Good reason

Every choice you make should be made consciously, thoughtfully, for real and good reasons.

SandraDodd.com/decisions
photo by Sandra Dodd

Lean toward it

You can lean—even without moving—with thoughts and decisions toward where you want to be.

Thanks to Rachel Miller for saving and sharing something I said during a presentation in Texas in April 2014.
photo by Sandra Dodd
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They don't owe me

My children didn't ask to be born. I was the one who wanted children. I invited them here by my actions and decisions. I owe them. I owe them food and friendship and protection. I owe them comfort if I can arrange it. I owe them the best of me, and to help nurture the best of them.

SandraDodd.com/serviceGift.html
photo by Jihong Tang

Real and good reasons

Every choice you make should be made consciously, thoughtfully, for real and good reasons.

SandraDodd.com/decisions
photo by Sandra Dodd

More positive, more nurturing

Commentary on it being bad advice for a stranger to say "follow your heart":

Making a "feeling" decision can not only bring down the family and bring down the child's opportunities, but it doesn't help the parent to lay out their own wounds to dry.

Logic is good.

So if a parent knows that she wants to be kinder, gentler, more positive, more nurturing, there are things that she can do—little changes she can make and decisions she can make that lead her toward that. And "follow your heart" is not a good one.

Unschooling Support: Extras with Sandra Dodd (recording and transcript)
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Who you Are

How do you apportion your patience, attention, courtesy, time, money, material help, respect?

Those sorts of decisions make you who you are.

SandraDodd.com/eyecontact
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Mathematics

Mathematics could use a better name. Seriously. School has gone and made that one all scary. In addition (she said mathematically), it's not called the same thing in all English-speaking places. "Math" in some places, and "maths" in others.

But it's about measuring and weighing and sharing. It's about making decisions in video games (buy the watering can? risk danger to collect coins?) and it's about how fast music goes and which ladder to use to get onto the roof. It's almost never about numbers themselves, and it's never about workbooks (except for workbook manufacture and purchase).

I went to look for a different word for "mathematics," and I didn't find one. One Old English word was "telling." For arithmetic: "cyphering," or sums. So I went looking for modern, philosophical definitions of mathematics that had nothing to do with school, and I have collected all these bits and pieces for you: Mathematics is a science dealing with the logic of quantity and shape and arrangement; structure, space, and change; logic, transformations, numbers and more general ideas which encompass these concepts.

Structure and transformations? I use those things. Shape and arrangement? That covers art, and music. Flowers in vases and books on shelves.

Unschooling is simple but not easy, and it's not easy to understand, but when math is a normal part of life then people can discover it and use it in natural ways and it becomes a part of their native intelligence.

Unschoolers and Mathematics
the image is a Holly photo
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Comfort, Joy and Decision Making

When the parents are curious and can find joy in exploring and discussing common interesting things in the everyday world, unschooling can make a lot of sense very easily. Optimism and positive attitudes help. If the children's comfort and joy can be a high priority and the parents can see the value of letting even young children begin to make choices, by the time the kids are teens they'll have had a great deal of real-world experience in making thoughtful decisions.

SandraDodd.com/interviews/successful
photo by Holly Dodd, through a dollhouse window
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The best answers

It's hard to explain unschooling, partly because the best answers are "it depends," followed by questions for the parents to consider while they're making their decisions. . . . . Getting unschooling is a process. There will be more to get once you're comfortable with the new understandings and behaviors.

Other factors
photo by Abby Davis

Step thoughtfully

If somebody said, "I want to walk to Santa Fe from Albuquerque," it matters which direction they go. It matters that they have water. It matters if they know how they're going to go. You can die between here and Santa Fe—it's a frickin' desert.

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!" and not get anywhere.

So I think they need to understand the direction they're going, and why. And they can get there a lot faster and a lot more whole, and with a lot more peace and understanding, if they will Read a little, try a little, wait a while and watch.

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

photo by Sandra Dodd, in Golden, New Mexico, March 2020
(the last time I left town)

Layers of an onion

My response to "Sometimes I think I've started to understand something but instead it's like an onion and there's another layer I didn't know I needed to understand."

That's how everything good is. Every hobby, skill, pastime, has a surface and has a depth. Some things can be just surface, but parenting and unschooling last for years. And if a family can't resolve to be and do and provide better for the child than school would, then school is better. If a family resolves to provide a better life experience then school did, then their decisions and actions should be based on that.

