"When I think about the food I make for my daughter (if it's different from what I've made for my husband and myself), I think ahead to when she might be making me food because I am unable to."
—Robin Bentley
photo by Sandra Dodd
WHAT UNSCHOOLING PARENTS NEED patience enthusiasm joy curiosity ability to follow disjoint ideas and conversations willingness to come back to a topic willingness to let a topic drop |
Everyone can, should, sort through the bad examples and good examples around them and move choice by choice toward whatever their own images of "better" might be. |
What's near seems Big! Stay close to your children so they will be big in your life. |
It's the path to unschooling—to go toward the better things and away from the worse things. |
In the same time and with the same energy one might think "I plan to do better," or "I intend to be better in the future," one could *be* better right then, right there. No planning or intentions are necessary to be better, in this moment, than one might otherwise have been. Each decision to make a better choice in thought, word or deed is what "better" is made of. |
A computer, a hand held game, an iPod are doors that lead to a vast world of experiences. Just as your front door leads to a vast world of many different things you can do. Would you refer to all the things your family does by going through your front door—walks, shopping, visiting friends. mowing the lawn, vacations—as "door stuff"?
Stop looking at the door. See the richness that exists beyond the door.
Thank you for looking, for reading, for thinking. Thank you for being a conduit for peaceful ideas. |
Parental encouragement, smiles, acceptance and support are what turn plain or unsettled life into magical and transformed shared lives. |
When one of your thoughts leads to another, it's okay if you don't know why, or where it's going to end up. Fearlessly slide from one idea to another. |
Our days are full and our learning is unmeasured and immeasurable. |
There are very wealthy people who have no concept of abundance. There are very poor people who feel very rich indeed. —Lisa J Haugen |
One of my guiding principles is that I want my children's worlds to be sparkly. There goes the dull and the darkness. Easily not chosen, not an option. |
Being pulled out of something sounds rough, and surprising, and a tad violent.
Being invited to come home is much sweeter, and gives the child an option and some power.
Explore. Go with curiosity. |
Approach perfection, don't aim and fail. Be the best in the moment, but don't expect that to be "The BEST." |
"The big upside of unschooling, in my opinion, was that it also created an unexpected peacefulness, fulfillment, and happiness for all of us." —Jenny Cyphers |
Live the way you want your children to be. Be curious. Be thoughtful. Be patient. Be generous. |
When you come to an intersection, how do you decide which way to go? It helps, before operating a motor vehicle with all its attendant expenses and inherent dangers, to know where you want It's the same with unschooling. If that's where you're headed, there are some wrong ways you can avoid simply by being mindful of your intent. |
"Radical Unschooling" is unschooling fully, from the roots, from the principles, extended into all of one's life and being. |
If an experience is new and different, children learn. |
Spoons. Flush toilets. Roofs, walls, doors. Paper and lights. Colored markers.
Love. Time.
Thoughts. Ideas.
We never minded putting them in the bed after they were asleep. It was rare they went to sleep in the bed. They would wake up there (or in our bed, or on the couch or on a floor bed) knowing only that they had been put there and covered up by someone who loved them. |