More valuable and less expensive

Becoming the sort of person you hope your child will be, or that your child will respect, is more valuable than years of therapy. And it’s cheaper.

SandraDodd.com/becoming

(source of quote)
photo by Gail Higgins
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A Respected Child

I really believe unschooling works best when parents trust a child's personhood, his intelligence, his instincts, his potential to be mature and calm. Take any of that away, and the child becomes smaller and powerless to some degree.

Give them power and respect, and they become respected and powerful.


This is a good one to read in context: How to Raise a Respected Child
photo by Sandra Dodd

Respect for the wholeness of children

When humor exists at the expense of children's dignity and self esteem, when humor is an indicator of the jokester's true feelings about the wholeness and value and intelligence of chidren, that undermines children's worth and their chances of being seen, heard and respected as the full and important humans they are.
. . .
Yes, jokes are funny, and yes, people need to have a sense of humor, but people also should have a sense of their own beliefs and courage and the future of mankind. Is that overstating it? Maybe and maybe not.

SandraDodd.com/notfunny
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Admirable and attractive

Perspectives do change, if people want to learn.

Different perspectives will affect what you respect, too. What is admirable, that you want to head toward? What is attractive, and pulls you nearer? What is disturbing or embarrassing, that you want to step away from?

The origin of that, or a link to
Getting warm
or to other posts on perspective
photo by Karen James

Fill up your family

"You can't give what you don't have," some people say, and if you want your children to give generosity and kindness and patience to others, you should give them so much they're overflowing with it.

It works with respect, too.


SandraDodd.com/spoiledkids
photo by Julie D, of Holly and Adam
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A Mindful Lifestyle

Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

Although unschooling is often described as a homeschooling style, it is, in fact, much more than just another homeschool teaching method. Unschooling is both a philosophy of natural learning and the lifestyle that results from living according to the principles of that philosophy.

The most basic principle of unschooling is that children are born with an intrinsic urge to explore—for a moment or a lifetime—what intrigues them, as they seek to join the adult world in a personally satisfying way. Because of that urge, an unschooling child is free to choose the what, when, where and how of his/her own learning from mud puddles to video games and SpongeBob Squarepants to Shakespeare! And an unschooling parent sees his/her role, not as a teacher, but as a facilitator and companion in a child's exploration of the world.

Unschooling is a mindful lifestyle that encompasses, at its core, an atmosphere of trust, freedom, joy and deep respect for who the child is. This cannot be lived on a part-time basis. Unschooling sometimes seems so intuitive that people feel they've been doing it all along, not realizing it has a name. Unschooling sometimes seems so counterintuitive that people struggle to understand it, and it can take years to fully accept its worth.

---

This was the description at an online discussion for many years—at the UnschoolingDiscussion list.

SandraDodd.com/lists/description
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Vibrant, healthy and active

I can see how vibrant, healthy, and active both of them are. They love to go outside, run with their friends, ride bikes, dig in the dirt, go swimming, catch fireflies, climb trees, and tons of other things. And they also love watching TV and playing computer games. I can look at them directly, without any fear, and see that they are whole and that our relationship is remaining intact because I respect the things they love and support choices they make."

—Susan May

Either/Or Thinking and "Screen Time"
photo by Sarah Dickinson

The children described aren't the same as those pictured,
but they're all unschoolers.
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See your child

See all that is good about your child.

SandraDodd.com/respect
Holly Dodd, self portrait in a gas cap
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Choices can abound

Choices can abound. Parents can arrange life so that their children have choices all the time, and learn to see their own actions as choices rather than "have to's," but none of them can give their children "the freedom" to do as they wish at MY house. Nor in a shop, nor a public place. Certainly not in a national park, or museum, or church. . . . .

Parents who tell their kids that they can give them "freedom" might be talking about the relative freedom of being out of school rather than in. Once they're in the normal real world, though, continuing to promise freedom isn't as helpful, nor as relationship building, as finding ways to give them choices.

Freedom/Choices/Empowerment/Respect
photo by Amber Ivey

Polite and confident

"Lead by example. Be polite and confident, show trust and respect to those who deserve it and your kids will do the same."

—Lyle Perry

SandraDodd.com/lyle/list
photo by Sandra Dodd

Be that way

"Treat them the way you want them to treat others. Do you want respect? Be respectful. Do you want responsibility from them? Be responsible."

