Transformations

Presented by Sandra Dodd,
September 11, 2009
Good Vibrations Conference, San Diego

Shared by permission of Flo Gascon, the conference organizer.

Thoughts about being and becoming, intertwined with stories of unschooling. What can you do with your whole self?

Listen here and there's a transcript at the bottom of this page.

or download your own:

Notes from the conference program:

Sandra Dodd

Sandra Dodd has been unschooling for a lifetime (Holly Dodd's lifetime), because Holly was born when Kirby was five and the Dodds were in their first year of opting out of compulsory education. The alternative parenting was already going strong, with attachment parenting and family bed picked up from La Leche League when Kirby was a baby in 1986.

Sandra lives in Albuquerque with her husband Keith and two-thirds of their three children. Kirby moved to Austin in August 2007, at the age of barely-21, to work for Blizzard Entertainment. At the time of the conference, Marty will be 20 and Holly will be nearly 18. Keith (the dad of the always-unschooled Kirby, Marty and Holly) is an engineer by profession, a woodworker by hobby and a medievalist by longstanding habit. Sandra is a former instructor of English, a writer by compulsion, and by vocation examines the underpinnings and practicalities of unschooling and mindful parenting.

Sandra will be presenting twice: Connections and Transformations.

Unforeseen Benefits of Unschooling

Links to other sound files (and some videos)

Strewing

TRANSCRIPT

September 16, 2025, I uploaded a machine-created transcript, and will be editing it gradually. I hope you come upon it after it's already all (or mostly) cleaned up!

[00:00:01] Earlier in the weekend, people have been talking about the changes that people make to become better unschooler zz--. And I want to talk about the changes that unschooling makes in fact in the people [00:00:12] Yesterday on the way or not yesterday, whatever day we came down here. Thursday, it seems like Saturday over and over and over here groundhog weekend. Yes. Okay, I'm going to yell at Brad and the rest of you will hear me good. We saw a Lexus convertible next to us and they done did itself, you know? I mean it was a little Lexus hardtop which converted itself at a red light, some rich, lady pushed a button and everything started to fold up and it was a convertible and the light turned green. I thought, that's pretty cool. It'd be neat, if unschooling could be like that. Just like you order it and then when it on the UPS guy comes and then you install it and then you're all transformed. The bad news, is it takes years and you actually have to pay attention and it's worse than even getting out in the rain and folding the thing up and stuff. It's big thing, but it's kind of fun to. So, part of what I need to talk about in here is being how are you being? Because you're being some way and then you're being a different way. But being as a really crummy word in English, it's an ancient words like a caveman word. And reason you can tell is that the forms don't make sense. If you have some new word like computer Computing, computed, you just put all those little Things on there. Any Lego way, you know, you stick the stuff on, but to be is so old. Nobody can explain. Its like, you can even look up and Adam ologies and nobody knows why. It's, I am you are He Is, We were at all, do you know? It's weird. So, that's a really old word and in English, it means everything. It means how you are in that moment and how you seem to be to other people, and how you are permanently and interactively, and how you are. I learned long term so we don't have different words for I'm in a chair and I'm old and I am, you know, am it's just like for all the kinds of and than I am. So it's hard with being some languages, have it easier, English doesn't. So when people say, what do you want to be? When you grow up? Like someone asked yesterday earlier today? And Kirby said, happy it's kind of smart. I like answer but it isn't, you know, I don't might not want to be old. When I'm older, but that's too bad.

[00:02:26] So to talk about what you want to be is a really odd question and I don't think it's very nice tassel. Kids what they want to be anyway because they're already being something like, what would you be if you were a person like hello?

[00:02:40] And I think that's kind of what it means is like when you're a real person, what do you want to do? Instead of what do you do now or, and sometimes the thing that people really want to do is not something that's going to make them a living, they might want to be a great golfer. And they might want to sail around the world, but that doesn't mean that they want to work on a cruise ship. It might be that they want to fix cars to make money to buy a sailboat. So it's a weird question. I think unschooler is tend to get over asking it after a while.

[00:03:14] I got an email. Just the day before I left from someone who used to live at our house when the kids were younger and she said she was cleaning her garage. Wendy. Some of you might have Wendy just clean her garage and came across As a piece of paper and she had written. Something Holly said, when she was six and it was, I guess a windy had said something to her, Holly like, I love your attitude or something like that. Jewelry thing to say to a little kid. Anyway, you know, but Holly instead of staying home, said I have the right attitude. Now, I just get to be mean and so windy wrote it down because she thought it was weird thing for a six-year-old to say. And it kind of is. But I think that what Holly was saying is yeah, the attitude isn't the thing, you know. So now that thank you for acknowledging that I have a good attitude. Now I just get to be a person or something as like I weird, but I think it that is that the Crux of the difference between being an unschooler and being however, we all used to be before because we had this expectation of how we might be with our children, or how we might be with our spouses or friends or neighbors, or roommates. And then it's something big starts to change.

[00:04:21] And our attitudes change and are being ourselves changes.

[00:04:29] The first time I gave this speech, I stole the notes from the first time I gave it. This is a not this speech, but one called unforeseen benefits of unschooling. And I'm using that for part of my outline and I had a quote here, Holly's almost 18, but when I wrote that she was 14 and I wrote, I have a 14 year old daughter who doesn't want to go to sleep without giving me a hug who will reach out and take my And in parking, lots, or stores. I didn't expect that. I have a 17 year old son will say, I love you Mom. Spontaneously, I didn't expect that. So, didn't Transform Me from unschooling, didn't transform me from a person who had a bad relationship with children to one of had a good relationship, but it transformed me from being a person who's surely, would have had a bad relationship judging by what I see around me or have I just done in a knee-jerk fashion? What my parents had done with me

