DaBreeze21

I am WAY behind on reading here as life has been crazy lately for me.
But I refuse to delete any of my updates from my inbox!

Anyways, I was just reading an article that a friend emailed to me here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/16/garden/16unschool.html?ei=5070&emc=eta1

(Hope that link works, I've never tried that before).I then followed
the link to this article:

http://babble.com/Unschooling-Why-my-kid-wont-attend-school-this-fall-or-maybe-ever/

on Babble.com (which I've never heard of till today). I went to the
discussion for this article and was BLOWN away

http://babble.com/Feedback/FeedbackMiddle1Top1.aspx?feedbackItemId=2224&returnTarget=%2fUnschooling-Why-my-kid-wont-attend-school-this-fall-or-maybe-ever%2findex.aspx

Many of the reactions to this woman's article were so intense and
negative. It almost made me sick. I know that unschooling is not the
"norm" in our society but I really couldn't believe how strong and
harsh the judgments were. (to the extreme of calling CPS on the
mother) It kind of stunned me.

I would like to hear people's experiences with reactions like these
and how you deal with them.

Sandra Dodd

-=-Many of the reactions to this woman's article were so intense and
negative. It almost made me sick. -=-



I read those links you're talking about when they were newer. My
reaction was not to bring it to this list, because it was so intense
and negative that it could make newer unschoolers sick.

For people who are somehow unaware of the strength of feeling against
letting kids have any fun or any choice, maybe it's worth looking
once or twice, but most of us grew up knowing how terrible some
people could be.



My advice: Get away from it. Don't dwell in the presence of negativity.

The energy spent reading those ugly reactions would be MUCH better
spent reading here:

http://joyfullyrejoycing.com

http://sandradodd.com/parentingpeacefully

http://sandradodd.com/help



Sandra




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DaBreeze21

> My advice: Get away from it. Don't dwell in the presence of negativity.
>
> Sandra
>

Somehow I knew that you would say something like that :-) Thank you. I
totally agree with you and the last thing I want to do is dwell in
negativity or bring it to others. I think that right now one of the
hardest things to wrap my mind around is WHY more people don't want to
live in a joyful, peaceful way... How come people don't see how
wonderful and beautiful life, THEIR life, could be?

Susan

BRIAN POLIKOWSKY

I won't even go there!<g>
But I have to say that 6 years ago before I had kids I would have probably had the same strong reactions
against unschooling ideas.
It would have been a knee jerk reaction.
I remember many, many years ago saying that cry-it-out was good for kids and that they should sleep in their own crib.
I used to say kids had to obey me like dogs( yes I said that), if I say stay they don't move or complain.
I was pretty horrible in my pre-kids years.
I would had said that kids not going to school or getting "educated" was abuse and negligence.
Many people that post on those discussions may not even have kids.
For me all I had to do to change was hold my baby in my arms and that was it. I knew all those ideas went drown the drain that exact second.
Even sending my baby to school for a stranger to tell him what he "needed" to learn was not an option anymore.

Alex Polikowsky
http://polykow.blogspot.com/

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/unschoolingmn/

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carnationsgalore

> I would like to hear people's experiences with reactions like these
> and how you deal with them.

Honestly, I didn't even follow the links. I have no desire to read
stuff like that. If I ever encounter a rude or shocking person, I'll
deal with it then.

I have discovered that there are lots of passionate people talking on
many different subjects. When I was on some pregnancy lists many moons
ago, the debates over things such as bottle vs. breast or circumcision
would just get really, really ugly. I hear college sports fans saying
really ugly things about people who attend rival colleges. My daughter
was on a local parks cheer squad so we were exposed to parents who push
their kids into sports for whatever funky reason. When I encounter
those shocking people, my heart hurts for the child.

I don't like to hang out with people who are really ugly about the
things I'm passionate about. I have the choice to walk away.

Beth M.

k

There are people --in real life-- who radiate being nasty ugly opinionated
and nosy, enough to call CPS. Things like freedom for kids are so
oxymoronic to their view of how kids *should* be out of all the kinds of
things to have and the lives that kids can live.

