Spiritual growth

Where the spirituality comes in that, I think partly is the trust that your child is an organism that wants to learn—that that’s how people grow. There is physical growth that takes water food and rest, there’s mental growth which takes input—ideas, things to think about, things to try, things to touch. And then there’s spiritual growth, which takes more and more understanding—an awareness that it’s better to be sweet to other people than not, it’s better to be generous with your neighbours than hateful, better to pet your cat nicely than to throw it around.

At first it’s a practical consideration but later on, as the children are looking at the world through older eyes, they start to see that no matter whether the neighbour noticed or not, it made you a better person. No matter whether your cat would have done your stuff damage or not, it made you a better person. So I think there’s a spirituality there of respect given to the children being passed on.

Improving Unschooling
SandraDodd.com/radiotranscript
photo by Brie Jontry

Be more involved

Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

Unschooling is the opposite of both authoritarian and hands-off parenting. It's neither about creating rules to remote parent nor about letting kids jump off cliffs. It's about being more involved in kids lives. It's about accompanying them as they explore, helping them find safe, respectful and empowering ways to tackle what intrigues them.

—Joyce Fetteroll
2009

SandraDodd.com/balance
photo by Eleanor Chong

This image might be hard to interpret. It's wintry yard art. A forked branch was stuck in a container of water, and when the top layer froze, it was pulled out and hung up as a temporary decoration.

One quiet, loving thought

Different families have different resources, but here are two gifts any of us could give to someone today:

1. A glass of water, to someone who is working, or playing, or just got home, or just woke up. A favorite glass, or a pretty one, or a special one, maybe. Perhaps with ice, or a slice of lemon. Present it with a smile or a kind word.

2. A gentle touch, for a child or partner. Fingertips on an arm, or brushed down the back, or a hand held for a second longer than you might have otherwise. Sit close and lean softly for a couple of seconds. Think one quiet, loving thought while you touch this important person.

Other easy gifts
photo by Karen James

In a drop of water

Universe-in-a-Drop-of-Water Method:

Can one intense interest come to represent or lead to all others? A mom once complained that her son was interested in nothing but World War II. There are college professors and historians who are interested in nothing but World War II. It can become a life’s work. But even a passing interest can touch just about everything—geography, politics, the history and current events of Europe and parts of the Pacific, social history of the 20th century in the United States, military technology, tactics, recruitment and propaganda, poster art/production/distribution, advances in communications, transport of troops and food and supplies, espionage, prejudices, interment camps, segregation, patriotism, music, uniforms, insignia, religion....

from "Disposable Checklists for Unschoolers"
photo by Roya Dedeaux

States of being

Sometimes wind is blowing and sometimes it's still. Usually water is wet, but in some times and places it can be ice.

I have vivid memories of being childless. I had babies, and children, and teens (not all at the same time). Now I'm a grandmother.

May your status and your transitions be peaceful and calm, with joys to discover.

SandraDodd.com/calm
photo by Tessa Onderwater

Natural forces

With the right set-up, wind or water or sun can create power. Natural things can cause big changes.

When unschooling is working well, questions, conversations, jokes or songs bring powerful thoughts and profound changes.

With the right set-up everyday life can create power.

SandraDodd.com/t/learning
photo by Shawn Smythe Haunschild

Social obligations

Probably in every culture there are ceremonial and social meals. There are times when eating food with other people creates or strengthens bonds, or when sharing bread or a drink has spiritual significance. One taste of a wedding cake is better than turning down wedding cake altogether, because it's the ceremonial blessing of a marriage. If people are toasting with alcohol and you don't or can't drink alcohol (ever, or at that time), at least join the toast with water. To refrain from joining a toast is worse than an insult; it's like a public curse. One who pointedly fails to toast is standing up against the crowd and saying "I hope your project fails horribly" (or whatever it might be). So let your children know those things.

In the absence of a social obligation to eat at least a token amount, let your children choose not to eat if they don't want to. If the purpose of food is the sustenance of the body and the mind, then let that principle override schedules and expectations and traditions, most of the time. Your children will be more willing to eat to be polite if you only press it on rare occasions.


