March 13, 2013, Moments and Mindfulness

In The Big Book, pages 198-200 [LATER NOTE: 229-232 in 2019 edition]

Moments: https://sandradodd.com/badmoment—No Bad Days
and
Mindfulness: https://sandradodd.com/mindfulness/ —Mindfulness in Unschooling

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Moments
Mindfulness is good. 🙂

it comes and goes with me. I suppose people aren't centered and mindful all the time, not even the best of them.

Thanks for being here.

Usually we wait half an hour or until we have ten people. So in the first part, people can talk about whatever in the world they want to.

I'm glad you still do this Sandra.

There's a big black bird in my yard. Not a crow. I was watering the compost pile and a plop fell right in front of me and I looked up. He's still out there, in one tree or another, for the past hour and a half.

Maybe making a nest.

Sandra did you see my message the other night asking about whether there will possibly be another ALL in NM this Winter? I believe not but just checking

Maybe a raven, but his tail is wide and splayed out.
Laura, I replied to that question where it was.

Good morning.

Gonna change computers. Be right back.

okay will double check my messages again

Here's what I wrote:

-=-you probably won't be having an ALL in NM this Winter right?-=-

I'm planning to. Keith says I need to look at the numbers first. Also, I don't want to commit my kids to doing it, poor kids. They agreed the first time, and the next time they were totally drafted, and they had other things to do.

Pam Sorooshian's family might not come this year because of various expenses (universities the girls are in). Or Pam might come and not everybody.

I have lots of ideas for various levels and combos of people and activities.

And if you want to, if it happens that I don't do the whole hotel thing, you guys could come to my house and stay a few days.

But I'm vaguely planning to, and we'll look at the figures as we work on our taxes, so soon.
Sandra-=-

I see it now...for some reason I only saw the top of my question and never saw your response.

I have all my tax papers here. An overflowing Xerox-box lid of receipts and notes and copies of book orders. Joy.

I think Keith might like to take a year off, though, just to do that. He's my biggest help in those projects.

I'm sorry you thought I ignored you! 🙂

nope didn't think you ignored me, just that the message might have been missed 🙂

I want Deb Lewis to transport over here and ID that bird.

can you take a picture of it?
or describe size and any markings

I went out on the deck (which is kind of high up) and I knew which tree he was in, because pollen was showering up (from an Arizona Cypress) but he was on the far side.
Black, bigger than a crow, tail spread out from below looking up. There are crows out there, doing regular crow noise, but this was doing something else. Or maybe it was a crow mating call. 🙂 Maybe it's a big butch crow-cock. 🙂

cockcrow?
Crow-dad?

LOL

Heh.

all my books are Eastern

Holly mentioned a week ago that there were crows in the yard. We haven't had any at our house (except passing by), ever. Not living here. Maybe this year, though.

I actually like this website WhatBird.com

it's been different here in Arkansas than in Florida. I've seen a few birds that I haven't seen since living in the Northeast

We're having an empty nest (people, not bird) trial run this week. It's not real, though, because all their STUFF is here, but Holly is in California with her boyfriend, Will, and Marty and his girlfriend are in Nevada, after which they're going to Utah touristing, staying with our friend Wendy north of Denver and then come south.

Keith and I are going to Austin in a couple of weeks, and I like to see the birds in Texas. They're quite musical and colorful compared to the sparrows and doves I'm used to. Red and yellow-bellied finches are our most colorful birds.

How's Marty's arm?

Where in Florida? I went to High School in Cape Coral? Laura?

I think it's getting well faster with him being on vacation than it would with him being around his friends.

🙂

If he was around his regular activities he'd be tempted to be more active than he should be. He can be a tourist without using his arm much.

Great!

Virginia we were in Saint Petersburg most recently but have lived in Miami on and off several times over the last ten years as well as a year in Argentina (and a few other places)

Wow.

I got finch feeders, and I made one out of a plastic spice jar and some wooden skewers (poked holes in the plastic with a hot ice pick--a trick I learned from Keith when we used to repair action figures whose limbs were coming off). Burned myself doing that.
"How'd you hurt yourself, mom?" and my honest and true answer was "with a red-hot ice pick."

