Discernment

Control implies one KNOWS the right answer and if he's not "out of control" or "lacking self control," there will be no choice; he will control himself.

Decision making requires lots of data and thought and freedom and discernment.

SandraDodd.com/control
photo by Holly Dodd

Over and over and often

You don't need to control yourself to keep yourself from being controlling. 🙂

Make generous, kind choices, over and over, as often as you can.

SandraDodd.com/battle
photo by Nina Haley

Be soft and grateful

Someone wrote once:

"I really have to be vigilant on myself and try not to control."

I was amused, but responded, in part:

Being "vigilant" sounds like absolutely exhausting effort. Relax. You do not "have to be vigilant." Especially not on yourself. That's you watching yourself. Way too much work. Let go of one of those selves. Relax inside the other one. Have a snooze. Don't be vigilant.

When you wake up, think. Am I glad to be here? Is this a good moment? If so, breathe and smile and touch your child gently. Be soft. Be grateful. Find abundance. Gently.

SandraDodd.com/battle/
photos by Rosie Todd

Learning, not being taught

Weeding out terminology we would prefer not to mean improves thinking.
. . . .Every time someone says "taught" or "teach" they can slip back into the whole school thing and be seeing the world through school-colored glasses. If they do what it takes, mentally and emotionally, to recast their reports and then their thoughts in terms of who *learned* something, then they can start to see the world in terms of learning.

The last holdout for some people is "he taught himself..." but maybe that should be the FIRST to go. Teaching comes from someone WITH skills or knowledge passing them on to those without them. If I taught myself to play guitar, I would have had to have known how first.
. . . .I learned from everything around me, from trial and error, from watching others and asking questions.

The information was being sucked in by me, not pushed in by me or anyone else. I didn't PUT the information inside me, I drew it in.

SandraDodd.com/control
photo by Sandra Dodd, of bricks with Florida on the other side

Arbitrary rules and limits

Arbitrary rules and limits have the characteristic that they entice kids to think about how they can get around them and can even entice kids to cheat and lie. I know a couple of really really great unschooled kids whose parents set limits on their computer use time. The kids used to get up in the middle of the night to use the computer while their parents were asleep. It is an unintended but very very predictable side effect of rules and limits that they always set parents and children up as adversaries (the parents are setting the rules and the children are being required to obey them &mash; these are adversarial positions) and can lead to kids feeling guilty and sneaky when they inevitably bend or even outright break the rules. Avoiding that kind of possibility is one really good reason for not having rules or limits at all.

Coercion creates resistance and reduces learning.

—Pam Sorooshian
(in an obscure discussion from 2004)

SandraDodd.com/control
photo by Chelsea Thurman Artisan
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Emotional well-being

Emotional health and emotional well-being are as important, if not more so, as physical health.

—Jenny Cyphers

Moving Toward Less Control, Concerning Food
photo by Janine Davies
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Much better

There are no "violent video games." Kids are sitting on a couch in their parents' home pushing buttons on a remote control. That's not hurting them or anyone else. (Or young adults are home sitting and pushing buttons, instead of being out drinking or vandalizing something.)

In every single case of real-life violence anyone can think of, wouldn't it have been better if the perpetrator had been home on the couch than out causing trouble? 🙂

SandraDodd.com/violence
photo by Sandra Dodd in 2012,
of a cool casual arrangement of stuff at Lisa Jonick's house

Learning to listen

Kids can't figure out anything if there's someone hovering and saying "Ooooh, good!" and "yuck, horrible."

If they're not allowed to decide which foods appeal to them, and what then those foods do to their body, then those children don't learn to listen to their own bodies. And it's likely that at some point they will learn NOT to listen to their moms. Then they will be eating things the mom disapproves of, and those might be things they never would even have chosen if their mom hadn't been sorting food into sin and virtue, poison and health, in extreme and sometimes arbitrary, faddish or political ways.

Though I left a few phrases out, the original is here:
food control (problems with that)
photo by Gail Higgins
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The joys that come

We can't control or contain the world, but we can appreciate the joys that come.