However. Many people who are willing to be nasty ugly online or over the
phone will refrain from similar behavior when face to face, where they're
more accountable and more vulnerable to counter response.

~Katherine





On 10/17/08, carnationsgalore <addled.homemaker@...> wrote:

> > I would like to hear people's experiences with reactions like these
> > and how you deal with them.
>
> Honestly, I didn't even follow the links. I have no desire to read
> stuff like that. If I ever encounter a rude or shocking person, I'll
> deal with it then.
>
> I have discovered that there are lots of passionate people talking on
> many different subjects. When I was on some pregnancy lists many moons
> ago, the debates over things such as bottle vs. breast or circumcision
> would just get really, really ugly. I hear college sports fans saying
> really ugly things about people who attend rival colleges. My daughter
> was on a local parks cheer squad so we were exposed to parents who push
> their kids into sports for whatever funky reason. When I encounter
> those shocking people, my heart hurts for the child.
>
> I don't like to hang out with people who are really ugly about the
> things I'm passionate about. I have the choice to walk away.
>
> Beth M.


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Sandra Dodd

-=-I think that right now one of the
hardest things to wrap my mind around is WHY more people don't want to
live in a joyful, peaceful way... How come people don't see how
wonderful and beautiful life, THEIR life, could be? -=-

They're on a vector away from it and they have momentum and
justification. They believe what they hear about discipline and
school and they're afraid. They have confidence that following the
crowd must be good for something.

Spend your energy with and on your own family, and helping those who
DO want help.

I have the urge to tell friends to change their ways, and I try to
resist it most of the time. It's a good way to lose friends. I
don't have to be friends with a family as a unit to continue to be
friends with the one who's closest to me. That's enough unhappiness
in my life, to see other people doing things I think are wrongheaded
or harmful. To start to sort through and collect stories from people
with no connection to me whatsoever would bury me in sorrow.

There's a world of sorrow on the evening news, and a bigger world of
sorrow on the internet. There's also a world of music, art and humor
on the internet. There's a world of comfort.

Make good choices for your children's sake, and for your own peace.



Sandra

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Jenny C

I think that right now one of the
> hardest things to wrap my mind around is WHY more people don't want to
> live in a joyful, peaceful way... How come people don't see how
> wonderful and beautiful life, THEIR life, could be?
>


I totally hear you! Even people we know personally are like that. I
think what happens is people get all caught up in how life should be
that they stop seeing how life could be. That's how the shift happened
in our family anyway. Just being open to how things could be, makes us
open to the whole wide world of ideas. Being open is inherently more
optomistic. Optomism keeps people smiling and wondering.

That's my take on it anyway.

Jenny C

> I don't like to hang out with people who are really ugly about the
> things I'm passionate about. I have the choice to walk away.
>


There's a really cool woman that we are working with in the haunted
house production that Chamille and I are involved in. She's kind of
taken Chamille under her wing a little, they have a bit of a connection.

She was asking me at one point, out of curiosity, what kind of grades
Chamille gets in school. I told her that Chamille homeschools, so she
gets great grades, since I am technically the one who would hand out
such things. It really wasn't the time or place to have a discussion
about how we homeschool, so I didn't go there. She was wondering how
Chamille would learn to deal with all the mean and nasty people in the
world. I told her that she would handle them the same way she does now,
get them out of her life and avoid them so she doesn't have to deal with
them, and surround herself with good people who treat her and others
kindly. She said she'd never really thought of it that way and how much
sense that made.

We talked further about life learning, so she gets that aspect of what
we do. Her own mother would randomly take her out of school and take
her to someplace like New York City to absorb the culture because she
thought it was more important to experience those things than to always
be sitting at a desk in a classroom. Too bad she didn't know about
unschooling!

The people at the haunted house thing really like Chamille. Chamille is
calling it her home away from home! I wish we could go everyday they
are open! I'm enjoying it too! It turns out that Chamille truly has a
great presence to act and scare people and they've been giving her
visible roles that require her to do her own thing.