I would live in Florida again.

But I think it seems the finches published our address on a "Finch feeders in Albuquerque" site somewhere birds read, because we're going broke on thistle seed.

us too...

ouch Sandra
LOL thistle is expensive...they must have put out the word!

ha! At least they are adorable!

I'm going to switch over to read only because I'm getting people food and helping Gabriella make pieces of pound cake look like French fries!

We had a neighbor that was able to keep hummingbirds around. When she moved, the hummingbirds moved too.

Fun!

We were buying that seed at a feed store up the canyon just out of town, but they closed! I went hunting. Fancy bird store, it's expensive. Walmart has it, but it's Walmart. Marty works at Target. I asked if they had a garden center and he said kind of, in summer, but what did I want? I told him and he said "Oh, yeah..." and told me right where it was, across from the registers, with pet food.

Hehehe

So next time. Marty's employee discount.

Caitlyn has yet to see a hummingbird...every time we would see one in the window I'd call her to see it but it was already too late!

We see hummingbirds around here sometimes, Montgomery, AL

Ah, food. I hafta try to make a green version of red velvet cake this afternoon for Chloe's (19th) birthday party which will happen on St. Patrick's Day.

judging by my old neighbor's facebook page, she still keeps humming birds around in her new location, different state.

ohh yum. we're going to be making a coconut banana chocolate chip bread this afternoon!

Hummingbird feeders are made to keep ants out. But it turns out that if the birds only get the sugar water (fake nectar), they're not getting the little bugs they get if they eat out of real flowers.

You can make green icing from avocado.

So IF you feed hummingbirds, don't keep the bugs out.

I made it once for a alligator cake.

Ah. Webpages were ugly in those days, Jenny. This is the oldest capture, but it was there six months or a year before that, with fewer links. No deschooling page yet, though! http://expage.com/RadicalUnschooling (on The Wayback Machine, at The Internet Archive)

I would've just called that page unschooling but someone had already named a page that. So that's why, to this day, my site is called radical unschooling.

So cool, Sandra!

Trivia you probably can't ever use. It won't be on the test. 🙂

I wonder if it will ever be acknowledged that "bullying" is nothing more than children treating each other the same way most adults treat most children most of the time?

Good point, Virginia.
And it's also the natural result of putting a lot of people of the same age together in a small space and not letting them leave. They form their own social hierarchy, because people's interactions involve hierarchies.

Ha ha, ”schooled-up” is a term I've added to my mental vocabulary.

and I tell those kids that when they have kids of their own, they should remember to treat them the way they would have liked to be treated.

I like that a lot Virginia.

ooooohhhh, I do remember that bit of trivia!
I must have known about your webpages then
like I said, hazy memory from back then

Has anyone observed a phenomenon of people getting panicky when their kid is approaching an age that was a hard time for that parent, when they were a kid?

Where did you see "Schooled up"?

I think I made it up. Not sure.

I'd like to have had a semi-original thought!

I was looking for what you were referring to.

Like screwed up? Or full up?

Like screwed up.

Got it. 🙂

More like overlaid with phony values.

I do that Virginia, I am working on it. But yes I panic on stuff that I know was difficult for me.

some people really truly believe those are true values that all kids MUST know

So moments...
Some things that can help:
Making a choice. In that moment of choice making, that crossroads, you're in that moment.
Breathing.
That air only goes into you once, ever, in that moment.
Realizing that you have another moment to make a different choice.

physically turning in a different direction has helped me lots, facing away from whatever it is that is causing the frustration

And the senses.
Touch something; there's your moment.
Smell something. It's right then, right there.
(A cat peed in Marty's room the other day.... that could've lasted a while, and there was fifteen minutes of me continuing to smell it as I cleaned up, a suede boot and a nylon folding chair, in its bag, and powdered the floor with pet-stink-removal stuff.)
But being aware of what is happening, what you're hearing and seeing, is a flash of awareness.

being mindful

Thinking in terms of moments has helped me be less anxious.

