Archive for the ‘Parenting for Peace’ Category
I had three mothers and I needed them all. I’m dedicating this Mother’s Day reflection to all you mamas out there who fill so many roles and wear so many hats in meeting your children’s needs — and you’re just one mother! You are masters of the bob-and-weave, performing complex multi-task maneuvering to cover the many bases required of moms.
My three mothers divvied up the task, though certainly not by design. It just sorta worked out that way.
Liz, My Birthmother
Throughout my childhood, I was matter-of-fact about the idea of having another mother out there somewhere. I remember fantasizing only once or twice that she was really one of my mother’s friends, someone I’d known all along. When my father asked me, soon after my mother died, if I wanted to find my birthmother, my interest blossomed from its dormancy.
Since mine was an independent, open adoption (one of the first ever), there was virtually no “search” required. My birthmother’s name was right there in the San Francisco white pages. I don’t really remember what Liz and I talked about during that first phone call. I was floating through an unreal place, and our mundane chit-chat felt surreal in juxtaposition. The bottom line was the setting of our blind date. {Read on at mothering.com}
Tags: adoption, biograph, Marcy Axness, Marin County
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It seem that we moms are always seeking more of something: more harmony with our children, more calm & confidence in our parenting, more connection with our partner, more uninterrupted sleep. (That last one is its own entire book, but…) You can get surprising traction on the rest by putting the power of example to work for you in a few simple ways!
Example — principle #4 of Parenting for Peace — is the ultimate mode of teaching and learning. Meaning, we are most influenced by example. In my book I focus mostly on ways to teach and influence your child through your own example, but let’s zoom out one step and use example to influence YOU. (Which, in a sneaky twist of paradox, is truly the best way to influence others!) {Read on at mothering.com}
Tags: example, influence, learning, mothering hack, parent confidence, simplicity, teaching
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I’m sure you’ve heard the old saying, “If Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.” So very true!
Children feed on our consciousness, so our mood state becomes the unspoken (but potent) back-beat for everything that takes place between us and them. The more we can nurture ourselves, the more easeful our day-to-day life with our children becomes — and the more healthy their development! Here are three simple ways to nurture yourself. {Read about them at mothering.com}
Tags: better parenting, happy mother, joy, nurture, simplicity
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One fundamental intention in parenting for peace is to foster trust and hope within your child from the very beginning. When we nurture trust in our children’s souls, it can unfold into an unending arc of confidence — in themselves, in you, in their fellow humans, in Life.
By trust I mean a calm reliance upon things that you cannot necessarily perceive much less control. (What a quaint notion in this era when we can perceive pretty much everything by virtue of our many technological devices!)
Insecurity, the antithesis of trust, carries a scent akin to fear — it repels and undermines the connection and collaboration required to be a person of peace and innovation. By contrast, trust is the great attractor; it is possible to tame the most powerful forces simply with deep and abiding trust.
But how do we foster trust within our children if we ourselves suffer from a drastic lack of trust? After all, our children learn mostly from how we are rather than things we say. Here are a few tried and true ways to fill your inner reservoir of trust. {Read more at mothering.com}
Tags: confidence, insecurity, simplicity, stress, surrender, trust, worry
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If you’ve followed me much, maybe you’ve heard me say this already: motherhood brought me to my knees. Motherhood broke me open, and then brought me… sometimes kicking and screaming (literally)… through the muck of daily mothering to a fullness of selfhood I couldn’t have even begun to imagine at the beginning of the bumpy journey.
I was a walking list of risk factors for maternal depressive symptoms (often narrowly pigeon-holed as postpartum depression). Many hands, many ideas and much good guidance helped me navigate those baby, toddler and preschooler days… days that often seemed like molasses in their pace. (They could be pretty sticky, too, come to think of it!) Here are just two invaluable guiding concepts that saw me through. {Read about them at mothering.com}
Tags: maternal depressive symptoms, Melissa Chapman, motherhood, postpartum depression, wonder
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We live in a culture deeply devoted to getting its citizens to read at the earliest possible ages. Whether it’s flashcards, alphabet-focused toys, or “teachable moments about letters” sprinkled throughout daily life with toddlers and preschoolers, we seem hellbent on early reading.