Angela Shaw

I think that right now one of the
> hardest things to wrap my mind around is WHY more people don't want to
> live in a joyful, peaceful way... How come people don't see how
> wonderful and beautiful life, THEIR life, could be?

I still don't understand it. It really blows me away.

When my oldest was around 5 years old and I had just discovered unschooling,
I talked about it a lot for the first couple years. I figured it was just
something that people hadn't heard about or didn't understand. I thought
that as soon as people understood, they would be as happy as I was to have
discovered it and jump on the band wagon. I was so excited about it I
wanted to shout it from the roof tops. I figured I had a big audience of
people who would be excited to learn about it on parenting and homeschool
lists that I was on. The way in which I chose to share it was to focus on
how it worked in our lives. I was very conscious not to come across as
critical of others but to focus on the positive outcome in our lives.

I was shocked at the reactions it brought out in people. I used to have a
web page and I used to participate on local home school and parenting lists.
The public and even worse, the private emails that I occasionally got that
were so reactive and hateful were horrible. I got a lot of positive
responses too and I know I turned several people on to unschooling. (some
that I still keep in touch with) but I really couldn't deal with the hateful
reactions of people who felt attacked despite that all my emails were about
me and my family.

My skin is a lot thicker now than it used to be and I do understand why
people are that way, to some degree, (They don't want to question education
because it opens them up to have to questions a lot more in their lives and
its not always a comfortable place to be.) but I still am thankful and
amazed by the people who advocate unschooling on this list (and others) and
who answer the same questions over and over and who get the hateful emails
and yet continue to do it for the benefit of others.

It brought too much negativity into my life and I had a hard time separating
myself from all that negativity. Some day I'll be a stronger advocate again
for unschooling but for now I just focus on my own kids and the joy I can
bring to their lives. I admire the people who can do both.



Angela



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Kelly Nishan

--- In [email protected], "Jenny C" <jenstarc4@...> wrote:
>> She was asking me at one point, out of curiosity, what kind of
grades
> Chamille gets in school. I told her that Chamille homeschools, so
she
> gets great grades, since I am technically the one who would hand out
> such things.

I went with Lizzy to the dermatologist to get a mole removed recently
and she told the doc she was a homeschooler so he alked me if she was
a good student. I told him she was a good person. She loved that.
Kelly

RON MONACH

You know, I have been reading for over 2 years now about unschooling and have been implementing RU a piece at a time as I mature and open and grow. But I have to tell you, the ingrained information about what is "right" and "what gets you to where you need to be going" still scream at me all day long.

I want to embrace 100% the principles and the respect and proper freedom like that which Joyce and Sandra and other veterens have offered their children and families. But I am soooo torn daily, with the panic of "if I don't TEACH them ___________, than they won't be successful, or get into college, or be able to hold a job that actually will make them a living." OR, "If I don't create a consequence for _______behavior, than that behavior will continue and it is hurtful to others.." These are just 2 vague examples, but truly even as I type and my tired kids are playing Halo...I am in a panic that they ARE playing and yes, I would feel so much better if they would take me up on my plan of making cut out pumpkins, or grooming the animals, or......

It is a conflict for me. It is different for me than was attachment parenting. I followed my HEART with my children from day 1, but those things (nursing, family bed, no circumcision, sling, no crying-it-out etc) seemed like NO brainers. This shift of unschooling from homeschooling feels more intellectual perhaps? Maybe the wrong word, but whatever the right word for it, I am reacting to my own unschooling with fear.

And when reading the other posts on this subject of reaction....most things are reacted to from a place of fear and knee jerk reactions. Growth takes place when the fear can be examined and worked THROUGH. MOST people find that very uncomfortable and may not feel like bringing yet another stressor into THEIR lives---for the sake of the children.

I am---but I am admitting that embracing it without an inner cringe is a really hard thing for me, and it doesn't seem to matter the amount of intellectual agreement I have with it, it is the ingrained, almost cellular level conditioning about what the "shoulds" are in life (like education....school...rules, consequences, limitations even), are all part of this conditioning. I call it "the middle of the night panic". It is usually ok during the day with a few exceptions like the one happening right now...but in the middle of the night.......yikes!