[00:05:23] to a person who didn't have those problems? So I looked out into the future, I cast out and went oh well, it's terrible to have teenagers and we're going to have Three all at the same time. So in the same way, two people dread the terrible twos. They call it a name, they have it. And they go, oh my kids. To now it's going to be terrible people. Do that about teams. They said well, but when you're tickling their teens, I'll be terrible. And I used to think that too, and I was wrong because what I didn't foresee was that they didn't have the 13 years of abuse and neglect leading up to being a really hostile angry. 14 year old It's like, although I've never seen a team who wasn't tormented to the point of breaking and then told and you will stay here another six years. No, that's that's pretty sadistic but that didn't happen at our house. So

[00:06:15] our our expected lives were transformed, but our real lives were transformed to and it's hard to see when you're in the. It's hard to see anything when you're a middle of it, you don't have the perspective of distance and time. So what I first expected about unschooling was that somehow at home, my kids would learn all the things that they would have learned in school. Only would be more fun, and, you know, less representative and and then eventually they would do the same things that they would have done if they were in school like being a band or orchestra, and do some Community Theater and then they would go to college when they were 17 or 18 and that didn't seem like a bad picture. It just isn't what exactly what happened. And what I started to see was that I thought they would be spending their days, learning the kinds of things people. Learn in school and what they are spending their days doing was meeting people and talking to people about real things.

[00:07:08] Didn't expect that. I didn't expect that, it would change my children's ability to make eye contact with people or that it would transform normal American kids into people who were in a way Timeless. They didn't act like eight-year-olds act like nine year, olds people didn't treat them like eight-year-olds nine-year-olds and so when they would meet a man they would shake hands with him. It's like I'm all the kids at school and I'm shaking hands with their teachers you know it's cool. There's a there's a division. It's almost like the inmates and the wardens and you don't get to shake hands, you know guys, don't wake up in prison in the morning guy. How can I snoring shake hands with the warden? Know you don't?

[00:07:53] Sorry. What is this music?

[00:08:00] That's going to be said,

[00:08:03] okay, I'm probably hallucinating reason, it surprises. Me that my yeah. You guys should have all gone. What music?

[00:08:12] It surprises me, that they have friends of such at such a range of ages. I didn't expect that. I thought they drank every wider. I thought maybe they have a 5-year age range, but they had like a lifetime age range. And I remember when we went to the conference in st. Louis. Marty was hanging out with a kid named Hayden, who was at the time for maybe five and the eve of all the kids Marty met that weekend. That was the one he thought was the most entertaining. And so he kept even though he was 14 or 13 or so running around with this little kid. And the little boys mom was really impressed, and she was surprised that someone that old would hang around with her kid carrying around humor, him wrestle with him, let him play rough, which is kind of sweet. Marty didn't know, but Hayden's dad had died a few years. Or and Hayden could use the wrestling attention of an older male and that's Diana Jenner. And that's where Holly's about to move this week over to Diana Jenner's house. I couldn't have foreseen that didn't plan. It, it just unfolded naturally of its own. I don't expect my kids to learn so much without me. I figured we would have a really fun alternative education life and I would think of cool ways to introduce stuff and they would appreciate it, and we just have a good time. So, one day for some Reason I wanted to talk to them about Roman numerals. Something had come in the mail and it was marked in Roman numerals and I said Kirby Marty come here. I'm going to show them. This coolest thing and they're real, Matthew kind of guys and I thought they'll love this, they'll think it's neat. We'll talk about Roman numerals for three or four minutes and forevermore they will understand them when they see them and then I'll have, you know, that momentary thrill of When people's eyes light up because I figured out when I was a teacher that that's why I was there, I was like a vampire of the learning moment.

[00:09:58] And I get it got to where the kids in my class were restless. I would pull out a math trick, like I knew that curriculum. They're not going to get more views strip for another two years. Like okay? Everybody come here. And I cut up some paper and I'd tape it and I'd cut it and let go. And I'm like, give me that.

[00:10:15] We figured out a formula for how to figure out, how many presents you get on the 12 Days of Christmas, and I'm not mad at me, but I knew that I get some of that energy. So I used to just Dazzle them so that I could soak in the moment of Park. So, here I am fixing to harvest. A moment of spark. And I said, come here, I wanna show you something. And I wrote down Roman numerals for four and five and six. And Marty, who was a little guy. How old was he when we moved to the new house at 7:00?

[00:10:43] So we need Holly here, Holly's our calendar, our Almanac, she knows how old everybody was, and it was Tuesday and who would know what they were wearing? But there was some day, I'm already was, you know, a little single digit guy. And he sort of looked over my shoulder where I'm preparing my exciting to and it less than. And he goes, yeah, that's four and five and six.

[00:11:05] and I said, how did you know that he said, Megaman and he took off

[00:11:12] So that was that. I was robbed.

[00:11:20] So when their life is all this world will learn things, they don't come and report, they won't come and say, guess what? I learned because they don't they know, you know what? You know. I told you, you know, they can come and go Mom. Listen listen, this is a for this is a five because I would have said, yeah, I know. So so as the years went on more and more things happen that they learned without me being around at all and after a while I got used to it and I came to appreciate it. But at first, I was keeping track of how many thrilling moments I had forfeited by enriching their lives. Of the point that they were Learning Without Me. But yeah, so if you're planning on the vampire effect of being there, only teacher that's going to fade quickly.

[00:12:02] I didn't expect her being Marty to be offered jobs, they didn't even apply for. I wrote down a few years ago. And then, after that happened with Holly, Holly did apply for a job at Zumiez, but some other job. She was offered. And I didn't think if I just make these guys really interesting and get them out there around older people than at some point. They're going to say do you want to work for real money?

