photo by Denaire Nixon
Sunday, December 24, 2023
More peace
photo by Denaire Nixon
Wednesday, October 4, 2023
Take a step thoughtfully
I was speaking, not writing. You can listen (at 15:27), or read the transcript.
photo by Brie Jontry
Friday, September 22, 2023
Thinking more clearly
'How do "we"' is a problem. The person is asking (I think) whether WE will support HER limiting her child. Each of us acts after consideration of what we know and believe, what our priorities are, what other factors (partners, grandparents, home-owner/landlord, religion, local laws)... But I acted with and toward my children as a partner in the way, in each moment, that seemed sensible and helpful to me, as much as was in my power in that moment. If I didn't do great, I would plan to do better in future moments. If I was happy with my actions, I'd try to remember what I was thinking so I could do that again in the future. But there wasn't a "we" except me and the child I was dealing with.
photo by Colleen Prieto
Wednesday, July 19, 2023
Gratitude and respect
photo by Brie Jontry
Thursday, May 11, 2023
What peace is not
It's not healthy for anyone, for very long, but it works against unschooling.
Outrage is BIG, visceral, adrenaline-filled RAGE. If your "outrage" is any smaller, use a different word.
photo by Marta Venturini, of her peaceful husband
Friday, March 17, 2023
Peace
photo by Diane Marcengill
Monday, February 13, 2023
Be kind to your children
You have helped me be more kind to my children. The best thing anyone could have done for them and me. Thank you!
(I didn't save the name.)
photo by Gail Higgins
Tuesday, June 21, 2022
Parenting reflects back
For me, it seems like a gift to me and my mom both, if I can do better than she did. She would have liked to have done better, too, so I can do it for her.
I get some healing benefit either way.
photo by Ester Siroky
Saturday, April 30, 2022
What's different?
photo by Gail Higgins
(quote is from page 203-236 of The Big Book of Unschooling)
Sunday, February 13, 2022
Live Lightly
Live Lightly.
Real Learningphoto by Sandra Dodd
See also:
Light on light; Sources of light; and Sun, or Moon, or Fire
Tuesday, February 1, 2022
Fly when ready
So people hadn’t considered that they could totally avoid that, that that would be a natural offshoot of radical unschooling.
Keith and I did think, early on, we said what we are doing is inoculating our kids against the trait of some, or the fact of some kids leaving with the first person who says “Hey baby, you wanna live with me?” or “Oh, let’s go get a house”, or, you know, that sort of energy of young people luring other young people out and away, to other states, to other places, to dangerous neighborhoods. We said "It’s going to have to be a pretty good offer to beat what they have at home."
And so that becomes a safety factor too. If the children know that they can stay at home, then someone who comes and says, "Hey do you want come do something with me? Do you want to come live with me?"—it better be a good offer.
photo by Karen James
Tuesday, January 25, 2022
Consider ideas
Live your life in such a way that you're not ashamed if someone quotes what you said, or tells something you did.
photo by Gail Higgins
Friday, July 9, 2021
Inspired and inspiring
photo by Karen James
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Friday, March 5, 2021
Just being
It's a simple gift we can all give to our children that will have the potential to last a lifetime.
photo by Cass Kotrba
Monday, December 28, 2020
Forgotten roofs of the world
I'm sure there are things on my roof that would be interesting to someone else, but I don't go up there, and I don't look. When I've visted other places, though rooflines seem exotic, and the chimneys and birds and all are not what I'm used to and I get excited. |
perhaps,
look up.
It can help in more ways than one.
photo by Sandra Dodd, in Chichester, in England
Tuesday, October 27, 2020
Learning curves aren't smooth
There's a learning curve that I see with unschooled kids and that is that they seem to be ahead [of their peers in school] for the first few years and then there's a period of time, roughly from about nine to 12 years of age, when they can seem behind. And then after they are 12 or 13, zoom! They look ahead! They seem to be ahead again.
If families can make it through that rough hump of "Oh, my kid doesn't know anything. He doesn't have cursive, he doesn't know the times tables and he's 12 and starting to get whiskers,"... Because it's just before a lot of the kids in school are saying, "This is crazy. Why am I doing this?"
photo by Amber Ivey
The quotes above are the beginning and end of something longer that's here:
The Learning Curve of Unschoolers
Thursday, October 1, 2020
In their own natural ways
photo by Colleen Prieto
Monday, August 17, 2020
Every bit of all the bits
Unschooling allows free use of any and all bits of information, not just school's small set. A grid based first on cartoon characters or the history of ice skating can be expanded just as well as one built on a second-grade version of the discovery of North America and the made-up characters in some beginning-reader series. If the goal is to know everything, and if each person's internal "universe" is unique, then the order in which the information is acquired isn't as important as the ease and joy with which it is absorbed.
The time will come in your unschooling when you will forget to use checklists, but it won't matter. The child's internal grid will already have given them the need to know what things feel, smell and taste, and what they used to be or will be, and whether it's different in other places. Connections will continue to be made throughout their lives. The universe inside will grow larger and the universe outside will become clearer with every new experience.
photo by Cass Kotrba
Saturday, July 4, 2020
What is needed?
There is personal growth in quietly providing what is needed. The world is made better by those who notice and attend to needs. |
photo by Gail Higgins
Saturday, April 11, 2020
Quitters sometimes win!
Schuyler Waynforth wrote:
Maybe you can see how quitting what you don't want to do is a good thing.
I've quit lots of things, jobs, relationships, books, drugs, cigarettes, lots of things that weren't helpful, that weren't good for my life. Quitting them made room for other things. It also helped me to think about what I wanted to do. Some of the things I quit I went back to like photography or knitting, I quit knitting regularly. Others I've not yet returned to like smoking or working at a plastics factory.
photo by Gail Higgins
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