Find ideas you like

Find ideas you like, but remember that all parenting happens at your house, not online, not in groups, but within the parent. Your relationship with your child doesn't need to be approved by strangers. It needs to be the best you can do with your child, yourself, at your house. If you need ideas, the world is overflowing with good ones, and bad ones.


SandraDodd.com/nest
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Getting it

When people say "I read [whichever] webpage last year, but..." and I say "Read it again," I think they might think I'm accusing them of not having read it, but it's that after using the ideas a while, the description makes lots more sense.


Whatever it is we're learning—crochet patterns, musical notation, using crutches, building a fire, making cookies—hearing instructions (or reading them) makes VERY little sense at first. Later it makes more sense. But after trying it and figuring out some things for ourselves, and then going back and looking at the directions, they come to life, in color, and they make 3-D sense.

SandraDodd.com/gettingit

Read a little, try a little; wait a while, watch
art and photo by Roya Dedeaux

Happy health

"Happiness is good for health! If something that makes a kid happy is deemed unhealthy by a parent, it will create stress and division. That kind of stress is NOT healthy. That kind of division works against the kind of relationship between parent and child that makes unschooling awesome!"

—Jenny Cyphers

SandraDodd.com/eating/peace
photo by Sarah S.

Really unschooling

Gradually, steadily, consider what might be better, how you would like to be, and what you have learned will help.

Be in the immediate presence of your own child, with the awareness and knowledge you can use to make that moment better.

The kinder thing, the better thing
photo by Nina Haley

Ease, joy, and sparkle

"Unschooling, for me, works better as a practice and less well as an identity. I can always get close, understand the problem better, and lean on unschooling principles to find more ease, joy, and sparkle."

—Tara Joe Farrell

SandraDodd.com/unschool/sparkly
photo by Cátia Maciel (her camera, anyway)

Everything counts

Where learning is concerned, it's never too late and everything counts.

Persephonics
photo by Dylan Lewis

Being very careful

Y'know when people say "Don't try this at home"?

Homeschoolers can do the same kind of damage school does, if they are not Very Careful not to.

Some Thoughts about Later Reading
photo by Sarah S.

Those cookies are not really sad or damaged, but I don't have many somber photos in the stash! They are ACTing.