One thing that helps me is visualising for a brief second how my children and I are going to feel after the moment is over depending on which way I choose. Sometimes it's too easy to choose the choice that's *not* the better choice because the vast difference isn't apparent until afterwards.

it's not as overwhelming to think of a moment instead of all or forever

Very nice, Tamsin. Looking a move or two ahead, in a way. A day can't possibly suck anymore, in my life.

The 'moment' has helped me too. ALso when unbelievable (for me anyway) things happen I tell myself I cannot be the only persont his has ever happened to, it strengthen me a little.

Even when someone is being spiteful and noisy, someone else is going to smile at me or say "bummer so spiteful and noisy!" and there's a nice moment.

Knowing what things trigger me personally, has helped me be more aware of when to be nicer and calmer

I have a really hard time when others are angry and upset, it's this weird thing in my head where I take it personally, when it's NOT ABOUT ME, geez, then I can move forward to my own happy thoughts that can rub off on others!

If I think in terms of moments, rough ones are so short lived. And sweet ones last a long time in my memory.

It has helped me to not stay in a negative place, when less-than-good things happen.

Because of this page in the book, because of that quote about the bucket, a dad named Bruce Curtis drove me by a house near his house in Penicuik, Scotland, where Robert Louis Stevenson had lived for part of his boyhood. It might have been the house, where the bucket was. Because I wrote that, and Bruce read that book, and I went to his house.... Isn't that cool?


It was a moment, based on factors stretching back in time.
In several directions.
And we are part of all that swirl of life

I love those bits of life!

And we can say "look" when stars reflect in water, or we can forget to look, or we can throw dirt in there or dump the bucket. Every moment, a new opportunity to make our lives, and the world, better.

Me too. We recently met a kid at the pool, and when I looked around I found his dad was one of my math professors from college.

Chamille's newest favorite band, she found in a round about way because many years ago, we listened to Series Of Unfortunate Events, which had music before and after on the disc that we listened to.

so she made a pandora station on that band just to see what might pop up and something interesting did

We're always talking about the voice actors who link together so many of the shows we love

I was listening to Pandora this morning when I was still in bed. I put in "Thomas Morley" and they played two things I taught Keith, years and years ago, and we sang with a group of people. One of them wasn't easy at all, but we didn't know that, and so we learned it. "April is in my Mistress' Face." Four part madrigal. Not the easiest harmonies. And we were solid and good.

I called Keith at work and told him mushy things.

Awwww.

aw

Living in moments opens us up to accept little things that might only last so short a while that you couldn't send anyone the bill. 🙂

Keith was the lead tenor. I was the group organizer and lead soprano. I was married. Not to Keith. We didn't talk about that this morning. 🙂

If something is good for a moment, it doesn't take a bunch of planning, and it doesn't need to be reported or documented. It can just be a good moment.

Sweet, Sandra.

And when people get more and more practice doing what it takes to create or accept or recognize those moments, they can have more and more of them.

I see Chamille doing that more and more

thanks for the sweet moments, Sandra. I'm off to play outside.

Bye, Renee!

bye Renee!

(I didn't see Renee come in, and now she's gone, in a moment! (in my life, a moment))

It's hard to share those moments sometimes, though, when you're interacting with people who'd rather see a report card.

Right, because report cards are based on a combination of things that are measurable, long amounts of time. 18 weeks, or 9 weeks. Hour-long tests. 50-minute class periods. Homework.

I think sharing those moments are great. I've noticed that my husband and my mom say sweet things about the moments they see, since I've been sharing those for so long.

yeah that's hard. You can still share those things, those happy moments with others.

What do you say when you share your treasure with someone and they say ”So what? How are they going to learn algebra?”

What do you say when you share your treasure with someone and they say ”So what? How are they going to learn algebra?” Having a sweet moment during a test or class is considered to be wrong, pretty much.

I can't really share bad moments with my extended family because they will take it and run. I share good moments mostly.

Give them a link to my page, Virginia. Or ask them when's the last time they used algebra.

