Family

200 Ways to Bless Your Children with a Happy Childhood

A Place for Me

September 1, 2012 | Categories: family, homeschooling, life, natural parenting, parenting guide, stress | Tags: childhood, children, gentle parenting, nature, outdoors, parenting, park, play, playground, positive parenting | Leave A Comment »

It’s Okay to Praise Your Child, Just Like it’s Okay to ‘Like’ this Post

As writers, we’ve all had the experience of publishing a piece we’ve worked hard putting together, and then posting it to Facebook, sharing it on Twitter, and pinning it on Pinterest…and having it just sit there, unliked, unshared, untweeted, and unpinned. Now, logically, we might know that only a small percentage of our audience sees what we share at any given time. And we know that, while some pieces we write hit just the right note at the right time and go flying around the blogosphere, others might need time to catch on or might simply remain a lonely, little, unread, unloved piece of ourselves that we’ve bravely put out there and the world has overlooked. But even knowing all of that, in those times when we share and no one hears us, when we bare our hearts and no one responds, the silence can feel like rejection, the work can feel pointless, the investment can feel wasted.

Our readers have lives of their own that usually don’t include hours of research and writing and editing and formatting and tagging and linking. They may not realize that their likes, comments, and shares are major motivators for us. They might not understand that, while our passion for our message, whatever that may be, is what drives us, their response is like a pat on the back, and a simple “Well said!” can make our day. And they may not be remotely conscious of how deflating, demoralizing, and depressing that awkward, deafening silence can be when a post goes ignored.

Most of us don’t make a penny from our blogs, but we’re okay with the heavy time investment, the personal sacrifices, and the risks involved in sharing our hearts so transparently…as long as we are heard. And how do we know if we’re being heard? Our readers’ responses, their ‘likes,’ their pins and tweets and shares, and their comments that tell us they’re listening, that they care, and that they appreciate our work.

And what makes writers want to quit? What makes them want to shut down their laptops, hang up their message, and go back to watching sit-coms, reading books, or doing whatever they used to do when they actually had downtime? Well, certainly meanness from people who’d rather cause trouble than just move on to another site, for one, but often it’s simply the silence that drains away the motivation. Sharing your heart with a world that doesn’t respond makes a person feel small, insignificant, unappreciated.

Enter the child.

A child comes to his mother with a drawing that resembles a game of pick-up-sticks and proudly announces that he’s designed a new airplane. She grins and says, “Good job!” and he runs off happily to draw some more pick-up-stick inventions. But his mother is cringing at her choice of words, wishing she’d stopped mid-diaper change with the new baby and turned her full attention to her son and said something like, “I see that you worked hard. You used lots of colors,” or something, anything that didn’t pander to his need for attention or approval. What if she turned him into a ‘praise junkie’?!? Bad mom! she castigates herself. When her son returns a few minutes later and enthusiastically shows her his pick-up-stick submarine, she’s ready. She smiles awkwardly, nods her head and says, “You obviously are trying to use your imagination. I see that you are in a creative mood. What else are you going to invent today?” in a stiff and unnatural tone. Her son stands there for a moment, not quite sure how to respond, then shrugs and drifts off to another activity.

Now, clearly, using “Good job” as a brush-off in lieu of taking the time to pay any real attention to a child is the core issue that parenting experts are getting at when they encourage parents to focus on the child and the effort instead of the product or achievement. But so often parents read these kinds of articles and come away feeling, as a concerned mother recently expressed to me, “Like I’m doing it all wrong. I feel like I’m messing up my child when I tell him I like what he’s done.” That mother wasn’t brushing her child off with her praise. She was interacting with her child with a natural, honest enthusiasm that may now be damaged by something she read. It breaks my heart to think of her little guy running up to show her his latest creation only to be met with an unnatural and stilted response because his mother is afraid her instincts aren’t good enough.

Here’s the thing, a healthy, natural, loving parent/child relationship trumps all. It is the foundation for autonomy, not merely a satellite aid to independence. It is the wellspring of confidence and trust that leads to exploration, creativity, and innovation. It is the safe harbor from which daring and boldness and risk can be launched to take on the world.

A parent whose focus is on connection will respond to their child’s need in the moment, whether that need is praise for a job well done or encouragement in the face of failure. A parent focused on ‘getting the words right’ may well inadvertently leave their child’s present needs unmet because they are afraid to respond naturally.

Just as it is the hungry child, not the satisfied child, who craves food, it is unmet needs that lead to attention seeking behaviors and unspoken approval that can create ‘praise junkies’ as the unpraised child seeks to fill the very human need we all have for validation.

Just as with adults, and specifically with those of us who are writers, children need to know they are being heard and appreciated. A ‘like’ on a post to us is like a pat on the back to a child, and a “Well said!” to a writer is like a “Good job!” to a child. In the same way that these acknowledgements don’t undermine our driving passions, but support and encourage them, spontaneous and sincere expressions of appreciation to a child don’t undermine a child’s passion to learn and grow and become. It is, in fact, the exact opposite. A parent’s sincere, spontaneous praise encourages and motivates a child to blossom in the warmth of their approval.

With my six children, while they are infants I am happy to let them independently scoot and shuffle and roll in an effort to reach a toy, but I am there to offer help the second they express frustration so they will grow up knowing that they never have to struggle alone in life. When they are older and happily working on a drawing or popsicle-stick invention, I don’t hesitate to spontaneously express my enjoyment of their creation. That isn’t interference. It’s a connection point, a message that they don’t have to actively seek my approval for it to be theirs.

I know that the world won’t always treat my children kindly. I know that failure, disapproval, and rejection will inevitably be a part of their lives. But I want my children to grow up knowing that there is one place in the world where help is always available, and approval, acceptance, and appreciation are always freely offered. I want my children to have the assurance of a safe harbor to return to so that they will have the confidence to take on all the challenges the world will throw at them.

And so, parents, the message here is this: Read and research and educate yourself about all the various ideas and methods and theories about how to raise happy, healthy, confident children, but at the end of the day remember that you are your child’s parent. You love your child more and know them better than anyone else on earth. Don’t let anything stop you from responding naturally and lovingly to your child’s needs, whether those needs are for a high-five, a “Good job,” a thumb’s up, or just a great big bear hug.

Remember, the only bad praise is the sincerely meant praise that is silenced. ~L.R.Knost

“Well done, good and faithful servant.” Matt. 25:21

Listen to the sound of silence.

Your Baby isn’t Trying to Annoy You; He’s Trying to Communicate!

Tots to Teens~Communication Through the Ages and Stages

Jesus~The Gentle Parent

3 Simple Steps from Diapers to Potty

A Place to Rest~Becoming Your Child’s Safe Harbor

Love in the Time of Cosleeping

The Butterfly Effect

Two Thousand Kisses a Day: Gentle Parenting Through the Ages and Stages

I Spy…A Bad Mom

June 28, 2012 | Categories: childhood, children, communication, family, life, pinterest, positive parenting, praise | Tags: children, communication, encouragement, positive parenting, praise | 22 Comments »

Mona Lisa Smiles

I’ve been ‘single-parenting’ it for almost two months now as my amazing husband has been gone day and night, working his day job and then heading nearly an hour away to help his family renovate an old home. It’s for a single mom who needs a place to move with her son because she’s losing her home to foreclosure, so there’s a time pressure involved. My husband is a skilled builder, so the renovation has fallen mainly to him, and with the narrow time frame he has to work with, the pressure has been pretty intense.

Nearly every day after work he heads straight to the reno house and works late into the night, often just staying there and sleeping so he can get up and go straight to work again. Between all of his extra driving and the times the children and I have driven over just so we can see him for a few minutes and get a tour of the work he’s doing, our gas budget has nearly doubled. That’s just not sustainable for a one-income family, so we’ve had to stop going to see him.

What that’s meant for me is a hubby who’s absent most of the time (read: no breaks for mama!) and who, when he does come home, is stressed and tired and tapped-out. Now, by ‘breaks for mama’ I don’t mean time away from my children. I don’t want or need to leave my little ones. But normally along with all of the sacrifices, compromises, and hard work that goes into keeping a long-term marriage healthy, there is companionship, caring, support, and a sharing of responsibilities.

In our family, mama having a break means daddy is the one who listens, at least for a little while, to the endless stories about snails that our little mud-magnet is into sharing at the moment. It means daddy takes a turn at the helm in helping our SPD girl cope when she gets overwhelmed. It means daddy takes our currently teething, clingy, diaper-rashed, sad little milk monkey out in the evenings to sing Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star to the moon (she’s a bit confused, but it’s adorable) so mama can take a shower alone. And, of course, all of that’s in addition to him running to the store, helping out around the house, fixing what’s broken, grilling dinner occasionally, etc.

But for the last two months all of the myriad details that go into running our home…homeschooling, juggling teenagers’ schedules, shepherding a high-spirited kindergartener, keeping up with a toddler, handling the bills, doing the banking and shopping and cleaning, coping with a broken dryer, and on and on and on…have all fallen entirely to me. Add to that some pretty hefty life-stressors we’re dealing with at the moment outside of our marriage and home…

And I’m tired.

And my hubby is tired.

And we’ve unconsciously fallen into the ‘my needs vs. your needs’ vicious cycle. You know the one:

First volley: “This is what I did all day.” (Translation: I need you to acknowledge me.)
“Well, this is what I did all day.” (Translation: I need you to acknowledge me.)

Second volley: “These are the reasons I did what I did all day.”
(Translation: I need you to understand me.)
“Well, these are the reasons I did what I did all day.”
(Translation: I need you to understand me.)

Third volley: “This is why what I did was harder than what you did.”
(Translation: I really need you to hear me.)
“Well, this is why what I did was harder than what you did.”
(Translation: I really need you to hear me.)

Fourth volley: “You didn’t do this.” (Translation: I’ll make you hear me.)
“Well, you didn’t do this.” (Translation: I’ll make you hear me.)

Unmet needs result in an ever-escalating cycle of attempts to get those needs met. And, as long as those two little letters ‘vs’ stand between ‘my needs’ being met and ‘your needs’ being met, the cycle will continue. Someone has to break the cycle, and the solution is always the same: Sacrifice.

Someone has to step up and stand down. Someone has to let go of their own needs and focus on meeting the other’s needs, not in an attempt to manipulate that person to meet their own needs, but with an honest generosity of spirit, a choosing to lay down self, a living expression of love.

And ‘someone’ will. Our marriage wouldn’t have lasted for twenty-five years and counting, otherwise! But I wanted to share some of the dynamics of breaking the ‘need standoff’ in a relationship while they’re fresh in my mind.

There are endless contributing factors to who stands down and when, from the differences in love languages, to past hurts and experiences, to upbringing, to the circumstances of the conflict itself. And standing down can take many different forms. It may mean moving on without receiving the apology you believe you deserve. It may mean letting go of the need to explain your position. It may take the form of an apology from you or a verbal indication that you are choosing to let go of the conflict. Or it may take the form of a favorite meal, flowers, a back rub, a gift, or some other loving act.

Sometimes the one who chooses (note: an active choice, not a reactive/self-protective response as in an abusive/controlling relationship) to stand down in a relationship is the same person most, if not all, of the time. This is often the result of a peacemaking personality. If you feel you are ‘always’ the one to stand down, consider these two things:

1.) Are you really the one to always stand down or is that just a perception you need to work through?

2.) Do you have a peacemaking personality? In other words, do you tend to be the calming factor in most of your relationships?

