by Shonnie | Mar 19, 2013 | Common Challenges, The Needs of Children
Welcome to the March edition of the Simply Living Blog Carnival – Clearing the Clutter cohosted by Mandy at Living Peacefully with Children, Laura at Authentic Parenting, Jennifer at True Confessions of a Real Mommy, and Joella at Fine and Fair. This month our participants wrote about de-cluttering and cleaning up. Please check out the links to their thoughts at the end of this post. Before I decided to have a child, part of what I thought I wouldn’t like about being a parent was having a messy home. Yes, I was a neat-freak and still prefer an orderly space (not spic and span, simply clean-ish and well-organized). What I didn’t realize is that children attract clutter in so many ways that decluttering is an ongoing activity of modern family life. Why children are clutter magnets First, let me clarify that when I say “clutter,” I’m referring to anything that I think is unnecessary or unwanted. It’s the stuff that takes up space — physical and mental — that I’d prefer to leave free or use for other purposes. Whether it is an unsuitable gift from a relative, a trinket that your child is “awarded” at a doctor/dentist visit, some flora or fauna your wee naturalist has collected, bits of partially-eaten food, an “experiment” your budding scientist has started, or an art project your beginning painter has created, children draw stuff to them and leave stuff in their wake as they move through their day. There is no criticism here, just my observation of life with child. Children are clutter magnets because: People love to gift the children they...
by Shonnie | Nov 30, 2012 | Common Challenges, Mindfulness, Parenting Practice
Welcome to the November 2012 Authentic Parenting Blog Carnival: Gratitude and Traditions This post was written for inclusion in the monthly Authentic Parenting Blog Carnival hosted by Authentic Parenting and Living Peacefully with Children. This month our participants have written about gratitude and traditions by sharing what they are grateful for, how they share gratitude with their children, or about traditions they have with their families. The Authentic Parenting Blog Carnival will be taking a break in December, but we hope you will join us for the great line up of themes we have for 2013! *** “If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, ‘thank you,’ that would suffice.” ~ Meister Eckhart Religious or not, all parents pray in some way or another. We yearn for our children to be happy and healthy. We hope that the ills they bear in life will be minor and easy to recover from. We envision their living well and being fulfilled in their lives. We also wish to be parents who help rather than hinder, love rather than limit, and nurture rather than neglect the children we have to care for. And we say “thank you,” countless times for all the richness and blessings we and our children experience in the course of our lives. What we may find hard or confusing to do is to give thanks for the pain, trials, and tribulations of parenting (for ourselves and for our children). We want to praise the light and celebrate the victories. We find it natural to curse the darkness and regret the losses. But what if we...
by Shonnie | Oct 9, 2012 | Mindfulness, Parenting Practice, Self-mastery, The Needs of Children
Welcome to the October 2012 Carnival of Natural Parenting: Instilling a Healthy Self-Image This post was written for inclusion in the monthly Carnival of Natural Parenting hosted by Hobo Mama and Code Name: Mama. This month our participants have shared confessions, wisdom, and goals for helping children love who they are. Please read to the end to find a list of links to the other carnival participants. *** “Can you do something so her upper lip will cover more of her gums when she smiles?” my mom asked the orthodontist, not realizing how this question would stick with me for decades. As I sit for a professional photographer my stepdad laughed while calling, “Don’t blink!,” making me even more nervous than I already was in the brightly lit studio. My parents were good people who loved me and were proud of me, yet they unconsciously did things that chipped away at my self-esteem. Like most parents of their era and many parents even today, I think they didn’t realize how great their impact was on how I felt about myself. Instead of feeling comfortable in my own skin, I often looked outside myself for acceptance, relying on others’ praise to feel worthy, loveable, and even normal. Conversely, when others didn’t compliment me or made critical remarks, I withered and doubted myself because I gave their viewpoints so much weight. And I worked diligently to be flawless (at least by the standards my family valued) so that even when I believed myself flawed inside, the outside world would see only a smart, talented, composed, popular, and “in” girl. My parents...
by Shonnie | Oct 5, 2012 | Common Challenges, Mindfulness, The Needs of Children
Our families are sacred. While the relationships among us may get sticky or even occasionally sour, there is still a sacred sweetness among us whether our bonds be of blood or of choice. Part of our duty as parents is to help protect the sacredness within our immediate family, sheltering it from the outside winds that have no reverence for what we’ve created. I write this as an entreaty to all parents — mothers and fathers everywhere — to get serious about giving your family a place of honor in this world and to not let family become just one other part of your lives like work, hobbies, or volunteering. Our culture doesn’t want you to do this. If family is held as sacred like the Sabbath once was, then what happens to work, to commerce, to productivity, to consumption, to profit? American society has no love of family despite plenty who will claim “family values” are important. The law allows parents to take 12-weeks of unpaid job-protected leave upon the birth/adoption of a child which, while better than no leave, basically says that children are worth 3 months of devoted attention and no more. Our employers, our government, our culture places no importance on family so that is up to us. More specifically it’s up to us as parents with sufficient financial means to reclaim the sacredness of family. What does it mean to hold family as sacred? Do an internet search on “family as sacred” and though google can find 141 million results, the first five pages are mostly about religious institutions or rituals or are from...
by Shonnie | Sep 21, 2012 | Mindfulness, Self-mastery, The Needs of Children
Recently a client mentioned being able to see herself taking baby steps towards her goals, the implication being that these would be small actions. Hearing her words I saw my newly walking baby in my mind’s eye. Her “baby steps” were bold, trusting, joyful, and graceful (for someone completely new to bipedal locomotion) — gigantic from a spiritual perspective if relatively small when viewed on a physical scale. It was the first time I’d ever considered that the way we use the term “baby steps” was completely wrong — baby steps are HUGE and BOLD and we most of us could use more of this baby step energy in our lives. How babies make bold steps (and how we can emulate them) They trust themselves and the universe. Sure they are new to walking (or feeding themselves, or tying their shoes) but they don’t fear failure because they don’t know what failure is. They fall and use that experience to refine their walking (they don’t judge themselves as clumsy or curse the floor). They are guided by passion, curiosity, and interest. They don’t do something with baby steps because they “have to,” they do it because they can’t not do it. Their excitement to explore the world around them compels them to act. They pay attention. Our little ones don’t sleep walk though life like we often do. They notice details about the world around them — “Birdie singing, mama.” Or “See this, daddy?” (as she places a piece of gravel in your hand) — and thus are sparked to investigate or examine further what they’ve discovered. They crave...
