| I don't want to spend my volunteer time telling people what to do. I AM willing to help people move away from needing that, and toward seeing that WHY to do things will help them figure out hundreds and thousands of whats and whens and wheres. |  |
| Why does...? Who will...? When did...? Where are...? What is...? Do you...? Can I...? | Because... I think... Let's ask... We can look... As far as I know... Sometimes. Yes. |
 | If life is a busy, happy swirl, they will learn. Learning is guaranteed. The range and content will vary, but the learning will happen. |
"I really have to be vigilant on myself and try not to control."
 | You don't need to control yourself to keep yourself from being controlling. Make generous, kind choices, over and over, as often as you can. |
 | "Be their support system. I want so much for my kids to grow up and hear that mommy voice in their head saying positive supportive things, not tearing them down, but encouraging them—and especially not a voice to be resisted." —Pam Sorooshian |
| Try to ease guilt and expectation and pressure. Those don't help the family unit. |  |
 | "Everything I've read about has really happened. The first couple of days, my youngest ate nothing but Twinkies and Spider-Man snacks. Then, amazingly enough, he got up the next morning and asked me for grapes for breakfast. You could have knocked me over with a feather! It truly didn't seem possible until I experienced it for myself." —Evie |
| If by "change the world" a person means "make the world better," then step #1 must be to decide right then not to make the world worse. |  |
| Plan on doing most of the cleaning for awhile. Better yet, plan on doing ALL of the cleaning for awhile, and whenever someone else pitches in, you may appreciate it more. Try not to look at it as "I have to do it all!", because you don't have to do it all. There's always a choice. If you don't feel like cleaning today, then don't. Will the house get messier? Yup. Is it a big deal? Shouldn't be. ... Cleaning doesn't have to be a big deal. Don't make it a big deal and your kids may be more inclined to follow in your footsteps. —Lyle Perry |  |
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| Question: “How do you transition kids from rules and chore lists if the kids are older?” Answer: “Go gradually. Don’t enforce so much. If they say, ‘I’m tired,’ then say, ‘Go to bed.’ Don’t make a big announcement, ‘We’re now unschooling.’ Just start saying yes more. If kids can only drink one soda a day and have to go to bed at a specific time, they often grow up to have dreams of drinking lots of soda and staying up late — and don’t we want kids to have bigger, loftier dreams than that?” |  |
In my life I put learning first. I always ask myself, which thing will help them learn more?
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 | Unschoolers have experiences other homeschoolers don’t have. Unschoolers know things that teachers can’t learn in or around school. Unschoolers who start early enough can have relationships with their children for which there are hardly any words. |
 | "Teaching" is a problem, in an unschooling light. Learning is the goal, and teaching gets in the way. |
Overly self-centered people can't do it because it requires a lot of empathy. People with too many personal problems that they haven't addressed in their own lives probably can't do it because they are too distracted by those.People who are too negative or cynical can't do it because they tend to crush interest and joy, not build it up. People who lack curiosity and a certain amount of gusto for life can't really do it.
On the other hand, we grow into it. Turns out that we parents learn, too.
So—when we are making moves, taking steps, in the direction of unschooling, turns out the trail starts to open up in front of us and we get more and more sure-footed as we travel the unschooling path.
