To that end, I am going to do a little series on Attachment Parenting for beginners.

Of course, no mama or papa is really a “beginner” when it comes to loving or nurturing or even taking care of another; and truly we’ve all had at least some experience in proper attachment, as well. To begin with, somewhere in our brains is a catalogue of evolutionary wisdom that sets us on the right course toward healthy connection with our young, even without our thinking about it. There are innumerable responses our brains and bodies enact, while barely alerting our awareness. We move, we breath, we pulse with life, we digest, we heal wounds, all with only the barest (if any) conscious thought. Another example and more to the point — when in contact with her infant, the mother’s body will heat up and cool down by several degrees as necessary to keep her baby’s temperature optimal. Additionally, there are further responses that our bodies and brains enact and/or experience based the thoughts we’re having, even our barely conscious ones. For instance, a nursing mother will sometimes have a milk “let-down” just hearing her baby’s voice in the next room. Add to these autonomic functions of the nervous systems of both infant and parents, the power of our empathy, which is both a brain function of mirror neurons helping us to read our children (and other humans), and an intellectual/emotional allegiance to our offspring — not to mention a healthy response to baby pheromones! And all of that (and more) is present in humans by nature, whether or not we had a loving, well-bonded infancy or childhood ourselves.

Fortunately, as it turns out, most of us, even if our upbringing was less than ideal, have had thousands of other moments of feeling profound love, care, and/or protectiveness for another. We’ve known love of moments, and of things, animals and people, and even mere ideas, all of which were important to us — not just in developing a sense of what it means to nurture, take care of, and connect with another, but each in their own right for the host of feelings that each love has given us. And every one of those moments and things and companions has added to our capacity to be loving parents.

The bottom line, here, is this: even if you’ve never had a baby, never cared for a baby, never even held a baby — you were born with the tools, and have trained for decades in how to empathize, and connect, and collaborate. You have what you need, and where you lack specific experiential knowledge, you can rely on your child to teach you, and rely on yourself to learn quickly, and rely on resources already available to you with wisdom to share. You can count on yourself. You can trust yourself. You can. I promise. And the more you do, the more you will. It’s parent magic. But only if you believe it.

If nothing else, it’s a sensible mindset to have, whether you can stay there long (at first) or not: I am  learning what to do as a parent from my child and myself in each moment, and I trust us.

All the tools are accessible. You are born with some, you pick some up along the way (from experience and from reading stuff like this!), and you get more from your kid(s) — if you accept them. And the more you use them, the sharper these tools get.

In terms of tools you can take away with you from here today — some of these will not be news to you at all, but they are the basics, and they need to be covered before continuing on with other themes of nurturing that all important parent-child bond. So briefly, here’s a list of pro-attachment practices that no good parenting tool-belt should be without:

