Words

Please be careful with words, because they say what you're thinking. Be careful with thoughts because they affect the way you're responding to people.

SandraDodd.com/words
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Playful experimentation

Children learn from playing. They experiment with tools, materials, textures, movements, sounds. They imitate the older people around the. They imitate animals, and fictional characters. They try on voices, faces, postures and ideas. Parents should encourage and facilitate their playful experimentation.

Learning Styles and living big, on the Always Learning discussion
photo by Sarah Dickinson

Rain and sunny days

"If it's raining, focusing on what you can do instead of the walk you wanted doesn't make it a sunny day! But it does make a day of rain more pleasant." —Joyce Fetteroll

photo by Polly Griffiths, of an accidental pattern

Unschooling should be...

Unschooling should be about peaceful, supportive relationships, about modelling consideration and thoughtful choicemaking, and about learning.


SandraDodd.com/problems/toofar
photo by Holly Dodd
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Give generously

If you want to measure, measure generously. If you want to give, give generously. If you want to unschool, or be a mindful parent, give, give, give. You'll find after a few years that you still have everything you thought you had given away, and more.

SandraDodd.com/howto/precisely
photo by Sandra Dodd

Hold on to something

Instead of requiring that my kids had to hold my hand in a parking lot, I would park near a cart and put some kids in right away, or tell them to hold on to the cart (a.k.a. "help me push", so a kid can be between me and the cart). And they didn't have to hold a hand. There weren't enough hands. I'd say "Hold on to something," and it might be my jacket, or the strap of the sling, or the backpack, or something.

I've seen other people's children run away from them in parking lots, and the parents yell and threaten. At that moment, going back to the mom seems the most dangerous option.

Make yourself your child's safest place in the world, and many of your old concerns will just disappear.

The Big Book of Unschooling, page 67 (71 of newer edition)
photo by Sandra Dodd
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That's all. Just that.

If I saw [unschooling] simply as a means to get them to college, I might be nervous. I see it as a way to live. I don't see it as keeping the kids out of college or hampering their opportunities for formal learning if they go that route. I'm not holding college up to them or me as "the goal." The goal, for me, is that they will be thoughtful, compassionate, curious, kind and joyful. That's all. That's not asking much, is it? I think if those traits are intact in them, they will continue to learn their whole lives.

SandraDodd.com/interview
photo by Julie D
Words 1998; Image 2013.