[00:12:25] People don't plan their lives like that but it happened with both of them. And later happened with Holly. It's not going to happen with everybody, but I didn't expect it at all. I didn't know that our relationships would stay so good. Even when they were older, even when they were upset, that they would come to me when they were afraid,

[00:12:43] I didn't foresee it, and that's a change in my expectations because I expected that at some point. They're going to abandon me and Keith and start hanging around with kids, their own age and have their whole secret life. But that's because I didn't know what was natural and normal. Well, and what was school? I didn't realize in my own upbringing in and all the people that I knew

[00:13:06] relatives, friends people, I met after they were grown all have these certain things in common and I thought that must be how people are everywhere. But in turns out, if you take some kids out of the school situation that very much of what we thought was normal is School.

[00:13:27] I didn't know that my kids would be so compassionate, I didn't figure. They would be hateful little bullies until I saw him in the team panel today.

[00:13:43] They did get the whole school prejudiced, about some kids are just going to be losers and some kids are going to be winners so scrambled to the top quickly. So you won't be one of the losers, but that's part of the, artificial construct of creating a tribe of 25. Little primates and then letting them work out their primary problems among themselves. So, that's, that's why you get leaders in bullies. And victims is because humans, as, with any primates, have instincts to know, who's the alpha male, who's the alpha female and the situation, and they need to know who they outrank so that they know how to act. And so if they're in a situation like this room, there are people they outrank or who outrank them and they can be calm. It's like, we need, we, if we need somebody to go and help a little kid at the pool real quick, Marty might be the quickest one here because he's young, because he's heard me speak before he's strong. He's fascinating swims. Like Marty go do it so that would be giving more to your real responsibility within a group.

[00:14:46] That doesn't really happen at school much at all. And when one kid is singled out for responsibility, will you take this to the office or will you go and move the piano, which some of us got to go and move? A piano on that about five blocks, we managed to drag that out to two hours.

[00:15:02] You know, they didn't, then you get in trouble with the other kids because you got it and out because you got to leave the room because you got to do something special. In the other kids are gonna be mean to you. None of that happens with unschooling. The other kids are impressed. When you get to do something cool, their friends are glad form, not resentful. That didn't take away from them.

[00:15:22] I there have been a couple of times in my kids dealt with kids who were severely Autistic or serious as Burgers cases and because they had never been in school to see that whole culture of special ed and retard, you know, and all of that, they didn't have those prejudices. The first time that this happened. I told the story of someone last night, the first time that Kirby and Marty met a child, who was Really emotionally in-kind partly physically stunted compared to their own development. He was about their size but they were all at a barbecue and almost all of the women. At the barbecues friends of friends were all special ed teachers and public school. So I just avoided discussing. What I you know what I thought about education at all. Talked about toads and food and the furniture in the books and the Kirby came in and said, mom, there's something wrong with this boy. I don't know what he's talking about and what he's doing. So he was a nonverbal, non eye, contact autistic kid, who was about five or six? One of the special ed teachers had adopted him and so I, you know, kind of peaked around and I had heard them talking about a little bit and I said, oh, okay, Holly was a year and a half or two at the time. Early toddler and I said, well, just play with them. Like you would play with Holly. I'll be fine and they and he just went. Oh okay, you didn't say why that's stupid. You know, he didn't have that dialogue in and we didn't have that part of that conversation when you go out and have to do that and it's okay. So they went back up and there was a swing set in there were two swings and so this kid is on one swing but he would only swing barely good because feet up off the ground, let the swing move a little bit and so if Marty your career on the other swinging and they went too fast, he would yell like he didn't, he was not only afraid to swing High himself. He was afraid for someone else to swing High. Hi. But these guys were just nice. They just let him call the shots in his own nonverbal way, and I thought that was pretty sweet. And after we left my walk out to the car, or the mom, followed me out. And with tears in her eyes, she said no one has ever been that nice to him before. And I didn't expect that. I had no idea that that would be the result of not. Having put them in a situation where kids were sorted out. By that sort of, mental ability or social ability, we had another boy who came to our playgroup and his mom called an advanced inside his boy named Michael and he's about 11 or 12. Do remember for sure Kirby about how old you guys were. She had a younger girl who was some kind of prize winning, Girl, Scout cookie sales, you know, just quick and personable. And then she had a boy, who was taller looked older than he was and wasn't as Burgers guy who just hated the world. He would talk but he didn't want to. And so the first day I told these guys know this, do this guy favor gonna be real nice to him when he comes and he won't want to play with you guys but making the offer. So Marty I think came up and said Michael we're going to go play ball or frisbee or something over here. Yeah. And he just didn't pay attention. He stood looking at a tree but Marty came and said he does want to play as well. Ask him again next time. And after a couple or three weeks, he would move closer to where they were and he wouldn't look at the tree. He would stand next to the tree. So he still needed a treat. But he would, they would just come and say we're going to go down here now and Michael would ignore them until they weren't looking in any go down. So he was close to where they were but I don't think it was two months before he was coming over to our house to play video games.

[00:18:59] And so I was really impressed that my kids would be that kind to someone and it wasn't a. Do we have to situation? It was just like, okay, we we can do that.

[00:19:15] A mom named Janet. I'm one of our discussion lists wrote. Something really cool one time. Part of it was the one thing I can single out. That's been the most

[00:19:27] What was I going to read all the side benefits from unschooling besides having healthy relationships with house?

[00:19:34] Sorry, I don't want to read the whole thing. I'm trying to see what would make sense by itself. The one thing I can single out that has most help, my marriage is unschooling. After I started treating my children nicer more respectfully and gentler, it just sort of spilled over into my marriage. I think it's great, marriage therapy.

[00:19:53] But I think what that is, besides true. I mean I think but I think the basis of that is

[00:20:00] If a person has always had awkward relationships or resentful relationships, or relationships, or your measuring, how much you put in, and how much the other person put in, and whether you're happier with, you should be happy. If you are happy to set mean, you're being tricked or duper fooler. They take advantage of you because people will just spin in their thoughts like that. Like is this okay, it seems okay, but if it seems okay beside just mean, I don't understand it. You don't know

[00:20:25] if you've had a successful relationship with your own child. And, you know, because you don't that child his whole life, you know what the contributing factors were that you put in, and you've seen the result of that, then you will have more confidence in your ability to create and maintain a relationship.

[00:20:46] Even though I might be with a three or four year old who's pretty easy, you know, they can be pretty easy to please.

[00:20:53] Then it's easier for you to reconsider how you want to act with your friends and your partners and your own parents and your neighbors. I think it can help a lot to have had one good success and then you have another couple of good successes and then, you know, you start to learn more about yourself, what's making, you cranky, what's making? You feel? Really great. It makes me feel good when my kids

[00:21:18] Show me things that they thought that back to that same. All I love to hear what they learned. And so when they come and whether I taught them or they learned from Megaman, now, I'm just really happy when they come and say, I learned something cool that I thought you'd be interested in. I love that. It makes me feel nurtured, kind of, or nurturing. And so, I've learned that with other people, too. And I've always been a kind of person who would buy used books for my friends. If I came to a book and I knew that my friend Mark, really Loved medieval religion or whatever. I get it for Mark. And so that's, it's been something about me that I realized. And I've used to good effect, which is probably what my webpage is all about. It's probably somebody's going to want this. So I'm going to save it. I'm going to save what Janet wrote six years ago, and I'm going to read it to people.

[00:22:08] So if you figure out what kinds of nurturing things your kids like, then you bring them more of those and it works. Then you can figure out by principle that other friends and other people in your life. Have nurturing things that they appreciate it. Makes you a better person. So it's not the relationship really that changed. Its you and it's the way you saw yourself and the way you saw your ability to interact with other people.

[00:22:43] Sorry, I usually stand up and wag and dance in that. Get some of my energy up. So I them I have a hurt leg for the people who are only hearing this later, I'm impressed on my children show real world courage, even though they're little kids, sometimes they've done something that was honest-to-god Brave. Just really bright that most adults would have been afraid to do like, stand up for a little kid. He's being picked on or to just do something that some adults said not to do some irresponsible kind of just being arbitrary and hateful. Adult says don't do that. And they look at the situation and they look around and they see what are the risks and benefits.

[00:23:24] At one time, it was Holly was visiting with another family and there was a very sympathetic to everyone involved, but there is a little girl whose mother was too crazy or mean or something drug addict and had been run off by the father of the girl. So he has custody of this girl from his ex-girlfriend. He works a lot leaves the girl with his brother. So this guy is the uncle of a girl whose mothers run off. And he keeps having to take care of this kid. So all he's over there, visiting one day and they were in the pool at another neighbor's house, Zeus house-sitting so Holly's there, it's not his house and it's not her house. So that made it kind of neutral which changed the Dynamics Behind These aware of all of that. So the little girl wanted to get out and get a towel and he said stay in the pool just for no good reason except that, that way he was controlling her you just wasn't ready to get up out of his chair or whatever.

[00:24:15] And Holly knew he wasn't the boss of her, you know, he couldn't tell her what to do. I live next door, she could just get up and go home. So she look at the situation, little girl was getting frustrated and sad and Holly got out of the water went and got her a towel and brought it to her when I was Holly's a child. He was probably seven. I would have been afraid to do that. I would have been afraid of any adult, telling any kid anything that I was out of my league to make any decisions, but my kids didn't ever learn that and so I've seen them in other situations where they use their own judgment. About whether what they wanted to do was okay to do. And the risk is that adult, might get really mad my head. I might whatever, you know, call me and say your kids a brat, those are not huge risks and I still think it's courageous for them to stick up for other people. When they have a chance like that, I'm impressed. I didn't know that. I would be so accepting of my kids saying, no, when I was a little Baptist kid with Texas, grandparents saying no to adult wasn't, okay? And it didn't matter how drunk or irritating or hungover. The adult was, who was being irritating. You weren't allowed to say? No. It didn't matter how unfair it was that they grabbed me up in swatted me about something stupid. I didn't get to say stop

[00:25:29] So I didn't think hard about what my expectations would be. I didn't know how far I would have moved from that until I got kids and they started saying, no, I don't want to and I went okay. You know, I didn't even have the visceral. You can't say that to me because I had made a conscious decision to not be that way and that, and it took me making a decision. It took me having a choice and then deciding to take the more peaceful, more Progressive choice. And it took me having the memories of having been baffled and frustrated, and irritated by though. Apparently, adults around me. So, when I had the chance I consciously, We decided to be the way. I wish my parents could have been, and I apart of that was having on two adult children of Alcoholics, meetings, and try and talk to other people who had some arbitrary person or two or three and their Life's Too. Unpredictable are unreliable, kind of people. And so, in dealing with what I had wished, I had had, I was able to say, well, I can't give it to me, really, but I could give it to Kirby. And I got pregnant when I was in those meetings. And so the other people were carrying around their little teddy bear because the 80s. You know, we're all doing inner child work and they'd have their teddy bear in there. Be a nice there. Teddy bear. It's like the invisible friend I had and I was a little kid. I burst into tears and yelled and yelled one time because my grandmother's, my grandfather. My papaw's said on both of Bob, my invisible friend and they ruin the day for everybody. You know, I couldn't believe you killed that guy.

[00:27:06] So so it was kind of like that is Kind of like okay now you can have both Kebab back and you can take care of them, nurture him like okay well happens, I'm pregnant. So I put all of that thought and energy into. How can I make Kirby's life? Cool. Like mine might have been and that was very valuable. But anyone could do that even without having had alcoholic parents, what a head start if you didn't have to start in that hole. So if you decide that you will give your children, what you would have liked to have had that wouldn't have hurt anybody, that would have been cool, then you just do it. And that will change you into the parents. You kind of wish you would had and it changes you into the parent that your child will never appreciate at all, because they don't know what they're missing.

[00:27:50] That's all right. It still makes me a good person to have gone out of my way to be nice, even though the kids have no basis for comparison and we'll say in public. But I'm lame—another reference to the teen panel.

[00:28:08] It was just a yes or no. Do you think your parents are lame? And they jumped up and said not true.

[00:28:15] I didn't expect to like to lose arguments and Keith used to say, Keith wasn't Keith grew up in a family. That was more quiet, our family tended to heal and slam a little bit, but Keith's family. Did the freeze-out sort of behavior that's like they would, you would become invisible if they were unhappy with you. But Keith would say why you let them argue with you. Why don't? I don't think she'd let them argue with you and I said, yeah. But look, if they can win an argument with me, they won't argue with anybody. So, I didn't mind if they beat me in an argument because it was never anything life and death, it was little stuff and if they had a good logical argument to make, I let him make. It's like, okay, you're right you and you can do it. That seem fair.

[00:29:05] I didn't expect the changes in me to make things so sweet between me and Keith and probably mostly it's just the keep is a nicer person than I am. You want to stand up and say? That's true.

[00:29:25] He's very patient but the same principles that we started applying to The Way We Were deal with the kids applied us to it's like okay well I don't I don't want to do that. Okay? It became easier for me to

[00:29:38] Not try to brush your teeth into going to a party. He's not as sociable as guys. Some people are. And so if you just want to stay home and watch DVDs and not go out to a party, I didn't whine and cry and say, yeah. But I shouldn't be in charge of all their social obligations and you should have to go with me is like, okay, he doesn't want to go. So here's the deal, I could still go. And if he goes and he didn't want to go, he's going to be unhappy. And so the same, it was easy to see that with the kids because we didn't have a bunch of Prior baggage. It's a little harder to see it with Keith, but once we had practiced with the kids going well, you know, Kirby doesn't really want to go to the park. So don't make him go. We'll figure out a way for him to stay home and play video games for the rest of us. Woke up. And I thought oh well that will work with Keith to woman and it made a big difference and I for me

[00:30:27] the more I got to know Marty the more ways I saw him being like Keith and the more

[00:30:34] Compassionate or sympathetic. I was about Keith flash used to think he was irritating for meanness, but then Marty showed me. He was just irritating out of personality and genetics, but but I was prepared for that because the day for me, was born, the very day Kirby was born and he was 7 pounds or whatever and still It'll damp. He looked at me. Was the dirtiest look?

[00:31:10] And I said, the Keith, I'm sorry, Keith, I always years. I thought you were giving me a dirty look and it was

[00:31:24] sorry.

[00:31:26] I didn't expect on schooling would make the grocery store fun. I never really hated grocery stores but sometimes when when When you get older and you have babies and schedules and stuff. It's not so fun to go to the grocery store, just for fun, it's business, you know, it's like part of the job but when I would go with the kids, they made it interesting. If I was willing to take a little longer and not say we have three minutes to get in there and buy 15 things. That's not even going to work, you know, even if you're a sprinter, you don't have any kids with you. So you might as well give it a half an hour but because they were interested in things that were things. They never seen. There were questions that I was willing to answer, they like to wait. Ages or whatever you don't need like to play with all that stuff. Whatever was in there, it was entertaining for me too if I was able to slow down and just let it be a museum, let it be like a science museum for them. Then it was just a lot sweeter and a lot easier used to go early in the morning and Marty like when they just waxed the floors, they have that like right on and wax Zamboni thing

[00:32:28] and if they had just done that Marty would lie down on the floor.

[00:32:34] Sorry iPod comeback, comeback audience. Okay,

[00:32:39] Marty would lie on the floor and do angel wings and stuff and looking at his reflection in the wax and I would just let him. I wouldn't have let him if it was busy and full of people. But, you know, I would just stand there and kind of garden. So they run over him and one time, we lost Kirby to store the Kirby's, been lost twice. And the first time, my mom and I had taken him to a grocery store and we looked around. He knows I thought he was with her and she thought that he was with me. Me and so I just thought, okay, he's either at the toys or something he can reach. So he wasn't at the toys and then we went over to the produce and he was about to a little, he's reaching up to the grapes.

[00:33:18] So that wasn't too bad and he was fine and he had some food. And

[00:33:24] and the next time you got lost we were at a Highland Games and I wanted to go shopping because, you know, I don't know what they have at Highland Games. A lot work stationary and lamb those little bouillon cubes, you know, like chicken. You can get lamb bullion. Like, no, I don't need it. But, you know, I can only get it there, so I go by it. So, I've been carrying Kirby around and I'm going to go buy some land bullion or something. And I leave them with Keith. It's like keep him. And I'm going to go shopping and I'll come back. I'm halfway to where the shopping is and it's a big public place, right microphones in bagpipes and I I like kind of stuffing and there's this. There's a little boy lost. He says, his name is... "Turbee?"

[00:34:12] so in front of hundreds of people, I trudged up there and I get Tara being so I look like a terrible mom.

[00:34:28] That's how I expected my whole life to be, but it wasn't like that. I didn't expect that. I would start to see school so differently. When I first quit teaching, I taught for six years and when I first quit, [00:34:38] they wouldn't let me quit. They said you want a sabbatical. I said I want sabbatical. I'm 26 years old. I want to quit and I don't want to owe you money, you know disability.

Okay. Okay, we'll give you a leave of absence when you don't get a leave of absence of somebody who's only taught for six years and And what the guy was the principal had been one of my teachers and he liked me. So he thought that I would just get away and have a break and come back. I couldn't even listen to a news report about school, they came on something about bond issue for the public schools, turn it off, turn it off. I couldn't read an article in Newsweek about schools. I was really traumatized and so I thought I would always just hide out from school and never want to hear a word about it. But what I started seeing was that for me as a kid school was my safe place. So school is not the same for everyone. It also helped it in those days when I had just quit teaching, my dad died around in those about that year and my sister and I didn't have the same relationship with my dad. So I realized it was really okay for me to really more in the part. The relationship I have with my dad even though he never did that cool stuff with my sister and it was okay for my sister to be mad at him because she was my mom's favorite and a lot like my mom and, you know, they buddied up, it was okay for her to be mad at my dad. Didn't have to be mad at him too and that helped me see school as individual for each person. So we don't need to all agree on how school is or what school does to people or anything school for me, was better than home. They had books there, they had people who had traveled, they have people who would be nice to me and not tell me I was stupid and irritating.

