Open

When I reject something from my life, it closes doors, in my head, and in my soul. I can't make connections there anymore. I have eliminated it from active play. It's not good for unschoolers.

Open and unfold, enlarge and expand.

SandraDodd.com/halfempty
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Means, encouragement, time and space

If the child is allowed to sit with mom or walk across the room, read or not read without pressure or fanfare, walk or not walk as he wishes, if his environment is kept comfortable (taking his personality, fears, needs into account when arranging his comfort) and if he has the means and encouragement and time and space to explore his ever-expanding world, he will learn.

SandraDodd.com/labels
photo by Sandra Dodd, at a tile museum in Lisbon
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Normal or exotic?

Near you there are many many plain and simple things that you might overlook for being commonplace, everyday, throwaway background sights, sounds, smells, tastes or textures.

What are walls and fences made of where you are? Some other places, it is very different. How does the air feel and smell when it's cold? What's the first plant that might volunteer to grow in a bare spot? What little animals might you see, and what birds do you hear? What do people throw away that a tourist might pick up and keep? What food is readily available, that everyone knows how to make, and has the ingredients for on hand nearly always?

When you look as far to the east as you can see, what is the view? Turn around and look the other way, too.

Where you are is exotic to most of the rest of the world. Most other people will never see it. Knowing that your plainness is someone else's curiosity can make your life richer.

Sometimes, when you look, listen, taste, feel, smell, close your eyes and rest, remember that you are in one special place.

The writing is new, but something to follow with might be SandraDodd.com/deblewis/abundance
or
SandraDodd.com/museum
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Exploring

"The idea of unguided discovery in a school setting isn't anything like the kind of discoveries unschooling kids make. There is a difference between a teacher handing a kid a pulley and telling him to discover what it does and write a paper about it and a kid finding an interesting object and messing with it because it sparked his curiosity. A lot of what my son has learned he's learned in a way that might be called unguided discovery, but it didn't look much like the model in the article, and it didn't happen in a vacuum."

—Deb Lewis

SandraDodd.com/deblewis/discovery
photo by Sandra Dodd

Looking closely

Karen James wrote:

Ethan and I are playing a game where one of us takes a close up picture of something in our yard, and the other one has to find it. Here's a sampling...



Sandra, I thought of this quote from Just Add Light and Stir as I was playing this game with Ethan today: "Some families travel. Some stay in one place, and come to know that place well."

It's interesting too, as I sit here and look at these photos again, that there's not anything particularly exotic about our back yard—it's kind of overgrown and weedy (as you might have guessed from a couple of the photos)—yet it looks so beautiful from this perspective. Especially that middle one. (Ethan was proud of that one.)

More exploring without leaving: SandraDodd.com/museum
The quote first said "...the quote from today's Just Add light..."

photos by Karen and Ethan James

Living thoughtfully

There is a danger in living an entirely reactionary life. If you do everything the opposite of what your mom did, it's as bad as doing exactly what your mom did without knowing why. Be discriminating and thoughtful. Don't chuck the ghost of the baby you were out with the bathwater of your emotional memories.

SandraDodd.com/relatives
photo by Sandra Dodd

Teaching is a problem.

"Teaching" is a problem, in an unschooling light. Learning is the goal, and teaching gets in the way.

SandraDodd.com/teaching
photo by Leon McNeill, of Holly Dodd looking at the original Bayeux Tapestry,
in France in 2005

Natural learning flows

Learning and growth are like a limitless reservoir, but we have factors in our culture that limit our access or control or faith that it could even work, or our feeling of ownership of knowledge of growth and learning. Experts. Timetables and charts. Once a parent knows enough about natural learning to help that learning happen, though, it can flow freely.

hand pumps, siphons, water containers
photo by Sandra Dodd

Finding art

Be brave! Not all art is in museums. Not everything that's in a museum is timeless, glorious art. Find accidents, jokes, coincidences... Share them with your children, share them with your friends.