If you do, in fact, have a peacemaking personality, be aware that it is a rare gift that comes with great responsibility. Someone once asked me why they always had to be the one to “put out the fires” in their relationship. Knowing this person to be a peacemaker in all of their relationships, I said, “Because God gave you the hose.”

While it can certainly be frustrating to be in that position, instead of letting it cause resentment to take hold, imagine how difficult life can be for those who don’t have that inner calm, and try to focus on the strengths they do have rather than fixating on the gifts they don’t have. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses, and focusing on people’s strengths (as well as being aware of our own weaknesses!) helps us to give them grace for their weaknesses.

*Take note, when it comes to parent/child relationships, the parent must always take the role of peacemaker, regardless of personality or gifts. Children not only don’t have an adult’s capacity for self-control, but they also don’t bear the responsibility for maintaining the relationship.

And so, in our home, with both parents tapped-out, tired, and out-of-sorts, we’ve found ourselves in that place of competing to get our needs met. Our children have, of course, joined in the ‘needs games,’ little reflectors that they are. It’s made for a less-than-joyful interval in what we typically refer to as the joyful chaos of our lives.

Then, last night as my miserably teething little milk monkey woke me up for the zillionth time with her crying and whimpering and tossing and turning and climbing from one side of me to the other and nursing and nursing and nursing and nursing until I thought I might explode, she suddenly stopped mid-climb, mid-cry, and pressed her ear against my heart. And then, with her tiny body draped across my belly and her head cradled between my breasts, she sighed and relaxed, a little Mona Lisa smile curving her sweet mouth as she finally succumbed to a peaceful sleep.

And in that moment, that tiny, mysterious, contented smile called me to surrender. To surrender to heart-meltingly sweet moments. To embrace again the extraordinary loveliness of ordinary life. To marvel at the littleness of the issues that set us apart and the bigness of the love that holds us together.

Love is a choice, not a feeling. Feelings shift, flowing now hot, now cold. They lead nowhere, and instead are misleading with their mercurial, capricious nature.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.Love never fails. 1 Corinthians 13

I choose love.

Your Baby isn’t Trying to Annoy You; He’s Trying to Communicate!

Tots to Teens~Communication Through the Ages and Stages

A Boy, A Girl, and A Baby~Journey to Gentle Parenting

Love in the Time of Cosleeping

An Ordinary Man

June 25, 2012 | Categories: breastfeeding, communication, cosleeping, economics, family, finances, life, love, marriage, money, motherhood, stress, wisdom, wise council | Tags: communication, family, sacrifice | 8 Comments »

The Trouble With Kids Today

[Portions reprinted from Two Thousand Kisses a Day: Gentle Parenting Through the Ages and Stages by L.R.Knost available on Amazon]

“People are telling parents like me that we are failing our children because we practice controlled discipline in our homes. I say: the children that are raised without it are the ones being abused and robbed of the chance of success in adulthood.” Controlled discipline in the eyes of this author of I Don’t Like Spanking My Kids, But I Do It Anyway is physical punishment. Equating discipline with punishment is a common misconception, but she is, unfortunately, not alone in her stance.

Many of today’s most popular self-proclaimed parenting ‘experts’ also equate physical punishment with discipline and go to great lengths to describe the best methods and tools for hitting children along with instructing parents to maintain a calm, controlled, and even cheerful demeanor as they ‘lovingly’ hit their children.

It is interesting to note here that, when it comes to the law, crimes of passion are treated as less heinous than premeditated, planned, and purposefully executed crimes which are termed ‘in cold blood.’ And yet when physically punishing a child, a crime in many places across the globe, hitting in anger or frustration (i.e. passion) is deemed wrong by proponents of spanking, while hitting children with calm and deliberate intent (i.e. premeditation) is encouraged.

It is also interesting to note that, in the not-too-distant past, husbands hitting their wives was also viewed as not only a societal norm, but a necessary part of maintaining a harmonious, successful marriage. In fact, a man who epitomizes the words calm and controlled, Sean Connery, shared his thoughts on the ’reasonable smacking’ of his wife in a 1987 interview with Barbara Walters:

The core belief behind ‘reasonable smacking’ of wives was that there was no other effective way to control them. I have to agree. If controlling another human being is the goal, then force is necessary. Fear, intimidation, threats, power-plays, physical pain, those are the means of control.

But if growing healthy humans is the goal, then building trust relationships, encouraging, guiding, leading, teaching, communicating, those are the tools for success.

Many parents simply don’t know what else to do. They were raised with spanking as a means of control and “turned out okay” so they default to their own parents’ parenting choices without researching alternatives to spanking or considering whether “okay” could be improved upon.

As to the I Don’t Like Spanking My Kids, But I Do It Anyway author’s contention that “We are raising a generation of children who are over-sensitive because they eventually find out that they aren’t as good at baseball or ballet as some other kid and their parents promised them that everyone is equal. They feel entitled because we teach them that they should. They throw tantrums when life doesn’t go their way because their parents have tiptoed around them to make sure that it does,” that reasoning sounds strangely familiar.

People throughout history have complained about ‘the trouble with kids these days.’ They’ve pinned all the ills of their society on permissive parenting. They’ve ranted about out-of-control children, disrespectful youth, entitlement, spoiling, disobedience, violence, self-centeredness, etc:

“The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority, they show disrespect to their elders…. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and are tyrants over their teachers.”
~Socrates, 5th Century BC

“What is happening to our young people? They disrespect their elders, they disobey their parents. They ignore the law. They riot in the streets inflamed with wild notions.
Their morals are decaying. What is to become of them?”
~Plato, 5th Century BC

“I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words… When I was young, we were taught to be discreet and
respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly wise [disrespectful] and impatient of restraint”
~Hesiod, 8th Century BC

“The world is passing through troublous times. The young people of today think of nothing but themselves. They have no reverence for parents or old age. They are impatient of all restraint. They talk as if they knew everything, and what passes for wisdom with us is foolishness with them. As for the girls, they are forward, immodest and unladylike in speech, behavior and dress.”
~Peter the Hermit, 13th Century AD

My grandpa notes the world’s worn cogs
And says we’re going to the dogs.
His grandpa in his house of logs
Said things were going to the dogs.
His grandpa in the Flemish bogs
Said things were going to the dogs.
His grandpa in his hairy togs
Said things were going to the dogs.
But this is what I wish to state:
The dogs have had an awful wait.
~Unknown, circa 1936

Small children disturb your sleep, big children your life.
~Yiddish Proverb

Perhaps, just perhaps, there isn’t any ‘trouble with kids today.’ Maybe the trouble is with societies who view normal stages of development as somehow abnormal. Maybe the problem is with parents who repeat the patterns their own parents set and don’t delve into the belief system they are now passing along to their children. Or maybe the problem is simply the rose-colored glasses older generations tend to have about their own youth when they share idealized versions of ‘the good old days.’

Could it be that ’kid’s today’ are just kids like they have been through the ages, full of exuberance and curiosity and learning their way in a great big world? Could it be that a listening ear, gentle guidance, and trusted arms to turn to when inevitable mistakes are made are really all children need to grow up into kind, helpful, responsible, productive members of our society?

Consider this, ”Since more than 90% of American parents admit to spanking their children, it’s hard to accept that a decline in spanking is responsible for the purportedly escalating rates of youth violence and crime. Could it be that the 90% of children who are subject to violence at home in the form of being slapped, paddled, smacked, yanked, whipped, popped, spanked, etc. are taking those lessons out into the world? Is it just possible that children who are hit learn to hit? That children who are hurt learn to hurt? Perhaps the lesson they are learning is that ‘might is right’ and violence is the answer to their problems, the outlet for their stress, the route to getting others to do what they want.” Better Children, Better World

Could it be that sowing peace in our homes is the answer after all?

12 Steps to Gentle Parenting

Practical, Gentle, Effective Discipline

Tots to Teens~Communication Through the Ages and Stages

Jesus~The Gentle Parent

Your Baby isn’t Trying to Annoy You; He’s Trying to Communicate!

Babes and Boundaries~A Gentle Parenting Perspective

One Slippery Sock & Other Silly Tools for your Parenting Toolbox!

The Measure of Success~Chinese Parents and French Parents Can’t BOTH Be Superior!

June 3, 2012 | Categories: abuse, adolescence, childhood, children, communication, elderly, family, fear, gentle discipline, gentle parenting, life, positive discipline, positive parenting, spanking, Uncategorized | Tags: adolescence, childhood, children, communication, discipline, family, gentle discipline, gentle parenting, parenting, positive parenting, teens | 27 Comments »

Motherhood~The Timeless Tapestry

The old preacher’s slightly shaky voice and once-hearty arthritic hands spoke of life and experience and hard-won wisdom as he held up a dusty tapestry with the backside facing us. The tangle of threads that seemed to go nowhere and snarl of multicolored knots gave no hint of the picture on the other side. “This is what we see,” he said. Then he turned the tapestry around to display the intricate, painstakingly crafted, exquisite picture on the front side. “And this is what God is doing.” He looked around the room, a kind and gentle understanding in his age-dimmed gaze. “Faith is trusting that your Father’s hands are carefully weaving a beautiful life’s story, even when all you can see is chaos.”

I remember this story often when life feels overwhelming, when big things like layoffs and sicknesses hit, and when small things like cranky toddlers, piles of laundry, and broken a/c units annoy. What feels to me like an endless cycle of dishes and diapers, punctuated by the odd disaster, must look like brilliant threads of golden perseverance, scarlet sacrifice, and soft blue-grey shades of faith, all woven tenderly into my life’s tapestry in my Father’s skillful hands.

I imagine life feels this way to my children, as well. As I try to teach and guide and nourish and encourage my children to grow into the beautiful humans they were created to be, they may not see the picture I am trying to weave.

They may not understand why they’re gently redirected when they try to crawl up the stairs or why bugs don’t make a good afternoon snack. They may not be able to fathom why their new dragonfly ‘pet’ isn’t allowed in the house or why they can’t hide in “the best hiding place EVER” in a hot car on a steamy Florida afternoon. They may not agree with the no-social-media rule and lack of a cell phone in their early teen years when “everybody has one!” And they may not fully get why the mall is not an approved hangout spot and why periodic texts to check in when out with friends are part of our family rules in their later teen years.

But, while these things may seem like meaningless threads or even unnecessary knots and tangles in their lives, the trust we share helps them to accept what they don’t understand, knowing that I have a purpose for each of these things even if they can’t see it.

It is that trust, that faith in my motives, my wisdom, my love, that makes gentle parenting possible. I don’t have to enforce my ‘rules’ with punishments or control my children with threats or intimidation because they know that I have their best interests at heart and that I will always, always listen to their concerns, even if I can’t change things or give them what they want.

I start building that trust from the moment my children are born and continue building it throughout their childhood. I respond quickly and consistently to their cries, whether they are eight days, eight years, or eighteen years old. I meet their needs as fully as I am able, whether those needs are a clean diaper, a full belly, a listening ear, or a warm hug. I respond gently and thoughtfully to their behaviors, whether they are having a meltdown, whining, tattling, questioning, or even challenging me.

And, perhaps most importantly, I’m honest about my own imperfections, am willing to apologize when I make one of my many parenting mistakes, and don’t expect perfection from my very human children.

Life is messy. No one has all the answers, at least not earth-side. But we can all trust that this sometimes bewildering, sometimes joyful, sometimes flat-out painful chaos called life has meaning and purpose and beauty beyond the scope of human sight. And as we carefully and gently weave the strands of our children’s days into a beautiful childhood, we can trust that our Father is thoughtfully and tenderly doing the same for us.