And then ask them when's the last time they had a moment so profound that it was like a treasure they wanted to share with someone else.

my immediate family I just try not to share bad moments

http://sandradodd.com/math/unerzogen

I'm getting a little anxious about an upcoming family vacation.

-=-What do you say when you share your treasure with someone and they say ”So what? How are they going to learn algebra?”-=-

You could say "You had a choice, when you spoke, to say anything in the world, and that's what you chose. "so what"

But don't take your eyes away if you make a move like that. Don't look away. Steady gaze and you win.

"So what? How are they going to learn algebra?"
You could say that those two things aren't mutually exclusive. 😉

I used to share moments like that with my Mom all the time. There are still times when one of the kids does something so amazing and I want to reach for the phone.

If you have a car, at the vacation site, be ready to need to go to town for something you just remembered you needed. Take the kids. What you might need is to get in your car and leave for a while. 🙂

Yeah, I should probably just stop beating my head against that wall. These are people who end discussions by saying "I don't care."

Why go on vacation with them, then?

Sometimes I post them on FB. I have a not very well kept journal. Maybe someday I'll have a blog.

I'm with Sandra on this one
why go on vacation with people who don't care?

If they don't care about you and what you say and do, why go where they are? It's a big world.

Don't have discussions with them. Play games. Be the fun. Look for the sweet moments.

maybe they won't care if you come and visit

I ask myself that, a lot. It's my husband's family. I think err mostly go because it's free.

Sylvia, you could make a blog, and quote the best things you've written elsewhere. You can backdate posts, and make a history. Share what you wrote about your mom in a more permanent place than facebook. More accessible anyway.

Good idea Sandra!

Is it free Disneyworld or Jamaica?
If it's free GLORIOUS DESTINATION, suck it up. 🙂

Yeah, I'd rather go to an unschooling conference. Or Minecon. Or PAX.

If it's not something your kids love to pieces, send your husband.

or spend lots of time getting to and from and a weekend with them

Orlando. No, it's great. This is my work. Bill parents aren't monsters, but they are very detached.

Or keep a list of the rude things they say, on paper, in your room, and amuse yourself and your kids with it.

The further I got from cynicism and pessimism, the more they jumped out at me when I heard them.

me too Sandra!

It shocks me now, some of the things I can remember saying, casually, when I was in my 20's and would insult my friends for fun.
"everybody was doing it."
We were hurting each other, for amusement. For practice. Out of habit.

Yeah, it was hard the day I realized that being nice didn't come naturally to me.

Detached is better than poking their nose in your business and commenting and telling you what to do.

I agree, Jill. 😉

If you write it down as a bad example, you might want to consider, at some point, writing it up for them and saying all those things were spoken, to you. That way if you ever don't want to go and they press you, you have a formal excuse/exemption/reason you could (if you wanted) show them.

And it might help you see how far you've come.

This reminds me of something I was thinking about earlier about laughter. I was once in a bad dysfunctional relationship. One of the main things I remember about that particular man was how much we laughed together. Really hard gasping for breath laughter. But underneath it was meanness - the laughter was always at someone's expense.

And it might help you decide whether it's worth going when the kids are older and the comments will be aimed at them when you're not right there.

It's easy to be mean.
It's harder to be nice.

Yes. Especially if you like to be funny.

Jim and I laugh together but it's totally different.

I keep thinking about this whole thing that's going on lately, with the international criticism of (I think, it seems to me) Always Learning. Maybe it's more general criticism, but I was named once, and the group was named a couple of times.
I'm being called pretty negative things.

It's a whole slew of negative criticism, and people who felt defensive because somewhere in their memory they were "treated mean"

Again, Sandra? 🙁

If you go, you could always work on looking toward the sweetness, and stay in positive, happiness, so much that it leaks out onto everyone. 🙂

Is this the same thing from last week or is there something else now?

so those people are coming out of the woodwork and feeling all validated by how they "felt"

Oh, I'm found much better now than the last time I saw them. Always Learning FTW!

But a candid count of words on my last over-100 posts on facebook showed this:



Not negative words at all.

That's always my personal take on things Jill! Infuse people with happiness!

I loved that image, Sandra!