[00:36:14] There were people there who befriended me because I was kind of bright and curious and they appreciated, the spark in someone's eyes from they learned something and so they wanted to Hang out with me and be there. When I learned things and there was music there, there's lots of music there, their musical instruments, and there were recordings and books and so, I love school. But that doesn't mean my kids would need it. I love school because at home there were people being arbitrary and dangers.

[00:36:46] I didn't expect to feel guilty about school, so I did have a good time at school. I did really well. And so then I started when I started looking at the damage school at done, other friends of mine and I'm saying, okay, school for me wasn't so bad, but people are some of the people were saying school for me, was a soul-sucking horror show. And I thought, oh, I helped with that because I went to school with kids, who would have killed to get a b, or if one single time they could have, had the highest grade in the class on a quiz. It's still remember it fondly and I'm like, oh yeah, number 942 best score on a spelling test and I go to District spelling bee. That wasn't making my life better really. And it wasn't, it was making other people's lives worse in a way. Yes, all got, you can go back and gold that around and share it out with people. But the fact is that in school, it cannot be helped that it's competition. And some people lost too much to ever recover and I want too much to appreciate it. So I saw that aspect of school too and it's not just the teachers who are doing damage. It's the other kids in various ways and that My Success was at the expense of some other people's happiness can fix it, but I can see it.

[00:38:00] I didn't expect it to improve my relationship with my parents who knew that? You know, I didn't even know. I would make things better with my friends and, and with my husband. And so here, I find out that it's okay with me. If we just put down the whole bunch of dog food and leave it there. And if the dog needs more refill, it the dog was at the dog that went to the vet lately or one of the cats and they said it was the dog. They took the dog to the vet and they're saying, well good, she's not at all over weights. Good thing that you're keeping Her diet, lower, whatever, you know. And it's like, no, we take her for a walk, the maybe couple or three times a week and she eats all the cat food she can steal.

[00:38:42] So, the guy doesn't believe that a dog that has food in the bowl all the time and getting the cats food without getting in trouble and hardly is ever taken for a walk. Wouldn't be overweight, but didn't surprise me because I've seen that with my kids. If you give them all the food they want and you don't shame them or yell at him or go, "I can't believe you're eating it again, the cat's food" you know. It's okay with me if my kids you can't

[00:39:06] let they don't they don't get crazy. They don't sneak down at night. Need some more. They just eat till they're not hungry anymore, and that worked with the dog to not ask, that's pretty cool. We could have an offense after a. While a couple of times at our fence broke, we didn't even fix it. All right, our yard looks like it's fence like from anywhere in the front yard, it looks like you can't get into the backyard. But really, there's not even a fence in our dog stays home. And so I'm thinking maybe that's like my kids staying home to. There's no reason for them to climb out the middle of night and go somewhere else because we would like we would help them go somewhere else if they wanted to know. If our dog really wants to go look right every time she barks, we go open the door and let her look out. Don't you live here for barking, dogs are supposed to bark. What is she wants to see if there's a bad guy in the front yard? So we go open the door. We check it out. There's not a bad guy. She we say good dog. And I would probably would not have been that way if it weren't for unschooling because I went with what is this dog need to do? What is she trying to do? What's her job to do? You know, kids like to learn dogs like to guard the yarn? So I made it easier for her to do that. Keith ladies here, Keith's, he's the dog walker guy.

[00:40:13] I didn't know, I didn't know, and this is a big one. I didn't know. People could learn so much without reading because I believe too that the reason to learn to read is to read books. So you can learn. And I didn't know that my kids would be light readers, and I thought Carly was a really light reader and he read a date, but he wasn't because Marty was nine. And Holly was 11. But by the time they read, they knew tons of stuff is huge amount of stuff more than I had known at their age and I was a great reader. I wasn't the best reader. I have the documentation to prove it.

[00:40:45] But when you learn to read and you're seven years old, you end up, reading nonsense, papen, not sense. That's not about anything important at all until you get good enough to start reading novels. And then what are you reading depressing? 19th century, you know, Oliver Twist, kind of stuff. I mean, you just the stuff that I was that I was coming up with to read. It's like, Nancy Drew solves. Another Lane mystery.

[00:41:08] That wasn't as good as what my kids were learning from movies and from playing games, Jeans and from hanging out and talking to people. But in my school Prejudice, what I was doing was valuable because you can get a S4 it documented that to and what my kids were doing wasn't valuable, because it wasn't going to be on the test and you couldn't get a taste for it. They were socializing

[00:41:32] and I love that question. What about socialization? I realize it's socializing and socialization or two different verbs, but I don't care. Because what I say is, when I was in school, they kept Telling me you're not here to socialize,

[00:41:46] and I have the season conduct document.

[00:41:53] I want to talk about being an expert was really Disturbed. Some people because there's a thing that people say about unschooling is, there's no if there are no experts we're all experts in our own children. You know your children has there's a whole string of Calm and calming girly platitudes that women say to each other. I think they're very harmful General because this is a good job. Good job. You going to be just spank your kid or don't know where he is. Or haven't fed him for a week. Good job. Such a good mother. I've collected those at center.com support. If you would go I would like to read my collection of support of statements.

