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Relational Parenting |Miki Dedijer

Relational parenting | Miki Dedijer | Raising humans together

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Miki’s Blog

Home as a place that doesn’t exist

July 21, 2018 By Miki Dedijer

The global village tends no fire around which the children can gather. Its sophisticated arrogance is politely to sneer at domesticity as a lovely ideal, but ultimately a naive and inevitably temporary undertaking. It announces to anyone seeking to grow roots, that home is to be found everywhere, making sure that it is nowhere to […]

Filed Under: Belonging Tagged With: belonging, child, community, connection, culture, home, indigenous, movement, stillness

Touch your child’s heart to feel her fear

July 17, 2018 By Miki Dedijer

Fear isn’t always visible on our children’s faces, even when their bodies are in turmoil. When my son was around four, we left the farm to visit the city for the day. We sat by a market square with an ice cream each, when a red-faced, drunken man walked up to us yelling and gesticulating. […]

Filed Under: Relationship Tagged With: fear, feeling, hearts

The spell of potential

July 13, 2018 By Miki Dedijer

There are a few spells around, beliefs that are so common we hardly notice their insidious impact on how we lead our lives. Like when we tell a child “You can be anything you want to be”, without us actually having any way to know what that child’s potential truly is. Potential has no definite […]

Filed Under: Belonging, Discipline Tagged With: belonging, child, community, gifts, home, joy

Your child’s spiritual doctor

July 10, 2018 By Miki Dedijer

Your child’s nature unfolds like an oak from an acorn. Once she has tumbled onto the ground from some mysterious height, it is the soil and the wind and the rains that give her ultimate expression its particular form. Who she becomes when she’s well rooted and fully extended has painfully little to do with […]

Filed Under: Belonging, Relationship Tagged With: belonging, child, community, guidance, parenting, spiritual, village

Spring cleaning

May 14, 2018 By Miki Dedijer

When the sun comes out again in Spring, we notice how much there is that needs a good cleaning, stuff we’ve tucked away during the dark months of winter. Psychological garbage we’ve forgotten to take out. Guck that clutters our senses. Lead weights that sink our hearts. Unmet expectations and stale resentments with a sharp […]

Filed Under: Relationship Tagged With: culture, family, nature, relationship, tradition

An invitation to lighten up

April 4, 2018 By Miki Dedijer

Children are full of spirit, passion, life force, vitality. It overflows. The world is new! The body amazing. Puddles are endless fun. Strawberries! The fur of a cat. Hard edge of a rock. (Ouch!) Tears. Up. Look. Sunlight through a fall leaf. The ocean waves. Your child can point you to where you’ve grown stiff […]

Filed Under: Relationship Tagged With: child, connection, habits, movement, passion, spirit, vitality

Beauty as gratitude

March 12, 2018 By Miki Dedijer

Beauty is made before it’s perceived. It’s decorating the dinner table with a crown of fall leaves. Singing by a fire. Hand painting a dead tree. Speaking a kind word to a stranger, Carving little jewels from elderflower branches. Gathering moss in the shape of a mandala. Dancing to the beat of a brooding storm. […]

Filed Under: Gratitude, Relationship Tagged With: generosity, relationship

Considered consequence

February 22, 2018 By Miki Dedijer

You don’t have to be the consequence visited upon your child’s choices. Let winter teach her what it’s like to rush out without putting on that extra pair of warm socks. Let molten wax on the knuckle of her pinkie teach her about a burning candle. The most loving way to parent can be to […]

Filed Under: Discipline Tagged With: guidance, parenting, teaching

Your secret lover

February 13, 2018 By Miki Dedijer

Your partner doesn’t know your secret lover called Plan B. Plan B is softer, more loving, doesn’t smell of onions. It has nicer parents, better health, and always agrees with the values you want to share with your child. Plan B doesn’t age. It is the other life you dream of when this one seems […]

Filed Under: Relationship Tagged With: advice, bedtime, child, connection, family, home, parenting, relationship

Your body says a lot to your child

February 8, 2018 By Miki Dedijer

Your child knows your body better than you might imagine. He knows the meaning of your hunched shoulders, the sound of your hurried heels on the floorboards, the slowly spreading smile before you get playful. Your body language says more than your words. The tone of your voice says more about your feelings than the […]

