Living Joyfully

Helping parents cultivate a thriving unschooling lifestyle in their family.

  • Start Here
  • Deschooling
  • Unschooling
  • Parenting
  • About
  • Contact
  • Podcast
    • Q&A Episodes
    • Ten Questions Episodes
    • Interviews I’ve done …
    • TUC Talks
  • Books
    • Book Clubs
  • Network
  • Summit
  • Questions?
  • Articles
    • Spanish Translations
  • Blog
You are here: Home / Unschooling / EU005: Ten Questions with Sandra Dodd

EU005: Ten Questions with Sandra Dodd

February 3, 2016 By Pam Laricchia 6 Comments

EU005Sandra is a long-time unschooling mom of three—Kirby, Marty, and Holly—who are now adults. She’s also the creator of the awesome unschooling resource, sandradodd.com.

In today’s episode, I ask her ten questions about her unschooling experience.

Quote of the Week

“If your child is more important than your vision of your child, life becomes easier.” ~ Sandra Dodd

Ten Questions for Sandra

1. I’ve always loved your short essay, “Rejecting a Pre-Packaged Life.” I’ve linked to it in my intro to unschooling materials for years. I’m pretty sure I first came across it way back in 2002 and the paradigm shift you talk about was both fundamental and inspiring at the beginning of my unschooling journey. Can you talk a bit about that shift?

2. Before you began unschooling, you were a teacher. What were some of the challenges to learning that you saw in the classroom environment?

3. When you children were young, I imagine that with three at home sometimes conflicts arose. Can you share some of the ways you approached them?

4. As your children got older and spent more time in activities in the community, what were some of the differences you noticed between the schooled and unschooled kids?

5. One topic that pops up pretty regularly in unschooling groups is online safety—there’s a lot of fear wrapped up in there. How did you handle that?

6. Another essay of yours that I love is “Public School on Your Own Terms.” In it, you talk about how, even if unschooling isn’t an option for a family at the time, there are ways to lessen the power that school exerts over their lives. Can you share some of those ideas?

7. Your children have taken some college courses over the years. Can you share a couple of stories about their experiences?

8. What’s life like for you and your husband now that all your children have moved out? Can you still feel the influence of the unschooling lifestyle in your days?

9. You’ve continued volunteering your time and effort in the unschooling community—answering questions online, speaking, sending out Just Add Light And Stir blog posts every day, and maintaining your extensive and amazing website. That’s awesome for us all! I’d love to hear what has drawn you to stay involved, even after your children have become adults.

10. Looking back now, what, for you, has been the most valuable outcome from choosing unschooling?

Links to things mentioned in the show

Sandra’s extensive unschooling website: sandradodd.com

Sandra’s daily inspirational posts: Just Add Light and Stir

Sandra’s essay: Rejecting a Pre-Packaged Life

Sandra’s Marty story details: What do you say about sex?

Sandra’s essay: Public School on Your Own Terms

Sandra’s yahoo email list: Always Learning

You can find Sandra in the Facebook group: Radical Unschooling Info

Sandra’s magical unschooling search page: is here

If you’d like to submit a question for an upcoming Q&A episode, just go to livingjoyfully.ca/podcast.

Filed Under: Unschooling Tagged With: college, interview

Comments

  1. Jazzy Jack says

    February 6, 2016 at 5:15 pm

    I’m just lapping up these interviews with all my favourite unschoolers!
    I started unschooling and investigating unschooling at the end of last year when we decided our 10 year old with OCD would be better at home. He has thrived!
    Now my 13 year old is trying out homeschooling with this week being our first week. He adored it!
    I think I am the one struggling most with it all of course. They are just off living and exploring.
    I have Aspergers and am finding the lack of structure tricky especially as our teen is a night person and our 10 yr old a morning person.
    How do we find the time to do things together…and not stress about it!
    Also the perfectionist in me feels pressure to strew madly and run around finding things everywhere. I find it hard to turn that off and can become a little overwhelmed.
    However once we sort those issues and I calm down a little, I’m sure it will be wonderful, as it is already. It sure beats doing the school run and homework!
    Love all you do.
    Thanks so much.
    Jazzy Jack

    Reply
    • Pam Laricchia says

      February 9, 2016 at 8:56 pm

      Hi, Jazzy Jack!

      I totally remember the overwhelm of the first year or so. But you’re right, as you figure things out, learn more about unschooling and about each other, things will settle down. 🙂

      And it sure does beat the school run and homework. Haha.

      Have fun!

