Safe place, time and space

The best unschooling parents aim to avoid punishments and shaming. They try to facilitate learning and joy, peace and happiness. They slowly and incrementally learn to make choices themselves and soon they can better assist their children in learning to make thoughtful choices. They try to nurture their children by creating a safe place, and time and space for them to play, to explore and to grow up whole and undamaged.

SandraDodd.com/betterpartner
photo by Karen James
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Work hard and happily

When I was a child and was assigned chores, I learned to do the job in a rudimentary fashion as quickly as possible. My kids never learned any such thing, and when they work at jobs, they work hard and happily.

SandraDodd.com/teenager
photo by Jill Parmer
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Deep and clear

Pam Sorooshian wrote:

When we started unschooling, my mom kept saying that she was worried I would "lose myself" in it—that I wouldn't have time for myself. She was very very wrong. I found myself and very very deep meaning to life and a much more clear sense of what's important.

—Pam Sorooshian

SandraDodd.com/peace/mama
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Where are you living?

Don't live in fear when you can live in joy.

SandraDodd.com/beginning
photo by Colleen Prieto

This line has been quoted twice before but not so briefly:
Live in joy (June 2012) and Time, change, learning

Holly likes green chile

Green chile is a New Mexico staple. Ten or twelve years ago, I wrote this, in a discussion about reading:

We've used this "someday you will" or "you just don't yet" about all kinds of things, from reading to caring about the opposite sex to foods. Holly doesn't like green chile yet. She figures she will ("When my taste buds die" she jokes), because her brothers didn't used to and now they do. Kirby lately started liking mushrooms. Marty still doesn't like spinach yet, but we haven't branded him "a spinach hater," and I don't think anyone should consider a child "a non-reader," just one who "doesn't read yet."

SandraDodd.com/r/encouragement
photo by Sandra Dodd

Simply put...

When you are kind, it changes the kind of person you are. When you are patient, it makes you a better person.

More simply put, kind is kinder, patient is more patient and better is better.

SandraDodd.com/mentalhealth
photo by Bruno Machado
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A happy little life

"I concluded a year or so ago that, if there is such a thing as reincarnation, I'd like to come back as a little flame on a birthday candle sometime. It would be a very short cycle, but man, it would be a happy one." —Gina Trujillo

SandraDodd.com/cake
photo by SouleMama