Sunday, December 29, 2013

January 1 chat on Time!




January 1 chat: Time. Years. Seasons. Months. Weeks. Daytime, nighttime. Days. Moments.

sandradodd.com/time is probably less familiar to you than sandradodd.com/moment




January 8, Parents' Hurts can Heal

Parenting our own children can be healing to our childhood hurts. Don't let your inner child hurt current, modern children. Turn the energy the other direction!



If you're reading this by e-mail and you need a path to the chatroom, click on the title to get to the blog, which has a tab up to the left with the link and password.

Sunday, December 22, 2013

Next chat January 1


No chat on Christmas; next chat, New Year's Day.


January 1 chat: Time. Years. Seasons. Months. Weeks. Daytime, nighttime. Days. Moments.

sandradodd.com/time is probably less familiar to you than sandradodd.com/moment




January 8, Parents' Hurts can Heal

Parenting our own children can be healing to our childhood hurts. Don't let your inner child hurt current, modern children. Turn the energy the other direction!

If you're reading this by e-mail and you need a path to the chatroom, click on the title to get to the blog, which has a tab up to the left with the link and password.

Sunday, December 15, 2013

December 18, Balance

Balance: Not too much, not too little, just enough.

The balance between routine and getting kids to try some other things, that they might not want to right at first, but with some enticement, you pretty much know they'd like it.

Balance between being way organized/controlling, and accepting unexpected opportunities.

Other balance points?

http://sandradodd.com/balance


No chat on Christmas; next chat, New Year's Day, January 1 chat: Time. Years. Seasons. Months. Weeks. Daytime, nighttime. Days. Moments.

sandradodd.com/time is probably less familiar to you than sandradodd.com/moment

If you're reading this by e-mail and you need a path to the chatroom, click on the title to get to the blog, which has a tab up to the left with the link and password.

Sunday, December 8, 2013

December 11, Hibernation, cocooning

Wednesday, December 11, we will have a chat on those sorts of still, fallow seasons when it seems nothing is happening. Some people think of it as hibernation, sometimes it seems like cocooning before a burst of energy.

How can we view downtime in ways that we can honor and appreciate it?

Here's a page on my site with a bit about these ideas:
http://sandradodd.com/being/home.html


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Sunday, December 1, 2013

Joy, Values, Wonder

December 4: Joy (page 275), Values (276) and Wonder (279)

Website links from those book pages:

Rejecting a Pre-Packaged Life (one of the first unschooling articles by me ever published
Priorities
Wonder


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Sunday, November 24, 2013

Chat without me, if you want to!

No formal chat this coming week; if you want to hang out in the chatroom, though, please do!

Keith and I are going to Las Vegas and during the chat time I expect to be on a tour of the power generators at Hoover Dam. That night, we'll be seeing Penn & Teller. I'm pretty jazzed!

Have a good week, all!

The week after that will be the last of the Big Book chats. :-)
Then we can go to some other series of topics, or ways to choose weekly topics, so if you have ideas, we can talk about it in the chat on Wednesday, December 4.


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Sunday, November 17, 2013

Unexpected Outcomes, November 20

November 20, Unexpected Outcomes (page 269), and a few pages following (spouses, trees, pets might be touched upon).

This and one more chat will finish the book, because we're up to the resources, quotes, essays and interviews.

November 27: no chat. I'll be at Hoover Dam with my husband, Keith, as a side trip from Las Vegas where we're going to see Cirque du Soleil and Penn & Teller.

December 4: Joy (page 275), Values (276) and Wonder (279)

Here is page 269's text for those without the book:

Unexpected Outcomes

When my children were young I knew their lives would be different, the differences were greater than any of my expectations. I hadn't known then, either, to predict how different my own life would be, and my husband's.

