Softer words

Some parents express their learning as "struggle" or "challenge," but those words are antagonistic. Try to relax, and try not to feel that you're wrestling (with your child's desires, or with your own thoughts).

If you can find softer words, you will experience softer emotions.


SandraDodd.com/battle
photo by Sandra Dodd, of a flowering plant
growing out of a rain spout
on a castle
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Words

Please be careful with words, because they say what you're thinking. Be careful with thoughts because they affect the way you're responding to people.

SandraDodd.com/words
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Use your words

Someone once wrote:
"In the past my kids have tended to expect to be waited on hand and foot."

I responded:
If you use phrases like "to be waited on hand and foot," you're quoting other people. That usually means the other person's voice is in your head, shaming you. Or it means you've adopted some anti-kid attitudes without really examining them. If you're having a feeling, translate it into your own words. It's a little freaky how people can channel their parents and grandparents by going on automatic and letting those archaic phrases flow through us. Anything you haven't personally examined in the light of your current beliefs shouldn't be uttered, in my opinion. Anything I can't say in my own words hasn't really been internalized by me. As long as I'm simply quoting others, I can bypass conscious, careful thought.

SandraDodd.com/phrases
photo by Sandra Dodd

The whole language

Because phonics treats written English as a simple code when it is not, many children are frustrated very early on.

Whole language involves language as communication, rather than separate parts (writing/reading/spelling). First language; details later.

With unschooling, children will learn from the language you use and they use, from the words they see around them, from using games and computers, from signing greeting cards or playing with words. There's no need for any school-style structure at all. For those who have worried about phonics and reading and spelling, please don't press that on your children.



Play with words
photo by Caroline Lieber

Magical music

Words are just words, on the one hand, and they are our connection to the divine, on the other. And the divine is often depicted with more than two hands (even Jesus has the nail-pierced hands, and his other hands, though not on the same statue like Ganesha might have), so on another hand words are magical music. And on another hand they are our link to the past and our messages to the future.

SandraDodd.com/wordswords
photo by Sandra Dodd, of a little bird feeder,
or something, in Yvoire, France

Books and clocks. . . music, blocks

Meredith Novak wrote, on facebook:

If you live in a home with books and clocks, movies, music, blocks, games, dishes, furniture, toys, clothes, the internet, and adults who are interested in kids, then you have "the basics" all around your kids all the time. And because those basics are there, kids will learn about them&mdashthey'll learn that words are a valuable tool and there are many ways to use them. They'll learn that numbers and patterns are as useful as words and sometimes better than words for a given purpose. They'll learn those things without lessons, living and playing and snuggling on the couch with you without ever needing to draw a line between those things and learning. —Meredith Novak *

SandraDodd.com/meredithnovak
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Words and thoughts

Words and thoughts are what you will use to change your beliefs and behaviors.

Mindful of Words

Other sources of information

I'm happy to know I'm not the sole source of information for my kids.

Last night I came to use my computer and there was a dialog on the desktop, a leftover instant message between my thirteen-year-old son Marty and an older homeschooler. This was the entirety of that dialog:

Marty: You coming down?
Other kid: yeah.
Marty: Did you know Canada has Prime Ministers?
Other kid: yeah
Marty: dude

Now I will never have to explain to Marty that Canada has a prime minister. I don't know why he cared, on a Friday night in New Mexico, but it doesn't matter.

SandraDodd.com/words/words
For the record, "last night" was in late 2002, and the other kid was Brett Henry, also unschooled, who is now a firefighter in the Los Alamos Fire Department.

photo by Sandra Dodd
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Canada... dude!

I'm happy to know I'm not the sole source of information for my kids.

Last night I came to use my computer and there was a dialog on the desktop, a leftover instant message between my thirteen-year-old son Marty and an older homeschooler. This was the entirety of that dialog:

Marty: You coming down?
Other kid: yeah.
Marty: Did you know Canada has Prime Ministers?
Other kid: yeah
Marty: dude

Now I will never have to explain to Marty that Canada has a prime minister. I don't know why he cared, on a Friday night in New Mexico, but it doesn't matter.

SandraDodd.com/words/words
For the record, "last night" was in late 2002, and the other kid was Brett Henry, also unschooled, who is now a firefighter in the Los Alamos Fire Department.

photo by Sandra Dodd
__ P.S. Since writing this, since taking that photo, I went to France and discovered that their stop signs say "Stop." Why, I asked my French host-mom, do they say "Arrêt" in Quebec? She said Quebec wants to be more French than France. One more bit of information that won't be on the test. Trivia.

Keys to knowledge

One of a child's best tools is to learn to ask "What's that?" It's one of a baby's keys to knowledge. "Sa-sat?" said one of my kids. Hundreds of times, pointing. "Sa-sat?" Another said, "Aht-dat?"

With names for things, categories form. Some small furry animals ARE "dog" and others are not. "Not" needs another name.

On naming, a researcher named J. Doug McGlothlin wrote, "A child possesses a natural desire to call an object by its name, and he uses that natural desire to help him learn the language. He receives real joy from just pointing out something and calling it by name. He never thinks it is stupid or silly to say something that others might consider obvious. For him, it is delightful."