• Begin before your baby is born to build touchstones for your baby — things that she can experience in the womb and after birth, and that will help her have a sense of continuity, and womblike “nueral-comfort”. Things like music, both parents’ voices (as well as other care-givers or siblings), certain scents (the mother would smell initially), and particular routines like going for a walk and then taking a rest are all ideal. Something like music, or your own singing can be used to help calm the baby both in and out of the womb, and can be used once your baby is born to help set the mood for bed time or other restful periods, as well as helping the baby feel generally safe and connected. Even if you didn’t begin this process while your baby was in your belly, start immediately to create these touchstones of calm security. Maybe use rituals around feeding or bedtime as a place to start — reading stories, playing a certain kind of music, repeating certain other conditions like smells, light levels, a certain snuggle position. Your baby’s body will remember and cue itself to act accordingly — that is, feel calm and safe and secure, and available for more input, and fully open to the experience of living.
• Have a gentle birth. Getting whatever help you need in order to do so, prepare yourself for a smooth, easy birth, trusting your body to do it’s thing, and making the transition as healthy, simple, and safe as possible for you and your baby. As soon as he is out, put your baby on your chest and let him see your face and smell your pheromones, and you do the same with him. Let him hear that yours is the same heartbeat he has been hearing his whole existence, and let him feel that you are (still) there to care for all his needs.
• Spend every single moment those first days in physical contact with your baby. Don’t do anything else. It’s like when you were a kid and you got that super-cool gift for Christmas and you just wanted to spend days and days and days checking out all the parts and figuring our how to make everything work. Get to know the face and body and human-ness that is your newly born baby. She’s here now. You can finally feel her in all her magnificence. So enjoy that, for all of your sakes. Parents take off your shirts and put your naked baby right onto your chests! Rub her whole back side with your hands (and maybe some olive oil), snuggle her, take deep meditative breaths, smell the top of her head, let her smell you and hear your heartbeat and your voice. When you have to get up, or put on more clothes, carry the baby with you, cozied up in some on-body carrier. Remember she is used to being in warm spring water, in near-to-absolute darkness, hearing the sounds of you and your body all day long. Do your best to replicate and/or provide those conditions for her.
• Think of the first few months of your and your baby’s after-womb life as a fourth trimester. Keep the environment muffled. Keep the baby on you. Keep all your expectations for yourself, outside of adjusting to your new life, down to the barest minimum. Just like while you were building your baby, 24/7, and gave yourself license(s) for different expectations of yourself — do the same in these early months. You have lot’s of continuing body work going on inside you, you have major emotional and physical adjustments to make, and your baby does too. SO put the baby in your pouch and make like a slow, happy koala for a few months. You’ll never regret it… (I’ll say more about how necessary and beneficial this is in my next post in this series).
• Always, always, always respond to your baby. If she is chattering about something fun, share in the joy with her; if she is looking deeply into your eyes, look back; if she is playing with you, play back; if she is talking, listen and respond in kind (even when it’s just babble games); if she is crying or in need of assistance, come to her aid immediately and calmly. When she goes to explore something, make the way clear for her, assist her if she needs it, and receive her back when she wants to check back with you in between her adventures. This cycle of letting her go out to explore and then return for reconnection is the quintessential pattern of the rest of your parent-child life together.
• Sleep with your baby. In whatever way you can manage, however it makes sense to you and your family, make it work to sleep with him near enough that you don’t have to wake up all the way to help in the night. If you’re nursing, then you’ll just roll over and go for it; if it’s a diaper change, have what you need at hand for middle-of-the-night quickies. If your child is napping, then you nap too, at least at first. The general edict of “sleep with your baby” will ensure that you’re both getting the most quality rest that you can. It’s also the best way for you and your baby to bond while sleeping!
• Normally, any good Attachment Parenting Basics list would likely include nurse on demand, and I am a huge advocate of breast-feeding. But I want instead to emphasize that what is most important is the “on demand” part. Obviously, nursing is “nature’s best option”, but if you can’t breast-feed, and/or choose to rely on formula, fine, but keep to the “on demand” part. Let your baby feed whenever she wants, don’t think that just because you are bottle-feeding that you have to create a regimented schedule for that. Your baby may tend toward a certain schedule, and that’s fine, too, but be in the receiving mode in terms of the signal for the timing of feeding. Remember, for the baby it isn’t about filling the physical void in her belly, it’s about receiving comforting. Always. I haven’t seen the research yet, but I am sure if and when it’s done it’ll clearly show that babies are never aware that they are wanting to nurse/feed because their bodies need sustenance. They almost surely think of it solely as comfort long into their shift to solid food.
• Use sign language and talk to your baby. He is used to your voice, he wants to hear it, it calms him, and he learns from it every single time you speak (though, it’s best if it’s in your regular voice, rather than adult-baby talk…). But in order to be able to actually communicate clearly with him as soon as you both possibly can, use some form of gestural sign language — something he can see. We advise actual sign language (that’s ASL for my “local” friends), because it’s used by others as an actual language, and is a discreet system all it’s own; but you can use whatever signs make sense to you, so long as you are consistent. Doing so gives your child opportunities and advantages unimaginable by non-signing families. First, it sets up your baby’s brain for multilingualism (an advantage in it’s own right in terms of full brain development); it also makes his first language lessons full-body ones, thus guaranteeing their fullest neural impact; it also gets you talking more to your baby, which is great for language acquisition, comprehension, and parent-child bonding; and it makes it so your 2 year-old has a full lexicon and can express his needs rather than being frustrated at his linguistic inability to communicate his  fully conscious and highly developed desires and ideas.
• If you’re brave enough to go for the gold, I would also strongly advise using elimination communication with your baby. It is sometimes also called “infant toilet training” which has the advantage of being a little more visceral, but I think also risks giving some the wrong idea — you aren’t just “training” your infant to go to the toilet instead of in a diaper, you’re “training” yourself just as much to listen and pay attention to her patterns and signals. This means you use loads less diapers, thus reducing your impact, but you also get to a level of connection with your baby that is nothing short of telepathic. You use the bond to grow the bond, and you are completely done with diaper/toilet issues by the end of your baby’s first year! Talk about a win-win-win situation…