I didn’t expect this to change my children’s ability to make eye contact with people.
It surprises me that they have friends of such a range of ages.
I didn’t expect them to learn so much without me.
I didn’t expect Kirby and Marty to be offered jobs they didn’t even apply for.
I didn’t know that our relationships could stay so good even when they were teenagers.
I didn’t know they would be so compassionate.
I’m impressed at their real-world courage and principles.
I didn’t expect to like to lose arguments.
I didn’t know I would be so accepting of kids saying “no.”
I didn’t expect it to make things so sweet between me and Keith.
I didn’t expect unschooling to make the grocery store so fun.
I didn’t expect to see school so differently.
I didn’t expect this to improve my relationships with pets.
I didn’t know how much people could learn without reading.
I didn't know we would have friends all over the country, and later all over the world.

http://SandraDodd.com/unexpected


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Monday, November 11, 2013

Unschooling parents becoming better people

Changes in the parents—how unschooling can make a parent a better person.

I'm going to use two pages that aren't right next to each other in the book:
268 Changes in the Parent
271 Healing

Those pages recommend reading http://sandradodd.com/change and http://sandradodd.com/parentingpeacefully


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Sunday, November 3, 2013

Young adults, saying "yes" to grown children

Young adults, saying "yes" to grown children, pages 264-267 in The Big Book of Unschooling

On the website, two of those three sections correspond to (but they don't duplicate) http://sandradodd.com/youngadults and http://sandradodd.com/yes/


TIME CHNANGES: Daylight savings time has come here now, too. Double check times, please. Noon in New Mexico (mountain daylight time).





If you're reading this by e-mail and you need a path to the chatroom, click on the title to get to the blog, which has a tab up to the left with the link and password.

Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Donations will be gratefully accepted!

Once upon a time, chatzy charged by usage, and because we don't use it much, it was only $36 every four or five months. They changed to months, instead, so I went to an annual fee to make it less expensive. The receipt looks bad for having a comma, but it wasn't $129,000. It's $129.00. Whew!!

That's about $3 per chat, as I didn't run chats while I was travelling in the summer, and another day or two were missed for holidays. That's pretty cheap for a meeting room with facilities (chat facilities, not toilet facilities), but still in one pile it was $129.


If anyone would like to help with that, here's "the hat" I'm passing, and thanks for contributing a bit if you can. If it goes over the chat amount, any extra can go toward SandraDodd.com's annual fee, which is $131.28. Assistance would be kind, generous and appreciated.




If PayPal spooks you, my address is
Sandra Dodd
2905 Tahiti Ct. NE
Albuquerque NM 87112
      And I LOVE Christmas cards!!

Sunday, October 27, 2013

College and alternatives, for teens and young adults

October 30, 2013, chat on college and alternatives, pages 261-263, and maybe pages 259-260 (jobs).

Europe has daylight savings time in effect; North America doesn't yet. Maybe check a world clock or website to check the time at some point before Wednesday. People are welcome to leave definite times in comments below, if that would help. :-)


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Monday, October 21, 2013

Teens, October 23

Wednesday, Pam Sorooshian will be in on the chat (because I'm staying at her house, and it will be easy for her to do that). We don't have teens anymore, right now, but we used to, each of us, three.

Here's a chat from early 2009, with and about Pam Sorooshian: http://sandradodd.com/chats/pamsorooshian and there's more about teens at http://sandradodd.com/teens and http://sandradodd.com/teens

or in the book, pages 251-259 or so in the book. We can discuss whichever parts of that section chat attendees want to discuss.


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Sunday, October 13, 2013

"Sex education" discussion October 16

http://sandradodd.com/sexadvice is a good starting place on the website.

Here is the entirety of page 250 from The Big Book of Unschooling
This was hard to place, so I've put it just before the section on teens.

Sex Education

Some families say "Abstain!" and if a pregnancy results, they see it as a punishment from God, the ultimate outing of sneaky, bad behavior.

There are more loving ways to handle teens and sexuality. There are more compassionate and sensible things to think and say and do.

Undoubtedly some of those reading here were the product of unintended pregnancy, and it is not the fashion for people to say "shouldn’t have been born" about themselves or anyone else. To be honest, though, with the world population approaching seven billion, helping your children only have babies they really want is good for you, them, and the hypothetical, potentially-unwanted children.

A girl can put a baby up for unseen adoption, and many parents have required teenaged girls to do that. There are risks to physical health and life, and certain effects on emotional health and life.