Continuation of last week, Sylvia.

Oy!

So I was trying, though it's difficult, to see it objectively.

And yes, there are magazine-sales considerations. And yes, there are "let's all be social" aspects.

right, Sandra, it keeps popping up in the Wendy circles of people saying amen to her post on how "some people" are just so mean

But I think it's "There is something in the world that SUCKS and let's all get ANGRY about it."

So I wondered if there was a word cloud of Wendy's last 293 posts, what some of the words might be?

LOL!

I think "corporations" and "evil" might be in there. 🙂

(coffee spray!)
And bad and disappointed

But I'm the one being called negative.

Sandra, it's because you are a wonderful, vocal, generous person...making you a big target for nay sayers. I really wish they would not get to you, and you would look at those of us who are immensely grateful for the things we've learned from you to make our families a great place to be.

I was writing to somebody about unschooling recently and wrote:

The term "unschooling" is becoming problematic in sort of the same way that "liberal" and "anarchist" have; every person who uses the word seems to mean something different by it. Anyone can call himself an "unschooler", even if their children are miserable. The term has now been around long enough for people to start trying to make money off of it as "experts", so now they have to manufacture orthodoxy so they can excommunicate each other.

Even if the children are in school!

What Jill said!!!

Jill, I try.

I am reminded of the early Church - with all the heresies and excommunictions! Also I second what Jill said!

But they're making me tired and flinchy

I really think people don't like to see their own faults at all, and when they do, they get upset and need someone to blame other than themselves.
You are an easy scapegoat, Sandra, because you are vocal
it's easier to blame big mean Sandra, than to examine ones own behavior

Virginia, do you think I'm being excommunicated, or am I on the team you think is excommunicating people? 🙂

Sandra, you seem so tough, in a good way, I can't even imagine how this stuff can hurt you.

Could you not read those things, Sandra? Protect yourself a bit?

Fear is so seductive! Misery loves company!

Well they are the one wallowing in negativity. You are not there being negative; you can't control someone yammering on about their negativity and using your name sometimes. I pity them.

Could I go and kick those people in the shins?

I don't go looking, Marta. Sometimes it comes in my facebook feed.

They are trying to excommunicate you.

Oh! I hadn't thought of it that way.

Yes, that happened to me too.

They're certainly trying to shush me.
But of everyone I now personally in those discussions (and there were a dozen I know in person and three dozen I've long been in internet contact with), I'm the only one who has been consistently helping other unschoolers.

They love being miserable about the world. They don't want to hear that it is a choice they are making!

Some of them have bopped in for a while here and there. And they're sarcastic and negative and reactionary, and they all got in one place and had a bloody frenzy.

Virginia, once you see, in action, really terrible unschooling happening and see clearly that those are exactly the people who have been hating on Sandra for years, well, you will see more clearly what that word means and doesn't mean "unschooling"

I only recently subscribed to LLM, I am pissed.

Mostly I don't think about it.

You could cancel your subscription and let them know WHY!

that's it right there, Sandra, sarcastic and negative and reactionary, one or all

Yeah, I should.

And mostly I'm confident that I'm doing enough, and that even if I didn't do anything but Just Add Light, it would be enough.

Yep, Sandra.!

and I've seen really terrible unschooling, if you even want to call it that

If you stopped everything tomorrow, what you had already done would be more than enough.

and some people just flat out lie online about what they do

I agree with Virginia. 😉

and Sandra isn't a liar!
and the people she quotes and adds to her website aren't liars

Jill, Keith and I were talking about you a bit yesterday, beause he picked up a printout of my flight times to Denver (for the Minneapolis ALL Unschooling Symposium) and was changing the time on his calendar. I said don't bother, they keep changing it a little bit, and I've quit even printing them out. All I care about, I said, was that I get to sit with Jill from Denver to Minneapolis.

