Courtesy, and teens

I posted this story in 2006 when it was six years old.
Now it is eleven years old. Our family looked like this, when the story was new:



A story slightly involving allowance, but a snapshot of how kids who aren't desperate for money can act:

Two of Marty's friends were going to pick him up to go run around, but they ended up staying here. Then another friend came over to see all my kids. Then a friend of Kirby's from work came over. I hadn't met her before. She was nice. So my three (14, 17, 19) plus four more (17-21) were all having a great time laughing and looking at stuff on Kirby's computer and around our house, and Marty's big Lego Viking village, and so forth.

They decided to go out for ice cream and then to see "Over the Hedge." I asked Holly if she needed money, and she didn't. (She saves her allowance up.) Every other person there has a job. Outside of Kirby possibly having an interest in the girl from work, there were no couples. Two of those kids do have steady others, but didn't bring them over. So it was four teenaged girls, four teenaged boys, no romantic tension (unless Kirby and new-girl; didn't see any).

And here's the big success part. They asked Keith if he wanted to go. I didn't know they had, when Marty came and asked me if I wanted to go. So they would have taken me, or Keith, or both of us, with them.

We separately thanked them and declined and found out later they had asked us both. Pretty sweet!

We didn't "teach them" to invite their parents to the movies. One advantage of our not going was that then they could fit into the big van and didn't have to take two cars.

The van they went in:



SandraDodd.com/math/allowance
Sweetness in Teens
The photos are links.

Easier and less needy

Schuyler Waynforth wrote:

Being proactive will work better, more effectively and leave him less needy. . . . ."It takes time and a greater focus at the beginning. It takes letting go, a lot, of your needs for down time or personal time or time to sit and chat with other people. But the more you do work to partner with your son, to help him before he needs help, to be with him more, the easier it will get and the less needy the relationship will feel.

—Schuyler Waynforth

SandraDodd.com/partners
photo by Dylan Lewis
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The open flow of real-world sharing

from 2004, Sandra Dodd:

The best thing unschoolers can do is to unschool well. The best thing those who are interested in helping others come along the same path can do is explain what helped it work well.

Reading other families' personal stories, hearing about paths that didn't work well and others that did is what helped me when I was new to this, and that's what I've been involved in helping happen ever since—real unschoolers sharing their real experiences.

Some people don't want to share in public and that's fine. Some people share things in public that turn out not to be true, and that's not cool. But over the years, many hundreds of unschoolers who first found one another through AOL's message boards, or at conferences, or through e-mail correspondence have met other unschoolers in person, and each person must ultimately gauge for herself who to emulate or trust or to go to for inspiration or whatever. There is no central board certifying unschoolers or conference organizers or listowners. It's the open flow of real-world sharing.

In 2024 I'm still offering a hand.
SandraDodd.com/help
photo by Linda Wyatt

Better than school

If you're going to unschool, it needs to be better than school. If that involves getting mental, emotional or physical therapy for the parents, then do it! The house doesn't work if the roof is leaking and there's no heat. Parents don't work if they're in an emotional fog and can't pay sweet attention to their kids.


Healing Presence
photo by Sandra Dodd

For unschooling to work...

Parents who want unschooling to work should be positive, upbeat, hopeful, helpful.

SandraDodd.com/gratitude
photo and quote by Sandra Dodd
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Three layers down

In a response to the Always Learning discussion list, I wrote "The principles of unschooling and natural learning work the same regardless of a child's talents or abilities, but parental posture (emotional, behavioral postures) can keep unschooling from working well."

During a discussion with half a dozen other unschoolers, some from France and some from England, I said that much of my writing was untranslatable because it had to do with English. This might be such an example.

The word "posture" is usually used to tell a child to sit up straighter or to stand more gracefully and impressively. But posture can be relative to something else—a wall, a chair, or another person. Posture can be very subtle, too. Posture can be biochemical. It's possible to read anger in another person's hands or the speed of his facial movements. It's possible to see love in the way a mother picks up or touches a baby. Or it's possible to see frustration, or resentment, or fear, in a parental reaction.

I don't think this will be easily translatable into any other language, but for unschooling to work, the relationship of the parent to the child needs to become so clean and clear that the parent is being, and not just acting. This might involve physical posture, but also thoughts and feelings, reactions and clarity.

It won't happen all at once, and it can only begin to happen when the parent understands that some postures are better, and others are harmful to a better relationship with the child.

