Quietly alert

If you can choose to be more aware over less aware, that will help.

One aspect of awareness is working on your ability to be quietly alert, like a mother hawk, aware of the location of your child, her mood and your surroundings.

A Loud Peaceful Home
photo by Karen James
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Spiritual growth

Where the spirituality comes in that, I think partly is the trust that your child is an organism that wants to learn—that that’s how people grow. There is physical growth that takes water food and rest, there’s mental growth which takes input—ideas, things to think about, things to try, things to touch. And then there’s spiritual growth, which takes more and more understanding—an awareness that it’s better to be sweet to other people than not, it’s better to be generous with your neighbours than hateful, better to pet your cat nicely than to throw it around.

At first it’s a practical consideration but later on, as the children are looking at the world through older eyes, they start to see that no matter whether the neighbour noticed or not, it made you a better person. No matter whether your cat would have done your stuff damage or not, it made you a better person. So I think there’s a spirituality there of respect given to the children being passed on.

Improving Unschooling
SandraDodd.com/radiotranscript
photo by Brie Jontry

Awareness of options

Pam Sorooshian wrote:

Lots of people go through their whole lives never feeling like they had choices in many many areas of their lives in which they really did. Just like it is useful for unschoolers to drop school language (not use the terms teaching or lessons or curriculum to refer to the natural learning that happens in their families) it is useful to drop the use of "have to's" and replace it with an awareness of choices and options.

How we think—the language we use to think—about what we're doing, matters.

—Pam Sorooshian

SandraDodd.com/haveto
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Most things are many things

Few things have only one name, one use, or one aspect. People have different roles and relationships, skills and traits. The same tree will look different in different stages, seasons, and times of day.

See things.
Appreciate them.

SandraDodd.com/awareness
photo by Lydia Koltai
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February 29 is Frederic's birthday, in The Pirates of Penzance. That's a musical from 1879, with a 1983 film version—humor and artistry from the past two centuries, current again today.

Listening, observing, exploring, helping...

Rebecca Creighton wrote:

I'm grateful for this forum that is helping me learn that it (unschooling, parenting, relationships, life) is not about perfection, right vs. wrong, a formulaic way of doing something, or a specific outcome—but rather, it's about listening, observing, exploring, helping, growing, awareness, choices—getting better at those things—little by little.

—Rebecca Creighton

The quote was slightly edited by Rebecca, for me to use. The original is in a comment at What peace feels like
photo by Jesper Conrad

Other possibilities

Being steeped in principles of peace, respect and strength has allowed me to learn that there are other possibilities. It's almost like recovering from addiction...addiction of the effects of control. Little by little, day by day, with a lot of (sometimes painful) awareness...slowly new peaceful joyful stuff replaces the old, sad stuff.

—Alex Arnott
(a.k.a. Alex Wildrising)

SandraDodd.com/recovery
photo by Brie Jontry

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

Thought, emotion and awareness

When someone recommends turning full on toward the child, that means don't keep reading your newspaper or your computer screen. Pause the video. Put down the gardening tools. It doesn't mean stare at the child until he finishes his story. It means to be WITH him, with him in thought, and with him in emotion if needed, and with him in awareness.

SandraDodd.com/eyecontact
photo by Lydia Koltai

Like a zombie?

Me, in response to a(nother) question, once, about kids who become so involved in something that they are like zombies, don't hear people, don't stop to eat...

If something is REALLY fascinating, extremely engaging, those things might happen. A brand-new video game at an exciting point. A book as good as Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, first time through. A news item on the death of a favorite person.

Those things can happen to me, still, as an adult—that I am mesmerized, engaged, involved in something, and it can be a program (I've been watching some great Korean dramas lately), or a book, or an interesting or difficult bit of sewing. It can take me a few seconds to come to myself and respond to another person.
. . . .

It would be unfortunate if someone's unschooled child loved a game or story so much that he seemed to be a zombie, and the parents started to limit his life because of it. It would be an unfortunate lack of appreciation and relationship and awareness on the part of the parents.

SandraDodd.com/zombies
photo by Destiny Dodd

Explore ideas

There is no academic degree that would enable you to answer all your children's questions.

SandraDodd.com/awareness
photo by Rosie Moon

Peace and use

In response to a question in a discussion once, I wrote:

Don't think of your brain. Think of your mind and of your awareness. A little tiny brain can hold a LOT of information. A big fat one can fail to do so. It's not size, it's peace and use.

