Sandra Dodd

With every “condition” or problem, there are some real cases, and sometimes a lot (dozens to hundreds of thousands) of not-as-real data points in the sample.

Gluten sensitivity was a recent fad. Some are still on it, but others have relaxed

Before that, Asperger’s Syndrome, which has passed out of use (or changed to “on the Autism spectrum,” which must be irritating to families of kids who are seriously very autistic, and not just kind of low on social skills).

Some of us thought recently that there would be a rush and a rash of MTHFR Mutation claimants, but it didn’t really hit (or hasn’t yet). There’s a website explaining it, saying that the author has understood it all so you don’t have to. Nice! [<——sarcasm note] Don’t do what you don’t understand.


Before Asperger’s was…. various dietary claims, of how sugar would cause hyperactivity and such, and why parents MUST control a child’s diet.

Some of the diet-to-control-behavior folks said that if a child loved a certain food, that proved he was allergic to it, because people crave what will harm them. That never made sense to me, but I was assured it was because my kids weren’t special, and that they MUST restrict diet or the child would be….. various things. Not good things. I thought: “Not learning, mostly; not feeling abundance."

Alongside that was the Indigo Child thing—aliens from another plane come to save us, but who couldn’t help but be obnoxious children, and their mothers wer individually and specially chosen to parent them. That didn’t hit as hard as I’d thought it would, and I think they’ve all grown up and asked their moms to stop it. Not sure.

That came out of the ADD / ADHD wave, which was the biggest and worst fad to hit unschooling. Some families were unschooling to get their children away from schools and prescribed/required drugs. That’s commendable, but some of them didn’t want to let go of the drugs or the label, and wanted to reassure us (when they felt like it) that THEIR child wasn’t going to learn the way other unschoolers were learning.

Are there other waves of belief that seemed to clog and disrupt thought and discussion for a while? If I had known there would be so many, maybe we should have charted them as they came and faded. I’m probably forgetting one or two.

Sandra




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

Sarah Thompson

When I was trying to do that questionnaire, I kept feeling like I wasn't getting to the heart of what I wanted to say. I was working with a group of people who were dismissing my questions and suggestions as irrelevant or petty, and I didn't know how to communicate with them that these things were like islands poking through the surface of the sea; the visible indication of the vast subaquatic mountain range of unschooling. I finally said something along the following lines (which still ended up causing defensive and hostile reactions from others, but I felt calm and clear):

My children aren't interested in learning philosophies, or nutritional theories, or neurological development. They are interested in a game, a toy, a video, a food, a tsunami, the Titanic, Star Wars Battlefront, Overwatch youtubes. So that's what I focus on. If it matters to them, it matters to me (I stole that from Laurie:)  I do like the idea of authenticity in the sense of not applying ideological filters to interactions, although it is a concept that has become trendy and speaky, maybe. 

I've glommed onto a fad or two in my time, but at some point it always got isolating; it made a filter between me and the other people in my life. It created something that felt *inauthentic*. I think that can be the way with a lot of parenting stuff-we start feeling like we need to a guidebook and a structure to cram our families into, instead of just being with them. There *are* important guiding principles; I think it takes some practice and discernment to recognize the difference between making it a child's problem if the parent is grumpy or bored, and changing up an activity to make it more satisfying for everyone while still acknowledging that developmental ages and stages have different needs. I guess that's what I take from the "read a little, wait a little" part; that there is a practice component, and no amount of talking it out can replace the learning that happens from just doing it. I might get it wrong occasionally, and go back to the drawing board, but it is not useful to try to get everything right on paper and then apply it to my kids.

Sarah