Kindness and lightness and joy

It's very easy to control food when you have a home of young children. Most young children aren't going to question the choices you make regarding food, they will eat what they like of what you've offered. The really big challenge is when kids start asking for other things and how you choose to respond to those things.

This is a biggie and it applies to EVERYthing, not just food. Are you going to be a mom that reacts big and opinionated to these questions and inquiries and curiosities? Or are you going to be a mom who helps her kids explore their questions and inquiries and curiosities? This is the very basis on which parents build the foundation of unschooling, if that is indeed the goal.

In each moment of questioning, or inquiry, or curiosity, you get to choose how you respond. You can respond in such a way that a child's question, their learning, is honored, with kindness and lightness and joy, or you can shut that down with your own opinions and ideas. The more a parent can honor a child's curiosity, the more that child will genuinely listen to their parent's ideas about the world. It's the only way that I've seen that kids really truly are influenced by their parents. All other attempts are seen and felt as control, manipulation, coercion, unless of course you have a child that is VERY easy going. But trust me, there will come a time when even that child will challenge you, and the more easy going you've been about their ideas from the beginning, the more influence you will have when that time comes. . . . . Emotional health and emotional well-being are as important, if not more so, as physical health (from food, etc.).

—Jenny Cyphers

SandraDodd.com/eating/control
photo by Sarah S.

Choose and be and do

Don't worry about what kids choose to do. Make sure they have lots of choices, and don't discriminate between what you think might be career path and what might "only" be joyful activity and self-expression, or what might seem to be nothing more than relaxation or escapism. Let them choose and be and do.

SandraDodd.com/watching
photo by Sarah Peshek

Approach "better."

Incremental improvement
Approaching perfection, no. Perfection is subjective.
Approach "better." . . . .

The tool to use to move toward "better" is an awareness of choice.
And practice making choices.
Learning to make choices.
Choices

"Happiness Inside and Out"
photo by Brie Jontry

You don't "have to"

Every time "have to" comes up in writing, speech or thought, back up two words and see it as a choice, and not a have to.

You don't "have to" do that, but your ability to make choices and to live a life of abundant gratitude will be hampered if you don't.

SandraDodd.com/haveto
photo by Marty Dodd
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Experiences, not lessons

Experience is the only true teacher. Give your kids experiences, not lessons. Give them opportunities to follow their hearts until they exhaust their curiosity. The longer you do schoolish things, the longer it will take for them to find a path of their own because they will constantly be looking for approval for their choices from without instead of from within. Expose them to cool and interesting people whenever you can.
. . . .
Relax. Live life. Breathe. Enjoy. Find yourself. Love your children.

—Jennifer / Jen Fox
from the last comment, here

Jennifer was writing about deschooling, so... SandraDodd.com/deschooling
photo by Julie D

Purposes and choices in the moment

When someone questioned "purpose," I responded:

I didn't say "live your live with a purpose," though. Not a singular overriding goal that would cause any other outcome to be failure. That's what some people mean when they say "a purpose," but I didn't say "a purpose." It makes a world of difference.

I was talking about individual situations, projects, days, ways to decide. Not about a whole life.

People do that with decisions, too, sometimes. When we talk about making decisions within unschooling discussions, it's not something like "I made the decision to be an unschooler." It's small decisions in the moment, right before each action or response, about what to have for lunch, where and how and why.

SandraDodd.com/choices
photo by Janine Davies, of a stile in England

But WHY?

Knowing WHY you want to make lunch can make all the rest of it a series of mindful choices. (Unless the "why" is a thoughtless sort of "because the clock hands pointed up".)

What and Why?
photo by Rosie Moon
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Sometime I go EEEEEk.

EEEEEk.
What gets me more than the casual acceptance and recommendation of arbitrary limitations is the characterization of allowing children choices as "plonking a 3, 4, 5, 10 year old in front of the television/google."

Can you imagine ANYone "plonking" a ten year old in front of google? And what? Demanding he look something up? But I have seen kids that young have a BLAST with google and other search functions, about games, or YouTube, or NetFlix.

If they can look up game hints at ten, they will be able to look up building codes or disease treatments or various translations of Bible passages on their own anytime thereafter, given resources. Practicing on something that might seem "loose, easy and unnecessary" can *BE* what is needed for them to be competent, functional workers when they're older. And I won't say "when they're grown," because my kids were competent functional workers when they were mid-teens, every single one of them.

So when people who haven't had a child who is mid-teens disparages my knowledge in light of their paranoid theories, sometimes I go EEEEEk.