SandraDodd.com/words/words
photo by Cass Kotrba
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Ukulele window

There is something you already have that can be fun and soothing: words. "Ukulele window" has a pretty rhythm, and is fun and easy to speak. Feel all the positions in your mouth, and think of other windows, other places, with a ukulele, or two or ten. This photo was taken in England, somewhere.

The colors are pretty. Someone decided in which order they should be arranged, while the display was set up. Most are probably off in homes—all sorts of places, with all kinds of people.

No one gets to know, but anyone can consider and imagine the possibilities.

Ukulele was originally a Hawaiian word. Window was lifted from Norse, but that's where words come from—all over the place.

The more you know, the better ukulele windows will be.


SandraDodd.com/curiosity
photo by Julie D

Playing with connections

I found something to share, but it seemed too long. While looking for a place to put it, I came upon a link to posts in this blog that are about play and playing.

These two images came up one after the other. They were posted seven years apart, but they're similar, and the posts they link to were called "Playing around" and "Play around." They're links here, and the quote follows.


Someone wrote in 2011:

I do worry about my boys playing computer all day.

I responded:

I have three kids who have played hundreds of games among and between them--Holly learned two new card games just this month that nobody else in the family knows, even her dad who has been a big games guy all his life. There is no game called "computer." I think you mean playing ON the computer. HUGE difference.

We have dozens of nice board games here, and table games (games involving cards or other pieces, to be laid out on a table as play proceeds), but those aren't referred to as kids playing board, or kids playing table.

The computer is not itself the game. There are games on the computer. There is information on the computer. It's not really a net. It's not really a web. It's millions of ideas, words, jokes, pictures, games, a ton of music and videos and.... But you know that, right?

Clarity can begin with being careful with the words you use. Thinking about what you write will help you think about what you think!

(The quote is from halfway down here.)
photos by Sandra Dodd and Karen James

L-words

Ronnie Maier wrote:

LIVE
LOVE
LAUGH
LEARN

That's the best thing about unschooling, having all of those L-words bundled up into one lovely lifestyle.

—Ronnie Maier

Details of Unschooling
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Playing for real

Playing with words makes them come to life.

The history of England, of math, of writing, of counting... all clued above and in all the histories of words. Any portal into the universe is as real as any other. If an interest in language or butterflies or patterns or water creates connections for that person to anything else in the world, that can lead to EVERYTHING else in the world.

A parent cannot decipher the whole world for her child, but she can help him begin to decipher it.

SandraDodd.com/etymology
photo by Sandra Dodd, of a sign in The Mercer Museum
in Doylestown, Pennsylvania
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Peaceful communication

Peace, in an exchange, has to do with tone of voice, eyes, posture, attitude, intention, compassion—all the non-verbal communications that go with words and actions. Don't underestimate your child's ability to read beneath and around and beyond your statements. You would do well to try to read behind his words, too.

SandraDodd.com/parentingpeacefully
photo by Sandra Dodd

Is this obvious?

I like the words "obvious" and "oblivious." They're not really related, but they seem and sound similar, which can be fun and funny.

To some people the presence of a lizard would be obvious. They would see it, right in their path.

I am often oblivious to lizards. I don't remember that they exist, if one hasn't just run up the wall.

Are we obvious to lizards? If one runs, he probably saw me moving toward him. They come to our compost bin to eat bugs. I bring new scraps from the kitchen. Out in my yard, sometimes lizards can seem to be oblivious to people, or to cats, or to roadrunners.

As the parenting of children goes, it is good to lean toward what is obvious, and to avoid being oblivious.

SandraDodd.com/words
photo by Karen James

"Sculpture" and other words

This photo is from a Chinese Lantern Festival event.


What is a Chinese lantern? What is "a lantern"? These have wire frames with cloth, and electric light inside. There are many other kinds of lanterns, both more traditional and modern.

In Albuquerque, balloonists sometimes get together to inflate their balloons at night. They stay on the ground, and the fire from the hot-air-creating burner will light the huge balloon up from the inside beautifully.

Back to the photo, though. It'a a monkey. It's a Chinese zodiac symbol. Geometry and technology were involved, with some traditional ideas about connecting pieces of cloth to create three-dimensional forms. It is a tool of cultural exchange, of good will, from a country at odds with our own. It is a propaganda monkey, and an art monkey. It was a happy light in darkness.

One thing is many things.

The flow of words
photo by Sandra Dodd, of other people's art
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Examine a word

A parent cannot decipher words for a child. Only the child can decipher written language. You can help! You can help LOTS of ways. One way would be to gain an interest in the words you use yourself, and stop once in a while to examine one, its history, why it means what it means.

SandraDodd.com/etymology photo by Sandra Dodd

Beneath, around and beyond

Peace, in an exchange, has to do with tone of voice, eyes, posture, attitude, intention, compassion—all the non-verbal communications that go with words and actions. Don't underestimate your child's ability to read beneath and around and beyond your statements. You would do well to try to read behind his words, too.

page 209 (or 243) of The Big Book of Unschooling
photo by Marty Dodd, of Ashlee and himself
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Plans change

When you can, allow for flexible plans. Your vision of the moment might not be as good as what could spontaneously occur. Sometimes, instead of calling your child back, follow her out of the frame.

SandraDodd.com/priorities
(New words here, many good words there.)
photo by Beth Lamb