Seeing the magic and the joy

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.

Unschooling and other Marvels, by Sandra Dodd
photo by Cátia Maciel

No other way

Read a little, try a little, wait a while and watch. There is no other way to learn this than gradually. There is no other way to learn to see clearly how it works than by trying it a bit at a time and seeing how putting learning first changes other things—how putting peace ahead of schedules changes things.

SandraDodd.com/readalittle
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Naming things

Seeing new things and learning their names is the way babies and toddlers learn their native languages and how they learn about the world. It works for people of any age.

Each model of the universe requires identification, sorting, relationships between things, and other patterns. Whatever seems trivial in one context is of central importance in another.

Names and words and labels and descriptors have a glory about them.

Naming Things elsewhere here
photo by Denaire Nixon, of a young red-footed booby

Step toward learning

Confidence in unschooling can't come from other people's accounts. It can only come from seeing one's own children relaxing into learning effortlessly through play, conversations, observations, a rich life.

"Facing fears" sounds scary, intimidating and negative. Stepping toward learning is much more positive. Being with children is easy; they're already right there. Move toward them, instead of milling around with fears and vulnerability.

SandraDodd.com/confidence
photo by Denaire Nixon
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Choosing joy

Tina Bragdon wrote:

I saw choosing joy was SO much better....really...unschooling and life just flowed....the relationships piece of an unschooling lifestyle was so much more full and sweet. My mind was calmer. It helped me deal better with those niggling fears that popped up about unschooling when I chose to be in THIS MOMENT....seeing the joy and the fun of the moment settled me instead of me stewing for days about if my kids were learning or what about this, or that.

—Tina Bragdon

More by Tina at SandraDodd.com/negativity
photo by Sarah S.

Seeing gifts

Colleen Prieto, April 2013

We just watched a documentary called Lost Castles of England. My 10 year old loves Star Trek and so he was particularly thrilled that it was narrated by Leonard Nimoy. 🙂

We paused - oh - probably at least 25 times during the documentary to look up things ranging from "When was the Bronze Age?" and "What exactly is Stonehenge anyway?" to "Who were the Normans?" and "How exactly big is England?" and "They killed the garrison... What's a garrison??"

We also paused a bunch of times as he described how he's going to be getting up early tomorrow to start work in Minecraft right away - he plans to build a motte-and-bailey timber castle, as described in the documentary. He asked me to keep the documentary in our Netflix queue so he can refer to it as needed for the particulars.

When the show ended, he stood up from the couch and proclaimed "That was AWESOME. And the whole time it was Spock. Spock just GIVING you interesting history stuff!!!"

It hit me right away that he didn't say "Spock teaching you history" or "A show teaching you history" or anything about teaching at all. He doesn't see things in terms of Being Taught. In his mind, he received a gift of new knowledge and facts this evening. A gift given by Spock, which made it all the better. 🙂

—Colleen Prieto

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Note from Sandra:
Colleen's son, Robbie, is twenty years old, as I share this. The story above has been on the page about "learning" for a long time, quietly helping others.

What Teaching Never Can Be
photo by Sandra Dodd

Seeing enough

Don't assess "enough." Pay attention to your child and don't try to press him to do something he doesn't want to do, and don't try to make him stop doing something while he's still having fun.

See learning as your priority, and you will begin to see it more and more.

Seeing it
photo by Sandra Dodd

Gradually learning; seeing clearly

Unschooling is not easy to understand. Even people who are ready and really want it will take years.

Read a little, try a little, wait a while and watch. There is no other way to learn about unschooling than gradually. There is no other way to learn to see clearly how it works than by trying it a bit at a time and seeing how putting learning first changes other things—how putting peace ahead of schedules changes things.


Quotes, tweaked slightly, from Explorations
photo by Cathy Koetsier

Rejoice

Connections and parodies, comparisons and contrasts—learning is all about seeing what is like what, and how an image, idea or object can apply or fit where.

Don't be afraid of happy connections and rearrangements. Rejoice!

Webs, nets, connections
Robbie Prieto's nativity scene, once upon a time;
photo by Colleen Prieto, his mom

Wonderful warm feelings

Brie Jontry wrote:

When we stretch beyond seeing more than only one or two possibilities, our children's worlds become exponentially larger, with more potential for laughter and learning and wonderful warm feelings of connection.

—Brie Jontry

SandraDodd.com/screentime.html
photo by Cátia Maciel

Able to see learning

The parents must be willing to believe that their children can learn.

Unless your children are given a real opportunity to show you how children learn, to show you that it works, you will not see it.

The parents have to be
   willing to see learning
      able to see it
         and desirous of seeing it.

You can kill unschooling on the vine with "That won't work."

