Valuable Information

[Sandra Dodd]

On another topic, someone wrote:

Probably the most helpful post out of the 75. No one was psychoanalyzed, just the facts of what someone’s kids needs were and how they were met. This has given me a lot to think about. Thank you.

Just imagine 75 posts like this one from 25 different families perspectives. The amount of valuable information would be astronomical. Maybe someday.

It was intended to be snarky. It was intended to criticize other posters. And significantly, it was probably the least helpful post on this site altogether.

There is an astronomical amount of valuable information from hundreds of different families' perspectives here:
http://joyfullyrejoycing.com/
http://sandradodd.com/typical (and adjoining pages)
http://unschooling.info/forum
all of those have links to other places too.

We don't have to imagine. These things have been discussed on messages boards and lists for years, and some of the best parts have been saved.

The author of the quoted comment above doesn't seem to have a homepage on this forum. I like being able to click on a name and going to see how many kids the writer has, how long she's unschooled, what she listed as a definition of unschooling, maybe a link to a blog or page.

[JennyStar]

The list type of posts are generally the ones that I skim through. It's not that I don't care what someone has taken the time to post, it's more that those sorts of posts don't help ME nearly as much as other posts.

I like to get to the thought and the idea behind something. It's kind of like understanding math. I can understand the algebraic notation and get all my answers right, but know nothing about math. Lists of things, are like that for me. I'd rather know what's behind it, so that I can take the idea and apply it to other situations.

There could be an idea or two, to be gleaned from a list, so I do skim them for such. To apply anything strictly from a list without the ideas behind those actions, though, you'd have to keep finding more and more lists to follow, to find things to apply to every situation.

But, then, that's just one person's opinion on posting styles!

I'm curious too, how many other's out there consider posting and hashing out ideas to be a method of psychoanalysis? I agree that we are taking someone's ideas and turning them around and around and around and looking at it from many angles, but are we specifically talking about the person or the idea? It seems that if we psycholanalyze someone's ideas, we really can't seperate the person from the idea. However, when I'm responding, I often forget the name of the person I'm responding to, and go straight to the ideas.

The last few posts, I intentionally used people's names, to see if it made a difference. I kept having to go back and check to make sure it was who I thought it was. There are certain people that I remember, simply because I'm familiar with their writing and ideas.

After I've written, I go and look at people's profiles that I've responded to.

[Melissa]

I don't see how it could be psychoanalysis, since we don't know the person at all?

All we have are the ideas presented. I think people just have a hard time with realizing this, and take everything so personally. I remember being new to some of the yahoo groups and feeling like it was all about me. Bwahahaha....the girls have that t-shirt!

[Robyn L. Coburn]

Oh when I read that comment about being psychoanalysed I thought the writer meant the parent was meeting the kids' needs without feeling called to analyse them. Funny how an out of context comment can sound different.