We can continue the tradition of the ages of punishing and shaming and controlling teenagers, or we can find better ways to help them learn what they need to know to make good decisions and to live a responsible, happy life.

That was all about pregnancy. There are other things to consider. It's easy to lie to kids or to create a cloud of fear and nonsense. What's not as easy is for parents to review and update their own knowledge so that what they're saying is helpful and current and true.

I was talking to Holly about "control," and of a family forbidding a 16-year-old to see her boyfriend (who attended the same school she did), which resulted in the murder of her family, house burned down, all the teens in prison…

I said: "Some families tell their boys never to look at dirty pictures and never to touch their penises."

Holly: "Ed Gein's mother told him that, hardcore."

Sandra: "Never to jack off?"

Holly: "Yes. And he dug his mother's body up, cut off her vagina and painted it silver."

SandraDodd.com/sex


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Sunday, October 6, 2013

October 9 chat on Regrets

"Regrets" (pages 245 to 249).
Sometimes people express a wish that they had unschooled sooner, or been nicer to children earlier, or gone to conferences rather than stalling off.

I have a collection online with a few more than the book has. http://sandradodd.com/ifonly


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Saturday, September 28, 2013

October 2 chat on Truth / Fact / Fallacy...

Two topics in the book will be covered, one in the first half, and the other in the second half. The first is about individuals and their choices. The second is about interpretation of information of all sorts.

Truth/Honesty/Lies, page 242 of The Big Book of Unschooling, corresponds to http://sandradodd.com/integrity

Fact/Fallacy/Opinion, pages 243-244 of The Big Book of Unschooling, or if you don't have the book, this might help: http://sandradodd.com/logic

Both topics contain ideas that can help an unschooling parent be more trustworthy, improving relationships and learning at home!



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Sunday, September 22, 2013

September 25 chat: "If I let him, he would..."

"If I Let Him" and other fear-based assumptions parents can learn to relax about.

Pages 236-241 in The Big Book of Unschooling, which expands on http://sandradodd.com/ifilet


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Sunday, September 15, 2013

Clarity September 18 Chat

Clarity, a great topic! In the book, page 235. On the website, http://sandradodd.com/clarity

I love this topic!


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Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Wednesday 11th Chat on Progress

Spanking should have been the topic, by book contents in order, but I don't want to talk about that, so I've been stalling.

I want to talk about what is better now, about parenting and unschooling, than twenty years and more ago.
I want to talk just a little about what might be worse now.

Noon! Soon!

Sunday, September 1, 2013

September 4, Toy Guns, Violence

September 4 Chat Topic: "Toy Guns and Violence"
Pages from The Big Book of Unschooling: 229 to 231

Advance reading with pictures:

http://sandradodd.com/peace/guns

http://sandradodd.com/violence


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Saturday, August 24, 2013

When Siblings Fight, August 28 topic

Last week's chat has been edited, and you can read it here: http://chattranscripts.blogspot.com/2013/08/internet-safety.html

August 28, the chat topic will be "When Siblings Fight," which is a three page article in The Big Book of Unschooling, pages 226-228.


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Sunday, August 18, 2013

August 21 chat on the Dangers of the Internet

page 225, Online Safety and related issues. Dangers of the internet, and related concerns.

Also, tales of internet glory and wonder!  

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Monday, August 12, 2013

August 14, Empowerment

"Empowerment" (pages 223 and 224), links to this page: SandraDodd.com/empowerment

ALSO! Chat transcripts will be gradually filling in (even the older ones) here, soon. The July 31 chat on applying principles to partnerships is there already. It will be edited a bit more (spellings, recombination of a few lines to help those who weren't there to read it more smoothly. http://chattranscripts.blogspot.com/2013/08/partnerships-better-from-principles.html


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Sunday, August 4, 2013

August 7 chat on Parental Myths

August 7 Back to The Big Book of Unschooling!

