Miki Dedijer

Coaching for Relational Parents | Miki Dedijer

Miki’s Blog

Where the sun rises

By

There’s a spruce-covered ridge by our farm, and for much of winter, the sun doesn’t clamber high enough to crest it.

Then come February, and one morning, suddenly, there it is. As a family it always surprises us, and delights us to witness its return, the warm herald of early spring.

Where does the sun rise in relation to your home? Does your child know? Do you?

A child’s familiarity with the sun’s cycles orients her to the rhythms of the natural world. The sweep of a day, or the turn of the year, all foretold by where the sun appears, or descends, on the horizon.

A practiced awareness of the sun’s movements also develops your child’s spatial perceptions, and with time also her sense of affection and appreciation for the blessing of each day.

Progress at home

By


Time comes to us as a straight line, from past to future, along which life progresses, evolves, becomes more refined as we go. There’s little in this now that is as wondrous or developed as its future iteration.

That seems to be a fair rendering of time as we understand it in the west. And whether or not you or I subscribe to this idea of linear progress, it finds its way into our homes and relationships, and into our parenting too of course.

Our personal views do little to shelter us, or our children, against the prevailing, bustling, winds of progress. The little one’s feel its chill creep through the cracks, wafting the candle’s flame.

How does the demand for progress show up in our parenting? As impatience when we growl rhethorically ‘how many times do I have to tell you to make your bed’? As an expectation that they are not ready, or ever willing, to fulfill. As comparison with peers who seem more advanced, or skilled, or gifted.

If we bend the line of progress into a circle, a shape more ancestrally familiar to it, some of our grievances and stresses might roll away.

Repetition becomes a welcome return to emphasizing the values or behaviors that we hold dear.

We find greater and unexpected delight as our child develops in ways we could never have imagined.

We learn to celebrate the unique ways our child expresses his or her gifts at a time that comes naturally.

Time as a circle, not a line, and the strain of progress falls some from our children’s shoulders, and ours.


Patience and the steady fire

By

It’s no guarded parental secret that a child’s wild fire and love of life doesn’t easily submit to tasks and chores, to the daily demands of keeping house or staying the course.

The understandable temptation in the hubbub of modern life is to keep our child otherwise occupied, perhaps hooked up to another channel of entertainment, as we dive again into the dishes or the gathering dust.

What is lost, if we regularly do, is the child’s learning to endure moments that don’t readily feed the fire, that don’t deliver excitement or pacification or both.

What is gained, if we don’t succumb to temptation, is something less immediate than a distraction and therefore a bit harder to gage and harder to insist upon.

Through our willingness to bind our child to moments that hold no promise of gratification, now or later, she gains some familiarity with patience.

Patience, abiding by what is without recourse to immediate relief, endurance, submission to the hard and unsatisfying work at hand without a promise of either praise or recompense.

It’s hard work for a child, and adults, to practice patience. Few of us are willingly subjected to adversity. Few of us are likely to thank anyone who insists we endure the unjust suffering of sweeping the floor or cleaning our room, or worse.

Chances are, though, that a child familiar with patience will one day know something worth knowing about the work of tending a steady fire, even on the inevitable day when the storm draws near, a day when warmth and light is most needed.


Good table manners

By

 As midwinter approaches on the northern hemisphere, it is time to once again gather with our loved ones around a table for a shared meal. It’s a time of great generosity, hospitality, a social ritual of both giving and receiving, feeding and being fed.

We welcome our guests, we might cook together, decorate the table, serve each other food, pour out drinks, swap stories and perhaps sing songs.

Sharing food with our loved ones of all ages, and even extending the hospitality to strangers, puts to rest the story of scarcity, at least for now.

Seated together around a table, we can make enough time for each other.  We can put aside our phones and meet each others gazes with a promise of attention, of listening to and seeing one another. We can bridge what sets us apart.

How we are at the table reaffirms the sanctity of food and the blessings of family and friendship, of connection and belonging. We can share gratitude for the many beautiful and unexpected ways this earth continues to sustains us. We can break bread, release our grievances, and restore peace.

Table fellowship is at the heart of spiritual etiquette, the practice of sustaining the space between friends, strengthening the subtle threads of relationships, nurturing companionship, and extending the family over time.

It offers us a place where we might return to fundamentals, the bare bones of being human, of shaping community through the bounty we’re willing and able to share.

Here we bear witness to one another, offering our presence to the possibility of remembering, rejoicing, or grieving as the wheel of the year turns once again, and light, life, may yet return.


A child’s ability to discern

By

When our child was a bit older than two, I left him with a new teacher at kindergarden.

As soon as he was in her arms, he started to scream. So I waited a while with him until he was calm again, and turned to leave. Outside, I heard him through the door, crying incessantly, loudly, so I returned.

I saw the fear in his eyes, and decided to change my schedule and take him home again.

Children have a keen ability to discern safety and trust. They sense intent in a person, and notice the subtleties of incongruous body language.

They trust without question their instinct on who they wish to spend time with, and who they want to stay clear of.

As a parent it’s hard to know when to allow their discernment to guide our actions. Often we can’t, and it pains us to leave them. Othertimes they need our patient guidance to feel welcome in new contexts.

But whenever we can give credence to their perceptions, we strengthen their ability to follow their hearts.

We later found out that other children had similar reactions to the teacher, who eventually was asked to leave her position.

Hold on to your child

By

There inevitably comes an age in our children’s lives when their attention and curiousity is directed more towards others than ourselves.

It’s easy then as a father or mother, flush with the business of making ends meet, to let go, understanding their outward gaze as an impending departure, rather than a cautious exploration.

Hold on to your child, is the advice of Gabor Maté and Gordon Neufeld to parents who notice their child’s shifting gaze and wonder what to do.

A child released too early from the family is exposed to the whims of a peer-led youth culture where each child pays for belonging with his or her vulnerability.

When parents let go too soon, the family fabric begins to fall apart and the the fire of youth is slaked by recurrent hurts, until the child becomes prematurely cool and conformist.

Hold on to your child, not by strengthening your hold but by remembering how much you still matter, and learning what your child asks of you now that she moves in widening circles around the family.