Controversial topic

When a family stays together, and when the marriage is improved and solidified, it's not just good for the children. It's good for the grown children, and grandchildren. It's better for holidays and family events, for estate planning and inheritance. It's better for being able to leave photo albums out, and photos of children with their parents still out on the wall, without trying to revise history to keep from offending new wife, new husband, girlfriend, boyfriend. It's better for casual stories like "Remember when we went to White Sands?" It's less likely that a story will need to be abandoned midway or trailed away from because someone who was there, and fun, is now estranged from the family.

I didn't know, years ago, that unschooling could strengthen a marriage. I did know that a good marriage would strengthen unschooling.

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SandraDodd.com/positivity
photo by a waiter, with my camera, 2011

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P.S. Why is that controversial?

I have been criticized, over the years, for encouraging people to be kind and compassionate to partners or spouses. I have also been thanked by people whose marriages became stronger because of those ideas, or by the use of unschooling principes in general.

Although I am sympathetic to people whose marriages have failed for reasons beyond their control, there are divorces that could have been avoided, and there are relationships still in the future that could benefit by being bathed in sweetness and patience, humor and positivity.

Do the nice things.

I think the role of a partner is not to train the other person, not to shame the other person, not to find a time to say "I told you so."

If you just do the nice things, that's what good partners do.

The Importance of Partnership
photo by Rippy Dusseldorp

Safety, comfort and joy

I don't treat my children as partners. I was, from the time they were babies, partnered with them. I was the older, more experienced, more responsible partner. I protected our team, which often meant I sheltered them from things that would have upset them or that they didn't care anything in the world about. I've done that for my husband, too, who's been my official legal partner since 1984 when we declared our partnership in front of relatives and friends, God and the State of New Mexico.

With my kids, it was a posture I took, partly physical, partly mental, in which I accepted and recognized that I had the power to make them unhappy, and the easy ability to allow them to be in danger (from me, in part) if I wasn't really mindful and careful to focus on their safety, comfort and joy.

"Partners," examined
Photo by my friend Annaliese, with my camera, in 1998, for sending to Keith who was working 1200 miles away. Click it to enlarge, and to read more about those kids, those days.

Loving and patient

In families in which parents have considered themselves partners in their children's rich lives, teens don't have the desperate urge to leave. A natural desire to leave the nest does kick in, as it does for many mammals. It might have kicked in sooner if the culture didn't require parents to take care of their children and be responsible for them until they were 18 years old. I know dozens of teens up close, by name, who are loving and patient with their parents even though the parents are getting old and forgetful. Teens can be helpful and generous with parents and siblings when they themselves have been generously helped up to that point.

from "Saying Yes to Teens" in The Big Book of Unschooling (page 252 or 293)
which links to
SandraDodd.com/yes

photo by Belinda Dutch

Generalizing in a good way!

In a long and heated discussion, Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

The discussion really isn't about TV. It's about the freedom to explore in a rich supportive environment in ways that *children* find meaningful. It means being their partners in helping them get what they want. It means offering options that appeal *to them*.

—Joyce Fetteroll

Logic and Parenting
photo by Rippy Dusseldorp

Thoughtful, patient, kind

When people make changes in their lives that make them more thoughtful, more patient and kinder, they'll be better partners, and neighbors, and dog owners.

One day on facebook...
See also SandraDodd.com/pets
photo by Annie Regan

Becoming more open

Marta wrote:

What I'm starting to realize (by what I've been reading and learning, and by my own observations of my experience), is that we can most certainly choose alternatives that can lead us to more openness (like choosing more positive words to describe how we feel about something, or genuinely trying to relax and see what our children and partners see in something they like, etc.). And that if we do it often, we can probably rewire our brains, creating new neurological paths and becoming indeed more open.

—Marta Venturini Machado

SandraDodd.com/open
photo by Elise Lauterbach
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More or less

The more you do for children, the less needy they will be.

(When your choice is "more or less," go with more.)

Being your child's PARTNER, not his adversary:
SandraDodd.com/partners/child
photo by Sarah Elizabeth
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Over, under, in between

Where we are in relationship to others changes all the time, with physical realities of space, place, size and age, mood, waking and sleeping. We move; they move.