The next chapter is "Myths too many Parents Believe" (pages 221 and 222), which links to SandraDodd.com/myths

Since I'm not sure if this topic's enough for the whole chat (sometimes you do two chapters), the chapter after this one is "Empowerment" (pages 223 and 224), linked to this page: http://sandradodd.com/empowerment/


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Tuesday, July 30, 2013

I'm Back! July 31 chat

I need help on an article tomorrow. I have a deadline and ideas, but I'm hoping for more ideas, or critique of my ideas.

So the topic will be primarily how the principles of unschooling can end up secondarily improving a marriage or partner relationship. Secondarily, perhaps the topic could be procrastination or priorities. :-)

Noon my time, which is MST/Mountain Standard, so if it's been a while and you need to look up your own time in relation to what will probably show on time zone charts as Denver, you have time to do it!

If I relax about the article contents sometime in the course of that, I'll tell stories about the trip to Lisbon, Leiden and London!


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Saturday, July 20, 2013

July 31, I'll be back; LEARN NOTHING in the meantime.

I'm in my last week of Exciting Summer Travels. I've spoken in Lisbon (Portugal), the Yarrow Valley (Scotland), Leiden (Netherlands) and Ashford (England). Joyce Fetteroll did, too.

The next chat will be on July 31.

This coming Wednesday I will be on a plane on my way home. My Learn Nothing Day will last 32 hours, but yours will be easier. Be wary, guard against learning.



Sunday, May 19, 2013

May 22, Respect (last chat for a while)

Wednesday, May 22, will be the last chat before my "Lisbon, London, Leiden" tour. I'll be gone until Learn Nothing Day.

The topic this week will be Respect. There are several page on the site you might want to read here: SandraDodd.com/respect, and here's what's in the book (page 220). It follows on "freedom."

Respect was discussed in the section on "being," earlier in the book, but in light of "freedom," respect can take another whirl. If I "give my children freedom" in a situation, it's because I had some leeway or rights myself. I cannot "give them freedom" that I don't have.

Some unschoolers become confused on that, and they begin to frolic in the "freedom" that they are pretty sure some stranger online granted them, and that unschoolers have inalienably from God, bypassing all forms of government and the limitations of wallboard. And so if an unschooling family is up at 3:00 a.m. playing Guitar Hero, they seem mystified that the neighbors have called the landlord.

I'm exaggerating. I hope I'm exaggerating.

If a storeowner says not to touch the crystal figures, a parent cannot "give her child the freedom" to touch them anyway. She could buy one and take it out of the store and let her kid touch the heck out of it, but she can't tell a store owner, "You don't understand; we're unschoolers."

So although I might seem to be wandering aimlessly here, freedom should involve a respect for others, and a respect for logic. And a family might not feel they "respect the law," but the laws still do apply to them, no matter how twinkly-eyed they have become in their newfound "freedom."

So if someone is selling you "True Freedom" (or snake oil, or the elixir of the fountain of life), have respect for yourself and your family and take a pass on it.

Meanwhile, parents with a realistic and considered awareness of what their own freedoms are within the laws of the apartment building, housing development, city, county/parish/township, state/province or nation are free to share some of those with their children. We let Holly choose carpet once, but we couldn't have legally required her to pay for it, as she was only eight or nine at the time. We have surprised waiters in many restaurants by turning to our children questioningly when the waiter asks the adults "Would you like to see the dessert menu?" They're even more surprised when the kids say, "No thanks," or "I'm full," while making friendly eye contact with the waiter.

And the "being" mention refers to this passage, from page 220:

Being respectful

"Modeling respect" is misunderstood by some parents. It seems they think that if they are courteous to other adults in public and their children see it, their children will be courteous to adults, including the parents. That's useful and important, but it has to do with etiquette and courtesy, generally, more than with a depth of respect.

Probably a better way to explain it then, is to be a model of respectfulness and of respectability. That's confusing too, I know, but parents need to find ways to respect their children–their interests and ideas and preferences of color and texture and temperature and their tastes in music and humor and their need for privacy and for attention.

When a child feels what respect feels like, he will know what others mean when they say "You should respect [whatever]."

