Parenting implodes in a social monoculture. The social ecology we’ve depended on as parents until recently, is today many times frail and tattered. There is little social cohesion around our homes, few of us have a living community in which to plant our children. In a few generations, the communal life that held our children […]
culture
Our children deserve less than we got
I know that my children deserve less than I got. Most likely your child does too. This doesn’t go down easy, if like me you’re a member of the industrial growth society. Here, most of us by far want to pass on more to our children than our parents gave us. Such is the script […]
Home as a place that doesn’t exist
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 […]
Spring cleaning
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 […]
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 […]
Making humans who serve life
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, […]
One-liners: parenting in a single sentence
“It’s only a mistake if you don’t learn from it.” My son spoke this sentence today. We were stuck with the car in an icy ditch. Foolishly, I had tried to reverse uphill on a crust of compacted snow and rain. There was a lot for me to learn here (and model too!). He’s heard […]
How to plant your child in community
I’ve heard from many parents who dream of planting their children in community. Like them, maybe you too have raised your head and looked around and seen nothing but fragments of a village, shards of a tribe, threads of an ancestral tapestry. You think at times of moving your family to where community seems more […]
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 […]
Let your child teach you how to move
Why did I tell my youngest boy to sit still at dinner? What possible reason would make sense here? “You can hurt yourself if you fall backwards.” “Your body needs to be calm while eating.” “You’re distracting others from their food.” Yes, sure, possibly, perhaps, maybe. More likely it’s because as a child I myself […]
Turn your family into a rebellious island of sanity
Start the revolution by making your family home a rebellious island of sanity and insane possibility. Create a home that’s your getaway, a place so good, so relaxing, so full of life that you have no desire to fly off to another distant promised land on a holy-day at an all-inclusive coddling factory. Tend the […]
Lifeline
A ship trails a lifeline in its wake for the safety of its passengers. It’s a precaution wise captains take, drawing on thousands of years’ experience with the high seas. The latest breathing technique, meditation video, yoga posture or parenting tool is of little use when your 8 year old is sulking, your 4-year old […]
The cost of privacy is the loss of intimacy
Privacy always comes at a cost. Privacy is keeping everything to ourselves. Drawing the curtains and hiding our struggles and bewilderment to the world. Most of us keep parts of ourselves private even to ourselves–plunging them deep into our subconscious. Maybe we keep our feelings and thoughts private from our child. We might keep other […]
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 […]
Are you parenting someone else’s child?
Your hands and heart may already be full parenting your child. You may not have the wherewithall to even contemplate other children. But that’s what I’m asking you to do, if you’re willing to consider it. If like so many of us you yearn for a village, you must take the first step in creating […]
Want your child to care? Cultivate your empathy.
A mentor of mine once told me we don’t learn how to be more loving or empathetic. We’re naturally loving from birth. The difference is small but significant. We don’t have to strive to feel more or improve ourselves. This perspective is a cultural illness. It affects us when we internalize the industrial ideals of […]
Rules govern every family, even when they’re unspoken
Our family rules guide our conduct, how we are with one another. They’re a vital influence on family health. The rules we live by are often unspoken, unwritten or assumed, which causes a lot of needless grief and strife and confusion. We may feel that our child is unruly. Or our partner! Yet when it […]
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 […]
Every family needs a gardener
Every family is an ecosystem to itself, a vegetable bed set in a larger landscape of great mosaic beauty. This fertile soil in which our children grow is a complex, wondrous, wobbling weave of ancestry, biology, spirit, life stages, genders, roles, grief and losses, professions, passions, dreams, possibilities. It is so vast even in its […]
Discipline asks that you’re clear on what you value
Discipline is teaching, and teaching works best when there’s a relationship of trust with your child. We build trustful relationships over time. It requires consistency and clarity and good role modelling. If like many parents you’re unsure how to discipline your child, start by getting clear on what your core values are. Your values are […]