Finding a social spot

Humans are social animals, and learn in mixed-age groups, when they learn naturally. A family can create that natural learning environment, or can fail to create it. :-/ Being around other people, though, IF AND WHEN a child wants to learn and is encouraged by parents to learn how to be considerate and sociable, can be a good place to learn "manners"—ways to behave politely.

In school, children are still social animals with the need to identify who might help them, and what their role is within the social structure. The social structure being unnaturally 20+ kids the same age, they figure out who are the leaders and the "young" and they act in accordance with their instincts in an unnatural setting. More adults to—teens, and young adults, and middle-aged, and elderly, behaving in natural real-world ways. TV is better for that than school is. Ideally, a rich unschooled life *IN* the real world is better than either.



photo by Julie D

I can't find where I wrote that, up there, but three people shared it in 2012,
and I still think it's true. —Sandra

A million ideas

I'm glad to live in a time when photographs are so easily taken and shared, without ever needing to be set on paper or touched with hands. I can show you things I've seen. Just Add Light has had images from four continents, from mothers and fathers sharing photos of their children, and from teens and children sharing photos of things they've seen. A thousand people can see them on the same day. A thousand photos have come through. It's worldwide strewing from which each reader makes his or her own connections. Shared experiences are interpreted differently by each person involved, and connected by each to his own existing knowledge and images.

SandraDodd.com/strew/sandra
photo by Sandra Dodd,
and it's one of over 1200,
but I rounded to the nearest thousand

Real world

The thing I think I've seen more than anything else in some of the older unschoolers, the people who are teens who haven't been to school much or at all, is they are so whole. Their place in the world is real. They're not preparing for the possibility of applying to have a place in the world after they're grown. They are in the world. And there's something so different about that.

Unschooling and Real Learning
photo by Sarah Dickinson

Common connection

"I still consider monkey platters the best way to connect kids and teens when they come over and may not have anything in common."

—Leticia King

A Simple Gesture
photo by Martialia Deb Files
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Glad to be wrong

When I had been unschooling for several years, I still dreaded and joked about how different it would be when I had teens. I expected what I thought was "natural" and what was probably inevitable teenaged behavior.

It turns out that much of what is considered "normal teen behavior" is a normal reaction to many years of school, and to being controlled and treated as children and school kids and students rather than as full, thoughtful human beings.

Being wrong doesn't bother me one bit when the truth is so much better than my fears and predictions!

from page 251 (or 292) of The Big Book of Unschooling
photo by Sandra Dodd, 2005 at a movie-character theme party
Kirby as Casey Jones from the first Ninja Turtle movie
Marty as Dr. Strangelove (←click there to see him in the chair with glasses)
and Holly as Addie Pray from Paper Moon
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Quick! They're gone!

Older moms say "Appreciate your kids. They'll be grown before you know it." Younger moms think it's rude, and wrong, and can hardly endure the endless days of damp, stinky babies and toddlers, and messy, destructive, needy three and four year olds, and... Life is made of stages that can seem long. I've had young children and felt sticky and crowded and exhausted. I've had teens I started to miss before they were gone. Wherever you are, breathe and be patient and loving.

SandraDodd.com/patience
photo by Ester Siroky