Saturday, April 20, 2019
Smell your child's hair
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Fears
New unschoolers are often afraid. They're afraid to keep doing what they're doing; they're afraid to change. Sometimes to calm someone I have said "It's not like moving to Mars. You will still live in the same house. You'll still be sitting in that same chair."
Something that allayed my fears when I had babies still works years later. When I'm fearful or worried, it helps to smell the top of my child's head. If you find a natural opportunity to hold or hug or bend over your child, inhale the scent of his head, slowly. Don't worry if it's an unbathed eleven year old. Just do it with love and gratitude, and you might find yourself in that moment, touching your child gently, remembering who you are and where you are.
I don't have a page on fears. This one mentions the benefit of smelling a child's head, though: SandraDodd.com/peace/noisy
2020 update:
Ten years have passed since I said I didn't have a page on fears. There are four, now, and all created to help people step past and rise above their fears.
Overcoming Fear / SandraDodd.com/fear will lead to the others.
Monday, August 19, 2019
No food fights
About attachment parenting, in this interview from 2009
monkey platter by Robyn Coburn
Monday, May 18, 2020
Fear can fade
New unschoolers are often afraid. They're afraid to keep doing what they're doing; they're afraid to change. Sometimes to calm someone I have said "It's not like moving to Mars. You will still live in the same house. You'll still be sitting in that same chair."
Something that allayed my fears when I had babies still works years later. When I'm fearful or worried, it helps to smell the top of my child's head. If you find a natural opportunity to hold or hug or bend over your child, inhale the scent of his head, slowly. Don't worry if it's an unbathed eleven year old. Just do it with love and gratitude, and you might find yourself in that moment, touching your child gently, remembering who you are and where you are.
To help people step past and rise above their fears: Overcoming Fear
Wednesday, October 6, 2021
See, hear, smell, touch and taste!
The parents will know the child better, and the child will know the parents better. They will be building a partnership based on trust.
photo by Roya Dedeaux
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Wednesday, April 6, 2011
The Real World for Babies
From a learning standpoint, when babies are carried they see more, they hear and smell more. If they are given things to touch and taste besides just a few baby toys left in the corner of a crib or playpen, they will learn by leaps and bounds. They will spend less time crying and more time being in the real world.
The parents will know the child better, and the child will know the parents better. They will be building a partnership based on trust.
SandraDodd.com/attachment
photo by Sandra Dodd, at a fabric store
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Wednesday, January 5, 2022
Taste, touch, see, smell, hear
Kids will want to touch snow, see it, smell it. Just the other day a kid in my yard was talking about how different it sounded, walking in it on the third day, than the first day. It was squeaky, when it compressed.
What seems old and normal to you will be new to each child who is born and sees things for the first time. Be patient and generous and maybe you can see it again, as though it were new to you, through their eyes.
photo by Ruqayya
Sunday, December 1, 2019
Preserve some instincts
information on a situation in which
Twinkies are better food than alfalfa sprouts,
and when lettuce might be very dangerous
Photo by Sandra Dodd of bell peppers (which I don't much like) stuffed with things lots of other people don't like or can't eat. I didn't do it on purpose, the recipe was just all beef, onion, garlic, tomatoes, mushrooms, pine nuts...
Friday, October 3, 2014
In the moment
Pam Sorooshian wrote:
There are times in life that you won't feel like you can take care of others around you as well as you'd like. You need nurturing yourself and other people's neediness starts to be draining on you.
I've felt that, too.
But I've also found that if I focus more on "seeing" my kids with loving-eyes focus, consciously choose to pay attention to what I love about them, then I actually begin to feel more nourished and strengthened by them, and by the very acts of caring for them.
Partly what is so draining is that your mind is on other things while your kids want your attentiveness on them. So you feel pulled and that is stressful. If you can, try to stop thinking about the other stuff and focus on the little details of what you're doing at the moment. If your child wants pasta at midnight (just happened here), then you go put the water in the pot and put it on the stove. While you're doing that, concentrate on feeling the coldness of the water, the heaviness of the pot as it fills with water. Hear the sound of the water running.
It is late and I'm not being as articulate as I'd like—but what I'm saying is to practice being totally "in the moment" by noticing every sensation—sound, touch, smell, etc. Especially do this in regard to your children—touch them, smell them, listen to the sound of their voices, and so on.