I tend not to respond on line but I do so to hopefully strike up a conversation about how to silent the other voice...how to forge forward with more confidence with the choice of unschooling--knowing it is as good as it gets.

Thank you,
Kelley
http://www.sandandstardust.blogspot.com/

Jenny C

"But I am soooo torn daily, with the panic of "if I don't TEACH them
___________, than they won't be successful, or get into college, or be
able to hold a job that actually will make them a living." OR, "If I
don't create a consequence for _______behavior, than that behavior will
continue and it is hurtful to others.." "

Even if you teach your kids or have consequences for behavior, it very
well may be that they don't learn what you intended with your teaching
and consequences. This is at the very heart of unschooling. People
learn what they want to learn because it has direct meaning in their own
lives. Intellectually you probably know this. Kids may regurtitate
information and the teacher may fully believe that the information was
learned, but that doesn't make it so. Read some John Holt books. He's
really good at showing this in what he writes about his observations.

"...I am in a panic that they ARE playing and yes, I would feel so much
better if they would take me up on my plan of making cut out pumpkins,
or grooming the animals, or......"

If you want to make cut out pumpkins, don't wait for your kids to ask to
do it. Set it up and start it. I'm sure they will gather round very
quickly to get involved. Even if they don't, you can still use them to
decorate the house and make a festive fun atmosphere that everyone will
enjoy while they play video games.

"I am---but I am admitting that embracing it without an inner cringe is
a really hard thing for me, and it doesn't seem to matter the amount of
intellectual agreement I have with it, it is the ingrained, almost
cellular level conditioning about what the "shoulds" are in life (like
education....school...rules, consequences, limitations even), are all
part of this conditioning. I call it "the middle of the night panic". It
is usually ok during the day with a few exceptions like the one
happening right now...but in the middle of the night.......yikes!"

In the newer days years ago, what helped more than anything else was to
actually see my kids and what they were actually doing. I would try to
see the world from their eyes and see how they lit up and give them more
of that. Just being with them and enjoying them for who they were
regardless of what they were doing, watching tv, playing dress up,
whatever helped keep my energy focused on them, rather than on fear of
what they weren't or weren't doing.

In regards to fear panics, have you run through worst case scenarios of
the things you are afraid of? What if your kids don't learn algebra?
What if they don't ever read books? What if they don't go to college?
What if they play video games for hours and hours for years and years?

What I'm more concerned about with regards to my own children is that
they are happy and that I have good relationships with each of them and
that they are getting what they want in life. I was going to say
"need" but I don't want that misunderstood, since a lot of people feel
kids need to do math worksheets. I consider what they want as a need,
but it's not my need as a parent, it's their need to pursue something,
whatever that something happens to be at any given time, which they most
definitely want. Since that is my focus, all that other stuff goes on
the wayside of trivial nonsense.

Or as my oldest says, "I pretty much know everything I need to know, I
don't need to go to school to learn all that stuff, it would be a waste
of my time, and if find I need to know something that I didn't know
before, then I will learn it, like history." She used history as an
example because she doesn't think she knows a lot about history and
other kids she knows that go to highschool are taking history classes
and such. I told her that she probably knows more history than she
thinks she does, but that it's not linear in how she knows it, like they
tend to teach it in schools. She's not really concerned about her
history knowledge, and has only recently wondered why people even want
or need to know history. That was a pretty interesting discussion.

Sandra Dodd

-=-It is a conflict for me. It is different for me than was
attachment parenting. I followed my HEART with my children from day
1, but those things (nursing, family bed, no circumcision, sling, no
crying-it-out etc) seemed like NO brainers. This shift of unschooling
from homeschooling feels more intellectual perhaps?-=-

Why don't you just start again and forget all about homeschooling?
Go back to attachment parenting.

