We were playing, a few fathers and our boys, in the newly cut hay meadow when a child found a dead snake. The adder’s body had been split in half by the angle mower. We soon found more animals strewn across the field–voles, shrew, mice, slow worms, smooth snakes. Death inevitably comes into our children’s […]
Miki’s Blog
Your child is raising you too
To parent is a verb, something we do to or with our child. There’s no single verb that I know of that describes what our child does to us. And yet, they raise us too, for a very simple reason–we love them and they love us. This reciprocal relationship shapes everyone involved, not just our […]
What grows up must grow down
The autumn rains, the growing reach of the night, the early morning mists all say it’s time to harvest now. The seeds I planted in early spring have become cabbages the size of UFOs and onions with leaves like spears. And as I start gently to pull them from the soil, their roots cling firmly […]
Flow with your child’s impulse
It’s so easy to miss. Your child says ‘Hey, let’s go check out the tadpoles’, and for some reason, known or unknown, you say no, sweetie, not now. And the moment passes, maybe for the summer. You have good reasons for not always indulging your child–chores, time, priorities, limits, plans, desires. But there are times […]