On a somewhat side note, my stillborn son, Sammy’s, birthday is coming up in a couple of weeks. While he’s always in my heart, as his birthday approaches my heart tightens in my chest a bit more each day until the ache becomes almost unbearable, and then finally the day passes and I can breathe again. I wonder how tragedy must look from Heaven’s side. I wonder about my Sammy and my other lost babies, gone before they even had birthdays. What colors did they add to my story? What eternal beauty did they bring that would have made my tapestry incomplete if they had not come and gone, so heartbreakingly briefly, into my life? While I feel holes in my heart, one for each much-wanted child, and an aching cavern of loss for my Sammy, would my life have been complete without them? I can’t answer these questions. I won’t even try. But I imagine that is where faith stretches its silken blue-grey threads across my story like the fragile gossamer wings of a butterfly.

“Now we see through a glass darkly; then we shall see clearly, face to face. Now I know in part, then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” 1 Corinthians 13:12

A Boy, A Girl, and A Baby~Journey to Gentle Parenting

A Place to Rest~Becoming Your Child’s Safe Harbor

Tots to Teens~Communication Through the Ages and Stages

May 11, 2012 | Categories: adolescence, attachment parenting, Bible, birth, character, children, Christian, Christian parenting, communication, family, gentle parenting, life, loss, miscarriage, motherhood, pregnancy loss, teens, wisdom | Tags: adolescence, attachment, attachment parenting, Bible, children, Christian, Christian parenting, gentle parenting, sacrifice, stillbirth, teens | 4 Comments »

Bubble-Wrapped Kids? You bet!

[By L.R.Knost, author of Two Thousand Kisses a Day: Gentle Parenting Through the Ages and Stages now available on Amazon and through other major retailers.]

There is a lot of debate in the blogosphere about Helicopter Parenting and Bubble-Wrapped or Cotton-Wool Kids. I make no apologies for protecting my children. They say crime is down. Maybe per capita it is overall down. Maybe there are less arrests or convictions or whatever. Or maybe there is less shoplifting and littering and other non-violent crimes. Or maybe ’they’ are wrong. I don’t know, and I don’t care.

Walk into a Wal-Mart and look at the wall of missing children, and you’ll see new faces nearly every day. Turn on the news, and you’re almost guaranteed to hear about a new heinous crime against a child. Misspell something on Google, and the sites that will appear in your search results will sicken you.

But if none of that were true, I’d still be the protective parent that I am. I’d still be that parent because of one sweet little local girl who was lost forever to a fiend. When I hear the name Jessica Lunsford, my heart shivers to a blood-curdling stop for a brief moment, and I have to catch my breath.

I remember the days after she went missing. I remember praying for her safety, praying for her family, praying for the rescuers and volunteers who were searching day and night for her. I remember checking for news updates multiple times a day, a silent prayer in my heart, begging, “Please, God, please.”

And the whole time I was praying, the whole time rescuers, family, friends, volunteers were searching, she was mere yards from her home being kept in a closet by a depraved monster who abused her and then buried her alive.

So, yes, I do guard my children closely. Outside play is free, muddy, messy, regular…and supervised. Bike riding is a family activity. Public bathroom trips are on the buddy-system. Sleepovers are almost exclusively at our house.

My children are homeschooled, but the oldest two started out in public school. For those few years, I drove them to and from school. I chaperoned field trips. I volunteered as a teacher’s aid.

There is more history to my journey, of course. There are happenings in my childhood I won’t share. There are people in my past who did what they should not.

And there are other things that led me here, to this place of mama lioness guarding her young fiercely, to this 5’1” person who could and would take on the most ferocious of threats to protect her children, to this gentle mother who will face the vileness of the world fearlessly and boldly to guard her little ones’ hearts, minds, and bodies. There is more, so much more I have seen and heard and experienced, but that will remain unsaid.

I will not apologize for protecting my children, no matter what the newest label or theory or study shows. My children are free to climb trees, hang from monkey bars, and play king-of-the-mountain on huge dirt mounds. But they aren’t free to hang out at the mall alone. They can scavenge their daddy’s workshop for scrap wood and other ‘treasures’ and use his tools to build…well, whatever their incredible imaginations come up with! But they can’t walk to the store by themselves. They can troll the beach for shells and explore the rocky inlet for sand dollars and sea urchin. But they aren’t allowed to surf the internet without supervision.

Freedom to explore. Freedom to grow. Freedom to discover. Freedom to become who they are meant to be. All within the boundaries of parental guidance and protection. That is how it is in our home. And our home is truly a happy and safe place to be.

The Measure of Success~Chinese Parents and French Parents Can’t BOTH Be Superior!

Tots to Teens~Communication Through the Ages and Stages

Better Children, Better World

Pinky or The Brain?

Character Counts!

Can We Talk?

The sWord and The sTone

Babes and Boundaries~A Gentle Parenting Perspective

Into the Looking Glass~Teens and Self-Esteem

May 4, 2012 | Categories: childhood, children, family, gentle parenting, helicopter parent, homeschooling, life, loss, play, wisdom | Tags: bubble wrapped kids, childhood, children, explore, freedom, gentle parenting, over-protective parenting, play, safety | 8 Comments »

Avenging Childhood~The Change Makers

As I drove out of my driveway this afternoon, I glanced up and saw The Avengers racing around my neighbor’s yard, intent on fighting crime (or each other or the dog or some dragonflies, lol). It made my heart so happy to see childhood…just real, everyday, the-way-children-through-the-ages-have-played kind of childhood at its most honest and robust and carefree. I jumped out of my van and proceeded to confirm my neighbor’s suspicions that I’m a little off my rocker by wildly waving my camera in the air and pointing at her adorable boys roughhousing, silently asking for permission to play paparazzi. She nodded, and the boys hammed it up for me for a few minutes, posing and posturing in their wonderful world of make-believe.

I climbed back into my van amidst my little girls’ giggles (pretty sure they were laughing more at me for taking pictures of the neighbors rather than laughing at the boys’ antics). As we headed off on our afternoon errands, I thought about how the world has changed, but children haven’t. Yes, over time the world will do its share of influencing or corrupting, as the case may be, but children are born children just like they have been since the beginning of time.

Every child is born a fresh, new, open book with pages and pages waiting to be filled. Everything is new. Every day is an adventure. Every experience is an opportunity for discovery. Whether they’re boys or girls, whether they have average or advanced or impaired cognitive or motor abilities, whether they’re Asian or Caucasian, Black or Middle Eastern, Hispanic or (as a growing number are worldwide) a unique blend of races and ethnicities, they all start out the same…brand-new, innocent, precious beyond compare.

I am passionate about helping parents fill the first pages of their children’s lives with messages of gentle welcome, of needs met, of trust. I’m equally passionate about helping parents transition into later stages where they are simply there to offer guidance, support, and encouragement as their children begin filling the pages of their lives with their own choices, interests, and gifts.

I’ve heard it said that only those crazy enough to think they can change the world actually do change it. I honestly believe that changing the world starts at home with how we parent our children. Maybe my neighbor is right about me, after all.

*Book art via Anagram Bookshop*

The sWord and The sTone

The Butterfly Effect

The Measure of Success~Chinese Parents and French Parents Can’t BOTH Be Superior!

April 6, 2012 | Categories: books, Captain America, childhood, children, comic books, diversity, family, gentle discipline, gentle parenting, graphic novel, life, newborn, play, race, wisdom | Tags: books, childhood, children, diversity, family, gentle discipline, gentle parenting, newborn, outdoors, play, The Avengers | Leave A Comment »

The Butterfly Effect

In the 2004 movie, The Butterfly Effect, 20-year-old Evan (Ashton Kutcher) goes back in time to try to change events from his traumatic childhood in an attempt to change his dysfunctional adulthood. The movie’s title is based on a mathematical prediction concept in chaos theory.

“In chaos theory, the butterfly effect is the sensitive dependence on initial conditions, where a small change at one place in a nonlinear system can result in large differences to a later state. The name of the effect, coined by Edward Lorenz, is derived from the theoretical example of a hurricane’s formation being contingent on whether or not a distant butterfly had flapped its wings several weeks before.

Although the butterfly effect may appear to be an esoteric and unusual behavior, it is exhibited by very simple systems: for example, a ball placed at the crest of a hill might roll into any of several valleys depending on slight differences in initial position.

The phrase refers to the idea that a butterfly’s wings might create tiny changes in the atmosphere that may ultimately alter the path of a tornado or delay, accelerate, or even prevent the occurrence of a tornado in another location. The flapping wing represents a small change in the initial condition of the system, which causes a chain of events leading to large-scale alterations of events. Had the butterfly not flapped its wings, the trajectory of the system might have been vastly different.” (Wikipedia)

So what does chaos theory have to do with parenting? Besides the obvious connection between chaos and parenting, it’s about understanding the concept of “sensitive dependence on initial conditions,” in other words, the power of early parenting choices to affect a child’s future.

It is a well-documented fact that early childhood experiences powerfully influence later adulthood. A childhood marred by abuse, violence, trauma, has profound implications in adulthood. From continued cycles of abuse to depression and other mental illnesses to relational and life-satisfaction issues, the negative effects are often far-reaching and destructive.

Not so well-documented is how the smaller differences in ‘initial conditions,’ or early parenting choices, can have significantly divergent outcomes. In these cases, it isn’t abusive or neglect-filled childhoods versus normal childhoods that create the different outcomes, but instead more subtle differences in parenting that may have differing and often unforeseen long-term effects.

One family may breastfeed, another formula-feed. One family may bed-share, another room-share, while another sleeps entirely separately. One family may homeschool, another chooses private school, while another chooses a public education. One family may discipline through connection, another through negative or positive reinforcement, while another may focus on punitive behavioral controls. Each parenting choice is a different ‘initial condition’ which can affect the overall trajectory of a child’s life in powerful ways with the resulting ‘valley’ of adult behavior, relationships, career choices, etc. varying widely.

It is beyond the scope of this article to go into the many studies that have connected specific parenting choices with their statistical outcomes. Here are some links to studies on the long-term causal effects of breastfeeding, spanking, and a Harvard study on health as it pertains to early childhood experiences. But just the understanding that our decisions as parents do have a long-range impact on our children’s futures is enough to encourage careful consideration in making those decisions.

The goal in parenting, however, can never be perfection because we are imperfect people raising imperfect people in an imperfect world. So, while being aware of the import of our decisions and making wise, educated choices is important, it is just as important to expect and account for parental missteps. Our mistakes can, in fact, become a vital part of raising our children to be gracious, forgiving adults. If we model taking personal responsibility for our mistakes along with forgiving ourselves, then our missteps can become virtual ‘butterflies’ on the slope into adulthood, redirecting the trajectory of our children’s lives in a positive direction.

That concept, the redirective effect of the ‘butterfly’ on the slope into adulthood applies elsewhere, as well. If we find that parental choices we’ve made in the past have sent our children in a direction we are unhappy with, we can redirect by setting in motion a butterfly’s wings, in other words, we can shift our parenting style and reroute the trajectory of our children’s lives.