SandraDodd.com/art
photo by Sandra Dodd, and it's a link to where and what it is

Where we live

Most of us live in a town, or near one, or in a city. Many of us live in houses—some attached, some stacked up, some with wheels. But all of us live in the present, in our families, in our bodies, and in our minds. We live, in part, in the thoughts of others. We live, sometimes, in peace and joy. We live in our imaginations, and in our dreams, and in our memories.

Stand in the place where you live...

SandraDodd.com/wonder
photo by Sandra Dodd, at a museum in London
but there was such a playset at our house
and I wish I had more photos of it

Explore your neighborhood

You could think of yourselves as tourists in your own town. What museum or historical site or interesting natural feature have you not gone to see, or maybe haven't taken your children to lately? Pretend you're only in town for two weeks and do some cool things.


Or if that seems awkward to you, import a tourist. Maybe an unschooling family could be persuaded to come and visit you, and you could take them sightseeing and also discuss unschooling. Just let the kids play, though, and play with them or watch them. Look at what they're drawn to. Look at how they examine things or what they ask about. Don't be teacherly in your responses. Answer them as you would a tourist friend who was visiting town. Tell the good parts in an inspiring way. You don't need to put it in historical or political context.

Give one cool fact and if they want to know more they'll ask. That's how conversations work. Have conversations.

The quote is from page 15 of The Big Book of Unschooling,
in the Deschooling section, but here is something similar:
SandraDodd.com/video/doright (bottom of the page)
photo by Marty Dodd
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Labels as walls

A label will put a wall of words and fears and filters between a parent and a child.

from "Seeing your child, rather than a label,"
page 70, The Big Book of Unschooling

Photo by Sandra Dodd, of the corner of a WWII bunker (or pillbox) at The Brooklands Museum in Surrey, in England. Full view was used on this blog September 29. Because it's near the Concorde, it's not much noticed. And it's not a display; it was there for the defense of the aircraft factory. **

Newness unfolding

I can't really speak to any "end results," because they're still growing and experiencing the newness of many firsts in their lives. If there is ever an "end," the results won't matter anymore. But as long as life continues, the results unfold.

SandraDodd.com/magicwindow
photo by Marty Dodd, of himself and his girlfriend when they drove to Grants, New Mexico, on a whim to visit the Mining Museum
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Whole people, now

Your children are not works in progress. They are whole people, now and from the day they were born. If you can try to see that, rather than think people are not finished until they're finished, it might help you.

SandraDodd.com/respect
photo by Sandra Dodd, of Adam Daniel picking out a souvenir shirt
at the Rattlesnake Museum in Albuquerque
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Circumstances and consequences

Questions such as "How important is this, really?" and "What's the worst that can happen?" change people's perspectives in several directions. They might decide the project really is pressing and urgent, but the difference will be that they considered the circumstances, the consequences, a range of choices, and made that decision.

From "Changes in the Parents," page 268 (or 309), The Big Book of Unschooling
which links to SandraDodd.com/change
photo by Sandra Dodd

If you think that photo has been used before, you might be thinking of this one, from a different London city bus, at the same museum.

Which hat?

These hats are in a museum in Pennsylvania, in a reproduction milliner's shop.

Recently Just Add Light had a quote and link to something by Pam Sorooshian about whether one should be a child's friend, or parent. Pam knows one should be both, and explained that elegantly.

I was with a group of home ed families in France, some unschoolers, others in the various stages of consideration of unschooling, and someone asked to to tell how I am as a woman. Bea Mantovani was the translator, and said the question didn't really translate. The questioner tried to clarify. She said I had spoken of my husband, and of being a mother, but how was I as a woman, separate from that?

I remember my confusion better than my response. One thing I said was that I AM a mother.

I suspected, and it was later confirmed, that it was a socio-political question, a feminist concept about identity above and beyond motherhood. But the question sets motherhood in a low position, if only the brightest and the best exist apart from and outside of that, and if to have no answer made me unaware or less whole.

For one thing, though, I was in France speaking to people because I had been invited to do so. I've written thousands of thousands of words about parenting and how children can exist in a peaceful world of easy growth in all directions.

I'm a changing-the-world woman. But even that didn't answer the question, because it still was an extension of mothering, which I had explained had involved sharing and modeling since I nursed babies at La Leche League meetings.

