Be that way

Be the way you want your children to be, and they will want to be like you.

Look here or at SandraDodd.com/being
photo by Bruno Machado
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Investing at home

Someone commented that responses to her questions had hurt her feelings. I wrote:

When he is calm and happy and trusting, THEN you will feel better—not because of things we wrote, or didn't, but because you will BE better. You will see it in your son's eyes.

Don't make it about you. Make it about his range of exploration and his choices and his learning and his happiness. You can live on the interest, if you invest enough in him.

(at Radical Unschooling Info, on Facebook)
photo by Colleen Prieto
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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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Unmeasured and immeasurable

Our days are full and our learning is unmeasured and immeasurable.

SandraDodd.com/sustainable
photo by Colleen Prieto

Surprised, repeatedly

Pam Sorooshian wrote:

Homeschooled children who grow up in a stimulating and enriched environment surrounded by family and friends who are generally interested and interesting, will learn all kinds of things and repeatedly surprise you with what they know.

—Pam Sorooshian

SandraDodd.com/pam/howto
photo by Joannah Smith of a tiny bridge, Scotland;
sheep can go under, a truck can go over
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Finding without searching

I'm bringing you three links today. First, a quote from an 1998 article I wrote called "Gifts for Guys to Buy" (written before Amazon, before Google, before online shopping):

There are some great commercial toys, but there are some that so many other kids also have that they become background. If you think back to your own childhood, there were probably a couple of special possessions you still remember or still have. Be flexible and open in your search for gifts, and consider combining several things into one “kit” or “gift basket.” A magnifying glass and a compartmented box could be a rock or bug collecting kit. A flashlight, mirror and some colored lens covers could be an optical physics kit. I can’t predict what you’ll find that kids might love, but I can predict that if you forget to consider “non standard” sources for children’s gifts they’ll miss out on some memorable treasures! *

Looking to see whether I had already quoted that here, I found something else about gifts: Gifts, a Just Add Light post from December 2010.

But the reason I was searching for "search" was to announce that I have added, to my site's search page, a custom search that will check my site, Joyce Fetteroll's and Pam Laricchia's all at once. I'm sure you will stumble upon some gifts.

SandraDodd.com/search
photo by Sandra Dodd
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History and tradition

Newness can dazzle us, and the future is confusing. But right around you are simple, plain, useful, interesting, solid bits of history and tradition—things that were there before you were born, things with their own stories, whose makers might be gone and forgotten, but the artifacts remain.

The photo today is a stile I saw in Texas. Stiles and fences have existed in various forms for a long time. There are quiet antiques all around us.

SandraDodd.com/curiosity
photo by Sandra Dodd
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