Here are a few illustrations of The Butterfly Effect as it applies to parenting redirections…

A young girl with dyslexia comes home from school day after day in tears, exhausted and overwhelmed, only to have to spend hours at night struggling through homework, more tears, and then get up the next day to do it all over again. Her father realizes that with his daughter’s unique learning style, traditional schooling is like teaching a butterfly to swim, with the result that his little butterfly’s wings would be forever damaged, and she’d never learn to fly. He turns his life upside down to make the time to homeschool her and find ways to emphasize her strengths and turn her weaknesses into gifts. His daughter transforms from a withdrawn child with low self-worth into a confident young lady soaring into a bright future.

A young mother brings home a precious newborn she loves with every fiber of her being. She wants the absolute best for her child and has read book after book saying that proper training of a child has to start right from the beginning. It hurts her all the way down to her soul as each night she gently and lovingly tucks her sweet baby into his crib and walks away, closing the door on his cries and sliding down onto her knees in the hallway to spend night after sleepless night crying right along with him. After the first torturous nights, she finds that her baby isn’t nursing well on the strict schedule the books suggested, and her milk supply hadn’t come in as expected. The pediatrician diagnoses failure-to-thrive and suggests supplementing with formula. As the young mother leaves the doctor’s office in tears, feeling like her body has failed her, an older mother sees her distress and approaches her in the parking lot. When the young mother pours out her story, the older mother shares her own struggles and discoveries over the years, ending by encouraging the young mother to bring her baby into her room at night and nurse him on demand to see if her milk supply increases. The young mother is relieved to hear there are alternatives to the rigid training methods she’d read about. She takes the older mother’s advice and, over the next days discovers that not only does her milk supply increase substantially, but both her and her new baby are finally getting some sleep! She tosses the parenting books and spreads her parenting wings, parenting from the heart, making every parenting decision by first asking herself how she would want someone to respond to her if she were the child. Her son grows up strong and healthy, with a deep respect and empathy for others.

A father is struggling with his three-year-old’s temper. He has poured himself into raising his daughter ‘right’ from birth, reading her stories every night, feeding her nutritious foods, getting her into the best preschool, correcting her with carefully controlled spankings dealt in love and followed by hugs and kisses. As he heads to pick up his daughter from preschool, his stomach tightens in dread. For the second time that week they’ve called him to report another incidence of aggressive behavior by his daughter, and he knows when they get home he’ll have to punish her. He sighs in discouragement. She used to be such a sweet, bubbly little girl. Now she just seems to simmer, anger hovering just beneath the surface ready to burst out at the slightest provocation. He signs his daughter out, then reaches out to help her into her coat. She flinches at his touch and flings her tiny hands up instinctively to protect herself. For one moment, their eyes meet, and the father’s heart freezes. Fear. Ever so briefly, instead of that too-familiar anger clouding his little girl’s eyes, fear had stared back at him. Feeling sick, the father gently helps his daughter into her coat and picks her up, hiding his tears by hugging her close as he walks to the car. Never again, he vows. Never again will his precious daughter look at him in fear. At home, he sits his daughter down and tells her that he’s sorry, that hands are for helping, not hitting, and that they’re going to work together to find better ways to handle things when people don’t do what they want. His daughter’s anger eases over time and trust returns. She grows into a compassionate young woman, serving her community with a gentle passion that wins hearts everywhere she goes.

In each case, the parent was faced with the reality that the track their parenting choices had placed their child was on wasn’t optimal, and each parent responded by shifting course and altering the trajectory of their child’s lives, in turn altering their child’s future in immeasurable ways.

The message here is this…our parental choices matter. They matter in life-defining ways that we can’t even imagine when we wrap those precious new lives in the cocoon of our love and set them on a path which we hope and pray will help them to spread their wings and fly. Choose wisely, parents, and don’t be afraid to change course in mid-flight if the winds are blowing in the wrong direction.

On the importance of early childhood experiences:

The sWord and The sTone

A Mile in Their Shoes

The Measure of Success~Chinese Parents and French Parents Can’t BOTH Be Superior!

March 31, 2012 | Categories: abuse, attachment parenting, birth, breastfeeding, childhood, children, cosleeping, diversity, family, gentle discipline, gentle parenting, homeschooling, meltdown, natural parenting, newborn, nursing, parenting guide, positive discipline, positive parenting, preschooler, rebellion, soothing, spanking, stress, toddler, Uncategorized, wisdom | Tags: attachment parenting, breastfeeding, childhood, children, cosleeping, discipline, family, gentle discipline, gentle parenting, homeschooling, natural parenting, positive parenting, preschoolers, sacrificial parenting, toddler | 10 Comments »

In the Best Interests of the Child

You are peacefully breastfeeding your 15 month old baby, cuddled up together in bed like every other night, when a hard pounding on the door jolts your little one awake. As you try to soothe her tears, two police officers and a social worker come into the room. The police read a warrant while the social worker snatches your little one out of your arms and marches out of the room, and the sound of your precious baby’s traumatized screams fade into the night.

Your homeschool year has ended and your family is boarding a flight, happily anticipating an exciting move back to your family’s country of origin. Suddenly, a fully armed police unit storms the plane and snatches your son out of his seat. You rush after them, begging them to give your son back to you, only to watch helplessly as your son is taken away by social services, bewildered tears running down his face.

You arrive to pick up your preschooler from daycare and are suddenly surrounded, handcuffed, and taken into custody where you are strip-searched with no explanation. Meanwhile, a contingent of officers has stormed your house, and Social Services has seized your children and is interrogating your pregnant wife, again with no explanation

While these scenes may seem like they’re straight out of a made-for-tv movie script, they are actually based on real events. In 2011, fifteen-month-old baby Alma was taken from her young mother when Spanish officials decided that breastfeeding and cosleeping were not acceptable forms of parenting. In Sweden in 2009, seven-year-old Dominic was snatched off of a plane and taken into protective custody where he remains to this day. His parents were accused of homeschooling him. And in Canada in March of 2012, little four-year-old Nevaeh set off a firestorm in the life of her family when she drew a picture of her daddy fighting monsters with a gun.

Scenes like these and others are played out in nations around the world when parental choices come into conflict with governmental controls. In nations governed by dictatorships, military rule, and communist parties, the abuses of the power wielded by officials are unfortunate facts of life, and parental choice is a foreign concept. But in democratic nations, parents expect to be able to exercise their rights to make life decisions for their family, including their underage children, without undue interference from their government. Increasingly, however, these parents are discovering just how vulnerable they are to governmental incursion into the heart of their homes.

The desire to give every child a safe, healthy, and happy upbringing and stellar education is certainly a worthy cause. However, the belief that government, that faceless entity populated by an ever-shifting power base and mercurial agenda, should have the final say in what is ‘best for the child’ is an idealistic hope at best and a dangerous arsenal at worst. Enacting and enforcing laws to protect and provide for children is a wise course, but cultures vary world-wide in what is defined as child abuse, what is viewed as proper housing and provision, and what is considered effective education.

In Bali, a thatch, open-air bungalow would be considered perfectly acceptable accommodation, while in the United States a home with no windows or electricity would be grounds for removal of a child into protective services. In Finland, children aren’t expected to even begin formal education until a minimum of age seven, whereas in Japan such educational standards would be considered seriously deficient and even harmful. In the Middle East, young boys are often subject to physical punishment in their religious training, but such actions in Switzerland would result in prosecution.

Having a one-world standard is, then, clearly problematic. But even on a smaller scale, the idea that government is a better caretaker and decision-maker for a nation’s children than their parents is insidiously taking root. Children in the U.K. have been removed from their homes due to educational choices that were once considered the prerogative of parents. Parents have gone into hiding in Australia for making vaccination choices for their children that went against their government’s edicts. U.S. children not old enough to see a pediatrician for an ear infection without having a parent present have been given access to abortion and vaccination without parental consent or notification.

In an era where cultural diversity has become a cultural icon in and of itself, one would expect the idea of whitewashing childhood into an institutional lunch-line to be rejected out-of-hand. But the emotional tug of sensationalized stories of child abuse and neglect is powerful and a far too alluring force for power-mongers to ignore. Harnessing that emotional train to usurp parental choice and enforce government controls is a pattern used to great and terrible effect in the past in Nazi Germany and more recently in The People’s Republic of China, among others, with human rights always, always, suffering in the process. The idea of allowing the same ideology of governmental controls to be implemented to protect human rights, specifically children’s rights, is counter-intuitive and doomed to the same misuse of power history has revealed time and time again.

There is absolutely no doubt that laws and regulations need to be in place to protect children. The question is, should the power to define what constitutes the rights of a child be given to an unelected global council which does not and cannot share a common culture? Even on a national level, how much power and control should government have over the private lives of its citizens?

Clearly there must be some norm, some agreement on what constitutes a safe and healthy childhood. But how far should it be permitted to go? Should government be given the power to co-parent, as claimed by the Canadian officials in the case of little Nevaeh? Should they be allowed to determine whether the turkey sandwich you sent to school with your child fits their standards and replace your choices with chicken nuggets as occurred in a North Carolina elementary school or send your five-year-old home with welts on his bottom from being paddled with a 16″ board without your knowledge or permission as happened to a Florida preschooler? And who should decide? A faceless global council? A distant national committee? Local government officials? Parents?

There are no easy answers, and yet the stakes are huge. We must protect those who can’t protect themselves…these small humans who come into the world so perfect and so helpless, who contain the next generation of scientists and sculptors in their ranks, who will one day run our world.

The question is this: Who has ‘the best interests of the child’ in their hearts and minds for your child? Should you have the right and privilege of deciding if and for how long to breastfeed, whether or not to vaccinate, how and where your child should be educated? Or should the government have the right to dictate those choices and more for you and your child?

Abuses of rights will always exist as long as humans are human. But taking away those rights from the many because of the abuses of the few would be a crime in and of itself. We so often hear, “I’ll make my choices and you make yours and we’ll all get along.” But just as often we hear, “There ought to be a law…” And the truth is that there do need to be laws, laws to protect the helpless and laws to enforce those protections. But who do you want those laws to be written by? Someone you elect and can un-elect if they become power-hungry and corrupt? Or someone distant, unconnected, unaccountable who can and, historically speaking, will misuse their power because they, too, are human?

I don’t have all the answers, but I’m willing to have the conversations, explore the possibilities, and evaluate the options so I can do my part to contribute an educated and thoughtful voice to a global issue that is sure to be an ever-evolving and ever-controversial dialogue. And I’m willing to do the ‘boots on the ground’ work of educating parents about the needs of their children and about gentle, effective parenting choices. I’m willing to step up and step in if I see a child in need. I’m willing to spend my time and resources helping organizations such as Bead For Life empower women in third world countries to become strong, independent people so they can provide food, shelter, and an education to their children. And I’m willing to stand firmly and openly against so-called ‘parenting experts’ such as Gary Ezzo and Michael Pearl who promote rigid child-training and corporal punishment of small children.

If we as individuals, the grassroots ingredients of change, commit to support and educate families, protect and speak up for children, and provide a helping hand to those in need, we can shrink a global mountain into a local molehill. I’m in. Are you?

The Measure of Success~Chinese Parents and French Parents Can’t BOTH Be Superior!