From "Social Obligations and Oddities," page 168 (or 190)
of The Big Book of Unschooling
which recommends SandraDodd.com/eating/humor
photo by Cátia Maciel

Provide more

Joyce Fetteroll, to someone fearful about not having started sooner:

How could doing better be worse?

You won't help yourself and your family be happy if you keep looking at what you *imagine* life could have been had you been mindfully parenting all along. You are where you are and right this moment you have the opportunity and a growing box of tools to be better. 🙂

When buckets have been empty for so long they've developed holes, it takes a lot of filling before those holes can start closing. But in the meantime having their buckets as full as you can make them will be better than empty. Maybe they won't ever be as full or lacking in holes as they could have been, but what's the alternative you have available right now?

—Joyce Fetteroll

Success with Later Unschooling?
with more, and follow-up

photo by Sandra Dodd
I used this photo once before,
but it IS bucket-shaped lacy water (with flowers), and seemed appropriate today.

Swimming in that water

It's fun to watch a fish. It might stay right where it is, however they do that, for a long time. It might change directions. It might dart away.

Try to see your child similarly. He's living in his own environment, in air, maybe walking on the floor or on the ground. He's there whether you're looking or not. He might stay in one place for a long time, or dart off somewhere.

Be at peace with small choices children make. See the beauty of them.

(Be at peace, but be ready to dart after them!)
Desire to learn
photo by Heather Burditt

Using tools

When I was a kid, humans used tools and that made us human, but that's no longer "the truth." Chimpanzees can use a leaf as a sponge to gather water out of a hole. They will lick a stick and put it down a hole to collect insects (termites? ants? I don't know what). They will move things to climb up on to get something they can't reach.

Marty says he thinks maybe elephants will pick up a stick to knock something down that's higher than their trunks. If they haven't, they should.

So what, these days, are "tools"? My computer? Google? Wikipedia? Blogger.com? My new glasses? That electric teakettle I'm about to go and heat water with?

We talk about parenting tools, and people adding to their toolboxes, and those are all in the realm of thought (and action proceeding from thought, but without physical tools).

"Tools" (on the Thinking Sticks blog)

Little Tools for an Epic Life
photo by Amy Milstein

Please and thank you

This was written in 2005, so note the update below.

My husband and I always said please and thank you to each other, and friends would comment on it, when were were dating and first living together. They said they don't say "please" for a glass of water or "thank you" for a kleenex. We always did, though, and still do. The kids picked it up easily because they heard it all the time.

Today's our 21st wedding anniversary.
We were together for six years before that.
We still say please and thank you, and we say it to the kids, too.

(original)

---

Later this month we will have our 39th anniversary.

When Keith thanks me for making a meal, I thank him for having bought the groceries. Tonight he thanked me for making a fire, and I thanked him for the firewood.

Experiments and experiences
photo by Rachael Rodgers, in 2016
when we'd been married 32 years

Cliff wall

Realities aren't always easily categorized. Where do these goats live? Turkey. Ester Siroky saw them, when she, her husband, and youngest child passed through. The goats have a shelter that's up against a cliff, against which is built a wall as high as the natural hill, maybe. I'm limited by what the photo shows. I like it, but there are still mysteries.

Appreciating the intersection of a natural wall and a manmade wall would not be ruined by knowing of other walls (if any, or fences) around those goats.

A wall isn't always an obstacle. It might be a shelter, a protection, and a thing of beauty.

It's possible, and it's fine, to appreciate part of a song, a film, a painting, a story, a life, without fully understanding the depth and breadth of the whole thing. A part of a thing is also a thing.


Same goats, out by water
photo by Ester Siroky

Simple needs

Joyce Fetteroll, in helping others untangle ideas and prejudices about what children think they "need":

If someone needs three glasses of water a day and only gets two, they'll spend the rest of the day trying to get that third glass. So it will seem to others like this person's constantly thirsty and can never get enough. But if he gets three glasses and can have as many as he wants, he won't seem thirsty at all.

