Is this obvious?

I like the words "obvious" and "oblivious." They're not really related, but they seem and sound similar, which can be fun and funny.

To some people the presence of a lizard would be obvious. They would see it, right in their path.

I am often oblivious to lizards. I don't remember that they exist, if one hasn't just run up the wall.

Are we obvious to lizards? If one runs, he probably saw me moving toward him. They come to our compost bin to eat bugs. I bring new scraps from the kitchen. Out in my yard, sometimes lizards can seem to be oblivious to people, or to cats, or to roadrunners.

As the parenting of children goes, it is good to lean toward what is obvious, and to avoid being oblivious.

SandraDodd.com/words
photo by Karen James

Learning what's important

In 1997, someone asked how unschooling moms stayed patient.

Other moms have told me they think I'm patient. It makes me feel guilty because I have the internal list of all the times I've blown it, but a few things have helped me.

The biggest was Adult Children of Alcoholics, an al-Anon group. I went to meetings for four years and learned a lot of calming and encouraging things. One of those is to remember what I wanted and needed as a child. Then I try to give those things to my children. I don't mean toys or books. I mean listening, and smiling, and joking, and letting them climb on stuff even if it made me nervous, and not making such strictly-to-the-minute rules like "be back at 5:45 or else" and other arbitrary control-junk. One of the quotes/sayings from that learning-time is "How Important Is It?" and thinking that little mantra can help a ton all by itself. If we waste our energy and our relationship with our children on how they wear their socks and where they keep their toothbrush between times, there's nothing left for important things. I try to save it for important things, and I try not to be the defining judge of what's important. There are things the kids consider very important, and I force myself (at first, until I calm myself and remind myself to give) to pay attention to their stuff too. No "That's nice dear" while I ignore them. When it happens, occasionally, that I've done that, I feel bad and I sometimes go back and say, "Tell me again about that game. I'm sorry. I wasn't really listening."

Next biggest influence was La Leche League. There I learned that children have within them what they need to know, and that the parent and child are a team, not adversaries. It reinforced the idea that if you are loving and gentle and patient that children want to do what you ask them to do, and that they will come to weaning, potty training, separation from mom, and all those milestones without stress and without fear if you don't scare them or stress them! Seems kind of obvious, but our culture has 1,000 roadblocks.


From having studied meditation and Eastern religion, I learned the value of breathing. I think what it does is dissipate adrenaline. I remember in the 1960's and early 1970's it was Big News that yogis could *actually* slow their heart rates at will! WELL duh. People had been doing it in church (those who cared to actually "be still and know") for hundreds of years, but nobody thought to wire up contemplative Christians.

When people (parents or kids) are agitated and are thinking for a moment that something has to happen JUST THIS WAY and RIGHT NOW, breathing helps. Deep breathing, slow, and full-as-possible exhalation. This is, in Western terms, "count to ten." Calm down and let the adrenaline go. Some people have biochemistry that's not easy to control, and some people count too fast.

SandraDodd.com/parentingpeacefully
(read aloud as an intro, in the recording at the bottom of the page)

photo by Sandra Dodd of the neighbor's tree seen through an inch-thick piece of ice from a bucket of water on a cold day
__

Looks like playing

Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

Real learning looks very different from schoolish learning. Real learning looks like playing. Even when it matches something kids do in school (learning the names of the different clouds for instance) it still looks more like goofing around because it stops as soon as their interest is satisfied. They don't push on like they're "supposed" to. No, what they do is revisit it when the feel the need to build on it and they draw on it (though not necessarily making it obvious to us) to help them understand more of the world. *Everything* connects to everything else.

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/joyce/jitters
photo by Cátia Maciel

All the way

"Unschooling is at its core an understanding that learning is a part of being human. It is a recognition that school undermines that by saying that learning needs to be organised, structured and handed down. School argues that certain things are so hard to learn that they must be taught. If you unschool partway you are mixing up your messages. If you unschool math and science and reading but structure nutrition and media studies you are arguing that while a rich and engaging life may make the three "r"s obvious they won't help you to deal with the difficult studies of food and televisions and video games and computers." —Schuyler Waynforth

SandraDodd.com/unschool/marginal
photo by Davis Harte

Joyfully detoxing

Paula L / "Paulapalooza" wrote:

Okay, not all days will leave us feeling as if we are Julie Andrews spinning around on that mountain top singing "The Sound of Music," but so many of my days leave me with just that feeling. . . . .

