined. Biochemically, in more youthful people who are "in love," that has a reality beyond and apart from respect. In the context of the topic from which that was taken, it's clearer.

The Wikipedia article has been amended, in the past few years, to credit Stanley Standal with the concept, and the phrase "positive regard" (for therapists).

Be where you are

Parents complain about children living in fantasy worlds sometimes, and not growing up and facing reality. I think probably in every single one of those cases, it was the parental fantasy of what the child ought to be doing that was really the problem.

Make each moment the best moment it can be. Be where you are with your body, mind and soul. It's the only place you can be, anyway. The rest is fantasy.

Walk where you are

The quote above is from The Big Book of Unschooling
pages 79 and 80 (72 and 72 of the first edition)
photo by Cass Kotrba