Substance

We have a compost pile, and it's kind of amazing how it seems at first that the food and leaves and sticks and banana peels and dog poop will never do anything but sit there looking like garbage, but when I stop watching it, it turns to solid black, rich dirt! I can't find any parts of the elements of which it's made. It's kind of like that with my kids. It took me a few years to quit watching them and trust that it would compost.

It did.

SandraDodd.com/substance
photo by Sandra Dodd

Value, form and substance

My response to this (years ago):

We are going into our third year of "homeschooling." Our first year consisted of complete deschooling. The next year I fell victim to mother panic mode

If I said "I went through a year of demagnetization, and the next year all kinds of metal stuck to me," you might think I hadn't really demagnetized!

Deschooling only works when it works. Doing nothing schoolish isn't the same as actively recovering from school. Kids will get over school gradually, but there needs to be an active unschooling life taking its place as they recover. Parents get over schooling MUCH more gradually, as they were in school more and they have parental fears and responsibilities and pressures from others. So it takes more work and more time for parents to see the value of and to recognize the form and substance of natural learning.


Unschooling - some questions (2003)
photo by Ester Siroky

Interwoven

In weaving, one thread touches all the others. At first, learning is in one place, play is in another, and work is in a third. Unschoolers can gradually become people whose lives are made of learning and togetherness. When play has value, and parents see learning in everything, the fiber and substance of the family's life change.

What is woven into your life is part of your being.

SandraDodd.com/substance
photo by Nancy Machaj

Substance

We have a compost pile, and it's kind of amazing how it seems at first that the food and leaves and sticks and banana peels and dog poop will never do anything but sit there looking like garbage, but when I stop watching it, it turns to solid black, rich dirt! I can't find any parts of the elements of which it's made.

It's kind of like that with my kids. It took me a few years to quit watching them and trust that it would compost.

It did.

SandraDodd.com/substance
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Not learning

If a person's life is compartmentalized into learning and not learning, then they have a part of them that is "not-learning."


The phrase came up in a chat, but this page is a good match: SandraDodd.com/substance

photo by Sandra Dodd, of a beautiful Sheffield wall with delicate flowers
unfairly drafted to portray a harsh wall for the purposes of this post

Sand and water

Play with sand and water. Find seeds. Sit in the shade, and in the sun. Set ice in the shade and in the sun. Write with ice on a sunny sidewalk.

SandraDodd.com/substance
photo by Janine

Unexpected discovery

My children have never asked, "Do we have to learn this?" They don't have to learn anything. So everything is equally fun for them. The joy of unexpected discovery is the substance of a typical unschooling day.

Typical Unschooling Day (Presidents)
photo by Holly Dodd
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Results of Unschooling

I can't really speak to any "end results," because they're still growing and experiencing the newness of many firsts in their lives. If there is ever an "end," the results won't matter anymore. But as long as life continues, the results unfold.

Are my children better friends and better employees because of the freedom they had? It seems so. What kind of managers will they be when they're in positions to make decisions about other people's employment?

When they marry will they be good partners? Would that be an "end result"? What kind of parents will they be?

What kind of neighbors will they be? How will their long-term health be affected by their early freedom to make their own choices? Will they be more or less likely to be binge eaters, substance abusers, or hypochondriacs? When they're old, will they still be active and interesting? Will their early freedoms affect their geriatric physical and mental health? I don't know, and probably won't be around to see.

In this window of time, though, I am satisfied. The peace and joy with which they live attests to the success of our attachment parenting and unschooling. Our lives are entwined and growing. The end result of twenty-one years of parenting as mindfully and as peacefully as I could is that I am content with the outcome. Someday I might report on the end result of twenty-five or thirty years of parenting, as life burgeons on.

SandraDodd.com/magicwindow, 2007
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Same sun

The sun I see today will be the same sun you all see. In Maharashtra, in East Sussex, in New Mexico, the horizon is different but the sun is the same.

Children learn by playing, asking questions, trying things, watching and thinking. The house, objects and and the other people are different, but unschooling works the same way.

SandraDodd.com/substance
photo by Pushpa Ramachandran

Another benefit of generosity

I've seen a difference in motivation in teens who have been nurtured and whose parents were not adversarial with them. They don't consider food a reward, and so they're less likely to spend all their money on food to self-soothe. They rarely need to "self-soothe" anyway. If they have a success in a project or at work they enjoy it for itself, for the feeling of accomplishment. And if their parents have managed not to use money in lieu of attention and expressions of affection, they're careful with money, too. If money means love, a needy person will want more money. If money is a tool like a hammer, or a substance like bread or toilet paper—necessary for comfort, and it's good to have extra—then it would make no more sense for them to spend all their money than it would make to throw a hammer away because they had already put the nail in the wall, or to unroll all the toilet paper just because it was there. If the parents have been generous, many other problems are averted.