That’s my version of the Cliff notes on Attachment Parenting, or what I like to call Cro-Magnon Parenting™. The whole idea is about making the transition from womb to Earth as smooth as possible. The aim is to grow the connection we share with our little ones, and to ensure that they feel safe, secure, and welcome here. I always think of the image in that REM song of the mother holding her child close and whispering into his hear “with calm, calm, ‘Belong’”.

Making sure our babies are securely attached to us is how we give them the proper rooting they will need to succeed at life here in the garden. It gives them the nutrients they will need to grow to their healthiest, happiest, most fully realized selves. It makes everything we will need to do in raising them easier for all parties involved. And if nothing else, it clearly communicates that they are welcome here. It’s our best possible way(s) of making sure they know that they belong.

Enjoy yourselves, new (or re-newed) parents. Welcome to you and your new little ones! Many blessings to you and through you.

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Be well.

As you may remember from the last couple posts, beginning right before Thanksgiving we spent four weeks enjoying a nearly continuous train of our menagerie of grandparents. In fact, we enjoyed visits from (at least a representative from) every one of our grandparent factions this fall before the winter holidays even began.

Last in this round, but by no means least, was Grammy! And she came fully loaded with art projects,

activities,

gifts, and…

Natalie’s beloved sister, Emily. This was quite a coup for a number of reasons, but mostly because everyone in her family always tells Natalie everything (usually before, or instead of, anyone else in the family), so undertaking to keep something from her for any period of time was quite a feat. But they pulled it off, and Emily arrived an hour before Grammy and hid out at the gate until Grammy came and they surprised us by walking out together to meet us.

Having the prized (and only actual) Aunt here at the same time as beloved Grammy was almost more delight than the kids could stand. The girls got to enjoy the day to day play, the art projects, the trips to our favorite café, a “dressed-up dinner”, and countless other little encounters with one, or the other, or both of these authentic, loving ladies. Sometimes the girls were huddling up with Emmy, sometimes with Grammy, sometimes  trading them back and forth from one sister to the other. And sometimes they played together on their own while the adults watched and chatted, or walked dogs, or ran to the store, or just ran. There were more of us than them, and I found myself tracking all the ways in which that was absolutely ideal for our girls.

I know not everyone has family that they can get along with long enough to really know what I mean, but to those of you who do — isn’t it so fantastic to have other people important to them love your kids?! In our family, and with literally all of our relatives, I think of the interactions our kids get to have with their elders as pure developmental gold. Each of their elders interacts with the girls in each’s own way(s), and tends to play to his or her own strengths — thank goodness! So for an abridged example, Nana might read 40 billion stories, Grandpa George winds up answering all sorts of questions about the nature of things, Juju likes to gives spa treatments, Gramma Bonnie has been known to play chase, Grammy regularly brings art activities, Grandpop Michael likes to shop and make jokes, etc., etc.. And in a general sense, family time with extended family is another ideal opportunity for the girls to receive validation and unconditional acceptance and love from adults (other than us) whom they value — adults who are delighting in the girls just for being who they are. In terms of developing self-acceptance and self-assurance, I think of us parents as basic, necessary nutrition — the kind kids shouldn’t do without — but I think of healthy extended family interactions as the mega-supplements, wheat-grass shots, and fermented fish oil caplets — the kind of additional nutrition that enhances normal functioning and development, the kind that makes for the happiest, healthiest humans. And I am so thankful for the family these three girls get to have — what a blessing for all three of them!