I WILL NOT GIVE UP THIS KIND OF LIFE. 😊

You know, I spent a good 30 of my 35 years in some type of structured setting, striving to please others and live up to their standards, which I convinced myself were my own. I feel that I will be detoxing from this for the rest of my life, and it's a joyful process. Living outside the box makes me a person at peace, a person people constantly observe as "always so happy." I used to be very good at "blooming where I was planted," which was of course not true happiness, and the strain inevitably showed. I am finally happy on my own terms, and the difference is obvious to me.

—Paula L

A happy free day!
photo by Vlad Gurdiga

Also by Paula L, beautiful, but I cannot match a photo to it:
A Day of Wonder
It's sweet and poetic; please read it.

Towards positivity everywhere

Janine wrote:

It's exhilarating to me, the transformative power of unschooling. It is the thing that has finally drained negativity out of my life and pushed me daily further and further away from it, and further and further towards positivity in every area of my life. When it does sneak in again it is more obvious and ugly and I see it for the poison it is. It was ever present through my childhood, my youth, relationships and early parenting.

—Janine Davies

SandraDodd.com/positivity
photo by Tara Joe Farrell

The up side...

It's easy to think our "up" is everyone's up, and our focus is the obvious way of seeing. Let your children see in their own ways, and if you're lucky they will share with you.

"What's up?" can have a special new meaning.

Thinking and choosing (also upside down)
photo by Karen James

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
__

Avoiding roadblocks

[While I was in La Leche League] I learned that children have within them what they need to know, and that the parent and child are a team, not adversaries. It reinforced the idea that if you are loving and gentle and patient that children want to do what you ask them to do, and that they will come to weaning, potty training, separation from mom, and all those milestones without stress and without fear if you don't scare them or stress them! Seems kind of obvious, but our culture has 1,000 roadblocks.

SandraDodd.com/calm
photo by Sandra Dodd
of a pretty wooodpile in Laurie Wolfrum's yard
__

Choosing "better" better

Jen Keefe wrote:

Choosing peace over anything else seems so obvious. Except when I didn’t know there were more peaceful options I thought I was choosing them. I guess I thought the least unkind or least chaotic choice was choosing peace- if I even realized there was a choice, or that peace was a goal.

Last night the kids and I stayed up until 2:00 a.m. watching The Office. We typically go to sleep earlier than that but we were so into the show (we are binge watching and are at the place where Robert California took over).

We stayed up later so we slept later. So we went and got subway for lunch and brought it to the pool. The kids got chips and cookies and soda. That’s not a big deal anymore, but it used to be.

Now they are swimming so happily while I sit here typing this and chatting with them. It’s so... peaceful. As much as I loved my kids and was learning to parent gently this is not the way I was headed. I wouldn’t have had this moment, or the moments last night, or those moments this morning when we snuggled in bed right after we woke up, watching more of The Office. I wouldn’t know who my kids are.

This is better. It’s just better.

—Jen Keefe
(March 2018)

There is a bit more of that at Becoming the Parent You Want to Be
photo by Janine Davies
__ __

Patience

In 1997, someone asked how unschooling moms stayed patient.

Other moms have told me they think I'm patient. It makes me feel guilty because I have the internal list of all the times I've blown it, but a few things have helped me.

The biggest was Adult Children of Alcoholics, an al-Anon group. I went to meetings for four years and learned a lot of calming and encouraging things. One of those is to remember what I wanted and needed as a child. Then I try to give those things to my children. I don't mean toys or books. I mean listening, and smiling, and joking, and letting them climb on stuff even if it made me nervous, and not making such strictly-to-the-minute rules like "be back at 5:45 or else" and other arbitrary control-junk. One of the quotes/sayings from that learning-time is "How Important Is It?" and thinking that little mantra can help a ton all by itself. If we waste our energy and our relationship with our children on how they wear their socks and where they keep their toothbrush between times, there's nothing left for important things. I try to save it for important things, and I try not to be the defining judge of what's important. There are things the kids consider very important, and I force myself (at first, until I calm myself and remind myself to give) to pay attention to their stuff too. No "That's nice dear" while I ignore them. When it happens, occasionally, that I've done that, I feel bad and I sometimes go back and say, "Tell me again about that game. I'm sorry. I wasn't really listening."

