Food as love

Offering a child food instead of waiting for him to ask has been frowned upon by some people as being pressure. I think that's wrong. Asking for cold pantry-food, or needing to ask someone to cook something isn't nearly as good as smelling food cooking, or seeing nicely-arranged food that's immediately available if you want it.

SandraDodd.com/food
photo and homemade pita bread by Sandra Dodd

Different food, future food

"When I think about the food I make for my daughter (if it's different from what I've made for my husband and myself), I think ahead to when she might be making me food because I am unable to."

—Robin Bentley

SandraDodd.com/food
photo by Sandra Dodd

Happy and interested

Deb Lewis wrote:

If your daughter doesn't want to leave something interesting to go to the table to eat, take food to her. Sit with her and eat together.

That's the same kind of sharing you could do at a table. Food eaten in front of the TV or computer with a happy mom who is interested in you is much better than food shared in grudging silence and anger.

Wouldn't you be grateful to a friend who brought you food if you were in the middle of something important? I'm always grateful when my husband brings home a pizza or Chinese food when I'm having a really busy day.

—Deb Lewis

SandraDodd.com/deblewis
photo by a realtor, of Janine's former garden
(they've moved)

Different food, future food

"When I think about the food I make for my daughter (if it's different from what I've made for my husband and myself), I think ahead to when she might be making me food because I am unable to."

—Robin Bentley

SandraDodd.com/food
photo by Sandra Dodd

Photos of food

I understand why photos of food are popular. For years, cookbooks and magazines have tried for good food photos, but they're not always easy to create. They used to be improved by choices of serving dishes, backgrounds, table settings, and sometimes fake ingredients because the real ones didn't photograph as well under studio lighting.

Along came small digital cameras, and now we can see what other people have made, or have been served at a restaurant or a picnic. It's fun.

Food that takes hours to make and minutes to eat can be preserved and revisited—not in an edible way, but in a manner that might inspire us to make something like that again.

Find joy in momentary visions that were not always possible to capture and share.

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Other food (fresh or prepared) at Just Add Light and Stir (some is for animals)
photo above by Sandra Dodd

Warm food

Offering a child food instead of waiting for him to ask has been frowned upon by some people as being pressure. I think that's wrong.

Asking for cold pantry-food, or needing to ask someone to cook something isn't nearly as good as smelling food cooking, or seeing nicely-arranged food that's immediately available if you want it.

The Full Plate Club
photo by Jen Keefe
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Special-occasion food

You can play with your food and eat it too.

Related for food images to
How Unschooled Kids Watch TV
and maybe to Easy Food Art
photo by Sarah S.

Preserve some instincts

Allow children to reject food they don’t like, or that doesn’t smell like something they should eat, or doesn’t look good to them. Don’t extinguish a child’s instincts because you-the-parent seem sure that you know more, know facts, know rules.
. . . .Instead of looking for exceptions to knock my ideas away with, read a little (of this or anything else), try a little (try not forcing food OR “knowledge” into children), wait a while (and while you’re waiting, ponder the nature of “fact”) and watch for the effects of the read/try/wait process, on your own thinking, or on the child’s reactions and responses, or on the relationship.




Reading science; food, and instinct
information on a situation in which
Twinkies are better food than alfalfa sprouts,
and when lettuce might be very dangerous

Photo by Sandra Dodd of bell peppers (which I don't much like) stuffed with things lots of other people don't like or can't eat. I didn't do it on purpose, the recipe was just all beef, onion, garlic, tomatoes, mushrooms, pine nuts...

Food

The more one's reaction to "food" (the word, the idea, the substance) is strong and emotional, the more evidence there is that the way in which that person was raised to see and deal with food should not be repeated.

SandraDodd.com/food
photo by Sandra Dodd

Everything changes

In a discussion, someone challenged the idea of kids have options even about what they wanted to eat, and how. She wrote:

"Eating decisions"?

I picked it up and set it down just a little way from there with this response:

Choices. If ALL of that is changed to a model in which there is food, and people make choices—lots of small choices, not big "decisions"—a hundred hard problems disappear.

In one small moment, if a child can pick up a food or not; smell it or not; taste it or not; keep that bite and chew and swallow, or spit it out; take another bite or not; dip it in something or not; put another food with it or not—EVERYTHING changes.

SandraDodd.com/food.html
photo by Sarah S

Problems disappear

"Eating decisions"?

Choices. If ALL of that is changed to a model in which there is food, and people make choices—lots of small choices, not big "decisions"—a hundred hard problems disappear.