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/needs
photo by Karen James

In full flow

Waterfalls are made of streams of water, made of drops, of molecules, that were up in clouds a week, a day, or a minute ago.

Confident parenting, in full flow, is made of courage born of successes of big choices and small decisions that were once tentative, and before that you hadn't even considered them.

Enough improvement and ease can cause good options to tumble and flow all around you.

Considering Decisions
photo by Rosie Moon

Variable speeds

Water freezes; ice melts.

The sun goes down; the sun comes up.

Children are still, and sit or lie down. Kids jump up and run around.

When I was younger and I would change, I thought something was wrong with me. I was under the mistaken impression that personality and mood should be constants. Life is better when I think of those fluctuations as tides, or as the weather of the soul.


Cocooning and other stillness
photo by Diane Marcengill

Bridges and reflections

When I look at a bridge, I think of travel, of engineering, of safety, and of history. Even new bridges change history as soon as they can be used.

In this photo, the arches are reflecting and making a round shape. That's always fun. There is also roundness in the tree to the right, and in its reflection in the water. The bank of the river has a rounded edge, and is covered with rounded pebbles.

Others, seeing that, might be thinking of what birds live around there, or other wildlife. If it's someone familiar with the area, they will know where the road goes, maybe who owns the land, and who used to own it before that.

Kids, seeing it, might wonder first "Could we get IN that water?" Wild swimmers (people who like to swim in naturally occurring waters) probably had that thought before any other.

Any scene is many things. The knowledge and perspective of each viewer is different. People spot different things and make their own connections.

SandraDodd.com/connections
photo by Ester Siroky

Watch and play

Karen James wrote:

Play. A lot. Wonder. A lot. Listen. Observe. Smile. A lot. .... If they like shows, watch shows. If they like video games, play video games with them. If they like water, make ice, take them to a splash pad, to a creek, to a lake, to the ocean, to the tub, draw on the sidewalk with a wet finger and watch it disappear.

—Karen James

More, and sweet: SandraDodd.com/karenjames/deschooling
photo by Cátia Maciel

Simple magic

Remember these moments, when simple things make the normal world magical.

Provide for the possibility of these moments.

SandraDodd.com/water
photo by Janine Davies
__

Happy apple trees

A good analogy for helping children grow in their own ways is the growth of trees from seed. An apple seed cannot grow an oak tree. Each seed has within it all it needs to know what kind of roots and leaves it will make. What young trees need is good soil, enough water, and protection from damage.

SandraDodd.com/appletree
photo by Roya Dedeaux
__

Philosophical cookies

What makes "a watermelon cookie"? These didn't taste like watermelon. They weren't made of watermelon. The term here is all about their appearance.

Watermelon is usually considered to be healthy, but tourists and host families in India are reminded that if someone should not drink "the local water," that they should also avoid watermelon, as that fruit takes in and stores some of the potentially dangerous (to visitors) elements of local water.

These cookies have nothing to do with India, or with bad water, except wait.... I just connected them, in a way.

Some parents might cringe (or worse) at the idea of my joy in something involving sugar and food coloring, but as I'm already talking about memories and connections, I can remind readers that parental disapproval (especially when it's overblown or overstated) does more damage than sugar-coated food-colored sugar with chocolate chips ever could.

I learned the watermelon cookie recipe from a younger friend, when she asked me if I could make them for her wedding reception. I did. She had horses. My daughter, who was eight years old or so and learning to braid, was able to help groom and braid the mane of one of those horses, and work some ribbons in there somehow. Later she did that with people, and My Little Ponies.

My granddaughter wasn't born when all that happened, but now she has helped make those cookies. She might never meet Sarah, who had watermelon-cookie memories from her own childhood.

Connections and memories involve people, places, newnesses, learning, amusement, trivia, and thoughts about the meaning of life, and of reality. The more naturally people can see and appreciate those things, the better life and learning will be.


Report on the making of watermelon cookies
Photos by Sandra Dodd—
this one is a link: