You don't have to make a choice.

Life is FULL of decisions, right?
Some people say no. Some people decided a long time to close their windows and thoughts and… wait. I wrote "Some people decided…" without even noticing.

When unschoolers discuss a vast array of choices, it seems inevitable that newer people will come by and assure us we're full of it. People have to do things, they say. They have to do what they have to do. People can't go around choosing from everything in the whole wide world, because the world isn't that way. Kids need to learn now that they have to live with their lack of choices.

How often do you make a choice?
How often do you think "I have no choice"?

SandraDodd.com/decisions
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Choosing more peace

There will never be perfect peace. We can't even define "peace."
There can be a closer approximation to ideal peace. People can come nearer to the way they would like to be, but only incrementally, choice by choice.

If you want to live peacefully, make the more peaceful choice.

Peace is all about choices.

To have peace in your house, be more peaceful.


SandraDodd.com/peace/noisy
doodly art by a younger Holly Dodd

Choosing More Peace

There will never be perfect peace. We can't even define "peace."
There can be a closer approximation to ideal peace. People can come nearer to the way they would like to be, but only incrementally, choice by choice.

If you want to live peacefully, make the more peaceful choice.

Peace is all about choices.

To have peace in your house, be more peaceful.


SandraDodd.com/peace/noisy
doodly art by Holly Dodd

Better Choices

Pam Sorooshian wrote:

My suggestion to you is to focus on making a "better" choice each time you can. I think that was the most helpful advice I got as a parent of younger kids—it was surprisingly practical and encouraging to simply consider at least two choices and pick the better one. The next time, try to think of the one you did choose and then one other—pick the better one. If you make a choice you're unhappy with, after the fact, think then about what would have been a better choice—have that one 'on hand' for next time.

Don't expect to be perfect, but expect yourself to be improving all the time.

—Pam Sorooshian

SandraDodd.com/betterchoice
photo by Sandra Dodd, of something Keith Dodd carved
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Huge and wonderful choice

Robyn Coburn wrote:

Intentions matter. Guidance offered from the place of partnership and trust has a different feeling, avoids rebellion, and is just plain less focused on the trivial. Guidance means optional acceptance instead of mandatory compliance. Guidance means parents being safety nets, not trap doors or examiners. Guidance facilitates mindfulness. Directives shut it down, and may even foster resentment instead.

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/choicerobyn
photo by Sandra Dodd, of a long-ago Kirby

The more the easier

SandraDodd:

My "make the better choice" tool has helped me move from "acceptable" to "better" and then MORE better.  🙂

JennyC:

It's nice to catch yourself in the moment and do better. The more you do it, the easier it is to do it.

SandraDodd.com/service
photo by Sandra Dodd

Step up; step up again...

Transcript from a presentation, long ago, about becoming more peaceful by making conscious choices:

If you think “Ok, I’m either going to whack him or I’m going to yell at him,” yell at him—that was the best choice you had at that moment. And the next time, start with “yell at him." “Ok, I'm either going to do what I did the last time or something better. I'm going to yell at him or I’m going to go in the other room for a second." Go in the other room.

And the next time, maybe your choice could be either “go in the other room” or “I’m going to take a deep breath and make a joke about it.” Make a joke.

And gradually and incrementally you come closer to the place where you want to be. Beause I don’t think anybody can just jump from a lifetime of responses and expectations and behaviors and just pick some other person and just become that person. You can’t do that.

My voice/Sandra, in 2002.
(I write better than I speak.)

SandraDodd.com/betterchoice
photo by Rosie Moon

'Tis the Season for Sugar

"Children that truly have choices, won't feel the need to always choose the most sugary choice, or the choice that gets them away from home the fastest... They have access to it all, so they can make choices based on what they really want or need, not what is most limited in their lives." —Ren Allen

SandraDodd.com/eating/sweets
photo by Sandra Dodd, and it's a link

Tiny improvements build up

Although ["make the better choice"] is useful in the moment, its best use is for incremental change. If my best choice used to be to yell or hit, and I yelled, then the next time I thought about it, hitting wasn't even going to begin to be one of my choices. Would I yell or wait? Or yell or speak quietly? Yell or leave the room? Maybe leave out the yelling, and choose between "speak quietly" or "breathe before speaking."

SandraDodd.com/makethebetterchoice
photo by Sandra Dodd

Sort through as you go

Everyone can, should, sort through the bad examples and good examples around them and move choice by choice toward whatever their own images of "better" might be.

SandraDodd.com/choices
photo by Sandra Dodd

More peaceful, more loving

If you can envision the kind of relationship and the life of learning you want to have, then every time you make a choice, choose the one that takes you nearer to that goal. Learn to make many choices a day and choose the more peaceful, more loving options whenever you can. Choose to make your life more positive, and less negative.

SandraDodd.com/video/doright.html
(video and transcript)
Related info: Better Choice
photo by Cátia Maciel

See the light, lightly

If we concentrate more on politics and the awfulness of school, we're not paying attention to our kids. I won't sacrifice my family on the altar of social change. My family will be a light, not a bonfire.

SandraDodd.com/issues/choice (A Downside of Choice)
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Sort through as you go

Everyone can, should, sort through the bad examples and good examples around them and move choice by choice toward whatever their own images of "better" might be.

SandraDodd.com/choices
photo by Sandra Dodd

Slack and choice

Feeling like a good parent is huge. The opportunity to be successful every day at something with immediate feedback (hugs and smiles and the little-kid happy dance) is rare in the world. But giving children more slack and choices creates more slack and choice for the parent, too.

If it's okay for a child not to finish everything on his plate, might it be okay if the mom only cooks what he likes next time? Or makes the best parts in new ways? Not every meal has to look like the centerfold of a cookbook. If children can sleep late, maybe the mom can too. If children can watch a silly movie twice, maybe the mom gets to be in on that. If a child (or a seventeen-year-old) wants to watch a butterfly for a long time, perhaps the parent will have the priceless experience of watching her own child watch a butterfly.

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

Steps toward "better"

By making the better choice, you step away from the worse choice.


SandraDodd.com/choicees
photo by Ester Siroky

Plain and good

Plain milk tastes WAY better if it's your choice than it does when it's plain because someone else wouldn't let you put chocolate in it. Without free choice, how can a person choose what is plain and good?

SandraDodd.com/respect/dodd
photo by Sandra Dodd
(I painted the stripey glaze;
Holly did the spots in the same colors,
when she was four or five.)

Not the best choice

Sometimes I want to whine. Sometimes I do. It never helps.

When making a conscious decision about how to respond or how to react, it will be rare that whining will be the best choice.

SandraDodd.com/betterchoice
photo by Elise Lauterbach
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Nicer and kinder

"If someone can take a moment to consciously be nicer and kinder to their children, a shift can take place. The choice to be nicer removes the choice to be mean. That can become a habit." —Robin Bentley

SandraDodd.com/nicer
photo by Lydia Koltai
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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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Focus on the positive

Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

People who look at what they have and how they can work with it find the ways quicker (and are happier) than those who look at what they don't have. That sounds harsh but it's true for everyone, regardless of how fortunate someone feels someone else must be. It's not easy! It's a *choice* to focus on the positive—a choice one often needs to remember to make repeatedly—because the alternative gets in the way of moving toward something better.

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/nest
photo by Sandra Dodd