The Seven Wonders of the World of Childhood

A Mile in Their Shoes

March 15, 2012 | Categories: breastfeeding, childhood, children, cosleeping, diversity, economics, family, gentle discipline, gentle parenting, homeschooling, kindergarten, newborn, nonvaxing, nursing, orphans, play, preschooler, toddler | Tags: breastfeeding, children, children's rights, cosleeping, homeschooling, parental rights, preschoolers, rights, toddlers, vaccinating | 10 Comments »

The Elves and the Homemaker

You’ve all heard the story of the industrious, magical little elves who went behind the poor, but good-hearted, shoemaker and finished his work for him, saving his shop and rewarding him for his hard work. This is not that story…

Once upon a time there was a kind, hard-working homemaker named Elvimama. She had five children, Elvin, Elvira, Elvish, Elvis, and Baby Elvie. Elvimama worked hard every day to feed her five children Elftritious foods, teach them their Elfessons, make sure they practiced on their Elviolins, take them to their Elfootball and Elfallet practices while she grabbed an hour at Elfercize (wearing Baby Elvie, of course!), and then rushed back home to put a healthy, home-cooked Elfalicious meal on the table for dinner. Life was busy, but good…except for one thing.

Their Elfhouse was a mess! No matter how hard Elvimama worked, no matter how carefully she organized her day, or how little sleep she got, her Elfhousekeeping ended up looking rather…well, unkept.

She’d start with the bedrooms each morning, straightening and sweeping and organizing, then move on to the kitchen and work her way through the morning dishes and then sweep and mop and take out the trash, before heading to the Elfamily room to polish and vacuum. But she was plagued by a strange phenomenon every single day…as soon as she was finished with one room and had moved on to another, the first room mysteriously returned to it’s former state of disarray! And when she finished the second room and moved on to the third, the second room was also suddenly back to a disheveled mess!

This pattern when on throughout her day, with each bedroom cleaned, then miraculously uncleaned, the kitchen spotless, then instantly a sticky stack of unwashed dishes appearing when she headed for the Elfamily room. And, even there, when she’d polished and vacuumed and straightened, the second she walked out, piles of toys walked right back in!

Day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, this phenomenon continued, with Elvimama starting every day with a messy house, spending every day cleaning and cleaning and cleaning, only to end every day with a still-messy house!

It was frustrating and exhausting, and sometimes Elvimama would head to the bathroom for a long soak in the tub and a good cry. But, inevitably, little elf-hands would come knocking on the door and little elf-voices would be calling out for Elvimama’s attention. Her long soak always turned into a quick wash, and she’d mop up her tears and emerge with a smile and arms ready to gather her little elf-loves close.

Time passed, and Elvin and Elvira went off to college. Elvish joined the Elf-Corp, and Elvis made the big-time in Nashville. Baby Elvie grew up and opened a little bookstore called The Elf Shelf.

One morning, Elvimama got up and started with the bedrooms, straightening and sweeping and organizing, then moved on to the kitchen and worked her way through the morning dishes and then swept and mopped and took out the trash, before heading to the Elfamily room to polish and vacuum and straighten. When she was finished, she stopped and stared in shocked silence. Everything was…spotless…pristine.

No jumbled piles of clothes had unfolded themselves in the bedrooms. No sticky stack of dishes had reappeared in the kitchen. No toys had marched back into the Elfamily room.

Her house was finally clean, but her heart longed for jelly fingerprints and funny little dirt-smudged elf-faces, muddy footprints and sticky little giggle-grin kisses. Elvimama sighed and headed to the bathroom for a long soak in the tub. Now, no little elf-hands came knocking on the door and no little elf-voices called out for Elvimama’s attention.

