thank you!!? I may have fixed it in the original, but this should go there:

Two things:

Nikki Zavitz, interviewed by Pam Laricchia in early 2020, shared a mental model of unschooling, including deschooling. ?It's wonderful, and there's a link to hear it, below.

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I always had this visual for unschooling for me, I picture it being this big giant house and it’s got like a million rooms in it. And there’s closets and doors everywhere. And for me, I’m walking around this house with this lantern and the lantern is like unschooling for me. And I have to open up doors and shine the lantern and look under the beds and look in the closet and I’m finding all these new, dusty things that have come from my life and have created this uncomfortableness and this kind of scary eerie feeling for me. And the unschooling is the light, like walking through shining light on it, considering it, asking questions, and eventually more lights are on, and the closets aren’t as dusty anymore, and the rooms are more open and free to go in and out of.

I kind of see that—I've always pictured my unschooling journey like that—and then everybody’s house is different. Everyone has a different unschooling house, and I just love that visual for me, I’m always picturing it like that. Like, "Oh, I found another room that I have to look in," and "I haven’t been in this room yet. I’m going to just step my toe in this room and then step back out and maybe I’ll come back again later," and I just love that.?

—Nikki Zavitz

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The million-room house image is at 43:26 in Deschooling with Nikki Zavitz

Episode 216 of the Exploring Unschooling Podcast, by Pam Laricchia.

I think that link will take you right to it. ?You can see Nikki's face light up.

Let her share her visual with you!

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That was in Just Add Light and Stir the other day.?

Then I came across something that's a good match for it. ?This is one paragraph of something I wrote, and it's on two pages on my site: ??(quoted by Karen James, with some of her ideas)

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but the quote is:

If your childhood abuse and neglect have left a lot of closed-off areas inside you, it would help to get therapy—even light help, to get you started on looking, a bit at a time, at what happened, and looking with a compassionate eye—compassion for the child you were, compassion for the adults who might have done better if they could have, if they knew more, if they had support for being kind and gentle. Then that would help you spread "kind and gentle" into the present, while you were gently untangling the snarls of your childhood memories.

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When I wrote "closed off areas," I was picturing rooms, and dusty old containers on shelves in storage rooms of the soul/memory.

I have had dreams of discovering a room—various ways, various places—that was mine, and I could have everything in there, but I had never seen it before. ?Sometimes there was more than one room. ?I have heard that such a dream represents untapped or unknown potential. ?Maybe so. ?Sometimes in my dream, though, I am inheriting objects, furniture, collections, from someone else. ?Someone left me something. ?Sometimes it's a room with extra beds—two or three mismatched beds in one room, when I'm needing that. ?Kind of a dreamed-up "Room of Requirement" (but before I had read any Harry Potter :-) ).

I'm interested in other people's imagery regarding rooms this way, or of reactions to Nikki Zavitz' description in the podcast with Pam Laricchia.

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Sandra

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I feel lonely. ?No one said "Did you wake up yet? ?What are the other parts?" ? ?:-)

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Now more than a week has passed and I can't remember what the cool other two were going to be, darn it. ?I guess that's how important it was. ?

But seriously, if people weight all things equally, they'll just go crazy from stress. ?Some things need to be very secondary. ?Some should be tertiary, and some should be not on an individual's worry list at all whatsoever. ?

If anyone wonders about "tertiary," I have a link for that. ?? ? This isn't the same page as learning/ ? (yes, I designed my site as a prairie dog might have—holes that look the same, all with escape routes, only mine also has transporters and sometimes a song or video). ? Look for Marty and a party and Holly being tertiary.In that case Marty was more important, but not as important as the people whose party it was.

It's an election season in the U.S., and young people (one of my kids among them) are being unrealistic about the value of their one single vote. ?They're using biochemicals up about it—stomach acid, and blood pressure. ? it's something about emotions, and math and statistics, and logic, and duty, and hope for the future, and the fervor of teens and young adults to feel they can change and rule the world. ?That all happens, but when it's happening and there are children in the home, the effect on those children could be negative.

Sandra

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A couple of interesting things have happened this week—small, but related.? Big, philosophically.

#3 was coming across this Just Add Light post from a while back.? Please take a look at it, and I'll share the related #2 and #1 after I sleep.

Maybe there's a #4.? Sleeping might help clarify.? :-)

Ah.? I found the "Learning and Peace" post while working on a Just Add Light and Stir for February 27/today.

It can be #3b, maybe.??

