Helping

Joyce Fetteroll, small part of larger writing:

We can view children's needs as inconvenient for us or we can view them as people who need our help doing what they want to do.
. . . . We can be our kids partner in helping them get what they want in life or we can be the barrier that opens or closes according to our whim.

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/yes
photo by Eva Witsel
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Surprise!

Life is richer when you are open to appreciating surprises.

Surprises and discoveries
photo by Sandra Dodd

Tales of "Oops"

Advising about an easily frustrated child, Brie Jontry wrote:

Talking about your own frustrations and talking through your own "mistakes," etc, in a light way—not *to* him, but around him, where he can hear you—might be helpful.

I did a lot of: "Ooops! I meant to cut the carrots length-wise instead of into circles. No big deal..." or "Hmmmm, I think next time, I'll do X first instead of Y" or whatever—talk to yourself, to your friends, to your partner about how you learn by doing. Short, light observations. No long drawn out monologues.

—Brie Jontry

SandraDodd.com/partners/child
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Light and shadow

Shadows can be fun to play with, and to notice. I've always liked it if a bird or an airplane made a shadow on me. Be a light, when you can be. Practice thinking about what you might be overshadowing. If you're in the desert, remember that it can be courteous to stand where you will shade someone who's tired or overheated, or is trying to read something. Be a courteous light.

SandraDodd.com/light
photo by Sandra Dodd

Continue to play

Play can be serious business. Playing is certainly the main way that very young children learn, until they go to school.

What if they don't go to school? What if the ages of five and six don't mark a life change, and the playing progresses along naturally?
Many people would have no idea how to answer that question. The idea that toddlers' play would naturally progress to other levels without interruption, without separation from families, and without professionals telling children when, where and how to play is foreign to most in our culture.

In one small corner, though, it's common knowledge. There are unschoolers whose children have not been to school and who have continued to play.

That writing continues here: SandraDodd.com/playing
photo by Janine

More

Alex Polikowsky wrote: Unschooling takes more, more presence, more guidance, more attention, more mindfulness, more connection, more thinking and questioning, more choices and better choices. —Alex Polikowsky

SandraDodd.com/misconceptions
photo by Sandra Dodd

False doom

If a child doing something harmless and happy is thwarted by a parent spouting false doom, the parent is the problem.

The game isn't the problem, the parent is the problem.

The child isn't the problem, the parent is the problem.



SandraDodd.com/gratitude
photo by Sandra Dodd