"Respect" is not a light thing. It's not easy to respect your child, when it's new to you. There will be people encouraging you to see your child as "just a kid," and "only a child." Think of adults you respect, and think of them as ten years old, four years old, two, newborn. They were those people from birth. There was a newborn Mohandas Gandhi; a four-year-old Abraham Lincoln; an eight-year-old Oprah Winfrey, a twelve-year-old Winston Churchill.

Would my mother have treated me differently if she knew I would grow up to write this book? How should I treat my children?

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Monday, May 13, 2013

May 15, Freedom (NOT AN EASY TOPIC!)

MOVED HERE, to my site, September 2021 —Sandra



Okay... This topic is a hard one.

I'm going to quote the whole page from The Big Book of Unschooling. Please read it before the chat and think about problems you've seen with too much focus on freedom.
Freedom

A discussion came up in which someone asked about "True Freedom" as though it were a concept central to unschooling. I'd never come across the phrase, and discussion ensued.

It's just musing and analysis of the ideas of freedom, which unschoolers do tend toward in lots of things, but in ALL things? Maybe, maybe not.

I think what some families call "freedom," I call "choices." In the discussion referred to above, I wrote:
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.
The bold face print in the quote below came from something Danielle Conger wrote. My responses are indented. It's at the link below.

After reading Sandra's words, I realize that my kids come to me, not because I say they have to, but because they use me as a sounding board.

Maybe they're coming to you as a font of "yes!"

That's a cool thing, if every time they want something loving and positive, they run to mom, huh?
Asking permission becomes a way of gauging their own sense of right and wrong because they know that I will explain a no and help them come up with better alternatives.
My big guys still ask little things, like "Can I have this last soda?" What that means is "had you dibsed it?" or "Is this perhaps NOT the last soda, so I'll feel better about taking it?"

If I say "Sure," they're drinking a soda I gave them, and I bet it tastes better than one they snagged knowing they had "the right" to drink it, but they wanted the blessing.
SandraDodd.com/freedom


From the linked webpage, SandraDodd.com/freedom (and there's more there):

"Freedom," and unschooling
In December, 2011, a mother whose daughter had been court-ordered to go to school created a facebook page called "The death of an unschooler." I went expecting to hear about someone dying, as Hannah Jenner did of leukemia, or as Sam Wilkinson did of falling through ice into a lake.

No. It was the story of a divorce, and of a judge ordering that the child should go to school, because the father wasn't in favor of unschooling. I objected to the name of the page, there, and the mother responded with these statements, and others.

"Unschooling is freedom."
"I have always told her she does not have to do anything she does not want to do."
The definition of unschooling is not "freedom." No parent has so much power and freedom that she can assure her own child she doesn't have to do anything she doesn't want to do. No parent has the power to choose to do nothing she doesn't want to do and guarantee her own freedom from incarceration.
I think good unschooling needs parents who aren't in jail, and children who aren't removed by the government or ordered into school. And while none of those things are guaranteed, there are many easy steps to take to avoid jail and court orders.

So for purposes of this page and radical unschooling as our family lived it, and as I am familiar with it in very many other families, unschooling involves learning and choices, LOTS of choices, but is not absolute freedom.

I think since the beginning of human existence there has never been anyone with total freedom. Living in a group comes with restraints and restrictions. It's just the way it is. Cave men, Bible days, feudal society, pioneers settling the Wild West... all end up answering to other people about what they're doing, how, where and why. And when. "We're trying to sleep; get QUIET!"

While there is a great deal of rhetoric, slogan, poetry and art about freedom, the author of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" owned slaves.

SO. Unschooling. There are many arbitrary rules, expectations, school-related goals and milestones and competitions and rankings that unschoolers can ignore. A family can choose to be free of those.

There are many cultural expectations and traditions—what food is for breakfast, but never for lunch; what time is too late for a ten year old to be awake; what music is for children and what is for adults—that parents can opt to disregard within their own home and immediate family. They cannot, though, by making those choices, cause anyone OUTside their home to think it's a great idea, nor to impose their new freedoms on friends or more distant relatives. If I let my children stay up late in my home, that doesn't even begin to give them the right to stay up as late as they want in any home on earth.

