[email protected]

It used to be that there were only *two* unschooling lists,
unschoolingdotcom @ yahoo and unschooling.com message boards (before
THAT, only one---the aol list). Now there are *dozens* of
national/international lists and *hundreds* of local/state lists.

The wonderful thing about just two lists is that *everyone* could read
there and get all the cool posts all the time (sometimes 600/day! <g>).
Now fabulous posts can end up on a list you're not on. I'm on 58
unschooling elists----and NO, I don't read all of them every day! <G>
But I get mail from many daily and I read *at* the sites of others when
things are slow-ish.

If I see something that's just too good to leave on one list, I'll try
to share it on others. Here's *another* brilliant post by Joyce over at
AlwaysLearning.

*********************************************

On Sep 26, 2008, at 12:04 AM, prism7513 wrote:
> I don't want to limit the sweets in my house


But you do want to! This is one of those mental shifts. You want your
kids to only eat as many sweets as you think are good for them. And
you want what you think to be right. So in your mind you do have a
limit. You just don't want to be the sweets Nazi. You want the kids
to internalize what you believe is right and limit themselves.

> If my child wants to eat them all the day I made them, do I let him?


What will happen if he does eat them all in one day?

What if you make another batch and he eats that too? What will happen?

If you buy ten bags of flour and keep making batches of cookies, how
many do you think he'll eat? All of them?

If you do that every day, do you think he'd keep eating cookies
everyday until he exploded?

> And he will, because *I'VE* done it!


Why do you think he and you are the same person? Does he like the
exact same things you do? Does he dislike the exact same things as
you do?

Just because something is possible, doesn't mean it will happen.

Just because we gave birth to them, doesn't mean they're our clones.

I suspect you know all that. I'm telling you the obvious *but*
sometimes our fears can override our common sense. We'll set aside
what makes sense to do some voodoo just to make sure some possible
bad thing doesn't happen.

And questions make us squirm. We don't have the textbook and we
didn't study. What if we get the answer wrong???

I knew I couldn't be trusted around candy. I had proof. I opened up a
bag of Halloween candy before Halloween and in 2 or 3 days, 3 bags of
candy were gone.

But actually what I had proof of is how I react to deprivation. I
didn't buy candy except at Halloween. It was the only time I could
get it so *of course* I packed in as much as I could before it
disappeared for another year.

So I gave myself permission to have candy. If I finished one bag
(Almond M&Ms were irresistible at the time) I promised myself I could
have another. It did take 3 bags! but I did get over the craving. We
now buy bags of Dove milk chocolate miniatures and have Ghirardelli
chocolate bits in the freezer. And I can go days without eating any.

> Or do we just all dig in a finish it in a day and then wait for a few
days to make more?


Why wait a few days? Make 4 dozen.

If you were thirsty would you have only one sip today then another
tomorrow even though there's an unlimited amount coming from the tap?

You *could* drink water by the gallon. Do you? *Is* it just because
water isn't as tasty as cookies? Most people would say that's true
but most people don't have a tap of running cookies freely
accessible ;-) So they're making assumptions without actually
testing. They don't know what they're like when cookies are as easy
to get as water. They only know what they're like when cookies appear
like an oasis in a desert.

(And if the obvious conclusion was always the true answer, no one
would have ever questioned whether the sun goes around the earth,
since we can see that it does, plain as day! ;-)

> My kids eat plenty of good stuff, but I don't know how to make sure
they don't get too many sweets.


You don't know because you're using your external monitor to judge
what's going on inside of someone else. Of course you can't know. So
parents make wild guesses. Or use their "gut instinct". Or look to
experts to pass on their wild guesses or gut instincts so parents
don't have to be wrong.

*If* we couldn't self regulate, *if* we needed experts to tell us
what we should and shouldn't eat, how would our species have survived
long enough to create experts?

Here's a mainstream article in the NY Times about eating that was
actually very close to what we discuss here:

6 Food Mistakes Parents Make
http://tinyurl.com/3m4lgf

(You may need to register to view it.)

> do you only have a certain number of cookies available for that day
(for everyone, not just the kids...)


Here's something Pam wrote about TV but it applies to food and
everything else too. Which is the really cool thing about philosophy!
The principles that work in one area can make our view of another
area clearer.

Economics
http://sandradodd.com/t/economics

> In other words, will they stop eating 5 at a time if the cookies are
there and available,


Again, what will happen if they eat 5 at a time? What if they eat a
dozen? Your fears are stopping you from doing ... what exactly? Think
about it! Really. Do you fear that if you let them eat 5 dozen
cookies that they won't ever eat anything else?

I suspect the questions are sounding snarky as though I'm saying "Are
you so dim as to believe what conventional parents believe?" But they
aren't. They're honest questions. Most parents don't think. They
fear. And they reach for answers that will soothe their fears. We ask
people to think! :-) And ask people to try it.

What *will* happen if you make 5 dozen cookies every day for the next
5 weeks? Why would parents be afraid to try it? What do they fear
would happen? (No one needs to answer that here. It's just something
to ponder why it would seem a better idea to ask strangers than to
really think about something and try it out. It's just pure fear that
makes us imagine that opening the flood gate of cookies will make
kids never want to stop stuffing them.)

I'm betting you can't even make it 2 days before the kids say "STOP!
Let me have something besides these darn cookies!"

> It's not that I don't trust them,


Yes, it is that you don't trust them! Clear thinking is helped
*hugely* by honesty. Parents are trained to say things in a nice way,
to cover up the truth. And it really muddies thought.

How many parents have said "I asked nicely and he still didn't do
it." Well if you *asked* then one acceptable answer was no. If no
wasn't an acceptable answer, then it was a demand in a frilly dress.

Take off the frilly dress and let those thoughts run naked. It's lots
easier to see what they really look like without their costumes on.

> but that if they're anything like me, then cookies it is, for
breakfast, lunch, and supper (and I DO eat them at every meal at this
point....)


And you don't trust yourself either.

I'm betting you can't make it through 2 days of nothing but cookies
either!

> So help me - should I stop?


What do you think? <eg>

Try it. See what happens.

Also read Sandra's and my site and the archives. Because if our kids
*are* eating nothing but cookies, you shouldn't be asking us for
advice! ;-)

http://sandradodd.com/unschooling
http://joyfullyrejoycing.com

Sandra also has some unschooling blogs listed:

http://sandradodd.com/blogs/

Ren is also running a Blog Carnival over at Familyrun (Radical
Unschoolers' Network) where people write blog posts on a particular
topic and links to their posts are collected in once place:

http://familyrun.ning.com/forum/topic/listForCategory?
categoryId=2184370%3ACategory%3A8129

That should be a good source of what kids look like in unschooling
families.

Joyce

********************************************************

Thanks, Joyce, for another winner!

And this:

"And questions make us squirm. We don't have the textbook and we
didn't study. What if we get the answer wrong???"

is priceless! <g>


~Kelly

Kelly Lovejoy
Conference Coordinator
Live and Learn Unschooling Conference
http://www.LiveandLearnConference.org

Meredith

"Well if you *asked* then one acceptable answer was no. If no
wasn't an acceptable answer, then it was a demand in a frilly dress.

Take off the frilly dress and let those thoughts run naked. It's lots
easier to see what they really look like without their costumes on.
**************************************

OMG, Joyce, that's hilarious! The mental image...<snort>.

So much of my own deschooling process was about letting all those
thoughts of mine run naked so I could really think critically about my
own preconceived notions. I had a Lot more than I thought I did! Whew.

---Meredith (Mo 7, Ray 15)