Gratitude
photo by Sandra Dodd

Natural growth

An apple seed grows an apple tree. No person ever born knows more about how an apple tree should naturally grow than that apple seed, if it's left to grow naturally.

I'm old enough now that I've grown trees from transplanted saplings, and from seeds I planted myself. I cannot predict or control or affect what kind of tree it will become. What I can do is make sure it's watered and protected from damage by animals, foot traffic, and lawn mowers. If it has what it needs, it will grow as it should.

If a child has what she needs, she will grow as she should. I know how to mess a kid up, and have chosen to try not to do those things. I'm trying to let them grow as they should.

SandraDodd.com/musicroom
(Follow-up page for a 2009 conference)
photo by Amber Ivey
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Moments of growth

Some moments seem more important than they are. Other moments are more important than they seem.

We can't guarantee or control much, in the world, so look for the good, and look for the growth.

A moment of peace and sweetness cannot be recreated. Perhaps new ones can be induced, though!

SandraDodd.com/gratitude
photo by Elaine Santana
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One more?

This is about love, and abundance, and trust-building. What would you pay, if you could buy love, abundance and trust?

If your kids ask for another one (potato, cookie, peanut butter sandwich) I think it's helpful if you just say "Sure!" and make another one, even if you don't think they'll finish it, even if you think they'll be too full or whatever. As long as they're not eating someone else's share (and even so, if the other person agrees), it's not a big deal. If they don't finish, save the leftover for someone else. If they do finish and they're "too full" that's how they'll learn their capacity (which will change anyway as they get older).


Moving Toward Less Control, Concerning Food
photo by Rachel Cooley Green
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Mysteries

"Don't borrow trouble," my granny used to say. Lately that comes to mind, in a good way. There are things we can't control. There are things that are none of our business! About some things, sometimes, it's okay not to care. Let there be mysteries. Parents with the ability to smile and to see the sky and to be grateful for local, familiar water and air are better for children than parents who are angry and complaining. Be a peaceful place for your children.

"How important is it?"
I took the photo, of a mystery unrelated to me in every possible way.
People in New Mexico neither need to be for nor against cane cartage.

Control

If you think of controlling yourself, and of your children controlling themselves, it's still about control. If people live by principles their choices come easily.



SandraDodd.com/self-regulation
photo by Holly Dodd

Learning what's important

In 1997, someone asked how unschooling moms stayed patient.

Other moms have told me they think I'm patient. It makes me feel guilty because I have the internal list of all the times I've blown it, but a few things have helped me.

The biggest was Adult Children of Alcoholics, an al-Anon group. I went to meetings for four years and learned a lot of calming and encouraging things. One of those is to remember what I wanted and needed as a child. Then I try to give those things to my children. I don't mean toys or books. I mean listening, and smiling, and joking, and letting them climb on stuff even if it made me nervous, and not making such strictly-to-the-minute rules like "be back at 5:45 or else" and other arbitrary control-junk. One of the quotes/sayings from that learning-time is "How Important Is It?" and thinking that little mantra can help a ton all by itself. If we waste our energy and our relationship with our children on how they wear their socks and where they keep their toothbrush between times, there's nothing left for important things. I try to save it for important things, and I try not to be the defining judge of what's important. There are things the kids consider very important, and I force myself (at first, until I calm myself and remind myself to give) to pay attention to their stuff too. No "That's nice dear" while I ignore them. When it happens, occasionally, that I've done that, I feel bad and I sometimes go back and say, "Tell me again about that game. I'm sorry. I wasn't really listening."

Next biggest influence was La Leche League. There I learned that children have within them what they need to know, and that the parent and child are a team, not adversaries. It reinforced the idea that if you are loving and gentle and patient that children want to do what you ask them to do, and that they will come to weaning, potty training, separation from mom, and all those milestones without stress and without fear if you don't scare them or stress them! Seems kind of obvious, but our culture has 1,000 roadblocks.


