Transcendental moment

Remember that your children will also experience flow.

If you interrupt them while they're playing Rock Band or drawing or spinning on a tire swing, you might be disturbing a profound experience. So interrupt gently, when you must. Treat them with the respect you would treat anyone who might be in the midst of a transcendental moment.

page 207 (or 240) of The Big Book of Unschooling, on Flow
photo by Sarah Dickinson

Flow, sparkle, joy

Unschooling should be better than school; if it's not, the kids would be better off in school. Any unschooler who wants to do just the bare minimum of what she "has to do" to be considered (by whom!?) an unschooler is NOT unschooling well or right. It needs energy, activity, interactivity, flow, sparkle, joy.

other "better than school" posts and sparkling ideas
(quote from 2014, preserved here]
photo by Nina Haley

Flow far and near

Let your thoughts wander far and near. Let connections flow.

Nicest History and Review Ever
photo by Gail Higgins
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(backup of that review, for the distant future, just in case)

The other things flow in around it.

(Below is most of my response to a complicated question about the balance of power and relationships, citing Bruno Bettelheim about A.S. Neill, and the assumption that unschoolers were libertarians:)

I've unschooled for over twenty years, and am not a "libertarian," and the unschooling ideals I've aimed for involved learning. They had little to do with Neill or Bettleheim (though I did like reading Bettleheim on fairy tales), but had to do with John Holt, attachment parenting, and observation of other families doing similar things.

Being a child's partner rather than his adversary makes the balance of knowledge unimportant. Nowadays my children drive me around, help me out, read small print and get things off high shelves. For many years, I did those things for them.

SandraDodd.com/partners

SandraDodd.com/balance

Learning first, and partnership and being present close after, and all the other things flow in around it.

photo by Sandra Dodd, of a well dressing in the village of Tissington
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Mushy happy everything

I've come to ask for a roll call on who's seeing, reading, caring. If you have this by e-mail, please respond, with at least a ping, if not a note.

The mailer-report says nobody saw this one: Constant flow of thoughts, which is too bad because there was a cool photo by Karen James of beautiful little plants growing in a crack in a lava flow. If you didn't receive that, I don't know why not, and I hope you'll take a look.

Some people object to "Mushy happy" anything, but I'm pretty sure it's better than dried-up cranky whatever, so if you want happy encouragement, stick around! If not, see if one of these guys has a daily blog for you, and best of luck.

Life changes things

Noticing and appreciating change and variation is good artistically, emotionally and scientifically. Life changes things. See that, accept it, and flow.

SandraDodd.com/flow
photo by Shannon Loucks

A constant flow of choices

Think.

Breathe.

Make choices that lead toward making life better. Not one big choice, a constant flow of choices every time you're going to say something or do something, all day, every day, starting now.

From a new, unfinished page: SandraDodd.com/fear
(I removed one word, for this post.)
photo by Sandra Dodd

Looking at whole lives

People live all over the world, and each life is different. Some people have horses, while others don't. Some can see the ocean every day; some never will. Some know all about snow, and others can't really imagine it.

We don't know in advance how lives will flow and grow, even while we're living in that flow.

Looking too closely for too long can bring frustration. "We had a meal today without vegetables, Oh NO!" or "This toddler didn't nap, and so Oh NO!" Look back at those in a week or a year, or in thirty years, and the diet will have averaged out, and the toddler will have slept.

Looking at details is good, but once in a while, take a long view of the lives of your grandparents, neighbors, friends, even maybe fictional characters. Sometimes the details dissolve into history, or are fleeting, or can be smiled away.

Find peace and hope in everyday ways.

Perspective
photo by Cathy Koetsier

Time flows

Every ghost town used to be alive. Every "haunted house" was once new. An abandoned car started with good tires, a running engine, and a happy owner. Each adult was a child.

The flow of history
photo by Karen James

Beauty and usefulness

The world isn't sorted into serious and funny, or beautiful and dull. Things are often quite mixed up, and changing with the moment, and the light, and the seasons. New things get old.

Some radio stations (which aren't as vital as they once were) play songs that are sixty years old, or more. A hundred years ago, 1920 provided the first public radio broadcasts of a news program (in Detroit, Michigan). A college radio station aired music, a sporting event and concerts (Schenectedy, New York). An opera was broadcast for the twenty radios that could receive it (August 2020, Buenos Aries, Argentina).

Our receipt of sound is more varied now, and we can bring in humor, debate, tragedy, and re-reuns of those things from earlier times. Text and images have been added. We have more choices than we have time to choose them, these days.