-=-Growth takes place when the fear can be examined and worked
THROUGH.-=-

Unless you created and own growth and fear, please qualify your
statements. Say "it seems" or "in my opinion." I'm asking for two
reasons: If you make a statement like this in your mind (which you
must've done before you wrote it down and hit send), you're telling
yourself that you understand what growth is and how it works.

If you know so much about growth, why don't you trust it in your kids?

You're telling yourself (and over a thousand others) what fear has to
do with growth, but if you're an expert on fear, why are you afraid?

You can't wait to work through your fear so that growth can take
place. Every hour, every moment, your children are growing up.
Every hour you're growing older. That's some truth about growth that
nobody on this list can change with a billion words.

-=-Growth takes place when the fear can be examined and worked
THROUGH.-=-

I disagree, and I don't want statements like that lying unchallenged
to scare other, newer list members.
It seems to me more helpful to say that fear goes away as growth
takes place.

-=-I am admitting that embracing it without an inner cringe is a
really hard thing for me, and it doesn't seem to matter the amount of
intellectual agreement I have with it, it is the ingrained, almost
cellular level conditioning about what the "shoulds" are in life
(like education....school...rules, consequences, limitations even),
are all part of this conditioning. I call it "the middle of the night
panic". -=-

Then thoughts and intellect aren't doing it for you. Use action. DO
things. Don't think about them.
http://sandradodd.com/checklists
http://sandradodd.com/strewing

When you see the things happening, you'll feel differently about them.
If you wait to feel differently, you might wait too long.

-=-I tend not to respond on line but I do so to hopefully strike up a
conversation about how to silent the other voice...how to forge
forward with more confidence with the choice of unschooling--knowing
it is as good as it gets. -=-

You're full of voices--relatives, teachers, friends. It's not just
one other voice.
Don't think of it as a need to "forge forward" so much as the
requirement to act in the moment in ways that lead you closer to
unschooling and not further away.

http://sandradodd.com/choices

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

k

----It is a conflict for me. It is different for me than was attachment
parenting. I followed my HEART with my children from day 1, but those things
(nursing, family bed, no circumcision, sling, no crying-it-out etc) seemed
like NO brainers. This shift of unschooling from homeschooling feels more
intellectual perhaps? Maybe the wrong word, but whatever the right word for
it, I am reacting to my own unschooling with fear.-----


I think I was lucky. I read this story: http://tinyurl.com/3fyx which is by
Kurt Vonnegut. It was posted on one of the unschooling lists not long ago.
The cute thing about that (and not the point of the story) is that being
conditioned by the school experience doesn't work well when someone can
ignore it. The programming doesn't take near as well if a person interprets
(or reinterprets) their experiences by tuning out the obviously silly
(seemingly "sensible") words around them. Some ways to avoid truisms are
books, movies, and a myriad of other things to do in life... whatever is at
hand to muffle the message which school is and to cut into its believability
with real life experience made by real living people.

So much of what we hear about school is hearsay, old wive's tales, straight
out lies, and hum ho .. theory! Unschooling is a great theory and since I
like it and have experienced quite a few of its benefits (Karl is only 5 and
so far it's been absolutely amazing) I'm sticking with unschooling as my
story! You can do that, you know.

Besides school, there's work right on its heels! With the overarching
message that one must do school and work in order to succeed or even just to
survive, people can go all their lives without reframing school and work.
School and regular 9-5 jobs are options. But they're far from the only ones
available to us.

Not reinterpreting personal experiences can make unschooling more difficult,
I think. Even if a reinterpretation of the world isn't the end-all-be-all
truth, it may offer more ideas for reconsidering the role of school and work
in our lives. Unschooling allows one to put school and work on another
plane ... the UN in unschool is to leave school behind ... and observe them
as separate from oneself. So that they're not constantly RIGHT there,
staring at us as the only reality there is. Unschooling is a great thing to
wake up to in the middle of the night, in your subconscious, all the time.
Very liberating stuff.

It's not easy for just anyone to think like that. Brian works (way too)
many hours per day. He doesn't get unschooling as much as I do because he
hasn't considered school and work alternatives the way I have. So his
beliefs are slanted much more towards school and work which he has been
conditioned to believe in.

