Life-in-progress

The structured homeschooling that involves buying a curriculum and teaching at the kitchen table on a schedule is not the control group the school system needed. Those who practice “school at home” serve to reinforce the school’s claims that they could do better if they had more teachers and better equipment. When a structured family has high test scores, the schools say “SEE? We could do that too if we had one teacher per three or four students.”. . . .
Scientifically speaking, my children are not a control group. They’re not isolated and kept purely away from school methods and messages. But what is unquestionable is that there are now thousands of children who are learning without formal teaching. They are learning from the world around them, from being with interesting and interested adults doing real work and real play. Instead of being put away with other children to prepare for life, they are joining life-in-progress right at birth, and never leaving “the real world.”

SandraDodd.com/thoughts
photo of Holly Dodd and Adam Daniel, by Adam's mom

Repeated, photo and all, from October 11, 2011. Holly is twenty-four years old now, and Adam is ten.
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Adam learned from Pokémon...

"If you lose at first, try again — it doesn't mean you will never win. If you lose, shake the other person's hand. It isn't possible to be unbeatable." —Adam Daniel (when he was six)

and there's more of that list at SandraDodd.com/adamlearns
photo by Tim Mensch

Life-in-progress

The structured homeschooling that involves buying a curriculum and teaching at the kitchen table on a schedule is not the control group the school system needed. Those who practice “school at home” serve to reinforce the school’s claims that they could do better if they had more teachers and better equipment. When a structured family has high test scores, the schools say “SEE? We could do that too if we had one teacher per three or four students.”. . . .
Scientifically speaking, my children are not a control group. They’re not isolated and kept purely away from school methods and messages. But what is unquestionable is that there are now thousands of children who are learning without formal teaching. They are learning from the world around them, from being with interesting and interested adults doing real work and real play. Instead of being put away with other children to prepare for life, they are joining life-in-progress right at birth, and never leaving “the real world.”

SandraDodd.com/thoughts
photo of Holly Dodd and Adam Daniel, by Adam's mom
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Shockingly efficient

Julie Daniel owns a company that advises people on efficiency and productivity. I interviewed her and asked whether unschooling had seemed inefficient. Her husband works with her, and she quotes him:

When I first started to explore unschooling one of the things I found very exciting was how amazingly effective and efficient it is. My husband, James, says it is 'shockingly efficient'. There isn’t any of the wasted effort that goes along with trying to entice someone to pay attention to something that they don’t care about. We notice what Adam is interested in and we think about what else he might find interesting and we provide opportunities to explore those things.

Mostly when people think about being 'organised' they think about structure and predictability. For me the point of being organised is to achieve a particular objective. I actually really like that I don’t need to have a lot of structure to achieve the goals of exploring cool things, learning about the world and having fun. Of course some of the basic organisational skills that I have learned do come in handy, like knowing where to find things that I’ve saved and keeping track of our calendar so we know where to be and when. But in terms of Adam’s learning I don’t feel the need for structure and predictability because I can see how incredibly efficient his natural learning process is.

—Julie Daniel

The Efficiency of Unschooling (interview)
photo by Julie Daniel
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Whole people, now

Your children are not works in progress. They are whole people, now and from the day they were born. If you can try to see that, rather than think people are not finished until they're finished, it might help you.

SandraDodd.com/respect
photo by Sandra Dodd, of Adam Daniel picking out a souvenir shirt
at the Rattlesnake Museum in Albuquerque
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Wholehearted change

The purpose of unschooling is not to change the parents; it's to provide a personalized learning environment for each child. Doing that does change the parents, though, if they do it wholeheartedly.
SandraDodd.com/change
photo by Julie D
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With young children...

We sang a lot. Singing can happen while dressing and driving and making food, so I worked to produce multitaskers. 🙂
. . . .
We have chairs with posts on each side of the back (I don't know chair-part-terminology for it) and the kids would put sheets over them and then rubberbands or hairties to hold them there. When I was little my mom would put a sheet over a card table. We've put a little pop tent up inside. Sometimes you can get those very inexpensively, the two-person dome tents.. . . .
Museums and very young children: don't plan to see the whole thing. Go in for a while and leave when the kids are restless.
. . . .
We used to play "hide the music" with Kirby (when he was very young). We would wind up a little wooden music box and put it somewhere in his room and he would go in and find it by the sound. Interestingly, he would always look where it was the last time right away, without listening first.
. . . .
ICE in the bathtub. Freeze some in advance. We have a fish mold. The ice fish was good. (It was really for jello or casseroles). Rings, though, like in a bundt pan, for ice too, like they do for punch bowls. And you can freeze things into it. toys. Soap. But even regular ice cubes—they clean themselves up. They float. They bob up if you hold them down and then let go.