I think that's where unschoolers get confused. They think they're replacing a set of rules with another set of rules. And partly it might be English. The idea that you can "give someone freedom" can seem whole and absolute to someone else. If my child looks in a happily full fridge and asks "What can I eat?" and I say "You can have anything you want," the context suggests that I mean he can have anything he can find in the house, and perhaps something I could prepare upon request. It doesn't mean I will take him to any restaurant on earth right then and buy him anything. It doesn't mean he can go to the grocery store that's a few hundred yards out the back gate and eat off their shelves.

The foregoing explanation sounds goofy. It seems I'm explaining something that was so absurd that no one could possibly misunderstand it.



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Sunday, May 5, 2013

May 8, Bribery and Coercion

May 8, the happy topics of bribery and coercion! Don't think blackmail and torture. Go to the very light place in your life, where a young child is being persuaded in such a way that he's not harmed and peace reigns.

In The Big Book of Unschooling, this is presented on pages 217 and 218.

On the webpage, you can read more about bribery here: http://sandradodd.com/bribery

There's nothing in Just Add Light and Stir about these things, because they're not uplifting and cheery!


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Sunday, April 28, 2013

May 1, Boredom

May 1, Jill Parmer and I will be at Alex Polikowsky's place in Minnesota, but we've scheduled the chat in. May 2, Thursday night, we'll be at the water park hotel where the ALL in Minnesota symposium will be held this weekend.

SO! Boredom, what is it, what it's not, how to swirl up and sparkle up your life. Add something, and stir.

In the book: Page 216
On the site: http://sandradodd.com/boredom/


On "Just Add Light and Stir" recently:
Rich and lush
A message to your grandchildren
Light and happy

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Monday, April 22, 2013

April 24 chat: Parenting Peacefully

Peaceful Parenting, a phrase I am told I cannot use anymore.

In the book, pages 209-215.
On the website, different information but same topic, http://sandradodd.com/parentingpeacefully


Some recent "Just Add Light and Stir" posts that tie in with this topic:
Happy Monkey
Where We Live
A smile instead of a frown


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Monday, April 15, 2013

Tone

Tone of voice, emotional tone... artists speak of tone.

Page 208, Tone.

We're over 2/3 through the topic pages of the book. The summer is coming, when chats will be less regular, so come to the next few if you like them!





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Sunday, April 7, 2013

April 10, Flow

Flow is one of those odd, special, magical things that doesn't happen often, and only happens when you don't expect it to.

When people say "he was lost in his work," or "I forgot where I was, " or "Is it that time already!?" it might be about a flow state.

In the book pages 206-207.
On the website, http://sandradodd.com/flow

But this one might be worth reading about elsewhere, too: wikipedia's article, or the reviews and comments on the book Flow, at Amazon.

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Sunday, March 31, 2013

April 3, Breathing

April 3, the topic will be Breathing. Pages 204 and 205 (where three links are recommended).

Smell imaginary flowers


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Sunday, March 24, 2013

No formal chat March 27

On March 24, Keith and I will be driving to Austin to visit Kirby, our oldest. I won't be in the chat, but if others want to come to discuss unschooling in general, that would be great!

April 3, the topic will be Breathing. Page 204-205 (where three links are recommended).

The photo is a link.

If you're reading this by e-mail and you need a path to the chatroom, click on the title to get to the blog, which has a tab up to the left with the link and password.

Monday, March 18, 2013

date correction (very minor)

I frustrate myself sometimes. :-)

I wrote "On March 24, Keith and I will be driving to Austin to visit Kirby..."
We're leaving March 27, Wednesday, so we'll be driving during the chat time.  

March 24 was on my list of dates for sending notifications.  

The topic this week is "Being."  The topic two weeks later will be "Breathing."

Doesn't it seem like "being" and "breathing" are so natural they're not worth talking about?  All around us, though, are people who could use thinking about them a time or two a day. :-)

Sunday, March 17, 2013

March 20, Being

Being respectful, being fun, being at peace, being aware.... being the way you want to be. In the book, 201 to 203. March 20.

