brandi yates

Im thinking about unschooling. We are enrolled in K12 right now. The
literature is soo boring.

My question is: Right now he is very into Minecraft and should I be
concerned if he wants to play that game almost the entire day? I dont know
why Im so worried that he will never find anything he would enjoy as a
career but it is always in the back of my mind. I keep thinking he should
be looking for something he could study on his own so he will be happy as an
adult making money in something he enjoys.


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

Joyce Fetteroll

On Oct 21, 2011, at 1:12 AM, brandi yates wrote:

> My question is: Right now he is very into Minecraft and should I be
> concerned if he wants to play that game almost the entire day?

Brandi, you just joined and Sandra asks that members read for a couple
of weeks before posting. This list is different from what people are
used to and it saves a lot of hurt feelings if people read for a while
before posting.

You should have received an email about this. If you can't find it,
the information is on the front page including links.

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

While you're there, if you go to the Messages page and search on
Minecraft there have been several recent discussion that you can read
through. (If you're not familiar with Yahoo, they've put 3 different
search boxes on that page just to confuse people ;-) It's the one
right above the messages.)

But I allowed this through because this hasn't come up as a topic
recently:

> I dont know
> why Im so worried that he will never find anything he would enjoy as a
> career but it is always in the back of my mind.

That's a good worry to take out and examine. Where did it come from?
Who gave you the idea he needs to spend his childhood preparing to be
an adult? Why is being a child not seen as acceptable by society?
Because kids outgrow it? ;-)

And why isn't video games a potential career? The people who designed
Minecraft undoubtedly spent their childhoods playing video games! :-)

The learning that comes from video games isn't just applicable to more
video games. Video games tap into real world skills. A lot of the
problem solving in video games mimics real life. Read here:

http://sandradodd.com/videogames/

In fact the first link is about Minecraft.

Seems to me someone brought a link here recently to an article about
how video gamers solved a science problem that had been baffling
scientists for years. You may want to keep an eye out for that as you
read back through the archives.

Do you play with him? Do you have your own account? The more you know
about what your child is interested in, the more connected you are and
the more you can help him explore what interests him and connect him
with other things that might interest him.

> I keep thinking he should
> be looking for something he could study on his own so he will be
> happy as an
> adult making money in something he enjoys.


Why is being happy right now not a good goal? Really think about that!

Is it reasonable to expect someone to find what they'll love in the
future by doing things they don't love right now?

Doesn't it make more sense that people will discover all sorts of
things they love by exploring what intrigues them? In a rich
environment where they're supported in what they love and have
swirling around them other things they could pick up and explore to
find potential new loves?

Is he happy choosing Minecraft? But you want him to give up that
happiness to do things that would sooth your worries so that he can
(you believe) be a happy adult? Where's the guarantee that will happen?

> I keep thinking he should
> be looking for something he could study


For one thing, he *is* studying Minecraft right now! He sees the value
in it. If you can't, is it because you're more knowledgeable about it
or because he is?

For another thing: Unschooling is not *not* NOT kids exploring
schoolish looking activities on their own! (This is a fairly common
misconception.) Unschooling looks exactly like what you're worried
that he's doing right now: Playing!

We humans play for a reason: It's how we explore and discover and
learn. We learn by exploring what intrigues us and playing "What
if...?" "What if I do this? What happens? Why did that happen? Let's
do more and see what happens."

We learn very very poorly by people telling us the answers to
questions we haven't asked yet. IT's why it takes school so long to do
what they do. You may get something out of:

Why You Can't Let Go
http://sandradodd.com/joyce/talk

Joyce