And Elvimama had a good cry.

~~~~~~~~~~

A mother’s love is strong enough to hold her children close when they’re young and she longs for rest, and to let them go when they grow up and she longs for the past.

L.R.Knost

My Renaissance Girl

Mommies are Mountain Climbers and Sisyphus was a Sissy

Beautiful Old Souls

The Story of Us~25 Years and Counting!

February 27, 2012 | Categories: attachment parenting, babywearing, bookish, books, childhood, children, family, food, homeschooling, life, love | Tags: attachment parenting, babywearing, childhood, children, family, food, gentle, homeschooling, parenting, sacrifice, sacrificial parenting | 4 Comments »

My Renaissance Girl

There’s another teenager in our house! My Renaissance Girl turned thirteen this week. It’s hard to believe my little preemie who started her days in the NICU, came home at 3 lbs 13 oz on an apnea/heart monitor, has struggled with severe dyslexia, sensory and auditory processing disorders, vestibular issues, attention deficit disorder, and more, is now a poised and confident young lady who is frequently absorbed in classic literature, enthralled with the art of Masters such as Van Gogh and Degas, and who’s musical tastes run from Mozart to The Beatles.

My children are homeschooled and are quite used to interacting in a mutually respectful manner with adults in banks, doctor’s offices, libraries, etc, so it’s always a bit of a culture shock when we run into society’s negative view of adolescents as we did on Renaissance Girl’s birthday. Literally, every time we mentioned that it was her thirteenth birthday as we shopped for gifts and took her for a birthday lunch, the reaction was rolled eyes and either expressions of condolences or warnings to my husband and I. Well, except for the one waiter who leered at her until my hubs caught his eye and shut him down!

What a world we live in, seriously. Is it any wonder that teenagers seem to have anti-social tendencies when, based on chronology alone, they’re either pigeon-holed as miscreants without anyone taking the time to actually talk to them (or, more importantly, listen to them!) or immediately become the object of sexual attention?

My Renaissance Girl

For those of you willing to look beyond the number of years a person has lived on this earth and see the person themselves, let me introduce you to a young lady who has some amazing gifts to offer this world…my Renaissance Girl!

Renaissance Girl has a heart for the elderly, the poor, the hurting, for anyone who is suffering. From her earliest years she would toddle up to an elderly person sitting alone at church or the park and climb up beside them to ‘chat’ or sing them a song or show them a flower she’d picked. Her heart breaks when she hears of children being abused or neglected, and she plans to adopt as many as her future husband will agree to (and with her sweet, strong spirit, I imagine she’ll follow through on that!)

The paintings of The Masters ignite Renaissance Girl’s imagination. For her birthday we ordered a Van Gogh’s ’Starry Night’ inspired ice cream cake from our little town’s best kept secret…Donna C, the decorator at our local Dairy Queen!

As part of our interest-led homeschooling, we’ll be working our way through unit studies on Michelangelo, Renoir, Van Gogh, Picasso, and more with materials from here.

Source: artmuralsforkids.blogspot.com via Linda on Pinterest

Renaissance Girl has decorated her room like a small artist’s loft with a drafting desk, a custom mural of a Parisian street scene (by your’s truly!), a romantic little reading nook with twinkle lights, and a stainless steel cable (Ikea!) stretched across the wall for her to hang her art, along with an art wall waiting to be filled.

Renaissance Girl studies with Mozart filling the silence (an SPD and ADD coping technique), and then rocks out to the Beatles on her brother’s Xbox Rock Band. She picks out tunes on the piano, trying to teach herself to play by ear, and is working on teaching herself to play the guitar.

Her beautiful mind sees the world through a unique lens similar to those of historical icons such as Thomas Edison, Leonardo Da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin, and Albert Einstein. While academics have been a huge challenge for her, the artistic and musical gifts she’s been given are incredible, and her gentle, sensitive soul is a rare and precious treasure. Many years of therapy have yielded the ability to read, and she’s like a butterfly newly emerged from her cocoon. Jane Eyre, Little Women, Anne of Green Gables, all have sent her beautiful mind soaring to different times and places, and all have become intimate, lifelong friends with my sweet Renaissance Girl. (From Beautiful Minds)

From her own artistic ability to her fascination with The Masters, her beautiful voice to her eclectic taste in music, and her humorous storytelling to her love of literature, my Renaissance Girl is much, much more than ‘just’ a teenager or ‘just’ a girl or ’just’ anything. She is an incredible gift to the world, and our family is blessed beyond measure to have her!

Think homeschooled children are unsocialized, over-controlled, locked-away-from-the-world misfits? Think again!

From goofing around in Goofy hats at Downtown Disney to playing Just Dance 3 on the Xbox Kinect, from gales of giggles pushing each other on the tire swing to gathering around to check out the awesome cello mastery of ThePianoGuys, from chowing down on mexican food at Tijuana Flats to burning waffles for breakfast, and from trying on jewelry to decorating cupcakes, these homeschooled girls are as All-American as apple pie!

Check out Renaissance Girl’s favorite YouTube version of ThePianoGuy’s dueling cellos!

Happy 13th Birthday, My Renaissance Girl!

Helping Unique Learners Find Their Genius

Beautiful Minds

12 Steps to Gentle Parenting

200 Ways to Bless your Children with a Happy Childhood

Into the Looking Glass~Teens and Self-Esteem

Tots to Teens~Communication Through the Ages and Stages

Gentle Parenting~The Teen Years…Tips for Talking to Teens

The Story of Us~25 Years and Counting!

February 23, 2012 | Categories: adolescence, bookish, books, character, childhood, children, family, food, homeschooling, life, literacy, literature, Mozart, reading, teens, The Masters, Van Gogh | Tags: art, childhood, children, family, food, homeschooling, literacy, literature, parenting, teens | 20 Comments »

Beautiful Old Souls

An aged beauty tips her face up, and her elderly companion leans down out of life-long habit to catch her soft voice. His old eyes see past the ever-deepening lines to the vision of youth he married decades earlier. His hands reach out to steady her fragile, but oh-so-familiar frame, and she smiles the same smile he’s woken up to and kissed goodnight his entire adult life. Theirs is an old love, subtle with wear, ripe with age, its rich beauty lost to those without the palate to plumb its boundless depths or the senses to delight in its warm bouquet. They are a living love story, two hearts time-stitched into one, beautiful old souls stepping in tandem toward eternity.

Truly, love does have many seasons and faces, each revealing its own power, its own purpose…

Young love shouts from the rooftops and expresses itself in passionate displays. Its flames are brilliant, stoked with newness and fueled with idealism, but at times it burns itself out with its own heat or through lack of care and tending.

Old love whispers quietly, “I’m here. No matter what, I’m always here.” It is a silent glance, a hand clasp, a timeless commitment.

Young love, blind to the rich time-tested tapestry, deaf to the wealth of meaning in quiet companionship, lost to the supple oneness of hearts in accord, often looks at old love and calls it dead.

Old love sometimes looks at young love and smiles with fond remembrance, but ofttimes shakes its head and declares it foolish.

Each has a place in the world, a purpose, a time, and a season.

And then there are the other faces of love…

The exhausted young mother tenderly cradling a brand new life in the early morning hours. The middle-aged man getting up at four o’clock in the morning for another backbreaking day of work to support his family. The teacher spending her meager pay to make sure her students have pencils. The pastor visiting a convicted felon just to play a game of cards. The teenager stopping to help a stranger push their stalled car to the side of the road…

Each speaks love in a different language, but the message is the same…love is alive.

There is another Love, a living, breathing, timeless, endless, lavish, inconceivable, unconditional, sacrificial, unlikely Love. His Name is Love because He is Love. He and I have an old love, a stalwart and enduring love, a time-tested, unraveled and rewoven, wounded and healed, shattered and renewed love.

In the beginning, when I was newly in love with my Love, His passion fueled mine and I was consumed. I flared white-hot and brandished His Name like a sword, intent on conquering the world all on my own and presenting it as a treasure to my Love. I scorned the quiet love of my elders as a burned-out relic, not fit for my King.

Then time passed and life happened. My Love clung to me fiercely through the storms, even as my own grasp weakened and slipped. My Love held me close in the dark and never let go even when I kicked and flailed and railed at Him because I couldn’t see Him through my tears.

And my young love grew into an old love, deep and rich and still. Our old love is a stunning tapestry of life and loss, triumph and tragedy, joy and heartache, woven from the tattered and torn remnants of our young love.

Now, in place of conquering the world, I let Him love the world through me. Instead of proselytizing, evangelizing, and sermonizing for my King, I let His love permeate all I do like the subtle fragrance of rain as it washes clean the earth. Rather than feverishly working to present My Love a treasure, I bask in His presence knowing I am His treasure.

And our beautiful old souls step lightly toward eternity…

To Everything…Turn, Turn, Turn
There is a season…Turn, Turn, Turn
And a time to every purpose, under Heaven

A time to be born, a time to die
A time to plant, a time to reap
A time to kill, a time to heal
A time to laugh, a time to weep

To Everything…Turn, Turn, Turn
There is a season…Turn, Turn, Turn
And a time to every purpose, under Heaven

A time to build up, a time to break down
A time to dance, a time to mourn
A time to cast away stones, a time to gather stones together

To Everything…Turn, Turn, Turn
There is a season…Turn, Turn, Turn
And a time to every purpose, under Heaven

A time of love, a time of hate
A time of war, a time of peace
A time you may embrace, a time to refrain from embracing

To Everything…Turn, Turn, Turn
There is a season…Turn, Turn, Turn
And a time to every purpose, under Heaven

A time to gain, a time to lose
A time to rend, a time to sew
A time for love, a time for hate
A time for peace, I swear it’s not too late

My Awesome Husband

Motherhood~The Timeless Tapestry

It Is Time

February 18, 2012 | Categories: adolescence, Bible, character, Christian, family, Jesus, life, loss, love, marriage, teens | Tags: adolescence, Bible, Christian, family, Jesus, loss, sacrifice, teens | 4 Comments »

A Place for Me

As a child, I loved to find a little ‘hidey-hole’ and tuck myself away from the big, big world for awhile. Somehow, sitting in a closet quietly singing to a much-loved babydoll, hiding in the leafy bower of an old grandfather oak with my nose in a book, or throwing a blanket over an end-table and crawling under it with a flashlight just made the world a little smaller, a little friendlier, a little less overwhelming. I remember feeling safe. I remember listening to the sound of my breathing, just listening. I remember closing my eyes and daydreaming, the cadence of my breath the only sound in the stillness.

It was there in the stillness, in the wanderings of my imagination, that I processed the brokenness of a broken home, adapted to the subsequent juggling of two homes, coped with the eventual abandonment by a father, and, over time, unlocked my guarded heart to a new father. It was in the smallness, in the microcosm of my own creation, that the big world shrunk down and the chaos receded and life’s mountains became surmountable molehills.

With my own children, I’ve fallen in love anew with the ‘hidey-hole.’ Whether it’s a fort of sofa cushions, a sheet with the ends tied to dining room chairs, a blanket hung over a coffee table, or the tree house built by my amazing hubby, my children’s imaginations take flight. And, as they make clubhouse signs and set about ‘nesting’ in their little corner of the world, their muffled giggles and busy chatter make my heart sing.

I pray that the big, big world out there is kind to my children, that they never know sadness, never taste bitterness, never experience disillusionment. But I know better. I know life can and will challenge and even hurt them. I know people will disappoint and hearts will be broken and dreams will be shattered.

But I also know that in the quiet places God’s still, small voice can be heard whispering comfort. I know that in the simplicity of play the complexity of life can be sorted like puzzle pieces joined to reveal a picture. And I know that in the nooks and niches we carve out for ourselves even as adults, the world seems a little smaller, a little friendlier, and a little less overwhelming.

200 Ways to Bless your Children with a Happy Childhood

If You Give A Toddler A Book…

Live to Play~Play to Learn~Learn to Live!

One Slippery Sock & Other Silly Tools for your Parenting Toolbox!

Babes and Boundaries~A Gentle Parenting Perspective

February 17, 2012 | Categories: books, childhood, children, Christian, cozy corner, family, fort, Jesus, life, play, reading, soothing | Tags: childhood, Christian, family, fort, hidey-hole, Jesus, nature, outdoors, parenting, play | 13 Comments »

The Measure of Success~Chinese Parents & French Parents Can’t BOTH Be Superior!

The Measure of Success

Mother Teresa never went to medical school, never married, never had children, begged for food at some points in her life…and won a Nobel Peace Prize, established 610 Missions in 123 countries before her death in 1997, and brought hope, healing, and comfort to millions.
Steve Jobs dropped out of college after only one semester, returned soda bottles for money to buy food, got fired from a company he helped to found…and, by Forbes estimates, was worth $8.3 billion dollars at the time of his death.
Thomas Edison spent a total of three months in public school before being labeled ‘addled’ and removed to be homeschooled, never attended college, bounced from one job to another, often being fired due to work accidents…and at the time of his death in 1931 held more than 1,093 patents including the phonograph and motion picture camera and had founded four companies including General Electric, which is still in existence today.

The perception of success is multifarious: professional standing, educational accomplishments, athletic achievement, celebrity status, humanitarian impact, political clout, financial freedom, personal fulfillment, etc. But what is success, exactly?

Success, put simply, is the accomplishment of a purpose…which leads us to the definition of purpose.

Purpose is defined as the reason for which something exists. The eternal question…. “Why are we here?”

Ah, now we begin to see why success has such a seemingly ephemeral definition, shifting like a mercurial mist, there and gone again before it can be grasped and examined and quantified.

Those of us who believe in a Creator may be said to have an edge in deciphering the matter, but even then there are endless debates about what our Creator’s purposes are for His creation, how those purposes are to be fulfilled, etc, etc, etc…

The definition of success…

The determination of purpose…

These are not simply matters for philosophers and theologians to discuss.

Every moment of every day, we live out what we believe. Every decision is based on an inner set of values that guide us and determine our direction in life. If we don’t consciously evaluate our inner guidance system and make informed, intentional choices about what we believe, we end up operating on the ‘default setting,’ a reactive position dictated by our past. Childhood experiences, adult traumas, things we’ve read and heard, things we’ve done and things that have been done to us, what we’ve witnessed and what we’ve participated in, all combine into a mishmash of knee-jerk responses to circumstances that often take even us by surprise!

Purposeful Parenting

When it comes to parenting, our definition of purpose dictates our definition of parental success, which, in turn, determines our daily parenting choices.

Consider…

The Tiger Mother –

This term, popularized by Yale Law School professor and author of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, Amy Chua, reflects the belief that “academic achievement reflects successful parenting,” a belief held by the vast majority of Asian parents. Based on this, the Tiger Mother believes that “the solution to substandard performance is always to excoriate, punish and shame the child.” If a child comes home with a B on a test, “there would first be a screaming, hair-tearing explosion. The devastated Chinese mother would then get dozens, maybe hundreds of practice tests and work through them with her child for as long as it takes to get the grade up to an A.” The Tiger Mother believes that children owe their parents everything and “must spend their lives repaying their parents by obeying them and making them proud.” Success to a Tiger Mother equals perfect performance, period. Amy Chua shares an example of this mindset in “The Wall Street Journal” essay, Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior.

Here’s a story in favor of coercion, Chinese-style. Lulu was about 7, still playing two instruments, and working on a piano piece called “The Little White Donkey” by the French composer Jacques Ibert. The piece is really cute—you can just imagine a little donkey ambling along a country road with its master—but it’s also incredibly difficult for young players because the two hands have to keep schizophrenically different rhythms.

Lulu couldn’t do it. We worked on it nonstop for a week, drilling each of her hands separately, over and over. But whenever we tried putting the hands together, one always morphed into the other, and everything fell apart. Finally, the day before her lesson, Lulu announced in exasperation that she was giving up and stomped off.

“Get back to the piano now,” I ordered.

“You can’t make me.”

“Oh yes, I can.”

Back at the piano, Lulu made me pay. She punched, thrashed and kicked. She grabbed the music score and tore it to shreds. I taped the score back together and encased it in a plastic shield so that it could never be destroyed again. Then I hauled Lulu’s dollhouse to the car and told her I’d donate it to the Salvation Army piece by piece if she didn’t have “The Little White Donkey” perfect by the next day. When Lulu said, “I thought you were going to the Salvation Army, why are you still here?” I threatened her with no lunch, no dinner, no Christmas or Hanukkah presents, no birthday parties for two, three, four years. When she still kept playing it wrong, I told her she was purposely working herself into a frenzy because she was secretly afraid she couldn’t do it. I told her to stop being lazy, cowardly, self-indulgent and pathetic.

Jed took me aside. He told me to stop insulting Lulu—which I wasn’t even doing, I was just motivating her—and that he didn’t think threatening Lulu was helpful. Also, he said, maybe Lulu really just couldn’t do the technique—perhaps she didn’t have the coordination yet—had I considered that possibility?

“You just don’t believe in her,” I accused.

“That’s ridiculous,” Jed said scornfully. “Of course I do.”

“Sophia could play the piece when she was this age.”

“But Lulu and Sophia are different people,” Jed pointed out.

“Oh no, not this,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Everyone is special in their special own way,” I mimicked sarcastically. “Even losers are special in their own special way. Well don’t worry, you don’t have to lift a finger. I’m willing to put in as long as it takes, and I’m happy to be the one hated. And you can be the one they adore because you make them pancakes and take them to Yankees games.”

I rolled up my sleeves and went back to Lulu. I used every weapon and tactic I could think of. We worked right through dinner into the night, and I wouldn’t let Lulu get up, not for water, not even to go to the bathroom. The house became a war zone, and I lost my voice yelling, but still there seemed to be only negative progress, and even I began to have doubts.

Then, out of the blue, Lulu did it. Her hands suddenly came together—her right and left hands each doing their own imperturbable thing—just like that.

Lulu realized it the same time I did. I held my breath. She tried it tentatively again. Then she played it more confidently and faster, and still the rhythm held. A moment later, she was beaming.

To the Tiger Mother, the performance is what matters, not the process or the person. Success equals perfect performance, period.

The Helicopter Parent-

Coined by Foster W. Cline, M.D. and Jim Fay in the 1990 book Parenting with Love and Logic: Teaching Children Responsibility, the term Helicopter Parent refers to the over-protective, over-involved, over-indulgent parent who seeks to ‘bubble wrap’ their children to protect them from every possible danger, every potential failure, and every conceivable disappointment. The Helicopter Parent is heavily invested in the emotional health and safety of their child based on the belief that success equals comfort and ease in life.

The Cadre Parent-

Loosely defined by author Pamela Druckerman in her book Bringing Up Bebe, and summed up in “The Wall Street Journal” essay, Why French Parents Are Superior, the Cadre Parent is one who compartmentalizes parenting into routines and rhythms. There is adult time and child time, eating time and snacking time, interaction time and play-alone time, etc. The Cadre Parent believes that successful parenting equals autonomy, and they train their children toward independence by maintaining a distant authority, a cadre (framework) of non-negotiable boundaries and schedules within which their children have the freedom to operate independently and with little to no adult interaction.

~~~~~~~~~~

There are, of course, many other distinctive parenting types as well as endless possible combinations of attributes from the different styles. The key to choosing a parenting style (or falling into one, as the case may be) is the basic belief system of the parent(s) as to what constitutes parental success based on their definition of purpose…in other words, their personal answer to the question, “Why are we here?”

Parenting On My Terms

For my part, I am a Gentle Parent based on my personal belief system. Success, to me, is defined as contributing to the world according to the gifts we’ve been given, which leads to my definition of parental success as raising children who are aware of their unique gifts and are able and willing to use them to benefit others and not just themselves. All of this is based on my belief that we are here for a higher purpose than any of mankind’s achievements could possibly reach, a purpose rooted in my belief in God’s personal involvement in and care for the world as evidenced by His sacrifice on the Cross.

