Small, simple steps

There are people whose lives have been transformed because they wanted good relationships with their children and they took small, simple steps to get there.

SandraDodd.com/change/ (Thoughts on Changing)

SandraDodd.com/change.html (How Unschooling Changes People)

SandraDodd.com/gettingit (Unschooling: Getting It)

Those three pages are an impressive collection of the powerful difference a deep understanding of unschooling, and its practice in a home, can make to parents as individuals.

SandraDodd.com/oneonone
photo by Cátia Maciel

Gratitude, abundance, positivity

Many of the things we routinely recommend to help unschooling families are also helpful to anyone's mental health and wellbeing. Gratitude, recognizing and appreciating abundance, avoiding negativity…

SandraDodd.com/gratitude

SandraDodd.com/abundance

SandraDodd.com/negativity

SandraDodd.com/joy

No matter where a person is, a step up is a step up. Happier is happier.

Mental Health (Marta's Collection)
SandraDodd.com/mentalhealth2
photo by Gail Higgins

Learn to love

A new unschooler wrote:
"I hate when people say that adhd isn't real."

Any unschooling parent who hates anything is at a disadvantage.

If an unschooling parent REALLY hates something, or five things, or ten, the spaces around those dark places will be harder to fill with wonder, joy and curiosity to learn.

SandraDodd.com/wonder

SandraDodd.com/joy

Hoping to begin unschooling while clinging to hatred isn't healthy physically, socially or philosophically.

SandraDodd.com/negativity
photo by Marty Dodd

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P.S. You don't need to learn to love everything, but learning to move toward neutrality from "hatred" (even using the term "I hate") WILL make a difference in parenting and unschooling.

Changing, building, and understanding

JoyfullyRejoycing

SandraDodd.com/unschooling

Those sites exist so that people can explore unschooling, but reading those pages doesn't make anyone an unschooler. Only changing one's own thoughts and beliefs and actions and reactions, and building a relationship with one's children based on those understandings can make unschooling work in a family.

There is a "there there" tradition among women. I've referred to it as "teaparty" talk in the past, and then made a page to illustrate what I was talking about. It *sounds* like support, but it's really more like "let's all avoid real thought together!" Unschooling takes real thought, and a desire to change. Any desire to be supported in staying the same will be a problem.

SandraDodd.com/support

Less entertaining, but easier to read from a phone:
"Support" messages all in one list
photo by Jo Isaac
❖

Facilitator and companion

I’ve been credited with the description below, but it was written by Joyce Fetteroll and tweaked by Pam Sorooshian and me before it was published at the UnschoolingDiscussion site, on googlegroups:

Although unschooling is often described as a homeschooling style, it is, in fact, much more than just another homeschool teaching method. Unschooling is both a philosophy of natural learning and the lifestyle that results from living according to the principles of that philosophy.

The most basic principle of unschooling is that children are born with an intrinsic urge to explore — for a moment or a lifetime – what intrigues them, as they seek to join the adult world in a personally satisfying way. Because of that urge, an unschooling child is free to choose the what, when, where and how of his/her own learning from mud puddles to video games and SpongeBob Squarepants to Shakespeare! And an unschooling parent sees his/her role, not as a teacher, but as a facilitator and companion in a child’s exploration of the world.

Unschooling is a mindful lifestyle which encompasses, at its core, an atmosphere of trust, freedom, joy and deep respect for who the child is. This cannot be lived on a part-time basis. Unschooling sometimes seems so intuitive that people feel they’ve been doing it all along, not realizing it has a name. Unschooling sometimes seems so counterintuitive that people struggle to understand it, and it can take years to fully accept its worth.

—Joyce Fetteroll, aided by
Pam Sorooshian
and Sandra Dodd

SandraDodd.com/unschooling
photo by Clare Kirkpatrick

An unschooling high

Some years ago, this enthusiastic story was written by a mom named Alexandra:

Today I had an unschooling moment.

We had movie and tv restrictions before, and gave them up after reading here. Today, we were driving somewhere, and went down a road near where the tide comes in (we live near the Bay of Fundy), and after renting The Lizzie McGuire movie last week, and seeing the state of the tide, naturally I burst into "The tide is high..."!!—joined happily by my three daughters.

