If you don't decide, or if you don't think of it many times a day when you make small choices, and decide how to act and react, then things won't get better.
Not every step will be forward, but if most of them are, then you'll make progress.
One surprise is that programs the parents had thought were "stupid" have led to discussion and research on the autobahn, the metric system, classic movies, technology, international sports, geography, segregation, famous speeches, sportsmanship and ethics, live theatre, opera, oil and mining, hygiene, reproduction, Australian food, life cycle of frogs, hurricane formation, trust, cooperation, classical music, Vikings, religion, art, how different animals survive the winter, Galileo, Japanese mythology, cooking, geology… this list could be twice as long without leaving that section of my website.
One trail went from a mummy cartoon to Egypt, to Pharaohs, to slavery, to the Civil War, to Abraham Lincoln, and to other presidents. The Simpsons' parody of Schoolhouse Rock led to a discussion on Thoreau and Walden.
text from page 141 (or 153) of The Big Book of Unschooling
and that page links to SandraDodd.com/t/cheesy and SandraDodd.com/t/learning
cartoon portrait by Gina Trujillo, my niece, based on this self-made photo
When I'm reading a book, I decide by the moment whether to keep reading or to stop.
Even writing this post, I could easily click out of it and not finish, or I could finish it and decide not to post it. Choices, choices, choices.
"Eating decisions"?
Choices. If ALL of that is changed to a model in which there is food, and people make choices—lots of small choices, not big "decisions"—a hundred hard problems disappear.
In one small moment, if a child can pick up a food or not; smell it or not; taste it or not; keep that bite and chew and swallow, or spit it out; take another bite or not; dip it in something or not; put another food with it or not—EVERYTHING changes.
|
The most effective thing I did to help my sons be their whole,
individual, unharmed selves was to support, encourage, and enrich their
interests, choices, and enjoyments - even when I feared that their
choices might have negative repercussions, or their choices made me feel
uncomfortable.
. . . . Look at your kids, watch your kids. What lights them up? Do & support more of that. —Caren Knox
|
|
If you don't decide, or if you don't think of it many times a day when you make small choices, and decide how to act and react, then things won't get better.
Not every step will be forward, but if most of them are, then you'll make progress.
| "Happy, supported, trusted kids don't make the same choices as unhappy, controlled kids." —Joyce Fetteroll |  |
 | "Children that truly have choices, won't feel the need to always choose the most sugary choice, or the choice that gets them away from home the fastest... They have access to it all, so they can make choices based on what they really want or need, not what is most limited in their lives." —Ren Allen |
When you begin to see learning from new and interesting angles, you yourself are learning about learning (in addition to all the things about bugs or food, bridges or clouds or trains that you're learning with your children, or when they're not even there).
Your softer, clearer vision of the world makes you a softer, clearer person.