Shan Burton responded:

OH! This just resonated through my mind and awareness.

What a concise, clear way of expressing it. It feels to me like this is the difference between unschooling learning and school learning. School learning is focused (and not so well, maybe) on pouring things into brains.

Unschooling is about learning, and engagement, and connections, and awareness of things that can get deeper and deeper, throughout life. It works that way for kids and for adults.

Peace and use. I feel like bit is going to be connecting to lots of other things in my mind and awareness for some time to come...

—Shan Burton,
most of that

Those quotes, and more, in context: SandraDodd.com/awareness
photo by Denaire Nixon

Good things swirl

Debbie Regan wrote:

Children prosper when parents are able to provide enough sense of safety, calmness and support, that feelings of peace and joy are close at hand. From there the business of childhood—exploring and learning about the world can progress unimpeded by stress. Stress is a distraction from the natural flow of curiosity, focus, joy, excitement, engagement, creativity, emotional awareness, learning...

The more peace and mindfulness I bring in my home, the more all those good things swirl around.

—Debbie Regan

The quote was in a passing discussion, but you might like this:
Becoming the Parent You Want to Be
photo by Julie D

Keep looking

If you're traveling or if you're in a familiar place, the things you see are viewed through your own windows, or doors. You see through your own eyes, and experience. *You* see.

The world you see where you are today will not be what you could see ten years ago, or twenty.

What your child sees and what you see will probably be different, and continue to change.

Keep looking.

SandraDodd.com/awareness
photo by Ester Siroky

What's important

Calm yourself with the awareness of what's important.

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I wrote that, but had not shared it in this blog. I found the quote last night at Being and knowing and passing it on, which I wrote in 2009.

Page 205 of The Big Book of Unschooling that Holly was reading that day.
It's page 238 in the 2019 edition.

photo by Sandra Dodd

Quick personal status check

Part of self awareness
is to be physically self aware.

One deep breath leads to another
selfie(s) by Holly Dodd
(there were others)

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.

Really unschooling

Gradually, steadily, consider what might be better, how you would like to be, and what you have learned will help.

Be in the immediate presence of your own child, with the awareness and knowledge you can use to make that moment better.

The kinder thing, the better thing
photo by Nina Haley

Knowing where you are

Parents with a realistic and considered awareness of what their own freedoms are within the laws of the apartment building, housing development, city, county/parish/township, state/province or nation are free to share some of those with their children.

We let Holly choose carpet once, but we couldn't have legally required her to pay for it, as she was only eight or nine at the time.

We have surprised waiters in many restaurants by turning to our children questioningly when the waiter asks the adults "Would you like to see the dessert menu?" They're even more surprised when the kids say, "No thanks," or "I'm full," while making friendly eye contact with the waiter.

More, in context: SandraDodd.com/freedom/limits
photo by Cátia Maciel

More peaceful behavior

Amy Carpenter wrote:

Adrenaline is a big part of an anger reaction — the "fight or flight" reaction is a very difficult one to reason ourselves out of once it hits. In addition to giving us quick reactions and additional strength, adrenaline gives us "tunnel vision" — we are only able to think about, or even see, one or maybe two variables at a moment (as opposed to when our conscious minds function normally, and we can juggle 5-7 variables in a situation).

I hope it doesn't sound like I'm just philosophizing (in a non-helpful way) about anger. I have collected these tidbits about anger because it has played a big part in my own life. It is only in the past few years that I can consistently count on myself to act the way I want to, even when "driven to anger." Knowing these things about anger have helped my own self-awareness, which led to much more peaceful behavior on my part.

There is more: Understanding Anger
photo by Karen James

Natural residents of Earth

So how do unschoolers learn geography? Better than I did in school. They learn it with flexibility and a lack of awareness of having "learned geography." They learn it from games, movies, satellite photographs, globes, the history of ships and airplanes, of cloth and houses, of the Okinawan karate and of Roman bathhouses. Their model of the universe is better than mine was when I was their age. Their confidence is better than mine is now! They are learning about THEIR planet. I felt like an unwelcome guest here, when I was "just a kid." They feel like natural residents of Earth, and they do know their neighborhood.

SandraDodd.com/geography
photo by Olga Degtyareva, while visiting Stone Town