So what does my parenting, based on this belief system, look like? Well, there’s a whole blog written about that subject! But for reference sake, my parenting can be summed up like this:

The Gentle Parent-

I model my responses to my children based on Jesus’ interactions with His disciples. I live what I want my children to learn. I want my children to respect me, so I show them respect and model respect in my interactions with others. I want my children to be compassionate, so I treat them and others with compassion and empathy. I want my children to honor God, so I model His unconditional love for them and for others. I want my children to love to learn, so I encourage their natural curiosity and joy of discovery. I want my children to listen, so I actively listen to them. I want my children to serve others, so I serve others with and in front of them. I want my children to actively engage in our society, so I participate with and in front of them in civic activities. I want my children to practice self-discipline and restraint, so I stop and think before I speak or act. I want my children to enjoy the life they’ve been given, so I enjoy the life in each of them.

For the record (and to forestall the “that’s great in theory” comments!) of my six children, I have raised a 24 year old Pastor and a 22 year old Family Therapist, and I have a 17 year old in his third year of pre-med, 12 and 6 year olds I’m homeschooling (as I did the others), and a 21 month old toddling around delighting all of our hearts.

As to the age-old question… “Why are we here?” …my answer is quite simple, “I believe we’re here for the same reason my own children are here. My children are here because I wanted to bring into the world children to love and to care for and to share with the world, and we are here because our Father wanted to bring into a world He created children He loves and cares for and through whom He has special gifts to share with the world.”

Pinky or The Brain?

Character Counts!

The No Zone

The Power of an Apology

February 7, 2012 | Categories: adolescence, attachment parenting, Bible, cadre parent, character, childhood, children, Christian, Christian parenting, communication, diversity, family, food, gentle discipline, gentle parenting, grace-based discipline, helicopter parent, homeschooling, Jesus, life, positive discipline, positive parenting, tiger mother | Tags: adolescence, Bible, childhood, children, Christian, Christian parenting, communication, discipline, family, food, gentle discipline, gentle parenting, homeschooling, Jesus, parenting, positive parenting, sacrifice | 30 Comments »

If You Give A Toddler A Book…

If you give a toddler a book

He’ll climb into your lap

While he’s in your lap

He might lay his head on your chest

When he lays his head on your chest

He’ll hear your heartbeat

When he hears your heartbeat

He’ll probably ask if you can hear his

When you lean down to listen

He might kiss your nose

When he kisses your nose

You could tickle his tummy

When you tickle his tummy

He might giggle and wiggle

When he giggles and wiggles

You’ll want to hug him tight

When you hug him tight

He’ll smile like the sun

When he smiles like the sun

You’ll smile right back

When you smile right back

He might tell you he loves you

When he tells you he loves you

You’ll whisper it back

When you whisper it back

He’ll probably snuggle close

When he snuggles close

He might ask you to read to him

When he asks you to read to him

You’ll read him the book

When you read him the book

He might just learn to love…

To learn!

25 Must-Have Books for Baby Bookworms

25 Must-Have Books for Toddler Bookworms

My Renaissance Girl

Beautiful Minds

Happy Birthday Dr Seuss!

Alphabet Fun~Imagination From A to Z!

Live to Play~Play to Learn~Learn to Live!

A Place for Me

Making Money Matters Make Cents

One Slippery Sock & Other Silly Tools for your Parenting Toolbox!

January 23, 2012 | Categories: books, children's books, communication, family, literacy, preschooler, reading, toddler | Tags: books, childhood, children, children's books, literacy, parenting, preschoolers, reading, toddler | 30 Comments »

Every Mama a Hero!

Ever heard the phrase sisyphean effort? It refers to any endless, frustrating, fruitless task, and it’s based on the mythological Greek king, Sisyphus. In short, King Sisyphus was a crafty, incestuous, murderous king who cheesed off the wrong mythical figure and was sentenced to an eternity of pushing a huge boulder up a hill almost to the top only to have it roll back to the bottom of the hill where he’d have to start all over again…whine, whine, whine.

Seriously? The best they could come up with was to sentence the black-hearted king to be a mom?

Mommy boulder #1 ~ Every mommy knows the moment the mountain of laundry is reduced to the last load, it’s a clear invitation to every stomach/intestinal bug in the vicinity to visit with their leaking, spewing, and reeking baggage of bodily fluids.

Mommy boulder #2 ~ Every mommy has experienced the sinking feeling of tackling the mountain of dishes, triumphantly putting away the last dish, and heading to the family room to sit down for the first time all day only to spy a pile of dirty cups and plates on the coffee table while simultaneously being bombarded with “I’m hungry!” and “What’s for dinner?”

Mommy boulder #3 ~ Every mommy’s shoulders have drooped when, upon vacuuming the family room and moving on to the bedrooms, she’s heard the unmistakable crunch of crackers and rushed back into the family room to find her toddler gleefully dancing to the magical music of goldfish being ground into carpet.

Mommy boulder #4 ~ Every mommy has cringed when, after organizing the playroom into neat bins of Legos, crayons, Hotwheels, Barbies, blocks, magnetic letters, puzzles, marbles, Squinkies, tea sets, play food, My Little Ponies, etc, she’s headed into the kitchen to start lunch only to run back at break-neck, but oddly slow-motion, and either way, insufficient, speed, at the shout “Where’s my blue truck?” followed by the crash of multiple bins being dumped into one. big. pile.

Mommy boulder #5 ~ Every mommy’s brain has mulled thoughts of possible tortures and other heinous acts of revenge after nursing her baby to sleep and then, bladder bursting, trying to slip out of the room only to hear the clomp of preschooler feet followed by the inevitable, “Mooooommmmyyyyy!” followed by the equally inevitable baby wail. (Note: real cause of incontinence?)

Source: nickmom.com via Linda on Pinterest

Any ‘Mommy boulders’ you’d like to add, my fellow mountain-climbing mamas?

Character Counts!

Pinky or The Brain?

Suffering in Silence~A Mother’s View

The No Zone

January 19, 2012 | Categories: breastfeeding, family, food, life, nursing, preschooler, stress, toddler | Tags: breastfeeding, childhood, children, family, food, newborn, parenting, toddler | 8 Comments »

It is Time

I’m not big on making New Year’s Resolutions, mainly because statistically they are almost certain to fail. While failure is a normal and even healthy part of life, setting myself up for failure seems illogical to me. Instead, I prefer to start each new year by evaluating my long-term goals and where I am in relation to those goals, and then plan the reasonable steps forward in the new year toward accomplishing those goals.

Or at least, that’s what I used to do.

Then came loss. One miscarriage after another, each knocking the wind out of me, shaking my faith, draining a bit of life with all its zest and hope and glory from me. One, two, three…nine miscarriages, the last with triplets, three babies lost at once. I was crushed. But I survived, bruised and bloody and scarred, yes, but not broken.

And then came my Sammy. His twin was lost at nine weeks, but Sammy lived on, waving and bouncing around at every ultrasound as if to say, “I’m here, mama! I’m still here!” What a tough little guy.

A tough little guy with a death sentence. A random mutation, incompatible with life. But he did live. With my body playing a most willing hostess, my little invited guest grew and thrived, kicking and rolling and LIVING. I enjoyed every moment of his life, treasured every movement, stored up every memory. It was all I would ever have of him, so I drank deeply of the days and saved my tears for the nights when all was still and the knowledge of death pressed too hard to ignore.

And then one day my Sammy unexpectedly slipped into and out of the world, still and silent and beautiful, bearing the imprint of his siblings on his tiny features.

And I was broken.

And I have remained broken. Someone in a similar situation asked me how I ever got over losing my son. My answer, “I didn’t.” There is no getting over the loss of a child. There is moving on. There is healing. And there is living. But I am forever changed. A part of me will always be broken while I live on the underside of Heaven and my son awaits me topside. That is a fact of life and loss. I have moved on. And I have healed.

But living is another matter altogether. Living, really living, is embracing life in all its fullness, laughing and loving, twirling in dizzying abandon in the rain with my little girls and playing a sorry game of basketball with my boys while they alternately chuckle at my crazy aim and earnestly try to help a lost cause. Living is cuddling on the sofa with my hubby watching midnight movies while he snores in my ear. Living is feeling and hoping and stretching and experiencing. It is breathing in all the joy and breathing through all the hurts. It is planning for the future, the unknown, brilliant with possibility and studded with thorns.

Living is not hiding. It is not stale and distant and cold. Living doesn’t cower under covers or behind locked doors…or in front of computer screens.

I thought I was done, that I’d handled losing Sammy to the best of my ability and moved on and healed and started living again. But as I stopped to take stock of 2011 before moving onto 2012, I was brought up short. The incredibly sharp rear-view-window vision of hindsight revealed a startling fact to me. I had moved on, and I had healed, but I was functioning, not living.

I do love, and I do laugh, but hope, that most basic of human needs, is transparently thin and unutterably fragile in a heart afraid to live like mine. The future, that great unknown, brims with more pain than possibility when viewed through a veil of tears. Fear reigns, and life suffers under its dictatorship. Life abundant has become life restrained.

And planning for the future is too breathtakingly daring to even consider.

Until now. I have felt the pull back into life this year…in the tiny hands of my one-year-old miracle baby tugging me to follow toddling steps into adventures untold…in the never-give-up attention-seeking of my five-year-old dirt magnet…in the budding womanhood of my daydreamer-artist twelve-year-old…in the endearing, emerging solidness of a man of character in my seventeen-year-old…and in so many more ways that I can no longer hide from the message, “It is time.”

And so, though my first response was to cringe and retreat when I read the One Word 365 post about a one word focus for the coming year, a seed was planted that quickly sprouted into a word, my word, my theme for the year 2012. I won’t be making resolutions, and I won’t be going back to my former pedantic planning just yet. I’m still too fragile for that. But I will take a step forward. I will let God show me the fullness of meaning He intends for this word, the impact He plans for it to make in me, the transformation and liberation and newness that can come from embracing one single word.

For 2012, my word is…LIVE.

Pregnancy and Infant Loss Support and Resources

Glimpses

January 2, 2012 | Categories: adolescence, birth, Christian, family, life, loss, love, miscarriage, pregnancy loss, stillbirth | Tags: children, Christian, family, loss, miscarriage, pregnancy, stillbirth, teens | 4 Comments »

My Amazing Hubby & The Incredible Bicycle Transformation!

Proud little-boy smile on a man’s face

Grease-smeared, skinned-knuckle hands display

An object immeasurable in its mediocrity

Changed tire, fixed washer, working toilet

It matters not the object

The gift is in the giver

And love makes it extraordinary

L.R.Knost

My hubster is at it again, giving me one of his extraordinary gifts (in addition to the tires, washer, and toilet, lol!).

Watch this site to see this…

Become a hybrid between this…

And this…

He’s at this stage right now…

Mechanics are in place and working, and the basic structure is done. Now he’s working on the platform to support the seats for our two littlest ones. I’ll update with pictures of his progress. What a man!

~~~~~

More progress…

Hubby hard at work

Hubs is building the seats as I write this! He’s made everything removable so we can pop it in the back of our 15 passenger van and head for the trails without having to mess with a trailer. So resourceful!