Look for beauty and usefulness. Choose joy and uplift, from the river of output that pours around us.

SandraDodd.com/emotion
photo by Sandra Dodd, in Liverpool one time

Stories of radio in 1920, which I looked up not knowing I really was writing this 100 years after initial public broadcasts, came from Wikipedia's History of Radio page. Good coincidence, for 2020. We are living in the flow of history.__

Doing and thinking

Learning to see learning is a process. It's part of deschooling, for the parents.

When learning starts to show, in its natural state, you will see that children are processing what they do and what they think about what they've done. They'll be making connections to everything else in their history and surroundings, to other experiences and imaginings.

When unschooling begins to really flow, the process of learning is the processing of experiences and connections.

SandraDodd.com/learning
photo by Nina Haley

Once you start looking...

Once you start looking for connections and welcoming them, it creates a kind of flow that builds and grows.

SandraDodd.com/connections/example
photo by Chrissy Florence
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Flowing clearly

Clarifying thought, it turns, out, is what unschooling is all about, for the parents. When the parents are clear, then learning can flow around them.


SandraDodd.com/clarity
photo by Sandra Dodd

Trivial history

Knowing that we live in the flow of change is something anyone interested in learning or in history, or in learning history, might want to learn to appreciate rather than to resist.

SandraDodd.com/history/zebrite
photo by Sandra Dodd
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A state of curiosity

In early 2008, sharing some interesting connections that had happened at our house, I wrote:

That all 'just happened,' but it happened because we've been building up to it with our whole lives and our whole style of communicating and living together in a constant state of open curiosity.
. . . .
Once you start looking for connections and welcoming them, it creates a kind of flow that builds and grows.

SandraDodd.com/connections/example
Photo by Sandra Dodd
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Water

I asked my daughter for an idea for Just Add Light, and she said "water."

Holly has played in small water and large, and suggested I recommend water play for its soothing effects, and for being one of the least expensive materials for exploration and entertainment. Bowls, pans and measuring cups. Water in sand or dirt. Showers and bathtubs. Wading pools. Ice makes a good floating toy. Ice cubes, or ice frozen into a mold, a pan, or a plastic bag will not need to be cleaned up or put away later. Ice in a wading pool. Ice in a sand box. Ice in a toy dump truck.

There was a time when Holly took two or three baths a day, just to be in the water, playing with a wash cloth, a colander, a funnel and some cups. She would listen to music and sing.

When our kids were very young, we would put a thick towel on the patio, set out shallow pans of water, little cups and bowls, and let the baby pour and splash.

For older kids and adults, a float or a swim, if possible, or some new soap and a long shower can make a difference in mood and moment.

Letting water run over your hands, feeling the smooth, gentle flow can move you toward peace.




photos by Sandra Dodd

SandraDodd.com/water (←that page is newer than this post)

Stop and hush

Meredith Novak wrote: Ultimately, what helps most to do first was not set myself up to yell—and that meant going back a few more minutes and noticing how things went wrong in the first place and changing those dynamics. Most of them were about expectations I had—kids should or shouldn't do some thing. As I worked through expectations like that, there was less to yell about. So basically I worked the problem from both ends—I found ways for life to flow more smoothly for my family on the one end, and learned to stop and hush and start over on the other. —Meredith Novak

New at the bottom of SandraDodd.com/parentingpeacefully
photo by Sandra Dodd
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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

A hundred times instead of once

Many people do have experience "removing restrictions," but please help us help others by NOT recommending doing that, ever. Sudden change confuses kids, they don't trust it, they assume it's temporary, and so their behavior reflects that. And it robs parents of the growth from gradually allowing more and more, as the parents learn more and more.

You could have said "okay" and "sure" hundreds of times instead of "whatever you want" one time, and the gradual change would have been a joy.
"Too Far, Too Fast": SandraDodd.com/problems/toofar
(I changed the original slightly, because it used to have "joy" twice.
I'm not against joy, but it broke the flow.)
photo by Janine Davies
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Good things swirl

Debbie Regan wrote:

Children prosper when parents are able to provide enough sense of safety, calmness and support, that feelings of peace and joy are close at hand. From there the business of childhood—exploring and learning about the world can progress unimpeded by stress. Stress is a distraction from the natural flow of curiosity, focus, joy, excitement, engagement, creativity, emotional awareness, learning...

The more peace and mindfulness I bring in my home, the more all those good things swirl around.

—Debbie Regan

The quote was in a passing discussion, but you might like this: SandraDodd.com/peace/becoming
photo by Julie D
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