Sometime after the nth rendition of that song all together, I thought, here we are doing something happily all together, and from that space, anything can happen, questions, answers, laughter, silence. Thank you Lizzie McGuire, thank you people of the unschooling.com message board, I'm not the kind of girl who gives up just like that....

(end of quote)

---

Just today I was interviewed and mentioned all the writings that were lost when that message board was taken down, and AOL's forum before that, and the user group I used to access when *Prodigy was new. So many ideas, so much writing, poofed away. And I said that's why I wanted to collect and preserve writing now. Thank you, readers, for your appreciation of my hoarding at SandraDodd.com.

SandraDodd.com/list
photo by Sandra Dodd
The song was part of the credit sequence of that movie, and you can watch and hear it here: Lizzie Mcguire the Movie: The tide is high (and this version was by an English girl group called Atomic Kitten)

Fifteenth Anniversary!

Images and parts of the text are links.

First post, with some nice comments, from 2010:

This would need more candles now, but...



May the richness and riches of this trove of words and photos seep into your soul and give you sweet dreams and good ideas.

---

With this, there are 5,343 posts. A few were deleted in the past for lacking longevity (announcements, temporary info). Some have been repeated for being especially good. They are labelled four ways, to keep it from being one big label/tag, so if you would like to see some "greatest hits," these are clickable, and are called

again (72 of those)

again! (147)

re-run (151)

repeat (136)

For today, then, if those are excluded, there are 4,837 non-repeated posts. Still around 5,000.

Most posts link to an unschooling page or two on my website. Most of those pages link back to this blog (from a little link in the upper right corner).

If you would like to help fund the maintenance of that site (from which most of the quotes come), there is a donation link at SandraDodd.com (which can also be accessed from this image on most of the unschooling pages:


The donation link is halfway down there. It's PayPal, debit or credit.

I can accept checks or Christmas cards to:

Sandra Dodd
8116 Princess Jeanne NE
Albuquerque NM 87110     USA

(If cool foreign money, save it there; consider photo request below!)

Also useful would be photos for the collection from which I try to pull a match for a text. Not all get used and some get used very late, but it's nice to have a variety. Send just a few you love, so I'm not overwhelmed, and tell me how to credit you (full name or truncated how). Those can go by messenger or by e-mail to Sandra@SandraDodd.com (and larger files are fine).

SandraDodd.com
tree art by Bo King
cake photo by Sandra Dodd
photos by many different people at the repeat/again links

P.S. I want the website to last a long time, so if I'm not able to collect funding assistance someday, maybe find Holly Dodd or Vlad Gurdiga and see if they need financial help keeping it going. It's a bit less than $20 a month these days; might go up as things might do. Thanks.

When choices come easily

The idea of "self discipline" isn't as helpful to understanding unschooling as the idea of making mindful choices is. It's similar to the difference between teaching and learning.

SandraDodd.com/teaching/

SandraDodd.com/control

If you think of controlling yourself, and of your children controlling themselves, it's still about control. If people live by principles their choices come easily.

SandraDodd.com/self-regulation
photo by Roya Dedeaux

A Mindful Lifestyle

Although unschooling is often described as a homeschooling style, it is, in fact, much more than just another homeschool teaching method. Unschooling is both a philosophy of natural learning and the lifestyle that results from living according to the principles of that philosophy.

The most basic principle of unschooling is that children are born with an intrinsic urge to explore—for a moment or a lifetime—what intrigues them, as they seek to join the adult world in a personally satisfying way. Because of that urge, an unschooling child is free to choose the what, when, where and how of his/her own learning from mud puddles to video games and SpongeBob Squarepants to Shakespeare! And an unschooling parent sees his/her role, not as a teacher, but as a facilitator and companion in a child's exploration of the world.

Unschooling is a mindful lifestyle that encompasses, at its core, an atmosphere of trust, freedom, joy and deep respect for who the child is. This cannot be lived on a part-time basis. Unschooling sometimes seems so intuitive that people feel they've been doing it all along, not realizing it has a name. Unschooling sometimes seems so counterintuitive that people struggle to understand it, and it can take years to fully accept its worth.