SandraDodd.com/youngchildren
photo by Sandra Dodd, of Adam Daniel and his new stuffed otter

Evidence of learning

Response to a question about what proof there is that unschooled kids are learning:

If the question is whether kids are learning, parents can tell when they're learning because they're there with them. How did you know when your child could ride a bike? You were able to let go, quit running, and watch him ride away. You know they can tell time when they tell you what time it is. You know they're learning to read when you spell something out to your husband and the kid speaks the secret word right in front of the younger siblings. In real-life practical ways children begin to use what they're learning, and as they're not off at school, the parents see the evidence of their learning constantly.

SandraDodd.com/interview
photo by Sandra Dodd

Thinking, seeing beings

Children have been whole, thinking, seeing beings since the day they were born. Assisting them to learn and to find their strengths and to explore the world and its possibilities is preparing them for their unseen futures.

Mommy-labs Interview, October 2012
("Children" replaces "they," to allow the quote to make sense out of context.)

photo: Young Adam Daniel, by his mom, Julie

Tidbits here and there

Joyce Fetteroll, in Five Steps to Unschooling:

Forget the linear approach to learning we grew up with. For instance, we learned that the way to learn is to read "all the important" stuff about a subject gathered and packaged for our convenience in a textbook and then move on in line to the next package of information.

Sure, sometimes an interest will cause kids to gather up a huge chunk of learning all at once. This is easy to see. And easy to overvalue as the "best" way to learn.

More often kids will slowly gather interesting tidbits, making connections as things occur to them to create a foundation. They'll add pieces here and there over the years to build on that foundation. This is not so easy to see going on. And very easy to undervalue.

So, if we can train ourselves to see that process we can help it along by valuing the times when they see Thomas Jefferson on Animaniacs and then later on the nickel and then still later on Mount Rushmore. Those moments will establish a feeling of recognition and familiarity. Then the more tidbits they gather about Jefferson, the more interesting he becomes. And the more interesting he becomes, the more they want to know about him.

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/joyce/steps
photo by Julie D, of a younger Holly Dodd and a little Adam Daniel
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One interest can lead to...

"One interest can lead to lots of other exciting things." —Adam Daniel

SandraDodd.com/adamlearns
photo by Sandra Dodd, of a helter skelter in London

Whole people, now

Your children are not works in progress. They are whole people, now and from the day they were born. If you can try to see that, rather than think people are not finished until they're finished, it might help you.

SandraDodd.com/respect
photo by Sandra Dodd, of Adam Daniel picking out a souvenir shirt
at the Rattlesnake Museum in Albuquerque
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The best moves

Some of what Adam Daniel learned from Pokémon:

You need a combination of different types on your team.

The best moves take a lot of practice to learn.

Don’t mess with a Charizard!


SandraDodd.com/adamlearns
photo by Sandra Dodd

People are different

Julie Daniel wrote:

One of the things that I really liked about the home education group was that the children were all different ages so Adam never realised that he was unusual in being able to read so early. Of course he knew that some children at the group could read and that some couldn't but in his mind that was just part of the concept that everyone is different — some children could run really fast and some were slow. Some children could go all the way across the monkey bars without letting go and some couldn't. Reading was like that. Some could, some couldn't. He didn't seem to notice until he was quite a lot older that he was an "early reader". And I liked that. It wouldn't have been possible in a school environment. —Julie Daniel

The lead-up to that is here: SandraDodd.com/julie
photo by Sandra Dodd

What's happening?

Robyn Coburn wrote:I suspect that any time a parent new to unschooling starts thinking "This isn't working" it is because they are holding on to an expectation.

Expectations can get in the way of seeing what is really happening.

—Robyn Coburn

SandraDodd.com/expectations
photo by James Daniel, of Julie and Adam at the Grand Canyon

In thought and awareness

When someone recommends turning full on toward the child, that means don't keep reading your newspaper or your computer screen. Pause the video. Put down the gardening tools. It doesn't mean stare at the child until he finishes his story. It means to be WITH him, with him in thought, and with him in emotion if needed, and with him in awareness.



SandraDodd.com/eyecontact
photo by Rippy Dusseldorp,
of Adam, Julie and James Daniel
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