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 | 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...