SandraDodd.com/playing
photo by Lisa Jonick

Two for one

I like photos with reflections. Sometimes they're clear and sometimes they're interestingly changed. Always, though, you see the two things.

Connections and contrasts are the way brains sort. What is the same, and what is different?

Covers of songs; different paintings of the same object or building or person; woodworking projects made from the same pattern by different carpenters with different types of wood... Examining pairs is like playing a game of "spot the difference." Each difference might have a natural explanation, or was a conscious decision on the part of an artist.

What a rich life you and your children might have in those moments that seeing, playing and learning are the same valuable substance.

Two things, two words
photo by Dan Vilter

Elation is good.

Sandra Dodd:

If something causes biochemical euphoria or elation, and if the goal is learning, and peace, seek that out. Pay extra for that. Clear your calendar to help your child obtain that.

Virginia Warren:

To the extent that our brains are chemical computers, dopamine is the program that we experience as happiness. Seeing "getting a dopamine hit" in a negative light is literally disapproving of happiness.

SandraDodd.com/gettingwarm
photo by Karen James

Ever-changing opportunities

Each little experience, every idea, is helping your child build his internal model of the universe. He will not have the government-recommended blueprint for the internal model of the universe, which can look surprisingly like a school, and a political science class, a small flat map of the huge spherical world, a job with increasing vacations leading to retirement, and not a lot more.

Unschooled children can organize their knowledge in free and better ways. They never need to feel they are through learning, or past the point that they can begin something new. Each thing they discover can be useful eventually. If we help provide them with ever-changing opportunities to see, hear, smell, taste, feel, move and discuss, what they know will exceed in breadth and depth what any school's curriculum would have covered. It won't be the same set of materials—it will be clearer and larger but different.
Seeing It
photo by Catherine Hassall
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Surprising changes

Sometimes deschooling works best when there are surprising (maybe even shocking) surprises, or stark refutations of what the mom has “guaranteed will happen,” or is positive can ONLY happen—that having candy out all the time will make kids throw up, have cavities, get fat. The stories of kids in the presence of the same old bowl of candy asking for vegetables and fruit are important stories to share.

Choices can’t happen without choices, and choices don’t happen well with a mom hovering around and predicting negative outcomes. Lots of people have reported that their experiences with food, and unschooling, changed everything. Seeing kids learning about food, and making choices about food, made other choices seem to make total sense.

from Always Learning, 05/07/19
photos by Ester Siroky (mushroom basket) and Elise Lauterbach (mushroom golf)

Learning, not being taught

Weeding out terminology we would prefer not to mean improves thinking.
. . . .Every time someone says "taught" or "teach" they can slip back into the whole school thing and be seeing the world through school-colored glasses. If they do what it takes, mentally and emotionally, to recast their reports and then their thoughts in terms of who *learned* something, then they can start to see the world in terms of learning.

The last holdout for some people is "he taught himself..." but maybe that should be the FIRST to go. Teaching comes from someone WITH skills or knowledge passing them on to those without them. If I taught myself to play guitar, I would have had to have known how first.
. . . .I learned from everything around me, from trial and error, from watching others and asking questions.

The information was being sucked in by me, not pushed in by me or anyone else. I didn't PUT the information inside me, I drew it in.

SandraDodd.com/control
photo by Sandra Dodd, of bricks with Florida on the other side

Curiosity and learning

One of the highest points of any life is seeing, touching, and considering something new and different.

When considering what to do, where to go, what to bring into your home, think of things your children can experience directly, thoughtfully. Don't ask them to report, past conversational exchange. They might want to think about it privately and come to some of their own conclusions. They might think about it for the rest of their lives, if you let it be sweet, and their own.

Disposable Checklists for Unschoolers ←the section on Five Senses
photo by Amber Ivey

When is enough enough?

Don't assess "enough." Pay attention to your child and don't try to press him to do something he doesn't want to do, and don't try to make him stop doing something while he's still having fun.

See learning as your priority, and you will begin to see it more and more.

Seeing it
photo by Elise Lauterbach
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Learning not to "have to"

Please don't think that you "have to." Then it won't be a fun choice you've made.

There are a few phrases that can keep parents from really relaxing into unschooling. Letting go of "teaching" and "have to" will go a long way toward seeing learning and choices. And not just seeing them, but feeling them comfortably, living with them, and with them in you.

SandraDodd.com/haveto and SandraDodd.com/wordswords
photo by Eva Witsel

First, become confident

Confidence in unschooling can't come from other people's accounts. It can only come from seeing one's own children relaxing into learning effortlessly through play, conversations, observations, a rich life.

"Facing fears" sounds scary, intimidating and negative. Stepping toward learning is much more positive. Being with children is easy; they're already right there. Move toward them, instead of milling around with fears and vulnerability.

Sandra's response to someone asking about confidence
photo by Tara Joe Farrell
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