And parents feel little choice in the matter: sadly, a 5- or 6-year-old kindergarden student in public or conventional private school who isn’t quite fluent with letters is already behind the 8-ball.
Child psychologist David Elkind has devoted his professional life at Tufts University to studying the costs of “hurrying” children. He points out that true reading readiness only emerges once a child has attained the neuro-cognitive milestone of syllogistic reasoning (“All men are mortal; Socrates is a man; thus Socrates is mortal”), which dawns during the concrete operational stage of cognitive development.
This “con-op leap” happens around age seven, and is a biologically based milestone, just like the shedding of baby teeth or the onset of puberty. How many parents fret if their son hasn’t managed to lose his first tooth as soon as his friend did… or if their daughter at thirteen “still just has not been able to get her period”? {Read more at mothering.com}
Image by tornatore through a Creative Commons license
Tags: learning disabilities, learning disorders, reading readiness, sensory integration, sensory processing disorder
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As I essentially take off this next couple weeks to hunker down and get tax prepped (ayyeeee!), I’m using it as an opportunity to share some cool folks with you in my absence.
Meet Tamara Donn, founder of Woman to Mother in the U.K., and creator of the Birth Art Café, which invites pregnant women and new mothers to gather and explore their journeys through drawing, painting and sculpture:
Trust & Surrender: A Powerful Pair
Trust is one of the 7 principles upon which my book Parenting for Peace is based. I define trust as “calm reliance upon processes outside of your immediate perception and control.” (more…)
Tags: birth, labor, parenting, surrender
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There has been a hurricane of cyber-buzz this past week over a HuffPo piece entitled, “10 Reasons Why Handheld Devices Should Be Banned for Children Under the Age of 12.” It went viral, natch.
What I want to say about that piece is
a) it is a comprehensive collection of research that should be of critical interest to parents
b) I am not the type to seek bans on such things; rather, I advocate that we as humans develop mastery and dominion over these creations of ours. Let our Frankenstein’s monsters work for us rather than against us.
As my daughter Eve once said, “We’ve all been baptized in technology.” Boy, did that spin me around and send me thinking. I wrote the following Parenting for Peace passage in reference to birth technology, but it totally applies to these questions about handheld devices:
Yes, most of us have been baptized in technology, so let us embrace the blessings of our modern brilliance, which was originally meant to bring freedom. Nothing has the power to control us once we can name the players and the game, once we can free ourselves from the prevailing fear-based group think and become capable of making choices that are in the best peacemaking interests of ourselves, our children, and the vibrant future of humanity.
{Read more about this debate at mothering.com}
Image:
sonyanews, through its Creative Commons license
Tags: brain development, handheld devices, psychosocial development, Siri, social intelligence, technology
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During my infrequent strolls through Costco, a persistent thought comes to me (besides yum, those pizza samples are good) — If I were an evil genius wanting to erode the nutritional wellbeing of a civilization, this would be a good first step: Induce mass consumer hypnosis via the big-box store. (Will return to this point in a bit.)
During my infrequent strolls down streets with actual pedestrians, a persistent question comes to me: How will it effect this generation’s social intelligence, that the world of relating has so radically morphed from person-to-person to person-to-screen?
In the half-decade between my son’s junior and my daughter’s freshman years in high school, I witnessed his late-night telephone confabs (on a landline, gasp, when conference calls were a cool innovation) give way to her disembodied “connectivity” with Facebook friends. This glaring (de?)evolution announced itself through our walls: where there was once the sound of my son’s human voice — expressing the dynamic range of emotions endemic to the adolescent — now there was… silence. Save for an occasional giggle or groan from my daughter as she digested the latest posts. {Read more of this at mothering.com}
NOTE: Mothering posts don’t allow video embeds, so here’s the 90-second video of a little boy trying to interact with Siri:
Tags: Facebook, Hands Free Mama, interpersonal neurobiology, Rachel Macy Stafford, Siri, social intelligence, social media
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