~~~~~

Almost finished! We’ve been taking it on the trails for a few weeks now as my hubby tweaks the mechanics, and now he’s working on the enclosed topper (to keep the sun off of little heads and the bugs at bay, lol!).

Me with my two youngest

Multi-tasking mama…babywearing and breastfeeding while bike riding! And that’s my talented hubster in the background.

The Story of Us~25 Years and Counting!

An Ordinary Man

30 Days of Thankfulness~Day 1~My Hubcap

30 Days of Thankfulness~Day 11~My Family!

December 31, 2011 | Categories: communication, family, life, love, marriage | Tags: communication, family, husband, life, love, marriage, spouse | 8 Comments »

Parenting, Trickery, and the Great Obesity Lie

Parenting involves lots of creativity, yes, but wouldn’t interacting with our children (i.e. playing basketball with them, setting boundaries, communicating about health and fitness, cooking together, taking hikes, bicycling, etc.) be better than stealth and trickery? I’m all for playing outside, but these PSA commercials by Let’s Move.org and the accompanying catch-phrase, Mom Was Here, seem to be the exact opposite of involved parenting, or parenting at all for that matter. Mom actually isn’t there…she’s too busy skulking around in the basement, carrying out her nefarious plans, and cackling bwahahaha with a sinister smile.

Here’s the latest PSA in the series:

Wouldn’t this be better…

And here are some interesting statistics:

According to the formula the U.S. government employs to measure weight, any person with a BMI over 25 is classified as overweight. BMI stands for Body Mass Index. It is a number that shows body weight adjusted for height. BMI can be calculated with simple math.
The B.M.I. doesn’t tell you the percentage of body fat you’re carrying, or how your fat is distributed. According to this measurement, half of the National Basketball Association is overweight or obese. [Muscle mass weighs more than fat, so the more muscular you are, the more likely you'll be labeled obese!]
Until a weight-loss industry funded report by the National Institute of Health in 1998, “overweight” was defined as having a BMI greater than 27 and “obese” meant your BMI was greater than 32. After the 1998 NIH report, suddenly tens of millions of Americans became “obese” even though they had not gained a pound. Shifting the BMI down two points helped turned obesity into moral panic.

I’m thin and active and healthy. I have friends who are also super active and healthy, but would be considered obese by these standards. Should we be placed in separate ‘classes’ for insurance companies to have an excuse for not providing coverage? Who is all this stealthy number-shifting benefitting? Does tweaking the standards really serve the American public? Does making healthy people feel bad about the body God gave them seem like a good plan to you? And why does tricking our children instead of parenting them seem like a good idea to anyone? What do you think?

Too Late For Teens

Communication or Miscommunication

December 30, 2011 | Categories: adolescence, communication, family, teens | Tags: adolescence, childhood, children, family, outdoors, parenting, park, play, playground | 2 Comments »

Parenting in Public: What’s in your Quiet Bag?

You’re sitting in a restaurant waiting the prerequisite 10-15 minutes for your food to be served, chatting quietly with your spouse and two-year-old, when it happens…the dreaded moment suddenly hits, and life as you and every patron, staff member, and passerby know it is turned inside out and upside down. That moment that every parent fears, the sudden switch from table companion to terror, aka ‘Toddler Time’, is, in fact, toddler time. The insignificant 10-15 minute waiting period for food to arrive is actually eons in toddler time, eons of hunger, eons of boredom, eons of stillness, eons of being expected to act like the adult that they are years and years (eons!) away from becoming. But you really don’t want to be housebound for all of those eons, right? And yet more and more public places are becoming child un-friendly with snarky signs saying they’ll give your child an espresso and a pony if you don’t control him or charge you extra if you dare to enter their establishment and support their business with your hard-earned money or even flat out ban you altogether if you bring ‘the beast’ out in public with you!

And what about those hazy, lazy summer days at the park with the laughter of children floating in the air, mommies packing babies in their carriers while they chat and keep eagle eyes on their precious little monkies dangling from brightly colored jungle-gyms, when it happens…the dreaded moment suddenly hits, and all goes quiet as every eye turns toward the poor soul who called out those awful, awful words, “It’s time to go!” The words echo against the lowering sky, which has conveniently decided to threaten rain just to add to the sheer madness of the moment, and then the shrieking begins. In toddler time, an hour at the park is gone in the blink of an eye, and fun things like being strapped into carseats and baths and naps awaiting at home are just adding insult to injury.

So what is a parent to do?

Here are a few preemptive tools for your parenting toolbox:

1.) Gather a few special ‘quiet’ toys and keep them in a Quiet Bag in the car. Only get them out when you go into a store or restaurant and let your little one play with one toy at a time until it’s time to go, saving one last special toy for the car ride home. Some ideas for stocking your Quiet Bag:

Here is our Dr Seuss Quiet Bag we put together for Dr. Seuss’ Birthday…

I found some excellent Cat in the Hat crafts on clearance at Michael’s. We have a felt board with felt Seuss characters and lots of colorful felt letters and numbers and symbols. And we’re making a felt board with a piece of metal, too, so we can use magnets on it. The foam Seuss stickers I found on clearance and the foam pieces to the Cat in the Hat mosaic will go on a magnet sheet and be cut out with an Exact-o-knife. All of the items went into labeled Ziploc bags for easy storage, and then were packed away into the Dr Seuss backpack I found at a thrift store. My little ones love it!

This is our new Scooby Doo Quiet Bag. With all of the back-to-school sales firing up, this is a great time to stock up on Quiet Bag supplies, and since we found this super-cool Scooby Doo lunch bag on sale we decided to just make a whole new one so we could alternate them out. Toys-R-Us had a little party favor area with mini boxes of clay and mini water paints and stress balls and fun little smiley-face bendable figures for $0.50-$1.00, so we stocked this bag with those along with some Scooby action figures, zombies, and mini markers. Then I just printed out some coloring sheets to fit the theme, and our Scooby Doo Quiet Bag was done, no crafting necessary!

2.) We made Calm-Me-Jars with these round, plastic bottles for our Quiet Bag. So far, we’ve made Starry, Starry Night, Goodnight Moon, Nemo Under the Sea, And Hello Kitty Princess Ballerina. Can you tell which ones my little ones named, lol? (click here for detailed instructions on how to make them and ideas for how to use them to help cope with or even prevent tantrums!)

Nemo Under The Sea, Goodnight Moon, Hello Kitty Princess Ballerina & Starry Starry Night

The Cat in the Hat Can Help You with That!

And here is the newest addition to our Calm-Me-Jars! We made this one for our new Dr Seuss Quiet Bag in honor of Dr. Seuss’ Birthday!

3.) Consistently keeping your little one in a highchair (or carrier/cart in stores) will help with any running around, disturbing people, and getting into things issues.

4.) Your best offense is a good defense, so keeping your little person occupied is always a good place to start, but if yelling/screaming become an issue, try responding with a whispered question or two. It’s pretty much irresistible for little ones to quiet down to hear what you’re saying, and even better if what you’re saying is super silly…”I think my nose went outside for a walk.” (conspiratorial ‘shared secret’ look) ”Could you check for me to see if it’s back yet?” (crossing your eyes to see for yourself)

5.) With the dreaded leaving-the-park issue, try bringing snacks your small one loves, and instead of saying “Time to go” try saying “Snack time!” and describe the yumminess waiting for her, all the while gently shepherding her to the car.

6.) Don’t forget to pack your ‘funnybone’ for a back-up plan! Humor is a powerful parenting tool, and carseats presented as rocketships to the moon, shared naptimes (parents can always use the extra sleep!) on marshmallow planets, highchair-bound movie directors with mommy and daddy as the actors, and shopping carts cars that continually stall and need to be fixed by their little riders are all inventive ways of keeping little people too busy and happy to meltdown. (Not to mention that these are great ways for parents to reconnect with their little ones and remember just how adorable they really are!)

7.) Actively work at avoiding confrontations and meltdowns by giving choices, staying engaged (i.e. listening to your child), and paying attention to triggers such as hunger, tiredness, sickness, etc. When our parenting goals shift from meeting needs and guiding actions to controlling our children, they invariably rebel and the battle is on, not a happy circumstance at any time, but especially difficult to handle in public! (And, in the long run, that makes for an ‘us against them’ relationship that sets the stage for an unhappy home, particularly when the teen years arrive.)

Practical Gentle Discipline

Happy Birthday, Dr Seuss!

Confession and A Challenge

A Tale Of Two Worlds

December 15, 2011 | Categories: babywearing, books, communication, cosleeping, family, food, gentle discipline, gentle parenting, meltdown, pinterest, positive discipline, preschooler, tantrum, toddler | Tags: children, discipline, family, food, gentle discipline, gentle parenting, meltdown, park, playground, positive parenting, preschooler, Quiet Bag, tantrum, toddler | 34 Comments »

Reasonable Parenting

Knowing that we can be loved exactly as we are gives us all the best opportunity for growing into the healthiest of people. ~ Fred Rogers

Coining new terms for parenting styles seems to be all the rage these days, from ‘helicopter parenting,’ defined as overprotective and over-involved parenting (often associated with over-indulgence and passive parenting), to ‘tiger parenting’ which is defined as strict, authoritarian parenting with rigid expectations (often associated with harsh consequences for not meeting those expectations). So, I thought I’d jump on the bandwagon, so to speak, and offer a new term to describe the 99% of us who fall somewhere between those two extremes.

And so, with no further ado, introducing~Reasonable Parenting!

Reasonable Parenting is so popular because it’s just so very…well, reasonable! The Reasonable Parent is available to their children and responsive to their needs, but doesn’t smother them, take over every project, stymie independent thought or creativity, or screen potential employers with background checks and fingerprinting via their FBI contacts (contacts made, of course, for just such a purpose!). On the other end of the spectrum, the Reasonable Parent does have certain expectations about their children learning to cooperate, adopting common courtesies, and achieving an education, but doesn’t force independence, control every aspect of their children’s behavior, punish every infraction, impose excessive pressure to succeed, or start preparing their future Ivy Leaguers for filling out those do-or-die college applications with occasional ‘pop quiz’ applications on evenings and weekends.

Now, in that ‘somewhere’ in between these two extremes, there is a lot of space for individuality and flexibility. Some Reasonable Parents, myself included, cosleep (aka bedshare) while others practice an arms-reach approach and still others are comfortable running back and forth to a separate nursery to meet their little person’s needs at night. Some of us breastfeed for two plus years, others don’t for various reasons. Some use time-ins, some time-outs. Some circumcise. Some don’t. Some babywear. Some homeschool. Some spend lovely days filled with crafting and nature walks and making wonderfully healthy meals together, while others must work outside the home and instead spend lovely evenings piled on the couch under flannel blankets watching a movie and eating popcorn and having tickle fights.

My point is this; we in the parenting community agree that children are individuals and should be treasured for their uniqueness, but then so often act as if parenting is a one-style-fits-all approach. The truth is that families are as unique as the individuals who create them, and parenting is a living, growing, evolving relationship that is only successful when it is molded to fit that uniqueness.

If there are any ‘rules’ to Reasonable Parenting, they are

1.) Listen, really listen to your children.

2.) Stop, Think, and then Respond. Don’t just React.

3.) Never, ever hurt your children. (No hitting!)

There are many parenting tips about how to accomplish those three core Reasonable Parenting values (see Related Posts below), but the main point here is to understand and accept and support each other as we share this parenting journey together. We have so much we can learn from each other, but in the end we each need to discover our own unique parenting styles for our own unique families!

Gentle Discipline Resource Guide