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Sandra

开云体育

Image by Karen Lundy, in 2016, based on ideas from Joyce's Toolbox cards

开云体育

==I'm hoping some here might want to sort of graph/describe their learning curves, as to "hitting continue" (deciding to learn more about unschooling) and either stepping away, or stepping up and staying with it.==

I do love a graph...although it might not be what you are asking! There was never a time I was going to step away, once I found out about unschooling, I was always going to hit continue...but there have been ups and downs in my progress, as shown on my (annotated!) graph! Green = improvements in deschooling, red = setbacks to deschooling... the % scale is my best guess!

-=-A person can feel unwelcome for a host of different reasons. Some may have something to do with others and some may be about yourself. Feelings are not facts. A person can feel unwelcome even though they are very welcome. -=-

-=-I cannot read other people's minds nor do I know their motives.-=-

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Sometimes there are sufficient clues that it's deduction and not mind reading. ?Facts can be facts without being stated explicitly, sometimes. :-)

The second year we were homeschooling, we went to a "science club" homeschooling meet-up in a park very near us. I had hoped there would be some sort of demos or activities, science related. ?Kirby was six, and Marty was three. ?

Moms were sitting on blankets and kids were on playground equipment, when we got there. ?Two of them made space for me to sit between them. ?We all smiled. ?I introduced myself. ?They said "Small boys are playing there, big boys over there (and pointed)." The girls, in two groups, were in other equipment. ?Kirby and Marty would have been in separate groups, and that would not have been fun for Marty. ?Kirby said, "I'll go with Marty."

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One mom asked brightly, "Do use Sonlight, or A Beka?"

"We're unschoolers," I said honestly, and I knew this was the end of the warm welcome. ?I wasn't feeling very warm myself, as the kids were grouped by age and gender.

When I had said that, the slight space that had been made for me became a little smaller. ?It was funny. ?It would be fun to get actors to act that out. ?Just a sort of change of posture, sitting on the ground that way and indicate "Sit here!" or "Ah.... no room." ?And that indication was made.

For anyone who doesn't know, both Sonlight and A Beka are fundamentalist Christian curriculums. ?This was 1991 or 92, when there was a HUGE Christian homeschooling movement. ?The "science" in their science group was probably going to involve Creationism, and no dinosaur play or toys. :-) ?I don't know. ?I stayed on the edge of the blanket just long enough to be polite, and went to check on the boys. ?Were they having any fun? ?Not bad; not great; they could've stayed. The other kids weren't really playing with them. ?I hung out with them a bit, and before too long we very politely thanked the moms and waved good bye.

We already had a weekly park meeting that was La Leche League based. ?That year and the next, it morphed into an unschooling group, as other families' kids went to school and some families' didn't. ?We were super welcoming of everything except discussions of curriculum. ?We didn't care if people used it, we just asked them not to talk about it there. ?So that might have made people feel unwelcome, if that's what they wanted to talk about. ? It only came up a couple of times over the years.

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Oh... about the "Sonlight or A Beka" group—we were not dressed as they were, either. ?Had I even tried to get invited back, they would have lost my number, out of courtesy. ?Sometimes it's a courtesy not to go back, or not to invite someone back. :-)

Sandra

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I think there are people who should not take a job working with children bc they don't have the patience for diversity.?

The question was about a shop, not a person who took a job working with children.

There are lots of people who work with groups of children, doing planned activities, or activities involving dangerous or messy or expensive supplies, and they have no obligation to allow ANYbody to disrupt what they have planned for a group. ? ?They have an obligation to keep peace and order (maybe quiet, even, thinking of hospital and library settings) for others in the group.

I explain to my boys that sometimes people in charge want everyone like the schools kids, to sit down and behave.. and that that they get stressed out if someone isnt like that.

Does the post office want people to line up because schools do?

At a cinema or in a grocery store, to the people in charge want everyone to wait quietly in line to buy tickets or groceries and get stressed out if someone isn't like that?

There aren't exceptions for courtesy or etiquette for unschoolers. ?Please don't add to the unfortunate body of evidence that some people have seen of unschoolers thinking it's cool to be wile.

My response to anyone that comments to me is " they are only a distraction if you let them be"

I've done many things with groups of people—with kids, mixed ages, and adults. ?If I had ever asked someone to be quieter or more attentive or to wait, I would expect them to do that or to go somewhere else. ?If a mom can't figure out a way to help her children behave courteously in public situations, they might be too young to be out. ?To tell the kids that they're fine and can do what they want, or that the other people are "letting them be a distraction" (as if there's something wrong with the other people), or that there's something special about the children that gives them a bye and an exemption, they're not learning honest things about the real world.