Even if you only manage to get into this heightened state of mind for a minute or two at a time, do it as often as you think of it throughout your day. Each minute will be refreshing—it is a form of meditation that you can do while you're going about your daily activities.
photo by Janice Casamina Ancheta
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Starting Places
Unschooling allows free use of any and all bits of information, not just school's small set. A grid based first on cartoon characters or the history of ice skating can be expanded just as well as one built on a second-grade version of the discovery of North America and the made-up characters in some beginning-reader series. If the goal is to know everything, and if each person's internal "universe" is unique, then the order in which the information is acquired isn't as important as the ease and joy with which it is absorbed.
The time will come in your unschooling when you will forget to use checklists, but it won't matter. The child's internal grid will already have given them the need to know what things feel, smell and taste, and what they used to be or will be, and whether it's different in other places. Connections will continue to be made throughout their lives. The universe inside will grow larger and the universe outside will become clearer with every new experience.
The quoted passages above the image are from the 2002 article "Disposable Checklists for Unschoolers".
Monday, July 1, 2019
The scent of life
Recently it smelled like the mountains right outside my front door. Later I read that the wind of the day before had blown the wintery pollution out of the valley, and that's what I smelled—the air from the nearby mountains on a frosty day.
Baby powder gave me good memories another day.
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Saturday, May 15, 2021
Ever-changing opportunities
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.
photo by Catherine Hassall
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Sunday, October 20, 2013
Children need...
They need to be protected from physical and emotional harm. They need to have positive regard, food, shade and sun, things to see, hear, smell, taste and touch. They need someone to answer their questions and show them the world, which is as new to them as it was to us. Their growth can’t be rushed, but it can be enriched.
photo by Bruno Machado
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Tuesday, December 18, 2012
The scent of life
Recently it smelled like the mountains right outside my front door. Later I read that the wind of the day before had blown the wintery pollution out of the valley, and that's what I smelled—the air from the nearby mountains on a frosty day.
Baby powder gave me good memories another day.
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Thursday, September 26, 2013
The time will come...
The time will come in your unschooling when you will forget to use checklists, but it won't matter. The child's internal grid will already have given them the need to know what things feel, smell and taste, and what they used to be or will be, and whether it's different in other places. Connections will continue to be made throughout their lives. The universe inside will grow larger and the universe outside will become clearer with every new experience. |
photo by Colleen Prieto
Saturday, December 26, 2015
Senses
Kids will want to touch snow, see it, smell it. Just the other day a kid in my yard was talking about how different it sounded, walking in it on the third day, than the first day. It was squeaky, when it compressed.
What seems old and normal to you will be new to each child who is born and sees things for the first time. Be patient and generous and maybe you can see it again, as though it were new to you, through their eyes.
photo by Ruqayya
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Monday, August 17, 2020
Every bit of all the bits
Unschooling allows free use of any and all bits of information, not just school's small set. A grid based first on cartoon characters or the history of ice skating can be expanded just as well as one built on a second-grade version of the discovery of North America and the made-up characters in some beginning-reader series. If the goal is to know everything, and if each person's internal "universe" is unique, then the order in which the information is acquired isn't as important as the ease and joy with which it is absorbed.
The time will come in your unschooling when you will forget to use checklists, but it won't matter. The child's internal grid will already have given them the need to know what things feel, smell and taste, and what they used to be or will be, and whether it's different in other places. Connections will continue to be made throughout their lives. The universe inside will grow larger and the universe outside will become clearer with every new experience.
photo by Cass Kotrba
Monday, May 1, 2023
Everything changes
"Eating decisions"?
I picked it up and set it down just a little way from there with this response:
Choices. If ALL of that is changed to a model in which there is food, and people make choices—lots of small choices, not big "decisions"—a hundred hard problems disappear.
In one small moment, if a child can pick up a food or not; smell it or not; taste it or not; keep that bite and chew and swallow, or spit it out; take another bite or not; dip it in something or not; put another food with it or not—EVERYTHING changes.
photo by Sarah S
Friday, May 3, 2019
Problems disappear
"Eating decisions"?
Choices. If ALL of that is changed to a model in which there is food, and people make choices—lots of small choices, not big "decisions"—a hundred hard problems disappear.
In one small moment, if a child can pick up a food or not; smell it or not; taste it or not; keep that bite and chew and swallow, or spit it out; take another bite or not; dip it in something or not; put another food with it or not—EVERYTHING changes.
photo by Karen James
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