Helping grandparents

Meredith wrote something in April 2011 about what the grandparents want...

It's helpful to keep in mind that one of the big things grandparents want is a sense of connection with their grandchildren. When kids aren't in school, that can feel awkward - what the heck do you say to a child other than "what are you doing in school?" Especially if you only see him twice a year? It can leave extended family members stymied. So it helps a whoooole lot to feed them useful information and conversation starters in the form of something grandparents usually like anyway - pictures and stories of their grandkids. Keeping a blog or sending regular notes (via facebook or plain old snail mail) goes a long way in that regard. And! they get to see their beloved grandchildren happy and adventurous, which can help to reassure them on that score.

Unschooling can come across as some kind of weird cult if you try to explain it from a theoretical side first. Start with happy kids living rich, full lives and school starts to seem less of an issue.

—Meredith Novak

"How do you respond to family members?"
photo by Sandra Dodd, of Dodd kids and paternal grandmother, early 1990s

Scattering to learn

Part of a 2004 description of our unschooling home, when three kids and their friends were here:

They come here and we’re working a puzzle or building something and they’ll get into that, too. It’s fun. We do things that are just fun. You can hardly walk by without picking it up and messing with it, too.

Sometimes, someone—my husband and one of the kids—will be doing something in one room and in the next room, some other friends are over and they are playing a video game and in another room or outside, another kid and somebody else are doing something else.

That also is the idea of the open classroom. Their ideal was not to be sitting at desks reading but to sit in a soft place, in a dark place, in a private place or wherever you wanted to, to read. So they tried to have interesting places where kids could get away from the other kids.


Sound file and transcript, of "Improving Unschooling" interview: SandraDodd.com/radiotranscript
photo by Destiny Dodd, of Kirby Dodd and their daughter, Kirby Dodd.

Principles instead of rules

The idea of living by principles has come up before and will come up again. When I first started playing with the idea, in preparation for a conference presentation, I was having a hard time getting even my husband and best friends to understand it. Really bright people local to me, parents, looked at me blankly and said "principles are just another word for rules."

I was determined to figure out how to explain it, but it's still not simple to describe or to accept, and I think it's because our culture is filled with rules, and has little respect for the idea of "principles." It seems moralistic or spiritual to talk about a person's principles, or sometimes people who don't see it that way will still fear it's about to get philosophical and beyond their interest or ability.

Rules are things like "Never hit the dog," and "Don't talk to strangers."

Principles are more like "Being gentle to the dog is good for the dog and good for you too," or "People you don't know could be dangerous." They are not "what to do." They are "how do you decide?" and "why?" in the realm of thought and decision making.

The answer to most questions is "it depends."

What it depends on often has to do with principles.

from page 42 (or 46) of The Big Book of Unschooling
photo by Sandra Dodd

Principles

Leaping and dancing

It's bad to make a religion of unschooling.

It's good to see all the logic and practicality in it, and to incorporate things gradually until the awkward first steps turn to confident strides and then to leaping and dancing in the dark.

SandraDodd.com/gradualchange

Happy Logic
photo by Sandra Dodd

Avoiding frustration

Pam Sorooshian wrote, of soothing a frustrated child:

YOU have to figure this out—you are like a detective in a way, or a psychiatrist, trying to understand what your own child is like based on all the clues/evidence. You come to understand how she is experiencing the world, and then you try to support her in ways that work best for her.

—Pam Sorooshian

SandraDodd.com/pam/soothing
photo by Cátia Maciel

Quietly alert

If you can choose to be more aware over less aware, that will help.

One aspect of awareness is working on your ability to be quietly alert, like a mother hawk, aware of the location of your child, her mood and your surroundings.

A Loud Peaceful Home
photo by Karen James
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Learning how to make decisions

Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

Some people, such as those who are naturally drawn to rules, who live under limitations accept the rules and stick to them. They live in fear and the rules are like talismans that will keep the boogeyman away. What happens when they are faced with new situations that they don't have rules in place for? People often extrapolate from the nonsense and extend the rules. But rational thought would reveal shoddy foundations for decision making.

If the reasons behind rules make sense, then there isn't a reason to make a rule. But people who follow rules aren't learning how to make decisions. They are only learning to follow someone else's rules.

If the reasons behind rules are nonsense, then people memorize nonsense and use that as a foundation for decision making.

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/joyce/logic
photo by Sandra Dodd
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