SandraDodd.com/clarity
photo by Gail Higgins
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Proof and Belief

I guess what makes me the most defensive is when people say, "I don't believe unschooling will work." Okay... based on WHAT? I want to say. Based on the fact that you went to school every day for twelve or sixteen years and "cooperated" and you want that to be the only possible way!? The fact that it has worked and DOES work (maybe not for everybody, but for a LOT of people) is right there for those who want to see it.

I might not BELIEVE a 747 could fly, but they do. Whether I can explain it or build one doesn't matter. They do fly.

I have friends with older kids than mine who do remarkable things their parents didn't teach them to do. They figured out how to do it.

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The foregoing was written in an online chat in 1996 (or late 1995) when my oldest child was nine. In the fifteen years since then, my own three have done many remarkable things they learned in all kinds of ways—from other kids, other adults, the internet, and on their own. The disbelief of others has had no effect on our family.

SandraDodd.com/confidence
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Work at playing

Usually it looks like we're just playing around. When it doesn't look like we're playing, I work on it. Unschooling works best when we're playing around.

Jubilation and Triangulation
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Something worth listening to

Robyn Coburn shared this story in 2006. That was fourteen years ago. Jayn turned 21 this week.

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Recently I annoyed someone (stranger at a kid's birthday party) whose first question on hearing that we homeschool was "How do you get her to listen to you?" by instantly replying "I try to say something worth listening to."

I thought she meant listen in general. She got this look of utter irritation on her face and started on about what a discipline problem her 7yo son was and how much more difficult it would be to have to keep his attention on school subjects and make him work at home. What she was really asking was "How do you make your daughter do her work?"

The paradigms we live under are so broadly apart from the mainstream that even the language doesn't cross over—we use the same words and have different meanings.

Yet of all the children at the birthday party Jayn was the one who came up to me a couple of times just to give me a quick kiss and say what fun she was having.



You can read more by Robyn here: Robyn Coburn
and see some of the Barbie tableaux that Jayn was making in the days mentioned at Barbie in Romeo and Juliet

photo by Jayn Coburn, years ago

People learn by playing.

My kids were always the most exhausted not after a day of physical activity, but after a day of intense learning. If they saw things they had never seen, got to do something they’d never done, met new people and played and talked, they slept like rocks.

Sometimes the most intense learning of all looks like play. And that is central to what makes unschooling work.

What makes unschooling work is that children learn by playing. Older kids too. Adults, too.

People learn by playing.

Chat with Sandra Dodd on Mommy Chats, 4/25/07
photo by Janine Davies

A safer home

Deep breaths change everything, for a few moments.
...When a parent learns to calm herself, or himself, many things happen. The home becomes safer. The parent becomes more reliable and more trustworthy. The children can make more choices without fear.

When a parent can learn to take one deep, calming breath while deciding what to do, the parent becomes wiser and more patient.

When a person knows how to calm herself, she can help others.

When children learn how to calm themselves, because the parents have helped them, because the parents understood how to do it, the children have more personal range and power, because they will be more reliable and trustworthy and able to maintain their calm, thoughtful, rational minds.

SandraDodd.com/breathing
photo by Gail Higgins

P.S. It doesn't work every time, but without practice, it won't work any time.

the developing souls and minds of children

I think if people divide their lives into academic and non-academic, they're not radical unschoolers. I think unschooling in the context of a traditional set of rules and parental requirements and expectations will work better than structured school-at-home, but I don't think it will work as well for the developing souls and minds of the children involved. And those who are not radical unschoolers would look at that and say "What do their souls have to do with unschooling?"

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If you wish this post had been longer and you want to take a five-minute detour, there is a song by Tracy Chapman called "All that You Have is Your Soul" (or you could listen to Emmylou Harris sing it).

SandraDodd.com/unschool/radical
photo by Sandra Dodd

Don't do this at home

Almost any piece of routine damage school can do to a child, parents can do at home. Parents can make their kids hate math. They can make them never want to read a book again. They can make them want nothing more than to grow up and get away. So with unschooling, when people ask me what I think makes it work, I tell them the kids have to have a choice.

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from Living Unschooling with Sandra Dodd
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Note: I do avoid "have to" but in an if/then situation, sometimes there's something a person has to have to enable the desired condition. If unschooling is going to work, kids have to have choices. Parents do not "have to" give their children choices. Unschooling parents will find themselves choosing to do so.