Sandra
2011

Plonking a child down in front of the television
is where I found it, but the original is here:
on Always Learning,
wherein the rant is all one paragraph.

photo by Sandra Dodd, of a granddaughter playing a game, a husband reading the news, and the TV was playing "Pupstruction" for another grandchild not appearing in that photo

Planning, resources and intention

Sylvia Woodman wrote:

Unschooling is not "doing nothing." It takes planning, and resources, and intention. I think it felt more like work in the earlier years while I was still doing the bulk of my Deschooling. (Don't get me wrong there are still things that "catch me by surprise" in my thinking even now! But it's not as constant.) But at some point, there was a shift. A Leveling Up. Unschooling became less of the way we were educating the children and more of the way we lived our lives. It wasn't one thing that we did. It was a million tiny choices (and not so tiny choices) that led us to where we are today.

—Sylvia Woodman

SandraDodd.com/doitwell

and the quote is also at SandraDodd.com/levelup/
photo by Jo Isaac

Thought, power and freedom!

"Self control" is all tied up with being bad, and with failure. Choices, though, are wrapped in thought, power and freedom!

SandraDodd.com/self-regulation
photo by teenaged Holly Dodd,
of some of her shrinky-dink art
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Less control, more learning

Some people homeschool because they think schools teach too much and aren't controlling the kids well enough. Some people homeschool because they think schools teach too little and control too much. I don't mind my kids learning things schools fear to teach, or having choices in their lives. Practicing on small things gave them knowledge and experience when they were old enough to practice on larger things. Some families homeschool to limit their children's access and freedom. For us, it's the opposite.

from the MomLogic interview
photo by Cathy Koetsier

Intelligent choices

Unschooling parents who have spent years giving their children freedom and options have learned that limitations create need while freedom creates intelligent choices.

SandraDodd.com/myths

SandraDodd.com/choice
photo by Cátia Maciel

Joy. That's it.

IF you can manage to move from cynicism and critical darkness into wonder and abundance—if you can make choices that help you live lightly—your life, your partner's life, your dog's life, your neighbors' lives AND OF COURSE your children's lives will be better. If you can find joy in being a parent, then you can enjoy doing it and it will bring you joy.

People who resist or reject joy will be rejecting the best tool they could have used to unschool well, to have longterm relationships with others, and to age gracefully.

Joy.
That's it.

SandraDodd.com/joy2
photo by Cass Kotrba

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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"Trying 'no limits'"

Someone wrote:

I see so many families trying 'no limits' and then…

I responded:

Two problems: "trying" and "no limits." If a kid knows the parent is only "trying" something, he will certainly take all he can get, desperately and in a frenzy.

"No limits" is not something any family should believe in, or promise their children The world has limits of all sorts. Parents don't need to add to that, but parents can't guarantee "no limits." They CAN give children lots of choices and options.

Gradual change would have helped.

Saying yes a thousand little times is better for everyone than one big confusing "Yes forever, don't care, OH WAIT! Take it back."

SandraDodd.com/cairns
photo by Sandra Dodd (in Albuquerque)

Be sweet and soft

Once a mom came and said she was having a hard time being present with her children. She wrote:

I hate it, and feel like I'm missing out on so many sweet, little moments, but it is so hard for me to be fully present, almost like I can't control it.

I responded:

Well don't hate it. Hate's no good. And you can't "control it." It might be easier to see it as a series of choices, with lots of chances to zone out, and lots of opportunities to focus back in.

People zone in and out all the time. It's not a sin. Live lightly. That's good for your children, if you can come back as easily as you slipped momentarily away, and if you're not hardened with self-recrimination and hate.

SandraDodd.com/negativity

Be sweet and soft, for your children.

Now, 11 years later, I have a page called "positivity," though both pages are about making choices that take one incrementally toward the more positive.
SandraDodd.com/positivity
photo by Lydia Koltai

Paths and choices

"Your role isn't to set up a path for them to follow but to set up the environment for them to explore."

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/nest
photo by Sandra Dodd

More peaceful, more loving

If you can envision the kind of relationship and the life of learning you want to have, then every time you make a choice, choose the one that takes you nearer to that goal. Learn to make many choices a day and choose the more peaceful, more loving options whenever you can. Choose to make your life more positive, and less negative.

SandraDodd.com/video/doright.html
(video and transcript)
Related info: Better Choice
photo by Cátia Maciel

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

Exploring interests

Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

What sets unschooling apart from other homeschooling approaches isn’t children making choices. It’s parents creating an environment that supports exploring interests. It’s creating an environment that allows children to make choices based on interest.

Unschooling is *parents* creating the environment that allows children to choose. One choice might be to go to school. But children aren’t unschooling in school. They aren’t unschooling in a class. They aren’t unschooling when they do a workbook. They’re learning.

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/unschoolingis
photo by Cátia Maciel