—Joyce Fetteroll, Pam Sorooshian and Sandra Dodd,
collaboration, long ago

---

This was the description at an online discussion for many years—at the UnschoolingDiscussion list.

SandraDodd.com/lists/description
photo by Sandra Dodd

Finding learning

Finding learning in play is like the sun coming out on a dank, dark day.

---

That quote is old, and when I looked for a photo to go with it, I found one with great light (look at the rays from behind the people on the right), but no sun coming out, no day. Cool!

Learning happens at night, too.

SandraDodd.com/unschooling

http://sandradodd.com/latenightlearning
photo by Janine Davies

Seeing and being

At the Radical Unschooling Info page on Facebook, an unschooling mom named Rachel Marie was clarifying for someone new to the idea of unschooling:

Unschooling looks different for everyone and that's why you are having trouble nailing it down.


I felt the same when I started. It's nearly impossible to describe because every kid is different and since unschooling is about focusing on your child as an individual, then it's going to be different for everyone.

If I were to say unschooling looks like laying on a quilt at night, looking at the stars and talking about constellations or it looks like taking long car drives just for the sole purpose of having long winded discussions about every single US war in history, there would be 30 people who popped in and said that's not what it looks like at all, because their kids aren't interested in those things.

Unschooling isn't about where or how you learn something, it isn't about doing what everyone else is doing. It's about creating a rich environment for your naturally curious child to learn things that spark their interest. If you can do that, you'll be headed in the right direction.

—Rachel Marie

SandraDodd.com/random
photo by Holly Dodd, of her projection of an eclipse

Unschooling and other marvels

My Favorite things about Unschooling

• You can do it at home!
• Your kids are there!
• It makes all of life a peaceful learning lab.

Unschooling is a subset of homeschooling. Unschooling is the radical, philosophical end of homeschooling. Unschooling is living a rich life and letting learning drop into your lap and into your ears and mind while you laugh and listen to music and play games. Unschooling is seeing the magic in every day, and the joy in yourself and the people around you. If your children don't go to school, why should you bring school home? Be free! There is nothing in school that isn't also in the real world. (And if there IS, why would you be needing to know it if it doesn't exist outside?) Use primary sources, not textbooks. Look at real nature, not photos of nature in a book.

SandraDodd.com/marvel
"Unschooling and other Marvels"
photo by Laurie Wolfrum

Late stage, looking back

Kelly Lovejoy wrote, in "The Three Stages of Unschooling," 2004:

My son Cameron (16) and I recently started sitting in on a college Sociology class. He asked for and received electric guitar lessons for his birthday. Mondays he goes to a nearby school and takes African drumming lessons. He's taking a weekly film class starting in March, and we'll be sending him to a weeklong film school in Maine in May. Duncan (almost 8) just started karate lessons. Ben (my husband) has just finished a class (with tests and all) that's required before he can put on Lt Col (Air National Guard) and is now in NJ for three weeks of "rah-rah" and classroom training and tests for the two new drugs he will be selling. I'm going to a one-day intensive "Bee School" to learn to take care of my Christmas present: two beehives.

Cameron said the other day, "For Unschoolers, we sure are taking a lot of schooly classes!"

That got me thinking...especially since we are one of those families that discovered unschooling after years and years of schooling.

I think that there are three "Stages of Unschooling."

continued here:
SandraDodd.com/kellylovejoy/stages

SandraDodd.com/stages
photo of Cameron and Kelly Lovejoy, the year after the article
(photographer credit lost; sorry)

Four steps to unschooling

Some people think they can read their way to unschooling, or that if they can win enough arguments about how learning works, that then they will be unschoolers. That's not how it happens.

If you do these four things, in this order, enough times, you might discover you are fully and confidently unschooling:

Read a little. Try a little. Wait a while. Watch.

SandraDodd.com/unschooling
photo by Sandra Dodd

Limiting Unschooling

I have heard of, read about and communicated with people who referred to themselves as part-time unschoolers, relaxed homeschoolers, eclectic homeschoolers, academic unschoolers and other terms.. . . .
Limited kinds of unschooling will have limited benefits.

