Miki Dedijer

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Seeing the north star

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It’s March, and for a few months longer on the northern hemisphere, until dimmed by the long summer days, the stars will strew the night sky.

This is a good time of year to head out with your child after nightfall, to introduce her to the North Star, this fixed axis point on the firmament around which all else moves.

There’s something magical, perhaps reassuring, in knowing there’s a single star that holds steady, despite all else that’s in never-ending movement, commotion, flux. It helps orient us to life, and to time (the old one’s knew to tell time by the position of the Little Dipper on the night sky).

So as you watch the North Star among the constellations, consider this: What are some fixed values in your family that guide you through the dark times, help you navigate the challenges? What is a constant in your child’s otherwise changing life?

Ask the star if you’re unsure. Pay attention and wait for the response. It may reveal some treasured insights. And your child may surprise you too.


Home as a place that doesn’t exist

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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 be found.

No wonder then that many of us are part of a deracinated throng that for generations has wandered towards an elusive somewhere we are told is both here and there, homeless people forever on our way towards the rumour of a village hearth.

The denigration of the homebody and the dismissal of a place-bound life has ripped into the fabric of most lineages, leaving its bloodied mark on the words once spoken there.

If you doubt whether this is so, and has been for centuries, consider the old Latin word villain, which means ‘inhabitant of a farm,’ or ‘the scoundrel in thrall to the villa for his life’.

The Swedish word ‘hemsk’ today means horrible, terrible, frightening. Follow it back in time to the 1800s, and you find the meaning changes slightly to anxious and gloomy, even stupid. Further back yet, and it speaks of a person who spends most of his or her time being at home.

Of all the myriad challenges parents grapple with as they raise a child in a culture such as this, one of the more common ones is the feeling of being unsettled, literally without a seat to rest on.

Many fathers and mothers are overcome with the experience of being adrift and isolated. Wanting to pass on a greater sense of stillness and belonging to their children, they wish for their lives to be held with more groundedness. But even meditation or its equivalents offer a weak medicine for the affliction of endless perambulation.

The path that meets these needs passes instead through the willingness to stay put long enough for the whole family to become so enthralled by the intimacy of a place, that they may one day proudly reclaim their role as villains.

Then home becomes truly irreplacable, a somewhere not found anywhere else but here, and that alone is enough to kindle a fire that draws others towards an actual hearth.

Respect trumps understanding

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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. But I didn’t know.

I could have asked, but I didn’t. It wasn’t my business to pry. He’s entitled to his anger. And I’m not sure my words would have offered any solace.

There is an old understanding that silence is a respectful way to honor relationship. At times it’s just what is needed to strengthen familial bonds and maintain communal peace.

The paradox is that you are often more relational when you don’t seek to understand. Just take a look at how we treat Earth, and it becomes apparent that the integrity of our respect for life is eroded by our incessant need to know.

When we show respect, we’re making it our priority not to interfere or violate a relationship. In the Navajo justice and harmony ceremony, for example, elders describe a person who is behaving disrespectfully as ‘one who has no relations’.

Silence can be the proper way to show respect, even for a parent.

Let your child teach you how to move

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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 was told to sit still. Even as an adult, when I am troubled, I am told to sit still.

“Meditate.”

“Go for a quiet walk.”

“Lie in savasana.”

“Float in a tank.”

We have so many ways of seeing movement as an affliction, and prescribing stillness as the cure. And those of our children who won’t, we reprimand, command or even medicate.

But what if slow, rapid, wild, sudden, spontaneous, erratic, unpredictable movement is the body’s god-given way to restore health?

Like many adults, I’ve been still for so long, I am troubled at times by my children’s facility for moving whenever they want to and however they like.

“Watch out you don’t break anything!” “Don’t fidget!”

We can label it natural, ebullient, nervous, stressed, manipulative, disturbing, wholesome, troubling, worrysome or symptomatic. But the fact that we notice it at all says more about our culture than it does about our child.

Movement is natural, however it manifests and whatever the emotion or imagined condition that drives it. A lot of us adults have forgotten that. And we pay dearly to relearn.

Somatic therapy. Tension stress and trauma release (TRE). Ecstatic dance. Five rhythms. These and other treats, retreats and treatments all aim to release movements or create a forum for movements that have become stuck in our bodies making us ill from a lifetime overdose of sitting still.

The next time my boy is moving, I’ll be more cautious in questioning the natural wisdom of his body, and allow it instead to remind me of the wisdom of my own body.

I’ll vibrate my leg nervously at the dinner table, playfully lean back in my chair, shake my booty on the bus, and take every opportunity that arises to remember to allow myself to move as the movement arises.

And if your child one day should say “Mom! Dad! Move!” Would you?

Everything in nature needs rest

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Everything rests if we don’t mess with it.

Deer rest under trees, digesting their food. In late summer the blue tits hang out on branches just swaying with the wind, watching the clouds go by. Our cat does nothing but rest–he’s merged with the sofa cushions.

Yet so many of us have scheduled rest right out of our lives. It’s more of an afterthought–or sudden necessity–than a welcome and natural part of our lives. Even our children don’t get the rest they need so, so much, and boy does busyness cost them dearly.

When we overschedule our kids we rob them of free play, boredom, creativity, self-direction and knowing their passions. And it damages their friendships and social relations too.

As overstretched families, we pass each other in the hallway, driving from one activity, heading to the next. It becomes hard for everyone to sit down for a quiet (or loud) meal together.

Everything rests if we don’t mess with it.

There’s no growth–for us or our children–without ample time to lie on the sun-warmed grass with a toe in the stream watching the clouds drift by. Or at least without enough sleep to recuperate and greet the day again with open arms.

Rest, repose, pausing, hanging out. It’s revolutionary-goes against the cultural grain of the western lifestyle.

And yet it’s perfectly natural.

Sometimes your child needs you to be quiet

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We’re taught to communicate through words: to speak our minds, to articulate, enounce, voice our feelings.

But no matter how good our intentions, all those words can be overwhelming and confusing. Sometimes our child needs us to be quiet.

If she’s afraid, in pain, angry, she’s not open to verbosity. She can’t even hear a “I see that you’re angry because you can’t have a cookie right now,” or “It’s OK, I’ll hold you while you cry.”

Try saying nothing for a change. Be present and let your child show you what she needs.

Sometimes silence itself is healing. Our comforting touch can be so much more articulate than logic or well-chosen words.

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