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 […]
connection
An invitation to lighten up
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 […]
Your secret lover
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 […]
Place is your child’s close relative
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 […]
Playlist of your ancestors
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 […]
Connect before you direct
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 […]
Attachment beyond mom and dad
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, […]
Respect trumps understanding
I just spent twenty minutes in the car with a sullen son on the way to school. We didn’t speak a single word the whole ride there, until we said goodbye with a long hug. I had no idea why he was mad–maybe something to do with his mom and shoes that were too warm. […]
Stories for the love of earth
We need children who love the earth unconditionally. Let the stories you tell your small one seed the ecology of her imagination. Go far beyond the arid fields sown with concepts, statistics, theories, information and labels about the natural world. Harness your heart to fairy-tales and myths, fables and anecdotes and journey with your child […]
Step one to breaking out of isolation. And step two.
When we first become parents we’re shocked at how isolated we feel. The first years without ample support of an extended family are overwhelming. There’s no shame in that. It’s really not about you or me. Almost everyone who is a parent knows that place of loneliness and anxiety. In the culture we’ve created, we […]
A child’s identity is forged in community
There’s this cartoon from the New Yorker I saw a long time ago. A man at a cocktail party is kneeling in the corner of the living room. Someone asks, What’s Larry doing? And the response, He’s trying to find himself. I laugh at that one every time, out of recognition surely. Spending our adult […]
Nothing is good for a child’s growth
Every child needs a healthy dose of nothing to do. Nothing germinates their imagination, cultivates their delight, develops their relationship to self. Nothing gifts them with the discovery that their selves hold an infinity of world’s within worlds. Nothing teaches them something about life that nothing else can do. Too much to do, too many […]
Flood the troubled child with love
Any child gets troublesome when there’s a tear in their most cherished relationships. She may be passive aggresive, anxious, manipulative, or fight with her sibling. There may be nothing you can say to resolve her pain. But there may be something powerful you can do. Flood your child with love. When all else fails, take […]
Restoring harmony through attunement
There’s a story I’ve heard about the Aka pygmes of central Africa and their gift of polyphonic singing. When a person among them is out of tune, tense, disconnected, the community sings him or her back into harmony. Developmental scientists might call this attunement and attachment. Attunement means bringing into harmony. When a mother softly […]
The richest inheritance you can give
It’s not wealth, property or an expensive education. The richest inheritance we can offer our child is our joy. It flows from us when we learn to love ourselves and others. It’s our laughter. Our delight. Our curiosity. Our awe. Our gratitude. Our acceptance. Our passion. Our playfulness. Our vitality. It’s the gift of our […]
Choosing to step into a larger world
Sometimes our world shrinks in an instant. A relative says something disparaging about how we parent. Our partner turns to another screen while we’re sharing our heart. Our child shatters a glass of blueberry juice on our new woolen carpet. Our bellies tighten, our chests constrict, our minds whirr with the incessant voices of trickster […]