      Reply
  2. Fern says

    February 8, 2016 at 10:34 am

    Thanks so much for the podcasts and TUC talks. Our family loves audio…there’s a much-used radio in almost every room in the house :). I love the “quote of the week” above from Sandra. It struck me especially because it reminded me of the Patricia Evans books on verbal abuse (which includes emotional abuse that’s non-verbal too), in which she describes the opposite of making the child (or significant other, etc.) more important than one’s vision of that person. She says that is what leads to verbal abuse: constantly comparing someone with your ideal of them instead of trying to know them with them as participant. This seems to relate very much to institutional schooling compared to unschooling.

    Reply
    • Pam Laricchia says

      February 9, 2016 at 9:06 pm

      Glad you’re enjoying the podcast and talks, Fern! 🙂

      I love Sandra’s quote too, and that’s an interesting connection with Patricia Evans’ books. Your comparison with school seems apt as well—test marks and grades are a comparison of each student against a fictional ideal.

      Interesting!

      Reply
  3. Julie Lewis says

    March 16, 2016 at 9:37 am

    Laughing with you guys, so funny! I have totally told my daughter to go watch TV for the same reason!

    Reply
  4. Sandra Dodd says

    April 18, 2020 at 2:52 am

    Update: Marty got a bachelor’s degree in Economics with a minor in geography, in May 2018. His wife and baby son were there, and a month ago (March 2020) they had a baby girl.

    He works from home on a contract helping with the maps Siri’s using, for New Mexico and Colorado. If Siri steers you wrong, let me know and I’ll pass it on.

    Kirby, the oldest, is working from home, too, now, for a while, and has the girl mentioned in the interview (whom he adopted), and two more since then. They live a third of a mile from us.

    Holly moved back home, and is working on a vegetable farm closer to the Rio Grande. She’s thinking of moving closer to there someday, perhaps with enough land to grow some things. (Our own yard is too full of trees to grow any vegetables. We grew shade.)

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

The Living Joyfully Network community

The Living Joyfully Network

The Living Joyfully Network is an online community for parents worldwide to explore unschooling with other like-minded parents who are also choosing to embrace lifelong learning and develop strong and connected relationships with their children. We invite you to join our candid and wide-ranging conversations about living and learning through the lens of unschooling!

Learn more about the Network here!

free intro to unschooling ebook

Click the book cover to get the book from your favourite online retailer, or click the link below to join my mailing list and download the book directly!

What is Unschooling? A book about living and learning without school.

Exploring Unschooling Podcast

click to listen to the archive of all Exploring Unschooling podcast episodes

Choosing to live and learn without school isn’t as intimidating as you might imagine!

The podcast archive is now home to more than 300 episodes, filled with unschooling goodness.

support the podcast on Patreon

Have you read my books?

Free-to-Learn-Cover Free-to-Live-Cover Life-Through-the-Lens-of-Unschooling-Cover Living-Joyfully-with-Unschooling-Box-Set-Cover The Unschooling Journey Libre d'Apprendre cover Libre para Aprender cover Szabadon Tanulni cover

Journey with us to a new way of seeing your child

icon-logo

Join Anne Ohman, Anna Brown, and I in our online Summit where we share the experiences, insights, and tools that we found most helpful on our unschooling journeys. We will walk with you from where you are now, to where you want to be.

Looking for something?

I've been exploring unschooling for many years now and there's a lot of content here! I've been working to tag things to help you more easily find information about the questions you're curious about right now. I'll continue to work on this.

Click a topic to explore:

college

dads

deschooling

food

grown unschoolers

learning

life

math

reading

relationships

relatives

technology

teens

work

Welcome to Living Joyfully

Pam ... an online resource for parents who are curious about unschooling. If you're passionate about exploring the world with your children, this site is for you. I'm Pam Laricchia, the author and owner of this site. Thanks for inviting me along on your unschooling journey!

The Living Joyfully Network

The Living Joyfully Network is an online community for parents worldwide to explore unschooling with other like-minded parents who are also choosing to embrace lifelong learning and develop strong and connected relationships with their children.

Learn more and join us here!

SEARCH LIVING JOYFULLY

Living Joyfully participates in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program and the iTunes Affiliate Program. This allows me to earn a small commission, at no cost to you. I appreciate your support!

Read my Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy.

Copyright © 2023 · Living Joyfully Enterprises

By using this website, you agree to the use of cookies. I use cookies to provide you with a great experience and to help my website run effectively. OK READ MORE
Privacy & Cookies Policy

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary
Always Enabled
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Non-necessary
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
SAVE & ACCEPT