Souls and minds

I think if people divide their lives into academic and non-academic, they're not radical unschoolers. I think unschooling in the context of a traditional set of rules and parental requirements and expectations will work better than structured school-at-home, but I don't think it will work as well for the developing souls and minds of the children involved. And those who are not radical unschoolers would look at that and say "What do their souls have to do with unschooling?"

SandraDodd.com/unschool/radical
SandraDodd.com/spirituality
photo by Lydia Koltai
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Gratitude and abundance

Last night I was tired. Holly had gone out for the evening. Marty had gone to bed because he works at 4:30 a.m. Keith was busy. I thought... I'd like to just go to sleep.

Then I looked up and there's food to be put away, and the counter was all full of dinner.

At first I felt whiney, "why me?" and kind of "DAMN it, I'm tired."

Then I thought...
I'm glad we have food. I LOVE that pan I made the sauce in. I got it for collecting savings-stamps at the grocery store. It's heavy stainless steel, and beautifully shaped.

We have containers to make small meals, and I can mix the sauce (which I made in the morning and slow-simmered most of the afternoon) with spaghetti in several little containers, and someone from my family will be glad to find it at some point this weekend, or maybe Keith will save one to take to work for lunch on Monday.

I'm glad we have a refrigerator, and that people in my family not only are willing to eat leftovers, they're glad to find there's some left of something they liked the first time.

We have a dishwasher. That's really wonderful. If all I have to do is rinse dishes and fill it up, that's not much work at all.

I've been listening to World War Z. Marty says some of his favorite stories aren't in the abridged audio book, but that he's heard the audio and it's good.

So I put World War Z to play on the computer, and cleaned up the kitchen I'm glad to have, for the family I love.

SandraDodd.com/abundance
photo by Holly Dodd, of the sun through smoke in early summer

Work can be fun

When the adults are happy and the children have choices, work can be fun.

SandraDodd.com/choice
photo by Sabine Mellinger

Empowering Others

Helping people learn to find their own answers is vastly superior to distributing answers on demand. . . .
Empowerment is a principle, not a rule. Learning to examine one's own life and needs and beliefs is necessary for unschooling to work.

These quotes were about unschoolers helping other unschoolers, but the ideas work with parents and children, too.
SandraDodd.com/rulebound

Younger Keith Dodd and his baby Kirby
photo by Sandra Dodd

Try, discuss, explore

What makes unschooling work is that children learn by playing. Older kids too. Adults, too. People learn by playing. People can learn without “work” and “study.” They can learn by trying, discussing, exploring.

SandraDodd.com/playing
photo by Sandra Dodd

Kotex, The Mummy and the talk

Lyle Perry, who unschooled two boys, wrote:

While watching a movie, a Kotex commercial came on and spawned a lengthy discussion on menstruation, and how all the different methods of protection work, or don't work, the reasons why women pick one method over another, and what did women do back before companies like Kotex existed. Then the discussion moved to the different methods of birth control, then to birth itself, and C-sections, natural childbirth, etc. All from one little Kotex commercial.

While watching The Mummy (cartoon), we talked about Egypt and the pharoahs, and then slavery, which eventually led to the civil war and Abe Lincoln, and then on to other presidents that had done "great" things.

That's just a few off the top of my head, but the main thing to remember is that none of these discussions were planned, and it's always the kids that initiate the talks, and when they stop asking "why, when, how, who and where" the talk is over. They may come back at a later date and want more information to add to what they know, or they may be satisfied and leave it at that.

TV is not a "bad" thing. TV can be very, very cool.

—Lyle Perry

SandraDodd.com/t/learning
or (bonus link):
SandraDodd.com/presidents
photo by Dylan Lewis
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Ideas and energy and fun

Joyce Fetterol wrote:

One of the factors that drew me to homeschooling rather than public schooling was that I thought learning should be fun. But only the unschoolers were focusing on fun and having positive relationships with their kids.

Much of the other forums were devoted to how to make kids do their work, what products were best, what to do with younger kids while older ones did their work.

Pam Sorooshian responded:

This got me thinking, Joyce. Because I found unschooling the same way, just looking for homeschooling information and discovered that the message boards where the unschoolers were talking were the ones that got my heart racing because they were so alive and sparkly with ideas and energy and fun and love of their children.

SandraDodd.com/unschool/sparkly
photo by Sandra Dodd