I would most like to be known as a woman of integrity, and for that to be true, I can't deny or reject any aspect of my being. I can't divide myself into parts and still be one integral whole. Any hat I might put on is still on my own head.

SandraDodd.com/integrity

Affection and Esteem (from this blog, June 6, 2012)
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Threes

I had a Shakespeare professor who said "Three trees make a row," to confirm a pattern when a student noticed that something had appeared three times. I remember thinking, but not saying, "Not if they're making a triangle." But it wasn't a math class, and I understood his point.

There's something strong and fun about three. Two parents and a baby. A tripod for a camera or a telescope. A three-legged stool (a tripod to sit on). Three versions of a song. A book or movie trilogy. Counting by threes with its elegant stops at 33, 66, and 99.

photo by Sandra Dodd
Some other images in this blog with three of something:

What do you hope for?

Museum of everything

Destinations

Happy and glad

Calm and quiet

Leeway and freedom

like pulling a bouquet of flowers out of a wand

Sometimes my kids get bored, and I can light up a half hour by digging into some box or drawer and producing something they've never yet seen. Like a magician pulling a bouquet of flowers out of a wand, I pull out a little doll, or some Australian coins, electric curlers (for sorting, putting back on the rods, and discussing), muffin tins, poker chips, grandpa's bow ties, a hand-cranked egg beater to froth up soapy water (I wish I had a hand-cranked drill; my dad did). Whenever I pull these things out I tell the kids why I have them and what I know about them. I told about the gold strip in Australian paper money, about ties my dad used to have with cowboys and bucking broncos on them, about patterned muffin tins being pressed kind of like steel car parts are pressed, of getting my hair stuck in electric curlers when I was a teenager and crying because I was afraid my long hair would have to be cut off.

SandraDodd.com/museum
photo by Sandra Dodd

The photo is not of my house, but of a candy shop in the village of Tissington, in Derbyshire, which had an antique till ("cash register," in American parlance).

When I was little, there were a few little stores in northern New Mexico that still had mechanical cash registers that didn't take electricity.

Interested and Interesting

In July 2009 I spoke at a small conference in London. This is about strewing for teens, from the notes for one of those presentation. Most of it would work for people of any age, though!

Your family needs to be interested and interesting.

Go places.
Bring things and people in.
Visit friends of yours who have cool stuff or do interesting things.

Ask him to go with you if you take the dog to the vet. Drive home different ways and take your time.

Putz around. Go to the mall some morning when it's not at all full of teens and window-shop.

If you can at all afford it, find something in another town like a play, concert, museum, event and take him there. Stay overnight.

Go touristing somewhere not too far from you. Like if you had out of town guests, but just go with your son.

Watch DVDs together.

Is there something you do that he might want to learn? Is there something you could learn together? Maybe the two of you could take a class or join a group that does... photography, hiking, quilting, scrapbooking, pottery, woodworking...

When Marty and I were going to the credit union to get money to get a used Jeep he wanted, I took Holly and her boyfriend along. That was a learning and sharing experience for us all.

SandraDodd.com/strewing
photo by Sandra Dodd

Seems like yesterday

If my kids watched TV for hours each day, I might not be a good person to listen to about this, but I'll say it again: Unlimited access to TV and to food in my house has produced kids who only watch TV when they want to, and who only eat what they want to eat which is NOT a bunch of candy.

Holly asked for broccoli Tuesday. I bought some and cooked it before I knew she had gone to her friend's for an overnighter (she got the invite and left while I was shopping). So yesterday she asked about it, I reheated it and brought it to her at the TV where she was playing a game, waiting for the Simpsons to come on. She finished that bowl of broccoli, salt and butter, and asked for more with less butter.

I cooked the rest of it, and she ate most of it.

When The Simpsons ended she was done with the TV.

This isn't theoretical broccoli or TV, it was yesterday.

[It was 2001, but I wrote it the day after it happened.
Holly was nine years old.]

True Tales of Kids Turning Down Sweets
photo by Sandra Dodd, totally unrelated to the text, from a display at the Victoria and Albert museum of art from defunct or dismantled churches
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