Being on Just Add Light and Stir

On March 24, Keith and I will be driving to Austin to visit Kirby, our oldest. I won't be in the chat, but if others want to come and answer questions and visit, that's fine.

ALSO, the chat on food has been edited and is ready to read. :-) Food, eating page 162-174 of The Big Book of Unschooling (2009 edition) online chat, January 9, 2013

If you're reading this by e-mail and you need a path to the chatroom, click on the title to get to the blog, which has a tab up to the left with the link and password.

Sunday, March 10, 2013

Time Change might confuse the chat!

In New Mexico, we've moved clocks ahead. For people in places where that hasn't happened yet, or isn't going to happen, the chat will be an hour earlier than you expected. If you have a world clock program, check Mountain Daylight Time; the chat is noon in that time zone.

http://www.worldtimezone.com
(in case you don't have something handy).

If you're reading this by e-mail and you need a path to the chatroom, click on the title to get to the blog, which has a tab up to the left with the link and password.

March 13, Moments and Mindfulness

March 13, the value of a moment, living in moments, and living mindfully. In The Big Book, pages 198-200

Moments: http://sandradodd.com/badmoment
and
Mindfulness: http://sandradodd.com/mindfulness/


a Just Add Light link


If you're reading this by e-mail and you need a path to the chatroom, click on the title to get to the blog, which has a tab up to the left with the link and password.

Sunday, March 3, 2013

Words and phrases (power and problems) March 6

WORDS. The power of the words you choose, and phrases to avoid. Pages 196-197 in the book.

On the site, http://sandradodd.com/phrases and http://sandradodd.com/words/words

If you're reading this by e-mail and you need a path to the chatroom, click on the title to get to the blog, which has a tab up to the left with the link and password.

Sunday, February 24, 2013

Abundance, February 27 chat

Abundance!  

Look at what is in your half-full cup, not at the badillion things that are NOT in there.
http://justaddlightandstir.blogspot.com/2013/02/half-cup.html

In the book, page 195.  On the website, http://sandradodd.com/abundance/

If you're reading this by e-mail and you need a path to the chatroom, click on the title to get to the blog, which has a tab up to the left with the link and password.

Sunday, February 17, 2013

Feb 20, Becoming the Parent you Want to Be

Becoming the Parent you Want to Be, page 194 in the book.

If you don't have the book, maybe look here:
http://sandradodd.com/peace/becoming

If you're reading this by e-mail and you need a path to the chatroom, click on the title to get to the blog, which has a tab up to the left with the link and password.

Sunday, February 10, 2013

February 13, Happiness

Text of page 193 on Happiness:
Dark thoughts or light? Worms or sky?

Sometimes dark thoughts are interesting, in spooky dramas or Stephen King novels. I've "raised" and kept and released worms. But if one's waking moments, meals, thoughts, bedtime stories and dreams are dark and negative, their children will be better off in school. It's one thing to go to goth night at the dance club. It's another thing to practice negativity and live (sort of live) in disdain of bright joy or humor.

If you were custom-designing a grandmother, for example, as in "I Sing the Body Electric," by Ray Bradbury, or the related "The Electric Grandmother," would you want a happy one or a cynical, whiney one?

If you're making a decision in some moment, for example, as in the next decision you make concerning your family, will you take the low road and have a low-energy, Eeyore moment? How much energy would it take to have a Pooh moment instead, or even a Tigger moment? Are you reading this from such a dark, cynical mindset that even a mention of Eeyore seems too cheery and upbeat to be endured? Prepare to go back to your black hole, then. Take your children to school, and stop on the way home for some black eyeliner and red eyeshadow. Don't say thank you at the check-out counter, either. Maybe just sleep the rest of the day, because life sucks.

Or don't! Maybe remember that every moment is precious and that you do indeed have choices and that you can for certain take joy in the sky as easily as you can be irritated about the ground.

If you were designing a parent for your child, wouldn't "happy" be pretty high on your list? SandraDodd.com/peace/mama
SandraDodd.com/morning


If you're reading this by e-mail and you need a path to the chatroom, click on the title to get to the blog, which has a tab up to the left with the link and password.