Filed Under: Relationship Tagged With: feeling, language, movement

Place is your child’s close relative

February 6, 2018 By Miki Dedijer

A friend of mine grew up in the inner city, a world of asphalt, concrete, steel and the growl of combustion engines. Outside his apartment a solitary lime tree sprung from the pavement. Every day he’d climb that tree. He says he perched there for what seemed like most of his childhood, watching the world […]

Filed Under: Belonging Tagged With: belonging, connection, culture, ecology, home, indigenous, love

Playlist of your ancestors

February 2, 2018 By Miki Dedijer

Music is a bridge to our ancestors You can wander on the arch of a tune towards the loved one’s you’ve lost. For me it’s Marian Anderson’s “Coming through the rye,” a song my father would theatrically sing to us as children. Or my grandfather’s songs that he learned in Sweden’s endless spruce forests, during […]

Filed Under: Belonging Tagged With: ancestor, belonging, community, connection, family

Making humans who serve life

January 28, 2018 By Miki Dedijer

There was a time in your ancestry, either within living memory or well beyond depending on your particular lineage, when a child was raised not to be all that she could be, but to serve life. Raising a child like that takes a lot of cultural savvy. The songs, the stories, the games, the rituals, […]

Filed Under: Relationship Tagged With: ancestor, community, culture, generosity, gratitude, indigenous, love, role modelling, values

Connect before you direct

January 16, 2018 By Miki Dedijer

Coming out of our house, I see my youngest son peeing all over our new patio. I’m incredulous, and tell him to get a bucket and wash the stones. Later I ask how come he peed there. And here’s what he tells me–he was competing with his brother to see who could pee the farthest […]

Filed Under: Discipline Tagged With: acting out, advice, conflict, connection, guidance, relationship, teaching

Fear and love and honeysuckle vines

January 15, 2018 By Miki Dedijer

Love and fear grow intertwined like honeysuckle vines. You cannot disentangle one from the other. Your vast love for your child braids endlessly with your overwhelming fear of loss. Your worry is a measure of your love. Sometimes you protectively hold on against your better judgement, knowing full well that love asks that you let […]

Filed Under: Relationship

Attachment beyond mom and dad

January 14, 2018 By Miki Dedijer

Attachment theory places a child’s sense of belonging at the breast of the mother, or in the lap of the father. But we’re all born with a need for attachment to a home that is far vaster than the nuclear family. Imagine instead an attachment theory that knows the pain of being uprooted and adrift, […]

Filed Under: Belonging Tagged With: ancestor, community, connection, ecology, family, father, gifts, home

Tending a good fire under any condition

January 1, 2018 By Miki Dedijer

We all have a fire to tend. It burns inside of us. A good fire is welcoming. It draws people in to hear your stories, or enjoy the comfort of your good company. Sometimes your fire burns too strong. On days like that, your family doesn’t know whether to approach you at all. You’re giving […]

Filed Under: Relationship Tagged With: advice, child, family, guidance, hearts, nature, role modelling, teaching

Music tunes your child’s spirit

December 28, 2017 By Miki Dedijer

In our fragmented and commercialized culture, it can be hard to know how to nurture your child’s relationship to spirit. You may not know yourself what it means for you to be a spiritual being, someone at home with all that is unknown, unseen, or beyond your understanding. You may not have an intact practice […]

Filed Under: Movement, Relationship Tagged With: movement, relationship, spirit

What if your child doesn’t say thank you?

December 25, 2017 By Miki Dedijer

A friend came to stay with us and brought gifts for our children–two really cool, powerful flashlights. The boys loved them, but they didn’t say thank you. They rarely do, and that’s ok for us, but sometimes it rankles people. This is all our fault; we’ve never told them to say thank you when receiving […]

Filed Under: Gratitude Tagged With: generosity, gifts, gratitude, values

Your child’s gift holds the family together

December 20, 2017 By Miki Dedijer

What sets every family member apart is what holds the family together. This is an old ancestral understanding. The strength of our relationships grows from our willingness to honor, celebrate and cultivate our differences. Every child has a unique gift, talent, passion that complements the gifts of others. These are the variegated threads of a […]

Filed Under: Relationship Tagged With: ancestor, ecology, family, gifts, indigenous, nature, parenting

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