photo by Cathy Koetsier
__
"Kindness, grace, and generosity go a lot further toward creating warm relationships and a joyfully harmonious home than measuring out equality." —Meredith Novak |
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 |
I am willing to watch it with her because I know she loves it. I affirm something about her by taking her interest, her pleasure seriously. I let her know she matters by making it clear that she matters to me. |
If you live in a home with books and clocks, movies, music, blocks, games, dishes, furniture, toys, clothes, the internet, and adults who are interested in kids, then you have "the basics" all around your kids all the time. And because those basics are there, kids will learn about them&mdashthey'll learn that words are a valuable tool and there are many ways to use them. They'll learn that numbers and patterns are as useful as words and sometimes better than words for a given purpose. They'll learn those things without lessons, living and playing and snuggling on the couch with you without ever needing to draw a line between those things and learning. —Meredith Novak * |
I think this is really key. If you're focused on who's "right" or which "side" to take, that's going to narrow down both your perception of the situation and the options you can envision.Helping maintain peace within families is a direct contribution to peace on earth.
"Unschooling doesn't magically save kids from making bad decisions or protect them from harm. Nothing can do that. What unschooling parents can do is step back from the idea that our greater knowledge about the world is something we can give to our kids. We can be friends, allies, facilitators, consultants, partners, but they're the ones inside their own heads, making their own connections." —Meredith Novak * |