SandraDodd.com/betterchoice
"Getting It" has some layers-of-onion discussion, too.

photo by Sandra Dodd

Sharing energy

If the parents aren't powering all decisions anymore, should the children take up the task of generating enough power to fuel their own learning? I wouldn't expect my kids to do that any more than I would stop feeding them and expect them to become hunter-gatherers in the back yard if they wanted to survive.

Energy is shared, and that's how unschooling works. Whether I'm excited about something new, or my children are excited about something new, there's still newness and excitement enough to share.

SandraDodd.com/balance
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Selflessly and sweetly

With a child, being his partner and not his adversary means that situations are not going to involve one of you winning at the other's expense. There doesn't need to be a winner and a loser, when a choice is made. Try to see that in your marriage and in your family. Make decisions that benefit your family, your home, and your children. Do that selflessly and sweetly, and your own life will be sweeter.

Gradually easier
photo by Gail Higgins

Without effort, without knowing

When people ask a structured family how much time it takes to homeschool the response usually ranges from three hours a day to six hours a day (much more than kids actually spend in classrooms in school). When you ask an unschooling family how much time it takes to homeschool, first there's a pause. I've heard, in rapid succession in groups of unschoolers, "None" and "All of it." Their range is it takes from zero hours a day to 24 hours a day.

When learning is recognized in the fabric of life and encouraged, when families make their decisions based on what leads to more interesting and educational ends, children learn without effort, often without even knowing it, and parents learn along with them.

All Kinds of Unschooling
photo by Sandra Dodd

Promote calm

In the smallest of decisions and actions, if you can choose what will promote calm and avoid tears, you will be moving toward a more peaceful way of being.

Maybe
photo by Theresa Larson

Dark corners, lit up

"Don't let fear and worry drive your decisions and interactions with your kids, though. If you focus on joy and partnership, dark corners won't seem dark. You and your kids will be able to illuminate them together through open dialogue and trust." —Jo Isaac

SandraDodd.com/partners/child
photo by Erika Ellis

Results of Unschooling

I can't really speak to any "end results," because they're still growing and experiencing the newness of many firsts in their lives. If there is ever an "end," the results won't matter anymore. But as long as life continues, the results unfold.

Are my children better friends and better employees because of the freedom they had? It seems so. What kind of managers will they be when they're in positions to make decisions about other people's employment?

When they marry will they be good partners? Would that be an "end result"? What kind of parents will they be?

What kind of neighbors will they be? How will their long-term health be affected by their early freedom to make their own choices? Will they be more or less likely to be binge eaters, substance abusers, or hypochondriacs? When they're old, will they still be active and interesting? Will their early freedoms affect their geriatric physical and mental health? I don't know, and probably won't be around to see.

In this window of time, though, I am satisfied. The peace and joy with which they live attests to the success of our attachment parenting and unschooling. Our lives are entwined and growing. The end result of twenty-one years of parenting as mindfully and as peacefully as I could is that I am content with the outcome. Someday I might report on the end result of twenty-five or thirty years of parenting, as life burgeons on.

SandraDodd.com/magicwindow, 2007
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Clarity in motion

Flow is learning to go fast in a calm way. Flow is clarity while in motion. The opposite of flow might be "stuckness"—being immobilized while thoughts and fears swoop and swirl inside you.

Flow is a state of being that unschoolers can reach, in which they are no longer laboring to make conscious decisions about how to encourage learning and to maintain peace and joy. It might only last a few moments at a time, but it will be enough.

page 206 (or 239) of The Big Book of Unschooling
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Connections and mysteries

You can see what is coming up, usually. Very often, you have a plan, and know where you're headed.

What comes next follows on what came before, but you won't get to write the script and control all the players.

Things happen, and schedules change. Keep your balance. If you keep your principles in mind, and at hand, decisions will be easier.

Real and good reasons
photo by Ester Siroky

Thoughtful decisions

Joyce Fetteroll's response to a parenting question:

Should you teach your child to always tell the truth?

"Always" and "never" are rules meant to stop thinking. Support your child in becoming a thoughtful decision-maker, not a thoughtless rule-follower.

—Joyce Fetteroll

Original, and more, on Quora
photo by Daniel Moyer Artisan
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