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

Aim for better

Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

Rather than shooting for perfect, why not aim for better? Perfect you're bound to miss and you will have failed. But better is doable. 🙂

We all have issues about something. They go deep and are tangled up around other stuff but working at them bit by bit can make them better.

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/issues
photo by Hema Bharadwaj

Raised up

With "make the better choice," the quality of the options gradually is raised far and away from the original starting-place options.

SandraDodd.com/levelup
photo by Jo Isaac, of a barking owl

Greater clarity

Karen James wrote:


If we don't move away from the extremes—those slightly blurry edges—we won't get to appreciate the crisp details of whatever it is we do hope to see and understand better.

That's true for most things, I believe.

Learn to recognize your own extreme thinking. See the nevers and the alwayses. 😊 Then, move around a bit, in search of greater clarity. That shift in thinking will help most relationships, I'm confident.

—Karen James

SandraDodd.com/balance
photo by Gail Higgins

Gentle with a child

We make choices ALL the time. Learning to make better ones in small little ways, immediate ways, makes life bigger and better. Choosing to be gentle with a child, and patient with ourselves, and generous in ways we think might not even show makes our children more gentle, patient and generous.

SandraDodd.com/haveto
photo by Lydia Koltai
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All-slightly-better Everything

Someone wrote that learning about unschooling felt like learning a new language.

I responded

It's like learning a new everything, but an all-slightly-better everything.

SandraDodd.com/beginning
photo by Renee Cabatic

Calm, happy, trusting

Someone commented that responses to her questions had hurt her feelings. I wrote:

When he is calm and happy and trusting, THEN you will feel better—not because of things we wrote, or didn't, but because you will BE better. You will see it in your son's eyes.

Don't make it about you. Make it about his range of exploration and his choices and his learning and his happiness. You can live on the interest, if you invest enough in him.

(at Radical Unschooling Info, on Facebook)
photo by Amy Milstein

Sometimes sitting on the fence is good

Make the better choice.


SandraDodd.com/betterchoice
photo by Lisa Jonick, of her chickens avoiding snow
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Slowly becoming wise

As children grow, parents age. Learning with them and from them and near them is learning we didn't expect.

Becoming a better parent is becoming a better person.

Unexpected Benefits of Unschooling
photo by Colleen Prieto

Better biochemicals

Once I jokingly complained that a package of citric acid was marked "chemical free." Several people joked entertainingly, but a couple were humorless and critical.

I noted:
Citric acid IS a chemical. Looking for harm is, in itself, harmful. Fear and negativity stir up chemicals your own body makes, that aren't good for you. Induce the better biochemicals by being sweet, hopeful and calm.

Irrational fear of chemicals:
SandraDodd.com/chemicals
photo of a navel orange slice hanging by thread, by Sandra Dodd
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More and better

What SHOULD I be doing as an unschooling parent?

• More.
• Better than school
• Making memories

Unschooling Very Well
SandraDodd.com/hsc/unschoolingwell
photo by Rosie Moon

Take a step thoughtfully

People can ruin their lives with unschooling if they don't know where they're going. If they just intend to make a bunch of wild decisions and mill around, it won't work. Their kids will end up needing to go back to school, and being clueless kids in school. So it's almost that big a project. You will have to take hundreds of thousands of steps. And so it's better to take a step thoughtfully, knowing what direction you're going, than to thunder around yelling, "I'm an unschooler! I'm an unschooler!"

Extras with Sandra Dodd
I was speaking, not writing. You can listen (at 15:27), or read the transcript.
photo by Brie Jontry

Positivity, gratitude, optimism

If someone wants to unschool well, positivity is better than negativity. Gratitude is better than resentment. Optimism is better than pessimism.

SandraDodd.com/better
photo by Cátia Maciel

Synthesis

If your family’s priority is learning, you can spend time in no better way than playing with and rearranging the ideas you already have and incorporating bits of what you see, hear, smell, taste, feel and think.

SandraDodd.com/input
Photo by Sandra Dodd

Thoughtful choices are better

Arbitrary rules will never be better for unschooling, nor for any relationship, than thoughtful choices will be. Unschooling parents must gradually learn to make thoughtful choices themselves and give their kids the opportunity to make choices.

The quote is from an interview
but here's a link to
Making the better choice
photo by Sandra Dodd

Gratitude and abundance

If unschooling parents can move away from hatred and fear, and toward gratitude and abundance, their children's lives are profoundly better. (And the parents' lives are, too.)

SandraDodd.com/negativity
photo by Colleen Paeff

Thinking more clearly

This picks up in the midst of something, but endure the first two sentences and it will make sense.

'How do "we"' is a problem. The person is asking (I think) whether WE will support HER limiting her child. Each of us acts after consideration of what we know and believe, what our priorities are, what other factors (partners, grandparents, home-owner/landlord, religion, local laws)... But I acted with and toward my children as a partner in the way, in each moment, that seemed sensible and helpful to me, as much as was in my power in that moment. If I didn't do great, I would plan to do better in future moments. If I was happy with my actions, I'd try to remember what I was thinking so I could do that again in the future. But there wasn't a "we" except me and the child I was dealing with.

SandraDodd.com/radiation
photo by Colleen Prieto

Life at home is blooming

A mom named Heather wrote:

Sandra Dodd & Joyce Kurtak Fetteroll, I came to unschooling to provide a better way to learn for my kids. Then I came to radical unschooling because I discovered it was about more than school. Now I'm discovering my hang-ups about food / nutrition / healthy food obsessions / weekend "junk" binges and controlling the groceries in our home and now radically unschooling (and your wisdom!) is helping me to unravel these problems and live wholly in the area of food too! Radical unschooling has SO MUCH been about me discovering issues I didn't even know I had, and life at home is blooming. I can't thank you enough for sharing your knowledge!

—Heather...

SandraDodd.com/change
photo by Sarah S, who took the photo in September 2023, of candy that's available for her kids anytime, and invites us to note there is still Easter candy in there

Be amazed

When someone asked"What are some good ways to teach a 3 1/2 year old during a grocery store visit?" Joyce Fetteroll responded:

Don't teach. Just look at *everything* with new eyes and you'll see how amazing:

automatic doors and scanners and scales and deli ticket machines are and all the different kinds of fish and lobsters and

how many different sounds you can hear when you close your eyes and

the man wearing a polka dot bow tie and

how high up the cereal is stacked (lift her up to get one🙂) and

whether there are more tie shoes or slip ons on the people in the store and

how you can draw pictures on the inside of the glass doors of the freezer after they're opened and they frost over and

whether the different coffee beans and candles and apples smell different and

whether she likes blueberries or raspberries or blackberries better and

how many different kinds of circle cereal there are and

how the different types of potatoes feel and

whether people say Hi when you say Hi to them and

how many different kitties or different types of pets there are on the products in the pet food aisle and

whether the stories in the Weekly World News are true or not (well, maybe for an older kid since at 3 *anything* is possible) 🙂 and

whether you recognize the Muzak version of the song playing and....

Just live life amazed. 🙂

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/discovery
photo by Sandra Dodd, 2009, Norfolk, UK
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Choosing joy

Tina Bragdon wrote:

I saw choosing joy was SO much better....really...unschooling and life just flowed....the relationships piece of an unschooling lifestyle was so much more full and sweet. My mind was calmer. It helped me deal better with those niggling fears that popped up about unschooling when I chose to be in THIS MOMENT....seeing the joy and the fun of the moment settled me instead of me stewing for days about if my kids were learning or what about this, or that.

—Tina Bragdon

More by Tina at SandraDodd.com/negativity
photo by Sarah S.