Sleeping as love

For the first MANY years of their lives, our kids fell asleep being nursed, or being held or rocked by dad or mom, or in the car on the way home from something fun. They slept because they were sleepy, not because we told them to. So when they got older, they would fall asleep near us, happily.

We never minded putting them in the bed after they were asleep. It was rare they went to sleep in the bed. They would wake up there (or in our bed, or on the couch or on a floor bed) knowing only that they had been put there and covered up by someone who loved them.

Going to sleep wasn't about "going to bed."

Kirby, four, fell asleep while playing.

SandraDodd.com/sleeping
photo by Sandra Dodd, 1990

Relax

Sleeping is natural and necessary. Help children feel good about sleeping.

Sleep When You're Tired
photo by Colleen Prieto

Sleeping when they're tired

We were active in La Leche League, and Keith and I both fell in love with being parents, and with the ideas we were learning there. We were active in a group that had many late-night parties and meetings, and campouts, so our kids were used to sleeping in different places, and falling asleep in our laps, or in a frame backpack either indoors or in the mountains under the stars. That helped us know without a doubt that children will sleep when they’re tired, and that it’s more important for them to be with their parents doing interesting things than to be home in bed simply because it’s 8:00 or 9:00.

From page 340 of The Big Book of Unschooling (page 381 of 2019 edition)
photo by Sandra Dodd

Peaceful bedtime

This was written by Joanna Murphy in 2009:

The biggest mistake I made in transitioning to radical unschooling was that I didn't transition. I thought I needed to make a pronouncement about bedtimes and food. I really didn't. I now, many years later, see that I just needed to make MY shifts in seeing how to support them and facilitate their lives—and then do it.

My son asked me, soon after we "stopped doing bedtimes" to please be more present with bedtimes. I had an idea that he "needed" to make these decisions for himself—but that wasn't true for him at all. It was too big and scary, and he stopped wanting to go to bed—probably because he didn't want to face the lights-out transition alone. 20/20 hindsight! LOL I really didn't get that there might be fear and/or abandonment involved—that insight came much later.

We now have a way that works well for us that everyone goes to bed with the last adult (that can stay awake—LOL). It is more important to both my kids to have that help and companionship at bedtime than it is to stay up late. It also supports their desires to do things earlier, since they are still both sleeping about 11 hours. If they go to bed much later than me, the next day is mostly gone when they wake up (as far as doing things with other people).

—Joanna Murphy

SandraDodd.com/sleeping
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Sleeping in shifts

From a page with notes, links and thoughts about the history of human sleep and what might be natural, Sandra's words:

I like the sentinal theory. I’ve often thought that teenagers’ propensity to stay up late might have been very useful in “the old days” (caves, camps or castles) because they could keep watch while they talked to each other. And their sleeping in the daytime while others are awake is seen as sloth in modern days by too many people, but I think as long as they get sleep, it shouldn’t matter so much what time it is.

What about sleep? sleep in history and culture
SandraDodd.com/sleep/outside
photo by Sandra Dodd (and it's a link)

Resting

Rests can be short or long.

Resting isn't always sleeping.

Sleeping doesn't always last long.

SandraDodd.com/sleep/outside
SandraDodd.com/peace/
photo by Cátia Maciel
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Falling asleep

For the first MANY years of their lives, our kids fell asleep being nursed, or being held or rocked by dad or mom, or in the car on the way home from something fun. They slept because they were sleepy, not because we told them to. So when they got older, they would fall asleep near us, happily.

We never minded putting them in the bed after they were asleep. It was rare they went to sleep in the bed. They would wake up there (or in our bed, or on the couch or on a floor bed) knowing only that they had been put there and covered up by someone who loved them.

Going to sleep wasn't about "going to bed."


Kirby, four, fell asleep while playing.

SandraDodd.com/sleeping
photo by Sandra Dodd, 1990

Flexibility and change

"Be prepared to be flexible and willing to change as your child gets older." —Emily Strength

SandraDodd.com/sleeping
photo by Janine

Detox, gradually

For a child, deschooling is just the time to relax and get used to being home and with Mom—a child who’s been to school. A child who hasn’t been to school has no deschooling to do. But for parents, deschooling is detoxification from a lifetime, and recovery from all of their schooling and whatever teaching they might have done. And it’s also the start of a gradual review of everything...

They don’t need to do it in advance, they don’t need to do it right at first. It’s so big, but it’s also gradual—it's just like living and breathing and eating and sleeping. Because every day a little more can come to the surface and be examined as it pops up.

Changes in Parents
The quote is from a recent podcast of Pam Laricchia interviewing me.
photo by Lisa Jonick

Beauty

"Choose to look at the beauty around you and to see life and people through loving eyes."

—Alex Polikowsky

Sandra's addition: "... to see life and people" and fancy chickens, cupcakes, frost, sleeping puppies and your favorite mug as beautiful.