Sunday, February 3, 2013

February 6 chat on Personal Change

Page 192, Big Book of Unschooling:

Personal Change

So you're your child's partner. You are beginning to see learning and family togetherness as priorities. You're becoming more accepting of your children's interests, and you're thinking of ways to provide them more choices about their own comfort and bodily functions.

Or maybe you've turned randomly to this page without reading anything else and you don't know what I'm talking about. This wasn't a good first-random-page. Maybe flip again, and come back to this page later.

What happens when you see other people differently is that you cannot help but see yourself differently. When you choose to find opportunities to give other people choices, you yourself have begun to make more choices.

When you begin to see learning from new and interesting angles, you yourself are learning about learning (in addition to all the things about bugs or food, bridges or clouds or trains that you're learning with your children, or when they're not even there).

Your softer, clearer vision of the world makes you a softer, clearer person.

Personal change has been touched upon in earlier sections, and will be found throughout my unschooling site, if you follow any of those links. The purpose of unschooling is not to change the parents; it's to provide a personalized learning environment for each child. Doing that does change the parents, though, if they do it wholeheartedly.

SandraDodd.com/change

If you're reading this by e-mail and you need a path to the chatroom, click on the title to get to the blog, which has a tab up to the left with the link and password.

Monday, January 28, 2013

Wednesday January 30 chat

Focus, Hobbies, Obsessions

(I tried to get an announcement to go, and it was stuck, so I've made a new one.)

Seeing value in a child's collections or curiosities, hobbies and interests.

In the book, this is pages 186-191 which has links to
Focus
Barbie
Feed Passions
Priorities


If you're reading this by e-mail and you need a path to the chatroom, click on the title to get to the blog, which has a tab up to the left with the link and password.

Sunday, January 20, 2013

January 23, Gratitude

Page 185, Gratitude
I've brought that page, as it's short, and important.

Gratitude is about abundance. Resentment is about paucity. Choose gratitude. It is a choice.

Half-empty cups are substantially different from half-full cups. It's not just theoretical holy water in those cups. The half-empty cups hold a concoction of frustration and need and irritation. The half-full cups contain joy and hope and gratitude.

Ren Allen wrote beautifully about gratitude one day, and I'm glad I saved it.

Washing dishes may not be my favorite activity, I can think of many things I prefer. But I can choose to grumble and feel bummed that I "have to" do this "chore" OR I can choose to be grateful to have hot running water, my loved ones alive and with me to use dishes, to have food to need dishes for etc...there is SO much to be grateful for in the simple act of washing dishes.

Gratitude embarrasses people sometimes. The same aspect of modern life that breeds cynicism chokes out gratitude. It makes people poor, though, to think of gratitude as something archaic or corny or stupid.

The difference between poverty and abundance is sometimes the ability to see what one has. There have been times when I didn't have a car, we had a leaky roof, and the washing machine wasn't working. There have been more times that the car and washing machine were functioning, the house was solid, and I forgot to appreciate it.

People seem naturally to want more, and to want better, and to have the urge to tweak and improve their lives and their surroundings. Don't deny the restless desire that enables people to explore and invent, but while looking ahead with hope and plans, look around with gratitude, too.

If you're reading this by e-mail and you need a path to the chatroom, click on the title to get to the blog, which has a tab up to the left with the link and password.

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

January 16 chat, "chores," serving others

In The Big Book, pages 175-184

Chores, Serving others as a gift, tales of kids helping out voluntarily

It's about the quality of peace and joy, not about the quantity of dirt or clutter moved around.

If you're reading this by e-mail and you need a path to the chatroom, click on the title to get to the blog, which has a tab up to the left with the link and password.

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

January 9, on food

Food, eating, choices, learning to listen to our bodies (or at least letting kids continue as they've begun). In the book, pages 162-174 or on the webpage http://sandradodd.com/food

If you're reading this by e-mail and you need a path to the chatroom, click on the title to get to the blog, which has a tab up to the left with the link and password.