[00:42:33] So despite the supportive truism that there are no experts. I want to tell you how I learned that. I was an expert in Balance when I was 15, I started I learned to play the guitar and I started collecting ballots and I just really like them, you know, Murder ballads from the south east or the Titanic sinks and everybody dies, you know, all those kind of cheering balance. And as time went on, I loved the train wrecks. But I started love the knights and castles and I started to collect old older stuff. The murders. You know, some guy didn't finish building a hat. He finished building the house but the guy didn't pay him. So he came and murdered his wife and baby. Now that's Charming stuff. And so, I pretty soon new 60 or 70 of them. And I went to college and learn some more and

[00:43:19] was in a folk singing Club where each person presented one topic and I presented ballots. So all of those people who are the folk singers and a he knew I knew a bunch about balance, so a couple of the professors used to call me. They were using a certain literature book that had a section on ballots. Only they called it Anonymous. Poetry. And so I would come, they would invite me and I would come to this class and do just the one cool thing for these college students or Gene sophomores, I guess. And I would sing the ballads that were in the book. So that chapter. Now, instead of being a bunch of words, is a bunch of songs and I would just, you know, writing that chapter every ballot in there, I would sing it to him.

[00:43:57] Will I knew that I was an expert in ballads was when I started reading other people's commentary and saying, well, that's not right. Didn't they read Bronson, you know? So that that's the point where I felt like, instead of me being at the bottom overwhelmed, with this great Deluge of information about ballads. When I came to the point gradually where I could see from a higher vantage point and look down, and go like guys are really good scholar but these guys are just making it up and it's too bad, they didn't find. This collection before they read this book. So that's what seemed to me. Like expertise, was being able to judge the value of different sources.

[00:44:39] And for me to be the guy that things Refreshers would call to come and teach ballots that was fun, but that wasn't that wasn't. What did it? It was me seeing relative differences in other and experts in authors and professors.

[00:44:53] And about four years ago, I started feel like that about unschooling

[00:44:58] Partly. It was because my kids were grown. It wasn't me thinking. And hoping that when they were older they were going to be better. It's me discovering, all these kinds of things I'm talking about that. I didn't expect to see like, okay, I knew a lot about unschooling. I had done alternative at. I had read all the John Holt stuff. I had known unschooler before my kids were school age. I had hung out and communicated with a bunch of unschooler. I've been to three dozen conferences, now and hobnobbed, I never never have been one of those people who comes to a conference comes in. And speaks and leaves, and there are some of those and you'll, you have probably heard some or my thought this weekend, because this is a real unschooler conference, but people will sometimes be invited to speak. They'll give him one night of a hotel in an airfare and a taxi hit the airport. They come to the conference. They Breeze in, they speak, they Breeze out, nobody talks to him, nobody has lunch with them, you know.

[00:45:51] I don't want to do that because I would like to be there for the conference. So, in addition to speaking, I've also hung out and talked to people, All weekend, a, lots and lots of times. So, because of that I've kind of had I'm aware of the differences regionally in the United States and I've kept up somewhat with what's going on in other countries and not in order to become an expert. I wasn't studying for a PhD and unschooling or anything. I was just interested because when people came and asked questions, I at least wanted to know who I could send them to, and that's a kind of an expertise to is knowing your resources like being a librarian. Marion. And that's an awesome job. When somebody comes and says, I think there was a speech made in Albuquerque, in 1930 at the airport. And she goes, I can find it. So, if you can find things like that, about unschooling in education and learning for other unschooler, 's, they need that they're people need resource people who know what's available in Arizona. Who know what's available in Northern California or India?

[00:46:52] So if you have extra energy to spare after you've helped your own kids, if you can start Gathering that kind of information. So when people need, you have it, that's awesome.

[00:47:01] And what I've come to see is, I know which people know those sorts of things. So I at an angle at an advantage point now, where I can see where to send people. So I'm kind of a librarian of unschooling information at least and that's me.

[00:47:20] I was a little surprised to find out how much of unschooling is doing. And I know now, it seems silly that I was surprised, but I thought it was just don't do all these harmful things, you know, eliminate many, many things from your life. And then what will be left is unschooling but We're not really sitting back in the corner, doing nothing at all and we're certainly as the world goes. We're not off in the corner at all in any way like we're right out in the middle right out in the big live middle.

[00:47:54] So we're doing something profound and direct. We're doing something socially profound and educationally profound.

[00:48:03] And we're doing something directly with our children and directly with and to the culture.

[00:48:11] I don't think that our kids will band together and form a union and go out and preach or anything. I don't think they're going to be standing at street corners at Christmas saying, give money for the unschooling orphans. It's not going to be, you know, they're not in a separate culture

[00:48:26] at all and there as they grow up and go out, you know, all these guys who are sitting here, they work in all. From jobs. They don't work unschooling Sweatshop or all of the employees are so unschooler. They're scattered out there. Somebody ought to come up with one of those Roya has a plan and knitting sweatshop.

[00:48:52] But what'll happen is they will be out there scattered in with the general populace. And if someone says, well, you know, if you don't go to school, you can't learn to read. They will probably know somebody who learned to read without going to school. That'll make a difference. And these guys will be out there. Making policies for whatever it's going to be Personnel, for hiring wherever they work or

Holly somebody this morning in the een panel or it's afternoon said It was morning. I don't even know what day it is. So there she had wanted to be a public school teacher. Who was that? Because remember, oh okay, Hazel Holly said to me one day. What a school counselors do? Because I was kind of thinking that buy me a new job.

[00:49:33] And so we talked about that, you know what she was interested in, was the psychology of it, not the scheduling and the pressure and the talking to the parents part of it. So she didn't know there were yucky Parts but that's interesting, isn't it? So they might end up some of them being teachers and school counselors, they might end up being on school boards or being in some position of deciding whether what the criteria are for working for a city or for working on a project, and they will not be able to say, we're only going to hire people who graduate from high school. They wouldn't even think to do that, they won't be able to say unless you have got a college degree by the time you're 20 to, there's something wrong with you, it wouldn't make sense for them to do that. So I think it's a little out of an effect on society just that they're out there. When I was first homeschooling, people would see us in the grocery store, is it. I'm sure you've all been there. You're at the grocery store and it's during school hours. And somebody says, why aren't you in school? And the kid says, I were no school or the parent says, we home school and used to be their goal. Is that legal? And now they got oh yeah. Oh, or there was a wild in there after about five or six years on the go of my cousin. Does that are my sister-in-law her? My daughter-in-law they would have a distant relative or a Neighbour and then after A while. It was all. Yeah, we do too. One day. I was at the grocery store by myself and Olmsted you and unschooler. Yes.