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Pam Sorooshian wrote:

"Unschooling is more like a dance between partners who are so perfectly in synch with each other that it is hard to tell who is leading. The partners are sensitive to each others' little indications, little movements, slight shifts and they respond. Sometimes one leads and sometimes the other."

—Pam Sorooshian

Being your child's PARTNER, not his adversary
photo by Jo Isaac
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A clearer, brighter light

Sandra Dodd:
Principles that applied to the kids applied to the adults, too, and we all experienced and shared more patience and understanding.

Karen James:
The deeper we applied the principles of unschooling to our lives with our son, the more we saw each other in a clearer, brighter light.



Each quote above is slightly longer at this link,
Spouses / Partners, where Karen's is in the first comment.
photo by Gail Higgins

Lucky Kirby!

Kirby, my oldest, was born in 1986. I went to La Leche League (LLL). There I learned a crucial concept: my child and I were partners, not adversaries. What was good for him was good for me. At that time I had been going to Adult Children of Alcoholics meetings for a little over a year, and there I learned that we need to avoid repeating our parents' parenting mistakes, and that by raising our own children gently and respectfully, that we would heal our own hurts.

Lucky Kirby!

SandraDodd.com/unschoolingworks 2002
photo by Ester Siroky
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Supporting the soloist

What is your relationship with your child? The boss? The friend? VARIES depending on project—sometimes I'm the coach or the lead. Sometimes I'm not.

Sometimes I'm a stagehand. Sometimes I'm the soloist. Sometimes my child is the soloist.

What happens with partners is that when one is the soloist, the others still sing backup, or sit in the audience supportively, and meet them at the stage door, figuratively or literally.

Some thoughts about partnerships
photo by Roya Dedeaux
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The cool thing is...

The cool thing about partners is, if they win you win.

Partnerships and Teams in the Family
photo by Tessa Onderwater
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See the good; reflect it back

"Get to know your kids' strengths and set them up to succeed at using those strengths in all kinds of ways. Don't burden them with the perceived shortcomings you find. Let them navigate their own challenges while you focus on their potential. See the good in them and reflect it back. That seems to have been the best gift I've given my own son so far."

—Karen James

SandraDodd.com/partners/child.html
photo by Gail Higgins

Partners in growth

"It's much better to be their partner than their roadblock. If you become an obstacle they'll find a way around you. Is that what you want for your relationship with your kids?"

—Joyce Fetteroll,
Unschooling Basics,
June 2008

SandraDodd.com/quotes
photo by Jo Isaac
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Things change

Being a child's partner rather than his adversary makes the balance of knowledge unimportant. Nowadays my children drive me around, help me out, read small print and get things off high shelves. For many years, I did those things for them.

SandraDodd.com/partners

SandraDodd.com/balance

Learning first, and partnership and being present close after, and all the other things flow in around it.


Part of a longer response to an odd question: The other things flow in around it.
See also "Snapshot" on this blog
photo by Karen James
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Think well of them

"Think well of them, all the time. Be grateful."

—Schuyler Waynforth
about partners,
but it works for kids

SandraDodd.com/goldcoast
photo by Cátia Maciel

Tales of "Oops"

Advising about an easily frustrated child, Brie Jontry wrote:

Talking about your own frustrations and talking through your own "mistakes," etc, in a light way—not *to* him, but around him, where he can hear you—might be helpful.

I did a lot of: "Ooops! I meant to cut the carrots length-wise instead of into circles. No big deal..." or "Hmmmm, I think next time, I'll do X first instead of Y" or whatever—talk to yourself, to your friends, to your partner about how you learn by doing. Short, light observations. No long drawn out monologues.

—Brie Jontry

SandraDodd.com/partners/child
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Learning, peace and kindness

Learning, peace and kindness make marriages better.

(and friendships, and partnerships with children)

SandraDodd.com/partners/
photo by Karen James, of a painting by Karen James

Options, doors, choices

Robyn Coburn wrote:

The idea of Unschooling is for parents to be the facilitators of options, the openers of doors, the creators of environments of freedom, and the guardians of choice, not the installers of roadblocks and barriers. Unschoolers are making the huge and wonderful choice to renounce our legal entitlements to be the authoritarian controllers of our children's lives, and instead choose to be their partners.

—Robyn Coburn

SandraDodd.com/option
photo by Sandra Dodd
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