In one small moment, if a child can pick up a food or not; smell it or not; taste it or not; keep that bite and chew and swallow, or spit it out; take another bite or not; dip it in something or not; put another food with it or not—EVERYTHING changes.

SandraDodd.com/food.html
photo by Karen James
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Life at home is blooming

A mom named Heather wrote:

Sandra Dodd & Joyce Kurtak Fetteroll, I came to unschooling to provide a better way to learn for my kids. Then I came to radical unschooling because I discovered it was about more than school. Now I'm discovering my hang-ups about food / nutrition / healthy food obsessions / weekend "junk" binges and controlling the groceries in our home and now radically unschooling (and your wisdom!) is helping me to unravel these problems and live wholly in the area of food too! Radical unschooling has SO MUCH been about me discovering issues I didn't even know I had, and life at home is blooming. I can't thank you enough for sharing your knowledge!

—Heather...

SandraDodd.com/change
photo by Sarah S, who took the photo in September 2023, of candy that's available for her kids anytime, and invites us to note there is still Easter candy in there

Courtesy and common sense

Don't bring your hot dog to the vegan friend's house. Don't bring stinky food to places where others can't get away. Don't bring great-smelling food to a hospital room where someone is on a restricted diet, or on an IV with no food allowed.
. . . .
"It depends" is a good first answer when someone asks whether something is or is not okay. There is no "rule" that says unschoolers can eat anything they want any time. But there should not be arbitrary restrictions, just really logical, sensible ones involving courtesy and common sense.

SandraDodd.com/foodrules
photo by Sandra Dodd

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

Food without evil

When food is given the status of a religion (the place where sacrifices are made to ensure a positive outcome and long/eternal life), then there IS the necessity of a devil/Satan/"the dark side." When food is just another casual part of life, kids will choose melons over biscuits/cookies and chocolate eggs sometimes.

SandraDodd.com/sacrifice/
photo by Trevor Parker, later edited by Holly Dodd
(click it)

The day it was picked

Sometimes people get the chance to eat food that was just picked that day. Those doing the picking might get to taste things right in the garden!

Life allows us to eat food all year that wouldn't have been available without trucks, trains, and ships. There's an upside and a downside.

I live in such a dry place that without import and transport, I would never even have seen most of the foods I can buy. I'm grateful for both—fresh local, for those things New Mexico can produce, and for those foods that needed different climates and seasons.

Live lightly and sweetly around food.

Joy / Live Lightly
photo by Belinda Dutch, in Brighton, England

Food and art

Food can be art, and there is art about food.

Some thing are obvious, like cake decoration, or piemaking. But even when you make a sandwich, it can be cut artfully and arranged nicely on a plate. You could use matching dishes, even if you're only feeding one child.

Aesthetics! Look for beauty, and create a bit of it.

SandraDodd.com/foodfun
photo by Jacki, Hannah's mom, long ago
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Brain food in abundance

Pam Sorooshian wrote:

Some kind of learning is happening all the time — but not all learning is good. Learning how to sneak food, learning that parents can't be trusted and counted on, learning to think of oneself in negative ways, all sad. Learning that life is boring, hard work, sucks, hurts, is unfair, also sad. Not what unschoolers are trying for.

Human brains are voracious and will feed on whatever is available. Unschoolers should be offering interesting experiences, ideas, stimulation, music, logic, conversation, images, movement, discovery, beauty, etc. Brain food in abundance. It requires effort. It requires attention to qualitative and quantitative aspects of learning. Depth and breadth — creating a lifestyle in which kids are offered the opportunity to learn a lot about some things and a little about a lot of things.

—Pam Sorooshian

on Always Learning, in 2011
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Artistry with color and food

When you choose, clean, cut and set food down, be there.

Sometimes, consider the texture, color and shapes. A few minutes spent seeing more clearly, and moving more purposefully, might make memories for those who see your momentary artistry, and will give you a moment of presence and success.

Play with your food
photo by Lisa Kae

Something so profound...

Just as the topic of food can be a hurdle or a brick wall to some trying to get unschooling, it can also be the source of the epiphany that sheds light on all other principles involved in natural learning and parenting peacefully. Consider a child who has been told what and how much to eat, and told how his body feels by someone trying to manipulate or control him. That is not about learning or choices. If a parent understands that a child can learn about food by trying it, by eating it or not, by sensing how his own body feels, the parent understands something so profound that all their lives will change.

SandraDodd.com/food
photo by Sandra Dodd
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