Sandra Dodd

Wayback Machine is part of the Internet Archives. It's been there a while, but they've started making the links work, and they're always bringing more pages in. Ren Allen had noted a while back that some of the TV discussions from the long-deleted messages boards at unschooling.com are surfacing. This morning I found that "Conversations with Sandra Dodd" has popped back up, too, and many of the links work. Not all.

This is from ten years ago; I cleaned up a couple of bits, but the link is below for anyone who wants to poke around "in the old days."



By Sandra Lynn Dodd (Sandradodd) on Tuesday, August 14, 2001 - 10:33 am:
-=-On the other hand, if I didn't limit it they'd
also fill up on Nick at Night reruns, those weirdo
cartoons they have on now (what's with Cow and
Chicken ANYWAY??), MTV and the usual.-=-

They would fill up and be done.

If you limit it, they will want more.
If you "unlimit" it they will fill up and be done.

They can only make their own choices if they're
allowed to make their own choices.

[I don't know who was being quoted in this next bit:]

-=-I bet your kids would too, eventually. And then
they'd be REALLY reading because they wanted to,
not because it was the best thing left after the
TV was restricted. If in the back of their mind
they're thinking "I'd rather be watching TV," the
reading won't be as intense or chosen. -=-

There are many families here who can show you kids
who don't turn the TV on much at all, but it's
because they are allowed to turn it on as much as
they want to.

I don't think balance will come from limitations
as well as some people wish it would.

I had a niece not allowed to eat sugar at all.
NOTHING with sugar. A little hippie kid in the
late 1960's, early 1970's.

She came to stay with us for a few days when she
was six. We were keeping to her mom's rules about
sugar.

We found her in the field, squatted over a 5 lb.
bag of sugar, eating it with both hands like a
monkey, as fast as she could before she'd get
caught.

That wasn't balance.

Or maybe it was. It was the balance of all her
deprivation.

My kids have come to their own balance with food,
TV, activities, sleep, because they're allowed to
make their own choices.

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