Climbing mountains and baking pies

In response to someone saying her child would rather take the easy route than try something tough, Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

It's human nature to avoid what we feel is a waste of time, energy and resources.
It's also human nature to pour energy into what we find fascinating.

If someone is made to climb a mountain, they'll find the easiest path, and perhaps even cheat.

If someone desires to climb a mountain, they may even make it more difficult—challenging—for themselves if the route doesn't light their fire.

If it were human nature to go the easy route, I wouldn't be sitting here writing out a response! No one would write a novel. No one would climb Mt. Everest. No one would bake a cherry pie from scratch. No one would have kids.

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/joyce/pressure
Photo by Sandra Dodd, of Holly Dodd riding a steam train restored and largely operated by volunteers. The easy route would have been for them to stay home and read books and watch movies about trains.

"Prior"—what comes first?

Someone inquiring about unschooling once complained:

"You seem to be saying that the two priorities are mutually exclusive."

Joyce wrote:

When we're trying to achieve two goals there will be times when a decision will lead towards one but away from another.

I responded:

Priorities have literally to do with rankings. Two "priorities" can't be equal, or there is no "priority" (first-in-lineness, precedence). So if they are to be called "priorities" then I suppose one has to exclude the other at that point of decision making. But people can have two favorite causes or missions or concerns, and lots of times the precedence of them won't matter. When it does, that's when they learn their priorities.

Both of us wrote a bit more than that, at SandraDodd.com/priorities
photo by Drew

Older buildings are reflected in the window; Silver City, New Mexico, a few years ago.

Towards positivity everywhere

Janine wrote:

It's exhilarating to me, the transformative power of unschooling. It is the thing that has finally drained negativity out of my life and pushed me daily further and further away from it, and further and further towards positivity in every area of my life. When it does sneak in again it is more obvious and ugly and I see it for the poison it is. It was ever present through my childhood, my youth, relationships and early parenting.

—Janine Davies

SandraDodd.com/positivity
photo by Tara Joe Farrell

Permission and approval

Some advice on going gradually:

Just like getting lots of gifts instead of one big one, if you say "sure," "okay," "yes" to lots of requests for watching a movie late or having cake for breakfast or them playing another half hour on the swings and you can just read a book in the car nearby, then they get TONS of yes, and permission, and approval.

If you throw your hands up and say "Whatever," that's a disturbing moment of mom seeming not to care instead of mom seeming the provider of an assortment of joyous approvals.

SandraDodd.com/freedom/to
photo by Cátia Maciel

Learning without clocks

School schedules give the illusion that life should be divided into 50-minute increments. It's nonsense.

Our culture has this "hour" and "half hour" thing that is as unnatural and arbitrary as can be. It has to do with clocks, not with people. It has to do with salaries and billing.

Be wary of scheduling and measuring, while deschooling.

SandraDodd.com/deschooling/
photo by Kinsey Norris

Everyday things; interesting things

We live in an everyday-thing world. People always have.

The only way to avoid the everyday world is to limit and control our children, to be separate from the world in ways that will keep our children from learning naturally about the things around them. . . . .

The more time parents spend with their children, doing interesting things together, the less they will worry about other things.

from Always Learning
photo by Sophie Larcher

Better and happier days

Caren Knox wrote:

The bulk of what was challenging for me was changing internally, not just in parenting beliefs and thoughts about learning, but acknowledging & feeling the very deep connection my sons and I share.

. . . . I found the more I trusted and allowed my heart to open to my sons, the better and happier our days were.

—Caren Knox

Do it Well
photo by Dan Vilter