?maybe I am wrong to go back and get verbally humiliated infront of others, but I? tell my kids , don't treat people how we feel now and try to focus on the fun we are having..

There's nothing to be humiliated about if you help the children behave in such a way that there would be no reason in the world for the group organizer or the other parents to complain.

I don't think the original situation and the one of the museum program are similar, so I hope they're not conflated in the minds of readers. ?Here, too, the word choices ("mistreatment," "diversity," Humiliation," "hate") seem more dramatic or antagonistic than necessary. ?Other descriptors would probably bring more peace and learning to everyone involved.

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once we were in a shop and a woman told us we should go. I ?asked if she was saying we weren't welcome. She said that was right, and so we left. My son was confused and asked why we were going when we had just arrived and I told him it was because we weren't welcome. He asked why we weren’t welcome there and I didn’t myself know why, so I just told him I wasn't sure.

I don't know more about the situation myself, and I don't nkow what sort of shop, and what the child was doing. ?Maybe he wasn't doing anything loud or dangerous at all.

Some shops aren't good for kids. I've seen shops with crystal things down low, and knew that even someone with a stroller and a sleeping baby could have a hard time in small aisles and expensive merchandise. ?

Some shops have policies against too many kids being in at once, or in school-age kids being in during school hours.

?I tried to think of it from an unschooling perspective. Pick joy. Pick peace. Getting confrontational with the woman didn’t seem like picking joy or picking peace, but neither did submitting to her request that we leave. That seemed more like picking compliance, picking defeat.?

"Pick" isn't as clear or as good ads "choose," for remembering how to make decisions. :-)

Just words? ?Maybe so. ?But if advice from my site, or this group, are to be cited, I'd like for it to be clearer. ?Choose a more peaceful option, of the two or three options the mom thinks of to consider. ?

The other word choices there, though, are words that might not be necessarily as precise or clear as they could be either, though: ?"submitting," "compliance," "defeat."

"Acceptance" as in accepting that it was her shop, and it wasn't a good time to be confrontational is more joyful and peaceful than "defeat."

...before I had children, and responding with submission has consistently been my method of operating.?...

If the mom has a non-confrontational personality, there's no reason to adopt or try out confrontation just because a child is with her. ?It's more reason not to. ?The mom could be wrong—could be over-reacting, might have misunderstood. ?She might want to shield the child from bullshit if there is bullshit, and deal with it online or by phone when he's having a nap later.

Kids worry enough about things they don't understand or that are far away from them, without parents exposing them to real, immediate problems that the child can't prevent or control.

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-=-Do my choices help them feel safer? More loved? More cherished? What choices would in those moments? Are even the most helpful questions to be asking?-=-

I think those are good questions. ?

But even beyond love and safety, is the situation entertaining and fun? ?Is the child learning something interesting?

There are places that aren't fun for kids, because the merchandise is expensive or fragile, or the parent doesn't have enough money to buy something. I avoided LOTS of gift shops in museums and other places when my kids were little, because of the expense or the reality of needing to say no to happy requests for expensive (cool looking but $40) things, with three kids, or three and their friends too.

On a spectrum of frustrating and dangerous situations, there is engaging in or causing them at one end, and staying home sitting on something soft at the other, maybe. :-) ?If a parent can even imagine some ways to cause problems, then move from that "choice" to whatever is closer to more peace and mobility and reasons to smile.

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Sandra

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Two things happened this morning already, about this group.

One was that when someone on facebook (friend of friend) was asking about unschooling, and a mutual friend asked me to linke this group, I declined and linked other things instead. I had already given the Just Add Light and Stir link. :-) ?So I gave Pam Laricchia's intro page, and Joyce Fetteroll's site. ? I said this group was not for beginners. ??

This is from an unrelated e-mail:

Hit the?continue?button (Note?- once you hit?continue, you can't go back)

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It made me think of people who come to unschooling discussions and learn just a little, and decide they don't want to unschool. ?Can they fully go back??

An awareness that unschooling exists can take a lot of pressure off a person.

I think it can also add stress, when logistics and realities don't make it possible for someone who wants to unschool to do so.

I'm hoping some here might want to sort of graph/describe their learning curves, as to "hitting continue" (deciding to learn more about unschooling) and either stepping away, or stepping up and staying with it.

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Thanks,

Sandra