The wondrous now

There are WONDROUS things people can do with current technology, and it's likely to get better and better, isn't it?

Don't separate your children from the future, from progress, and from understanding and using things just because the parents don't understand them or use them as well as they might. Don't hobble your child out of fear or superstition or trying to impress people you don't even know who want to scare and shame you. Be your child's partner. Lift him up and let him see.

SandraDodd.com/partners/child
photo by Sandra Dodd, of sculpture and shadows in Albuquerque,
to share around the world, without printing, paper or postage
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Souls and minds

I think if people divide their lives into academic and non-academic, they're not radical unschoolers. I think unschooling in the context of a traditional set of rules and parental requirements and expectations will work better than structured school-at-home, but I don't think it will work as well for the developing souls and minds of the children involved. And those who are not radical unschoolers would look at that and say "What do their souls have to do with unschooling?"

SandraDodd.com/unschool/radical
SandraDodd.com/spirituality
photo by Lydia Koltai
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Food and its purpose

[When my children were little...] I always put the kids' needs ahead of dinner. Dinner happened after or around nursing babies and such.

You might have to do away with the idea of a peaceful mealtime for a few years. Maybe re-thinking meals would be the way to go.

I think it helps rather than to live by the idealized traditional model of dinner at 6:00, all at their seats, dinner conversation that could be reported to the media as an ideal mix of news of the day and philosophy, etc, to think of food and its purpose. People need to be nourished physically and it's uncomfortable to go to sleep hungry. THAT is the purpose of evening food, not the appearance of a well-organized dinner.

SandraDodd.com/eating/dinner
photo by Sandra Dodd, of one of the former Dodd babies
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Live sweetly by choice

It seems to me the best you can do for your family is to choose to be with them as long and as well as you can be, mindfully aware that you have chosen to do this.

Live sweetly by choice.

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From my handwritten notes for a 2004 presentation that was pre-empted for a last-minute speaker.
photo by Sandra Dodd of the cloth from the article here
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Saying Yes to Infants

If an infant can't even ask a question, why would a parent say "no"? But some of the first words many babies hear are "No!" and "Don't" and "Stop." Even without the words themselves, if a baby reaches out and the parent pushes his hand back or ignores him, that is a big "no." If a baby cries and the parent ignores him, or puts him down roughly, or leaves the room and closes the door, that is not even nearly in the realm of "yes."

When one of the partners is in pain, the partnership isn't doing very well. And it's not a fifty-fifty partnership; nor is anything in the whole world. In the case of a mother who can walk and talk, access water and maybe drive a car, she can't expect a newborn baby to do half the work. If she gives him everything she can, he will give back as much as he has, not just then, but for years to come if she doesn't screw it up.

SandraDodd.com/babies/infants
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Rational responses

There's a very old joke about a man saying "Doctor, doctor, it hurts when I do this," and the doctor replying, "Well don't do that."

When someone comes to a radical unschooling discussion to complain about their children's response to bedtimes or limits or "having to" read, they won't get the help they think they want. They will get advice to stop doing that. People will point out that the parents' actions and expectations are the problem, and the children's responses are rational and maybe inevitable.

Where is the edge of unschooling?
(quote from page 38 or 41 of The Big Book of Unschooling)
photo by Sarah Dickinson
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Living Sweetly by Choice

It seems to me the best you can do for your family is to choose to be with them as long and as well as you can be, mindfully aware that you have chosen to do this.

Live sweetly by choice.

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From my handwritten notes for a 2004 presentation that was pre-empted for a last-minute speaker.
photo by Sandra Dodd of the cloth from the article here
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Special ideas

Deb Lewis wrote:

When you have snow, or can get to snow, snowshoeing is wonderful because you don't need any special skills to strap on the shoes and go have fun. Rental isn't expensive and most places offer group rates if you ever get together with others for the day. We went snowshoeing on Christmas day... Wonderful!

Don't be afraid to tell rental places you're looking for the best price. Tell them you're homeschoolers, ask for a discount. You'll be surprised how well it works.

—Deb Lewis

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Sandra, adding...

I LOVE ideas and advice that are regional and seasonal. Deb lives in Montana. It will be summer soon, there.

Other unschoolers might live where there are ZERO snowshoe rentals, ever. But what else might they have that Montana doesn't?

Frolic in thoughts and ideas, and maybe in snowshoes.

Deb Lewis's List of Things to do in the Winter
photo by Janine Davies

The best of bad dreams

I went to school for 15 years straight, and most summer sessions from 8th grade through university.

Beginning in the 4th grade, I had a nightmare the night before the first day of school every single time, and I came to count on it as a checklist. The first few were small and kind of standard, like I got off the bus in only my slip, or I had my house shoes on, or I didn't know whose class I was supposed to be in.

Over the years these dreams blossomed into extravaganzas of mishap, and they were always so real I'd wake up in a panic thinking I'd gotten off to such a horrible start the whole year would be a total disaster. Then I'd realize the whole year was still ahead of me and I'd get out of bed and do all the things right that had gone wrong in the dream.

The night before my first day as a classroom teacher I dreamed I didn't have a grade book or a pen. Next day I did. That one, my first checklist dream as an employed adult, made me start to wish for more.

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I wrote all of that in the early 1980s, before I had children. Checklist dreams have continued, or stress dreams where I had lost a child's shoes, or had forgotten to order a cake, or didn't have gas in the car.

If you can make checklists out of fears, worries, and stress dreams, and your life is better because you think "Well I won't let THAT happen," what a gift!
Use happy advantages wherever you can find them.