—Pam Sorooshian

SandraDodd.com/pam/howto
photo by Chrissy Florence
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Fill yourself up

Generosity makes you generous. Kindness makes you kind. Respecting others, and their ideas and their interests, makes you full of respect—respectful. These are little things that build up quickly.


SandraDodd.com/becoming
photo by Janine Davies
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Principles instead of rules

The idea of living by principles has come up before and will come up again. When I first started playing with the idea, in preparation for a conference presentation, I was having a hard time getting even my husband and best friends to understand it. Really bright people local to me, parents, looked at me blankly and said "principles are just another word for rules."

I was determined to figure out how to explain it, but it's still not simple to describe or to accept, and I think it's because our culture is filled with rules, and has little respect for the idea of "principles." It seems moralistic or spiritual to talk about a person's principles, or sometimes people who don't see it that way will still fear it's about to get philosophical and beyond their interest or ability.

Rules are things like "Never hit the dog," and "Don't talk to strangers."

Principles are more like "Being gentle to the dog is good for the dog and good for you too," or "People you don't know could be dangerous." They are not "what to do." They are "how do you decide?" and "why?" in the realm of thought and decision making.

The answer to most questions is "it depends."

What it depends on often has to do with principles.

from page 42 (or 46) of The Big Book of Unschooling
photo by Sandra Dodd
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All the good things follow

“Start with love and respect and all the good things follow—it is not magic, and it is a lot of hard work, especially at the beginning.”

—Marina DeLuca-Howard

Recently quoted by Pam Laricchia here,
and obtained from Quotes for Unschoolers on my site
photo by Sukayna
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Listen, learn and trust

Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

*Listen* to what she says with an open mind. Don't listen with an ear tuned to your ideas of what she should be thinking or should not be thinking. Listen to *her* ideas. Don't impose your "right" way of thinking on her. Don't lead her to your "right" way of viewing the world. Listen to her growing understanding. Trust that she's a thinking being and her ideas will change as she gains experience with the world. Trust she'll value kindness if who she is is treated with respect and kindness. Trust that she'll want to step on your ideas if you show her that's what you do with people who don't have the same ideas as you do.

—Joyce Fetteroll

Joyce wrote that on the Always Learning discussion list on July 22, 2010.
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Kind, thoughtful and respectful

Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

If we want our children to be kind and thoughtful and treat others with respect we need to model that for them. We can make kids *act* respectful and act kind and act thoughtful but when we stop making them and give them the choice, they're unlikely to want to be kind, thoughtful and respectful of those who don't treat them that way.

—Joyce Fetteroll

(Joyce responding to someone who thought we were WRONG.)
photo by Ester Siroky

Ideaflow

I was studying education in the early 1970’s, having wanted to be a teacher since first grade. The university was a hotbed of radical new thought about learning, spirituality, the value and valuing of the human life and spirit. I was in my late teens, and eager to take my turn at trying to change the world. We read all the then-current discussions of classroom failure—James Herndon, A.S.Neill, Jonathan Kozol and John Holt—and I lived and breathed in their hopeful vision of the future of free schools and open classrooms. I taught hard, and after six years I quit. I never did quit learning, though.

Newer John Holt books were waiting for me fifteen years later, when my firstborn son was expressing his distaste for organized activities and formal learning.

While I was making him little medieval costumes and taking him to feasts and tournaments where I set him down to play with his collection of could-have-been-medieval wooden and clay and metal toys, he being part and parcel of that ongoing work of performance art which is the Society for Creative Anachronism, I started to think that maybe school wasn’t going to benefit a child who was resistant to group control and already surrounded by learning opportunities which my distant impersonal gurus of education would have approved. Homeschooling seemed part and parcel of the respect for individuals and the attachment parenting which had flowed so freely from my previous experiences.

SandraDodd.com/HippieShirt
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Where do you look?

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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It's all information

Respect trivia.

For school kids, "trivia" means "won't be on the test."

In the absence of tests, where all of life is learning, there IS no "trivia." There is only information.

Principles of Learning (chat transcript)
photo by Sandra Dodd, of tile in Austin
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Compassion and kindness

Robyn Coburn wrote:

I think that any time we get caught up in the idea that the child is "being disrespectful" (self-focused thinking) it can be harder to get back to thinking about what they are feeling, the need is they are expressing, and how to help them either fill the need, or cope with it being impossible right now, with compassion and kindness.

—Robyn Coburn

SandraDodd.com/robyn/respect
photo by Robin Bentley