From the time our children enter the world, fresh and new like the snowy pages of an unwritten journal, and on through their toddlerhood, preschool years, middle childhood, and beyond, communication is the instrument with which we compose our relationship. Listening, responding, understanding, guiding, interacting, etc. are all inscribed as the messages we communicate to each other both...
I really love the work of Neil Postman, in particular, his theories on why schools need to be improved, and also, on why childhood is changing. In possibly his most controversial work, The disappearance of childhood, Neil Postman (1982) proposed that childhood was an invention of the late middle ages. Rather than a natural,...
Not long ago, I had a book signing at a small-town parade followed by a charming street festival. Sitting in a booth for hours on end, I had the opportunity to watch hundreds of families passing by, offering little vignettes of parent/child interaction that sometimes made me smile and other times broke my heart....
Learning about homeschool leads you on all sorts of paths. I was really surprised to learn about unschooling. Unschooling is defined by John Holt and Pat Farenga as homeschooling without a fixed curriculum. Holt said that it was about giving children as much freedom “to learn in the world, as their parents can comfortably...
A healthy mother and baby is the most important result of birth, it’s true. But after my first child was born my arms were shaking from the epidural and I could not steady myself to properly touch or kiss him, and then he was whisked away. I heard him screaming and knew my husband...
I am beginning to realise (or re-realise, as to be honest, I knew this stuff already), I need to be able to look after myself in order to be able to truly connect with and nurture my children. Laura Markham in “Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids” states that our first responsibility in parenting is...
My heart is a hammock for a stranger today As she cradles her Dead Baby. It is a weight all mothers will share As they see her face, Stricken and stolen By the pain of Loss. Loss of a promise beyond any measure The promise of love, Life. And he looks asleep, perfect. Though...
*Reprinted from Two Thousand Kisses a Day: Gentle Parenting Through the Ages and Stages by L.R.Knost available March 2013. Want to know a dirty, little secret about punishment? It doesn’t work. Punishment may be able to control a child’s behavior temporarily while they’re small or when they are in their parents’...
At the end of this past summer I had 2722 kilos of dirt (3 tons) delivered to our property and dumped out in a big pile. I was building some raised bed gardens in the backyard, and I needed dirt to fill them up, along with dirt to mix into the compost that I...
My husband will tell you I am a bit of a stickler for being on time. The chapter of my life pre-children, some might almost say I was obsessive about it. Post-children I’ve chilled out a lot. For some crazy reason though, it is still important to me to be vaguely on time. Probably...
One of my favourite memories of parenting has been sharing my love and appreciation of nature and our part in it. It is important to me that my children are raised in an environmentally aware home. Equally so that they know that their existence depends on the health of the environments around them. So...
The year has started so gloriously that I am absent from my computer. Its a good sign – something to be grateful for. But time to give back has come. And to share an idea for families that might be joyous is this idea that I have begun for 2013. It came from pondering...
Attachment Parenting International’s Eight Principles of Parenting is well known to those in the AP community. As I read them a few weeks ago, two of them struck me as excellent ideas for how to reach other women. I started my blog with a zeal to speak out for those whose voices are...
Parenting involves doing so much for children. It’s also about teaching children how to do things for themselves and others, and more importantly, how to continue learning and growing long after their parents have gone! What a privileged position parents are in – to facilitate and observe their children every day as they...
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