The Big Book of Unschooling, page 41 (or try 45)
which leads in to SandraDodd.com/unschool/vsRelaxedHomeschooling
and SandraDodd.com/unschool/marginal
photo by Sandra Dodd

How much time do you have?

Sometimes people say to me, "You're patient with your own children but pushy with unschooling parents." I don't go door to door asking people if they know about unschooling, and whether they'd like to know more. If they come where I already am, though, I might press. And when I do, it's because of the possibility that they will run out of time.

My kids have their whole lives to memorize 7x8 if they want to.

The mother of a twelve year old has VERY little time if she wants to help her child recover from school and spend a few unschooling years with him before he's grown and gone. She doesn't have time to ease into it gradually. If she stalls, he'll be fifteen or sixteen and it just won't happen.

If the mother of a five year old is trying to decide how much reading instruction and math drill to continue with before she switches to unschooling, I would rather press her to decide toward "none," because "some" is damaging to the child's potential to learn it joyfully and discover it on his own. And "lots" will only hurt that much more. "None" can still be turned to "some" if the parent can't get unschooling. But if she doesn't even try unschooling, she misses forever the opportunity to see that child learn to read gradually and naturally. It will be gone forever.
Forever.

That's why I don't say, "Gosh, I'm sure whatever you're doing is fine, and if you want to unschool you can come to it gradually at your own pace. No hurry."

SandraDodd.com/schoolinmyhead
photo by Sandra Dodd

Your own clear understanding

Pam Sorooshian wrote:

Unschooling happily and successfully requires clear thinking. I don't think it works as well when people just look at those with young adult kids who are happy and successful and try to copy them without doing the hard thinking and building their own clear understanding of unschooling. When they try to emulate, they are still following rules - unschooling rules. Unschoolers always say yes to everything. Unschoolers never make their kids do anything. Kids always decide everything for themselves. And so on. But those "rules" are not unschooling. Unschooling well requires understanding the underlying philosophy of how children learn, and the principles that guide us in our everyday lives arise from that philosophy. It isn't some new kind of parenting technique that can be observed and applied without understanding.

—Pam Sorooshian

SandraDodd.com/understanding
photo by Belinda Dutch

Understanding it, not acting it

Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

It usually takes a long time before people new to unschooling stop looking for new rules to replace old ones. The more people are discouraged from skimming a surface understanding of unschooling, discouraged from relying on meaningless reassurances that going through the motions of unschooling with crossed fingers and assurances everything will be fine, the better for their kids.

Unschooling is a paradigm shift for most everyone. That shift doesn't happen by acting like other unschoolers. It comes slowly, bit by bit, as understanding of what unschooling is grows.

—Joyce Fetteroll
(original)

SandraDodd.com/gettingit
photo by Karen James

Paleolithic unschooling?

Would you rather live in the stone age, or live now?

(Hint: You don't actually have a choice.)

Brie Jontry, responding to someone who said unschooling was the closest to paleolithic, and that unschooling has worked for countless generations:

Paleolithic families had Internet and Netflix and PS3s? Did they have park days and YouTube? Were their parents distinctly turning their backs on the dominant culture and letting them learn in ways that felt kinder and gentler? Were they, in many cases, living at significantly lower income levels so one parent could stay home, at least part-time?

Unschooling is nothing at all like paleolithic life.

Unschooling has worked for a generation or two, but it hasn't been working for countless generations. That kind of thinking might get you all bound up in confusion as your son gets older and more aware of the modern world, and it may hinder your own ability to define what it is your family is actually doing.

—Brie Jontry

Brie's response was longer, and a little scary (in good ways):
SandraDodd.com/reality
photo by Karen James

Exploring interests

Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

What sets unschooling apart from other homeschooling approaches isn’t children making choices. It’s parents creating an environment that supports exploring interests. It’s creating an environment that allows children to make choices based on interest.

Unschooling is *parents* creating the environment that allows children to choose. One choice might be to go to school. But children aren’t unschooling in school. They aren’t unschooling in a class. They aren’t unschooling when they do a workbook. They’re learning.

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/unschoolingis
photo by Cátia Maciel