I used to subscibe to LLM but stopped after never reading their issues but always going to AL or Sandra's sites or my books. I now get constant emails asking me to resubscrube

and it seems clear and obvious to me

Jenny, there are a few people quoted on my page that I might want to sneak out some dark night. 🙂

I was looking for something new because I was down to hitting random over and over on Sandra's site

Tell them why. Wendy should get the message that negativity is bad for business!

well, then you could maybe do that! Or take the name off if the quote is good

I have a year's subscription to a magazine that published an article of mine last fall. So I got the electronic copy yesterday. And I read one article, hoping I would love it. I didn't love it.

I can't wait, Sandra. I was thinking about snacks to bring for the plane and things you might like. And sitting with you and chatting. 🙂

Pathways to Family Wellness.
A little boy didn't sleep well, at a year old.

Oh lord.

When he got older, he lagged behind other kids on his sports team.
Sometimes he was frustrated.

poor little boy

So they removed all gluten from his diet.
Or something. I don't know. It was sad to see and I can't give you a link, I guess, because it's a subscription deal.

I don't want my kids to end up with a broken down body like mine, so I let them eat as much of a thing as they want and as little of a thing as they want!

If it turns out that gluten IS rising up to kill us all, I will have been wrong, continuing to make bread. But if it turns out (which I think more likely) that it's a fad and a panic to match any food fad of the past 500 years, each child whose diet was so extremely limited will think less of his parents.

I see it each moment my children decide what to eat or not, how that choice is made and it's a GOOD THING!

I had a huge blind spot here. I got better.

I wasn't allowed chocolate, for YEARS, when I was a kid. The other girls would get chocolate, and I would get a stupid almond windmill cookie or some such.

We recently had what I'm calling "The miracle of the doughnut holes"

and sometimes each kid has limited their diet in a way that I wouldn't have and then balanced it all out again

Alrighty, back to my sewing. Thanks for the chat, everyone!

And beause a doctor had told my mom I was allergic to nylon and soap, I was given cotton underwear (while the other girls had pretty day-of-the-week panties) and bath oil.

Bye Jill!

It's over? Nooooooo!

And it turns out the cotton was fine, but the bath oil was BAD. I had eczema, and needed to be cleaner.

Oh no 🙁

Not oiled up and sad. 🙂

Hehehe

My mom needed to wash me more, or get a frickin shower. We had one bathroom with a tub for six people.

and chocolate was probably good for you!

Wait. I want to know the miracle of the doughnut holes!!!

I had eczema on my hands for years. 100% psychological.

I had it in the bends of my elbows and of my knees. I think I was allergic to my own sweat. Stress made it worse.
I used to get yelled at and swatted for scratching it.

Early October, I realized I was screwing things up with food.

Started reading your site again, joined Always Learning.
Realized I was using food as a tool to get them to do choose what I wanted them to choose
Realized I was treating my husky daughter's good choices differently from my lean daughter.

"food choices"

Decided to stop it.

and did they call you out on it?

Wish they had!

Awesome Virginia!

Started saying yes more. First thing that happened: they started sharing their fun foods with each other.
They're 6 and 8.

generosity is good!

A box of doughnut holes from the Fresh Market used to be a supreme prize around here. We used to argue with the girls. "Don't open those now, they're for tomorrow morning!"

Fast forward to this weekend.

Saturday morning, nobody wanted them.

I am loving this story!

I'm waiting quietly for the miracle.

(Well I WAS until I posted THAT.)

Oh, nobody wanted the doughnuts.

Okay. Good miracle. 🙂

The "don't open now" part means you didn't think this page was important: Economics of Restricting TV Watching of Children, by Pam Sorooshian

Jim bought Girls Scout cookies from a co worker and brought them home. The kids sort of shrugged.

They might've been dreaming about doughnut holes, the glory of incomparable doughnut holes.

Well ladies, got to go! Dinner's on the... couch!

That would have NEVER happened in my childhood!

Yeah, I need to go move the water in the back yard. 🙂 Thank you all very much for being here!

The water or a puddle? [reference to Moving a Puddle]

Bye!

Ha, I thought I didn't need that because i never restricted games or TV

little epiphanies!

😉

thanks ladies /bye

---

Moments: Living in moments instead of by whole days

Mindfulness in Unschooling

Transcripts of Chats on sections of The Big Book of Unschooling