Color, texture, scent. Sound. Taste.
Let your days be sensational.
Disposable Checklists for Unschoolers
photo by Janine Davies
If you don't decide, or if you don't think of it many times a day when you make small choices, and decide how to act and react, then things won't get better.
Not every step will be forward, but if most of them are, then you'll make progress.
The main idea is about seeing everything we do as a choice.
What locks people in "have to" thinking is they close the doors of choices they will not for various reasons take. They often end up with only one door open and it feels like they have to take it. And they feel trapped.
A ten year old boy was being unkind to his five year old brother. Their mom thought it was partly from the older boy having been treated badly when he was in school, and wrote, "Some of those memories and hurt feelings have carried over and he's still
My response: You could tell him that he will help himself heal and feel better by being the kind of person he would like for his brother to become. (Nicer than the kids at school.) |
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They help people who need help. The people who need help ask for it. These are good things. —Deb Lewis |
My strongly held belief about most things is that no one knows for sure, knowledge grows and changes, but that stress and fear are always harmful.
Sometimes you will understand what your kids *could* be learning from something. Always they'll be learning much more, making connections with ideas that seems to have no relation to what they're doing, learning thousands of little bits about peripheral things like music, social interactions, history, math, who they are, who you are and so much much more.
| If you touch your child gently, softly, lovingly, he is more likely to be gentle with others. He will have learned not from words, but from his own lived experience, from your example, how to touch gently. |  |
Outside, you might be where trees, or mountains make a border for a cloud show.
Perhaps you see the sun set on water, or desert plants. Maybe familiar buildings are what the sun goes behind, from your point of view.
Don't forget to look, sometimes, at the beauty you can view nearby.
People don't need to enact each extreme to find a resting place. Because we have the ability to imagine, and remember and to plan, here is an idea. Think of what too much noise would be—too much talking, too much background noise, too many wind chimes, too many power tools.
What would be too much silence? No running water, no bird song, no fan, no one to ask you questions, at all.
Too much talking can be as harmful as no talking at all. Approach the balance from the quiet side.
| Connections are the best part of learning, in unschooling, in life, for fun. But if it’s too noisy too often, a quiet moonrise over a lake will get all sound-polluted. And one person’s thoughts of beauty might be overrun by someone else’s free associations. |  |