Disposable Checklists for Unschoolers
photo by Sandra Dodd
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[P.S. for those who are good with numbers, and didn't like "15 years": I didn't go to kindergarten, and graduated from public school a year early. Four years of university, graduated in May 1974, turned 21 that summer. Then I taught for six years. I was quickly learning about learning!]

Happy monkey

I went to the grocery store alone. It was crowded and people were moving fast, but were calm and smiling. I saw three young children. Their relatives were being very sweet to all of them. In other families, older kids were being helpful.

On the way to my van, a man who was 35 or 40 was happily riding the back of his shopping cart down the hill toward his car, with the wind blowing his hair.

On the way home, I thought of the cutest thing I had heard. A young mom had been holding a toddler, and he said something and touched her mouth. She said, "Monkey?"

He indicated that she was right.

"You're a monkey?"

"Happy," he said.

"You're a happy monkey? Happy monkey!"

And he was. He was very happy.

So easily, we can tip two degrees over into the sorrows and fears of the world. Without trying, we can fall into a pool of despair and take our friends and families down with us.

Not everyone can be happy today, but if your child is whole and well, for one moment or for ten do your part to help him be as happy a monkey as he can be.

SandraDodd.com/gratitude/health
photo by Julie D
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Closer to peace

We can't live in "how will I survive this?" time nor can we live well by pining for that past we've already lived through. The best way to get through must be to do a better thing. If a conscious thought about time passage comes, think of what will be an improvement, and make that choice, however tiny, however slight.

Avoiding regret, contributing joy...
time will flow as it will,
but we can move closer to peace.

original writing, a bit longer, at Time is Inconsistent, June 2017
photo by Cass Kotrba

Be that way

Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

Treat them the way you want them to treat others - It's easy to be nice when the kids are nice. The kids need to see how people (you) can be patient and kind when life isn't going smoothly. They need to see how to work with someone whose view is different. They will get to see that by how you treat them when their view is different from yours. If you treat their needs and feelings as less important, they'll learn to treat other's needs and feelings as less important. And then when you're old and bedridden, they'll say, "No, you don't need more tea, no, you don't need to finish that TV program. I have other things to do than tending to your needs. Can't you see how busy I am?"

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/happychildhood
photo by Erika Andromeda, of a patient child and his well-loved Great Grannny

Learning informally and naturally

If budding unschoolers will look at how they learned things outside the classroom, and use that as a model and a goal, that helps. They don't really have to hunt down other unschooling families, although it doesn't hurt. A family isolated from other unschoolers might do well to brainstorm examples of things they've learned informally and naturally, and to look around for other people learning things in the same manner.

An Interview with Sandra Dodd by Emily Subler, 1998
photo by Rosie Moon

Start thinking about stopping.

Here's a way to gauge your unschooling progress: Can you stop learning, at your house? Can you put the pause on unschooling?

Once a year, lots of people do that, as well as they can. Just one day. It's coming up next month, July 24.

I thought you might need some time to plan.




Learn Nothing Day, in here, over the years

An examined life

"I think to do unschooling well, it is a fundamental element to have an examined life. To be mindful of our choices and understand our thought processes." —Rippy Dusseldorp

SandraDodd.com/feedback/rippy
photo by Sarah Dickinson

Informal and natural learning

I don't really know the magic words to get people to be calm and realistic about expectations and results. To proceed without looking into the school-windows-of-their-minds all the time.

There is no switch I can flip. Just as with other teaching/learning situations, all the learning takes place inside the learner. None can be inserted by a teacher.

If budding unschoolers will look at how they learned things outside the classroom, and use that as a model and a goal, that helps. They don't really have to hunt down other unschooling families, although it doesn't hurt. A family isolated from other unschoolers might do well to brainstorm examples of things they've learned informally and naturally, and to look around for other people learning things in the same manner.

An Interview with Sandra Dodd by Emily Subler, 1998
photo by Ester Siroky

Time is inconsistent

Time is theoretically some sort of mathematical constant, but parents know that a day can seem to last forever, and a season can seem like a lifetime—then in retrospect seems to have zoomed by.

We can't live in "how will I survive this?" time nor can we live well by pining for that past we've already lived through. The best way to get through must be to do a better thing. If a conscious thought about time passage comes, think of what will be an improvement, and make that choice, however tiny, however slight.

Avoiding regret, contributing joy...
time will flow as it will,
but we can move closer to peace.

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The writing here is new, but here is more on this perspective:
SandraDodd.com/change/
photo by Sandra Dodd, on a carousel in Austin
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Choices and thought processes

"I think to do unschooling well, it is a fundamental element to have an examined life. To be mindful of our choices and understand our thought processes."

—Rippy Dusseldorp

SandraDodd.com/being/healing
photo by Sarah Scullin

Options over rules

Probably some families make rules so that their kids will learn to follow rules. It's possible. Too much practice can kill the joy, though. Being forced to play an instrument can create an adult who doesn't even bother to own one of the instruments he knows how to play, because how he's out of school he doesn't "have to." If someone made me practice eating before every meal, I wouldn't be very hungry.

So here I have kids who can sleep as long as they want, who set their alarms and get up; who have all kinds of clothes and no rules, who dress well and appropriately to the situation; who don't have to come home but they DO come home.

Something important is happening.


SandraDodd.com/rules
photo by Karen James

Clearly living

"It's not about being great or reaching lofty goals. If that happens—awesome! To me though, a life well lived is one where our motivation for doing what we do is clear in our own minds and hearts."

—Karen James

SandraDodd.com/happy
photo by Sandra Dodd