[00:50:57] So that was pretty awesome. That was cool. [00:51:13] I think that there are biochemical realities in these changes when you are a better person. When you when you feel like you're a better person, you probably better person. Like as you're the one who you're the judge of better or worse, when you decide what kind of person you want to be? I don't believe in magical wish for, I don't believe in. Write it on your mirror in lipstick, like Elvis and 52, you know, I don't think that's where change come from. The, I think change comes from you, making choices from you, knowing where you would like to be. And I don't mean where you'd like to be when you grow up, or when you're 59, or not a distant image. But like what? I leave this here. Am I going to go that way? Or that way? On Monday, I want to be in my chat Pam's house. So I know that, you know, that's my next plan. After this is I need to be at Pam's house from 2:00 to 4:00 or somewhere where there's internet. So I can do my online chat. So just having those little Stepping Stones where, you know you want to be next. Then your decisions are what brings you closer to that or further from that. So, that's, that's easy. You get to a place by physically getting there by emotionally getting there by mentally getting there. And so, if I go out here and I have no idea which way to turn, if I go, well, all this nations are equal and doesn't matter what I do because there are no right or wrong answers, I can end up down in the basement, you know? With the washing machines, that wash the green and white towels, which might be okay,

[00:52:42] but it might not be because I'm supposed to go to the talent show. I need to eat my leg hurts, you know? No, so okay, you need to think enough to know where you want to be tonight, where you want to be tomorrow where you might want to be next week or you can't get there. So all it takes is having a vision of where you want to be in a while and making decisions in that direction, you need to know when you get to the elevator or the you're getting it or not and whether you're going up or down and where to get off that's not brain surgery. Little kids have been doing it all weekend.

[00:53:13] There are biochemical reality is a good one is love and my kids are in the throes of all of that and Heath and I are kind of past the throes of all that, you know. It's like, oh yeah, I can look at pictures of Zac Efron and go nice abs, you know but that's about all I think and I'd be a pervert if I thought any more than that but I'm around all the friends of my kids.

[00:53:38] And I see them going through all of this exciting, teenage and young 20s, crazy eggs, you know. And I also see the birds in my yard in the spring who are dancing and dancing and showing off and nesting. This is same kind of thing, I think we got biochemically there like a supposed to be doing something. I'm not sure what it is. It has something to do with that I don't know getting a car and a house and building a nest out of mud and sticks and no but they're just they're they're angsty. They're like frazzled because they know there's something they're supposed to do. And They're trying to do it and they're kind of confused.

[00:54:11] But there's a bio chemistry there, that instinct comes with your body changing somehow. It's like I have these urges was like itches in my britches song, like he's not

[00:54:23] so

When that biochemical comes and when you fall in love in your holy, have that whole brain thing. Like I can't see anything. But that person, everything is about that person.

[00:54:35] There's a chemical reality and it fades, okay? There's another biochemical reality that unschooling can use and that is bliss and joy, you know, to get to the that sort of flow situation, where, whatever is going on, whatever you're thinking, whatever's happening is great. It feels good. It feels right? And now life is great, but that's also a biochemical State. The cool thing is that even old people can do it

[00:55:01] and if you can, if you can learn how to induce that, how If you can and you can't stay there all the time and be kind of exhausting, you know, sometimes you just have to go home and have to go the grocery store and I don't have any little kids to make it fun. But so, there are, there are kind of still boring irritating parts of life, but if you can live the kind of life and be the kind of person who can induce Bliss and joy, sometimes where you can take a situation and find the good parts and extract the joy. That's a huge benefit but it's a biochemical set and you can lose it. I don't mean lose it go crazy. I mean you can it can fade, it can go away but you can get it back.

So then, if you think of it that way, not like let's all be happy. Let's all be hasn't be happy. That's not how happiness comes. You don't go, okay, okay, I'm kind of tired after the store but at 7:00, let's all be happy. You have to induce it, you have to create it. You have to nurture it. But you can you can learn to do that. And when people are happy and amused and smiling and at peace, they learn better. And when they start learning better and you believe this and you have confidence, you have more reason to induce that joy and Bliss. So that may be one of the best things you can learn from unschooling because then after your kids grow up and move away, which I didn't think would ever happen, they, you can still find reasons to be happy and, you know, how to do it, you know, how to pull it off.

So I'm thinking I might even be a better person if I'm really old and live in a nursing home because of all of this. School and stuff, you know, and they're starting to make baby boomer nursing homes. I said, 20 years ago, when I'm old, there better be a nursing home with some Grateful Dead posters and LSD... and I hear that it's Asheville. North Carolina, [00:56:53] like, I don't want my grandma's nursing home, that's boring. I'm not going to crochet an afghan. Get me some rock and roll. [00:57:03] So that's as my time nearly up. Yeah, I have a countdown 57 minutes. [00:57:12] I have five minutes.
20 minutes, 20 minutes. Okay.

[00:57:20] I was just going to say the biggest transformation for me has been that. I feel like a good parent. It's awesome. I've never felt so successful about anything as I have felt about being a parent and it gives me big load of confidence about doing other things. Not that I have much time to do anything else. But but if you can, if you can feel that you really, honestly are a good parent, that can be something that you and your partner have in common that can make that better. To because you will have taken on a serious. Now, we are talking life and death project and come out successfully and I can't imagine much in the world. I would feel better than that and seeing someone grow up and still hang out with you even when they're grown, even when they can drive and do have a job and never have to come, see you again at the still meet you in San Diego, even though they have to take days off. Thank.