On Jul 27, 4:24 pm, Sandra Dodd wrote:

Something the unschooling discussion gained years ago from someone no one can remember to credit (name separated from quote and not claimed, over the years) is that it's better to think of good moments or bad moments, rather than to curse a whole day with "this is a bad day." Here's something related to it. It's the Zen-a-day calendar quote for today:

There are no holy places and no holy people, only holy moments, only moments of wisdom. JACK KORNFIELD

Today, in the car, as we drove to the swimming pool, I was talking to David about how I can't think of the last time I would write off a day as a bad day. There are bad moments, but I don't think we've had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day in, well, a very, very long time. Looking at tense moments as moments instead of as the great swath of time that a day can be makes a huge difference in how I respond to something. Or how I offer myself. Or how I respond to Simon or Linnaea when they are having a difficult moment.

It helps a lot to try for better moments not days. Don't judge a day by one upset, judge it as a bad moment and move forward. A little bit better each moment. A little bit more aware.
(You can click it for the full summary of how she became a calmer, more content mom.)

I have been thinking a lot about the example Sandra gave a while back to a mom whose kid was hiding behind the door, waiting to scare the younger brother—the suggestion was, what if the mom were to say, loud enough for everyone to hear, "your brother is behind the door, act scared."

This is so easy a solution, one little sentence that makes the whole thing a non-problem, and rather, turns it into a game that connects all the participants. I have been thinking and thinking about where that response could come from in me—who would I have to be to have that response. I've been facing how the current me would be a lot more likely (at least until I read that post) to have some half-formed thought in my head that the scaring kid should not be acting that way, and then thinking I had to do something to make the scaring kid see the wrong of it, so he would not do it again.

So, I started thinking, (and this is just what I imagine I would be doing if I had said that, not trying to analyze what Sandra may have been thinking at that moment) that maybe that easy, fun response was about making that one moment a good one. It wasn't in the future about keeping the kid from scaring again. It wasn't coming from a picture of how the kid ought to be different than he was at that moment. It was just about making that one moment more fun and safe for everyone.

How much easier to just try to make one moment more fun and safe, rather than trying to manage all these future (imagined) moments by trying to get the kids to change into (my idea of) fun & safe people. That makes *me* NOT fun, and NOT (emotionally) safe for my kids. Ha! Turns the whole thing on its head.

I'm also struck by how just a little comment like that, relaying the idea of saying, "your brother is behind the door, act scared," has set off such a chain of thinking and changing in me. Sometimes it is the tiniest thing that is able to get through the years of enculturated prejudice against children.

I wanted to write this to thank Sandra and other poster who share the small moments of their lives here. Also, I'd welcome any further thoughts on this if I am out in left field somewhere.

Maya

JessicaSexton: We've been getting Astro Boy Happy Meal toys for Michael and he wanted to go back for another one today, he wanted me to promise we would, and so I said LET'S GO NOW! even though I was running around crazy trying to get us ready for a day out. It only took 10 minutes!