Relationships and wholeness aren't even questioned. Make those those things
your quest, and be driven by a need to get to them. Think in the middle of
the night about how to attain those, and don't let school and work limit
your children. Avoid school and work as goals at all. If your kids want to
go to school, college or have a job... let them be the kid's goal(s). *You*
don't want to make your kid's schooling, college or career be your goal(s).
Remember.... relationships, wholeness, avenues to a big wide world.

~Katherine


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Sandra Dodd

-=-Not reinterpreting personal experiences can make unschooling more
difficult,
I think. Even if a reinterpretation of the world isn't the end-all-be-
all
truth, it may offer more ideas for reconsidering the role of school
and work
in our lives. -=-

This is important. One way to do it is to make a list (in your head
or on paper) of all the people you know who hated or dodged school
and still did well. Consider too the list of everyone you know who's
"done well" in school and has a degree and doesn't use it, or maybe
has a degree, uses it, and hates the job or has gotten into financial
difficulty by trying to "live like a doctor" or whatever it is but
they still had school debts or just plain over-extended.

Those guaranteed paths to happiness very rarely lead to happiness.
So why are so many people shoving their kids onto the paths? Largely
because they're not thinking. They're not standing as tall as they
can and actually, directly looking around with their own eyes.

I think we might have come to the place where there can be
unschoolers who are only looking at other people with little kids
and not standing tall and looking around. Maybe some people are
shoving their kids onto the unschooling path without going to the
thought and effort of really understanding unschooling themselves.



Sandra






[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Sandra Dodd

-=-Unschooling allows one to put school and work on another
plane ... the UN in unschool is to leave school behind ... and
observe them
as separate from oneself.-=-

Some phrases that have been applied in such instances in the past:

Leave school behind.
Live as though school didn't exist.
Don't even live in the shadow of school.

(The next two paragraphs are me from somewhere else:)

---------------------------------------------------------------------
The "unparenting or anarchy" phrase is interesting, and clearly a
suggestion that that's what was advocated on the other list. Any
group (list, club) formed in so reactionary a way can't be healthy.
It needs to have a positive, happy core and not live in the shadow of
the former group.

That's why I've told unschoolers they need to turn away from school
and not live in the shadow of school. If they think "school" with
every thought, they might as well be in school. Move away from the
school. Find strength and joy and *then* you you can have growth.

--------------------------------------------------------------------


Sandra



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Jenny C

> Relationships and wholeness aren't even questioned. Make those those
things
> your quest, and be driven by a need to get to them. Think in the
middle of
> the night about how to attain those, and don't let school and work
limit
> your children. Avoid school and work as goals at all.

There were so many things I liked about this whole post, but I only
pulled out a small segment.

Intellectually, I got unschooling all the way from the very beginning.
The part that took more time was relationships and wholeness. When I
got THAT, that is when things started happening in the direction that
made unschooling work great!

The way I see it, often, is that there are multiple facets that make
unschooling work best. The 2 biggest facets that go hand in hand for me
are the absence of school and school think, combined with real working
relationship with my kids. People can go and do one or the other and
not let them overflow into each other, but it won't be as bright and
sparkly, with the facet analogy.

Verna

>
> That's why I've told unschoolers they need to turn away from
school
> and not live in the shadow of school. If they think "school" with
> every thought, they might as well be in school. Move away from the
> school. Find strength and joy and *then* you you can have growth.
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------

I think this is why I find so many of the homeschool groups available
around here increasingly so unbareable. While the kids play, the
adults constantly talk about school, the schools, what they learn in
school etc... even if they are referring to home they call it school.
Someone asked me the other day how my son J was doing with reading.
He is 7. I just responded that he is doing fine. She pressed
further about what we are doing to teach him to read. I responded
that we are not really worried about it and that he will learn to
read when he is ready to read. Before I could get away I got the
question, "but what if you want to put him in SCHOOL or what if he
descides he wants to go to SCHOOL? My God people can we talk about
something else besides school.