Next biggest influence was La Leche League. There I learned that children have within them what they need to know, and that the parent and child are a team, not adversaries. It reinforced the idea that if you are loving and gentle and patient that children want to do what you ask them to do, and that they will come to weaning, potty training, separation from mom, and all those milestones without stress and without fear if you don't scare them or stress them! Seems kind of obvious, but our culture has 1,000 roadblocks.


From having studied meditation and Eastern religion, I learned the value of breathing. I think what it does is dissipate adrenaline. I remember in the 1960's and early 1970's it was Big News that yogis could *actually* slow their heart rates at will! WELL duh. People had been doing it in church (those who cared to actually "be still and know") for hundreds of years, but nobody thought to wire up contemplative Christians.

When people (parents or kids) are agitated and are thinking for a moment that something has to happen JUST THIS WAY and RIGHT NOW, breathing helps. Deep breathing, slow, and full-as-possible exhalation. This is, in Western terms, "count to ten." Calm down and let the adrenaline go. Some people have biochemistry that's not easy to control, and some people count too fast.

SandraDodd.com/parentingpeacefully
(read aloud as an intro, in the recording at the bottom of the page)

photo by Sandra Dodd of the neighbor's tree seen through an inch-thick piece of ice from a bucket of water on a cold day
__

Kids are people

Except in the few obvious ways, I don't treat my children in a lesser way than I treat my husband. It has been crucial to our interactions as an unschooling family that the kids were people first, and kids only incidentally and temporarily.

---

That was written nearly 20 years ago,when Always Learning was new
Now they're adults, so it was true! They were only temporarily children.
photo by Elise Lauterbach

Keys to knowledge

One of a child's best tools is to learn to ask "What's that?" It's one of a baby's keys to knowledge. "Sa-sat?" said one of my kids. Hundreds of times, pointing. "Sa-sat?" Another said, "Aht-dat?"

With names for things, categories form. Some small furry animals ARE "dog" and others are not. "Not" needs another name.

On naming, a researcher named J. Doug McGlothlin wrote, "A child possesses a natural desire to call an object by its name, and he uses that natural desire to help him learn the language. He receives real joy from just pointing out something and calling it by name. He never thinks it is stupid or silly to say something that others might consider obvious. For him, it is delightful."

SandraDodd.com/words/words
photo by Cass Kotrba
__

Trees and Plants

Here is another change in my life, from years of unschooling:

I even garden differently than I used to. I certainly didn't expect that. I have let trees grow their own way without frustration on my part, and appealed to my husband not to prune so much. I have found things for vines to grow on that aren't fancy or store-bought. The vines are going to cover it up anyway. I've let native plants go ahead and grow, if they don't have stickers. Some of them are really pretty, and they want to grow there. If I destroy them and put in some foreign plants, will the neighbors be impressed?

Considering what is natural in my children, and what I can't control and shouldn't even try to control, has made it easier for me to look for what's "natural" in nature. That seems pretty obvious, written down that way, but many people want to control trees, and grass, and flowers. I don't mind influencing them and encouraging them, and nurturing them, but "to control" them? I don't even "control" tumbleweeds. I pull up any I find and put their little carcasses in the compost pile. That's tumbleweed euthanasia, maybe, but not "control."

The quote is from page 278 (or 321) of The Big Book of Unschooling,
and you might want to look at some tumbleweeds I've touched.
photo by Sandra Dodd, and it's a link
__

A joyful process

Paula L / "Paulapalooza" wrote:

Okay, not all days will leave us feeling as if we are Julie Andrews spinning around on that mountain top singing "The Sound of Music," but so many of my days leave me with just that feeling. . . . .
I WILL NOT GIVE UP THIS KIND OF LIFE. :-)

You know, I spent a good 30 of my 35 years in some type of structured setting, striving to please others and live up to their standards, which I convinced myself were my own. I feel that I will be detoxing from this for the rest of my life, and it's a joyful process. Living outside the box makes me a person at peace, a person people constantly observe as "always so happy." I used to be very good at "blooming where I was planted," which was of course not true happiness, and the strain inevitably showed. I am finally happy on my own terms, and the difference is obvious to me.

—Paula L

SandraDodd.com/day/paulal
photo by Sandra Dodd