SandraDodd.com/alex/optimism
photo by Helene McNeill

Knowing someone loved them

We never minded putting them in the bed after they were asleep. It was rare they went to sleep in the bed. They would wake up there (or in our bed, or on the couch or on a floor bed) knowing only that they had been put there and covered up by someone who loved them.

Going to sleep wasn't about "going to bed."

SandraDodd.com/sleeping
photo by Sandra Dodd

Sleep

Whenever possible, let children wear something they could sleep in. Or let them sleep in something that wasn't really for sleeping. Put sleep above tradition or appearances. The purpose of sleep doesn't require special equipment or costumes.



Twice in the past week, I've fallen asleep in my clothes, and the sleep was wonderful. The photo is of a camphor lamp, to keep mosquitos away, in the room I'm staying in this month in India.

The top quote is from the "Toddlers" section of The Big Book of Unschooling
(page 66, or page 71 in the 2019 edition)

Doing without a "have to"

The story quoted below is from nine years ago and involves a sixteen-year-old.

Marty is twenty-five now and is getting married in a couple of days.

---

Marty has an orthodonist appointment at 10:30 this morning, and works at noon. He has gone to ortho alone, and has taken Holly before. I asked yesterday if he wanted to go alone or me take him. He wanted me to go. He asked me to wake him up an hour before. He likes at least an hour before, and usually an hour and a half.

I forgot to wake him up, but I heard his alarm go off at 9:31 (and remembered I had forgotten).

He was tired and I offered to put a fifteen or twenty minute timer on and come and get him, but he said no, he wanted to get up.

There is a snapshot moment in the "don't have to" life of a sixteen year old boy.

I'm not saying that every child given leeway will be Marty.
I'm saying that every person who claims that leeway will inevitably cause sloth is proven wrong by Marty.

SandraDodd.com/sleeping
photo by Sandra Dodd, of Marty, a different morning in those same days

Impermanent beauty

The peaceful beauty of a sleeping child, a young woman, beautiful food, a flower, a building—nothing lasts forever. Beauty might only last a moment, a day, a year, and will change.

See what is lovely.

Love what is loveable, and remember to expect it to slip away.

photo by Karen James, of found art
and another, found by Lisa Jonick
(backup)

Now that I think of it, though, most photos are of found and fleeting art.
I'm grateful to all those who have let me share their photos here.

Disorienteering

So sorry to have missed two days! There was travel, and sleeping, and time change, and I'm on another continent. They drive funny and speak differently, and I need to think faster, so I sleep more.

There are advantages to staying quietly and peacefully in familiar places sometimes.

Try not to let confusion scare you. Set a good example for others. Relax if you can.

SandraDodd.com/calm
photo by Sandra Dodd

Sleep when you're tired

It can help to encourage a child to sleep when he's tired. When children get older, parents can do it too, without feeling guilty, if it has been a policy for anyone without immediate responsibility to sleep when sleep comes.

SandraDodd.com/sleeping
photo by Nicole Kenyon
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Luxury

It's a luxury to be able to sleep when you're tired.

Parents of young children might think that opportunity won't ever come back to them, but it will. Meanwhile, try to feel the benefit, and the gift you're offering when you let your children sleep how and where they want to, if and when you can.



SandraDodd.com/sleeping
photo by Roya Dedeaux

Osmosis and television shows

A cranky person wrote to me:

I do unschool but I obviously do not subscribe to your radical view of unschooling where children are expected to learn by osmosis and television shows.

To the Always Learning discussion list I wrote:

When the environment is rich, children learn by osmosis, if the membrane through which ideas pass is their perception of the world. What they see, hear, smell, taste, touch and think becomes a part of their experience, and they learn. And they learn from television shows, movies, paintings, books, plants, toys, games, movement, sports, dancing, singing, hearing music, drawing, sleeping.... as if by osmosis, they live and they learn.

SandraDodd.com/tv
photo by Sandra Dodd of a tractor covered in lights
Albuquerque Bio-Park's "River of Lights," 2011

RV, or home, or cabin...

Alex Arnott wrote:

Try to look at and accept them for being exactly who they are right now, not how you think they should be.

There is a whole world outside the RV AND a whole world inside their iPad. Whatever they choose, be there with them! It’s hard to truly be with another person when you’re wishing they were something else.

—Alex Arnott

on Unschooling Discussion 2020
"RV" stands for "recreational vehicle." They can be used for travel and for sleeping and living. In other places they might be called motorhomes, campervans or caravans. While I was looking, I found some new designs from India, and The Netherlands.

photo by Sarah S.
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On a peaceful day...

Watching the news on TV, or following too many news sites, can harm the peace of an unschooling home. Some moms, especially when their children are young, have found more peace if they focus inward on their children than outward far away.

If someone WANTS to be afraid and pissed off, even on a fairly peaceful day, all it takes is to turn the news on and let it affect your entire nervous system, your digestive system, your adrenal glands and hormones, your chance of trusting your neighbors, or of sleeping peacefully.


SandraDodd.com/news
photo by Sandra Dodd, of someone else's puppet