Big Book of Unschooling, page 299 (258 in first edition)
photo of teenaged Marty as Dr. Strangelove at a costume party
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Organic learning

Learning happens all on its own when the parents stop looking at life in a schoolish way, and can appreciate and encourage that sort of organic, constant addition to a personal body of knowledge.

SandraDodd.com/substance
photo by Sandra Dodd

"Do we have to learn this?"

My children have never asked, "Do we have to learn this?" They don't have to learn anything. So everything is equally fun for them. The joy of unexpected discovery is the substance of a typical unschooling day.

SandraDodd.com/presidents
photo by Marty Dodd

Capable and loved

Schuyler wrote:

I am often struck by how much of an effective method unschooling is. Maybe effective isn't the right word, but it feels right, or apt. I don't know of any other approach to people that helps them to feel more themselves, more powerful, more generous, more capable, more loved. And what an outpouring you get in response. And I feel so much better as this parent than I did as the parent I used to be.

—Schuyler Waynforth

SandraDodd.com/substance
photo by Sukayna

Your Own Certain Knowledge

Vague interest can turn to trust in others' accounts of learning and of parenting successes. Trust in those stories can give us courage to experiment, and from that we can discover our own proofs and truths to share with newer unschoolers, who might find courage from that to try these things themselves. Faith in others can only take us a little way, though, and then our own children's learning will carry us onward.


Some ideas become theories. A few theories might turn to convictions. Some early thoughts will be abandoned; others will gain substance. After much thought and use, what is left will be what you believe because you have lived it.

SandraDodd.com/knowledge
photo by Leon McNeill

Two for one

I like photos with reflections. Sometimes they're clear and sometimes they're interestingly changed. Always, though, you see the two things.

Connections and contrasts are the way brains sort. What is the same, and what is different?

Covers of songs; different paintings of the same object or building or person; woodworking projects made from the same pattern by different carpenters with different types of wood... Examining pairs is like playing a game of "spot the difference." Each difference might have a natural explanation, or was a conscious decision on the part of an artist.

What a rich life you and your children might have in those moments that seeing, playing and learning are the same valuable substance.

Two things, two words
photo by Dan Vilter

Strolling along

Explore. Go for a walk. From special days in exotic locations to normal days in the same old place, there will be things to see and thoughts to share.

SandraDodd.com/substance
photo by Chrissy Florence
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Food

The more one's reaction to "food" (the word, the idea, the substance) is strong and emotional, the more evidence there is that the way in which that person was raised to see and deal with food should not be repeated.

SandraDodd.com/food
photo by Sandra Dodd

Solid and sunny

In a moment, in a place, the world can be solid and sunny. Awe-inspiring. Accessible. Safe and strong.

Those conditions can arise in other ways, too. There can be a time of solidity and warmth in a relationship, in family finances, home maintenance, friendships.

Then there will always be more slippery, jarring days when the world is not as warm.

Store up the feelings and memories of the solid, sunny days. Remember they will come around again.

SandraDodd.com/substance
photo by Lisa Jonick

An outpouring of growth

Schuyler Waynforth wrote:

"I am often struck by how much of an effective method unschooling is. Maybe effective isn't the right word, but it feels right, or apt. I don't know of any other approach to people that helps them to feel more themselves, more powerful, more generous, more capable, more loved. And what an outpouring you get in response. And I feel so much better as this parent than I did as the parent I used to be."

—Schuyler Waynforth

SandraDodd.com/substance
photo by Cass Kotrba

Calmly confident

Stay at the playground. Play with sand and water. Find seeds. Sit in the shade, and in the sun. Set ice in the shade and in the sun. Write with ice on a sunny sidewalk. If there's a brass plaque at the park you can set a piece of ice on it when it's hot and get the letters in reverse, melted into the ice. Don't talk about WHY those things happen unless the kids ask. Just let it happen. They'll figure it out.

Once they get the hang of figuring those things out, they'll be able to figure out harder things. If they practice on cheap and easy stuff (ice is great—in the bathtub for floaty-toys, crushed ice for snacks...), they'll be calmly confident about figuring out increasingly harder things.

SandraDodd.com/substance
photo by Nina Haley