From having studied meditation and Eastern religion, I learned the value of breathing. I think what it does is dissipate adrenaline. I remember in the 1960's and early 1970's it was Big News that yogis could *actually* slow their heart rates at will! WELL duh. People had been doing it in church (those who cared to actually "be still and know") for hundreds of years, but nobody thought to wire up contemplative Christians.

When people (parents or kids) are agitated and are thinking for a moment that something has to happen JUST THIS WAY and RIGHT NOW, breathing helps. Deep breathing, slow, and full-as-possible exhalation. This is, in Western terms, "count to ten." Calm down and let the adrenaline go. Some people have biochemistry that's not easy to control, and some people count too fast.

SandraDodd.com/parentingpeacefully
(read aloud as an intro, in the recording at the bottom of the page)

photo by Sandra Dodd of the neighbor's tree seen through an inch-thick piece of ice from a bucket of water on a cold day
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Real decisions

I think it's as important to turn away from "self control" and "self regulation" as it is to turn away from schoolishness itself.

When people have the opportunity and encouragement to make real decisions for real reasons, and they know why the're doing what they're doing, and they're not doing things that don't seem to have a purpose, then "control" and "regulation" don't factor in at all.

I know it sounds crazy, and I also know a LOT of families who thought it sounded crazy and now have that same feeling about serious discussions of "self control" or "impulse control."

Choices, choices!!!!
photo by KathrynRobles
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Aiming the spotlight

Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

I once described the difference between teaching and learning as where you shine the spotlight. In teaching, the spotlight is on the teacher. There may or may not be a learner taking in what the teacher is doing.

With learning, the spotlight is on the learner. The source is unimportant. There might be a teacher. There might be a set of blocks. There might just be the learner's thoughts.

If that's called "teaching" then it pulls the spotlight away from the learner. The light shines on the source as if it were the actor in the process.

I think parents like to feel like a child's learning is their project. If the teacher isn't in the spotlight, then something they aren't in control of or directing is happening.

—Joyce Fetteroll

The photo is re-run from Clearer and larger
photo by Julie D.
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Thoughtful choices

"One of the wonderful things about unschooling is that we come to understand that children are learning all the time. Knowing that, we can make thoughtful choices about how we'd like to influence that learning. We cannot control what is learned, but we can create an environment in which joyful learning can thrive."

—Karen James

Patience
photo by Sarah Anderson Thimmes
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Ease into change

Instead of just going from lots of control to "do whatever you want," a really sweet way to do it is quickly but gradually. Quickly in your head, but not all of a sudden in theirs. Just allow yourself to say "okay" or "sure!" anytime it's not really going to be a problem.


If something isn't going to hurt anything (going barefoot, wearing the orange jacket with the pink dress, eating a donut, not coming to dinner because it's the good part of a game/show/movie, staying up later, dancing) you can just say "Okay."

And then later instead of "aren't you glad I let you do that? Don't expect it every time," you could say something reinforcing for both of you, like "That really looked like fun," or "It felt better for me to say yes than to say no. I should say 'yes' more," or something conversational but real.

The purpose of that is to help ease them from the controlling patterns to a more moment-based and support-based decision making mindset. If they want to do something and you say yes in an unusual way (unusual to them), communication will help. That way they'll know you really meant to say yes, that it wasn't a fluke, or you just being too distracted to notice what they were doing.

SandraDodd.com/eating/control.html
photo by Julie D
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Be open to learning

When something someone heard from a friend or read on a blog is stated adamantly as TRUTH, rational thought has been batted away. Some people have the fervor of conversion upon them, having heard that there is an easy way to SAVE their families from disease and death, to make their children smarter, and better behaved; to make themselves strong and beautiful into old age. It is partially fountain-of-youth stuff. It is partly an attractive excuse for controlling children (and spouses, sometimes).

The quote is from a page about food as a religion, but it's really about control
(being too easily influenced, and then trying to pass it on)
photo by Amy Milstein
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