After the slew of relatives paraded through, we had just enough time to finish off our gift boxes and mail them out to our loved ones (even though some of them had just been with us…). And then we started Yule!

As no doubt some of you will remember, we celebrate winter holidays beginning on the Solstice (or Hanukah, whichever comes first), and continue through the New Year.

This year we had the older girls for the second half of the winter break, so it was just a skeleton crew on our hike Christmas Day: Mary, the dog Santa brought to Echo, riding piggy back with a little monkey friend as her pillow (you can just see a monkey arm and  leg sticking out under Mary’s head), Echo, Natalie, Henry (our dog) and his girlfriend Isis (whom we are currently dog-sitting), and me. The holiday hike a tradition Natalie and I would like to make permanent, though we’ve only done it two or three times in our 8 years together.

This year we hiked through the set of the upcoming American film version of Waiting for Godot…

There’s the tree…

We got to the top of the hill, which normal comes with a lovely overlook of our snug little burg nestled in the heart of several converging mountain valleys, but on this day there was nothing to see. In fact the entire town, which would normally be visible in the background behind Echo above, was washed completely out, at least visibly. The more eerie thing was that we could hear everything just the same: the strip of highway between us and town, the sound of car tires swishing on wet street, squeaking brakes, even a siren, and a couple of random voices.

The next day I went to get Bella, and the day after that Xi returned. Since then, we’ve spent every day huddled together in whatever room any of us is in. We’ve only ventured out once in the last 4 days, and that was to have a belated ice cream celebration of Bella’s birthday. Inside, we’ve been slowly opening and enjoying daily influxes of new things from under the Yule tree, reading together (right now Bella and Xi are taking turns reading a book aloud to Echo), cooking, eating, making thank you cards, playing games, and hanging out. Bella opened the remainder of her birthday presents the other day as well…

All in all, we’re having a totally blissful time here at Gus. We hope you have had and are having a delicious holiday season as well. Felicitous Yule Tidings to you and yours from us and ours.

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Be well.

Well we had to return our last set of grandparents after the Thanksgiving weekend. They’re still functioning in perfect working order, and there was no issue with their grand-parental performance — but much like the books we get from the library, we got to enjoy them while they were here, and we will be able to check them out again, but we have to return them when they are due, so that others can enjoy them too! Or something like that…

Not to worry, though, we got our second installment of grandparent fun delivered just a few days later. Grandpop Michael showed up with bags of souvenirs from around the globe and more jokes than a stand-up comedian. He wowed the girls with dolls from Macedonia, shirts from Nepal embroidered with their names, and bizarre cat noises almost no one else could create. He made the girls laugh and gave them “heck” (as he’d prefer I say…).

It has been fun to watch the grandparents with the kids. Each one interacts in his or her own way, and the girls respond in their own ways as well. It makes for some fun anthropological research — if you’re into that sort of thing, which I am. The other thing that has been really interesting to me is collecting more data about where personality comes from. What a weird and wonderful thing human personality is…

We enjoyed an extended weekend with Grandpop, and packed in as much fun and restaurant food and shopping as we could all stand, and then sent him back off to Virginia and then on to parts unknown. His spot in the pink chair was barely cold before we got our next installment of family, though… Grammy arrived yesterday and surprised us all by bringing with her Natalie’s sister Em. But more on that next time!

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Be well.

My parents, Nana and Grandpa George, arrived yesterday afternoon from their home in Alabama.

Somehow it worked in perfect cosmic synchronicity that the flight they were on got in with just enough time for me to pick them up, grab the bags they checked, run to the van with them trailing behind, and hightail it to the Montessori school Xideka attends for the Thanksgiving feast they were having. The kids, teachers, and some parents made the food; and when we dashed into the school, all the 50-odd children in the school were seated neatly around a low, winding strand of tables before a semi-traditional Thanksgiving spread. The director of the school gave aallll the kids the opportunity to say one thing for which they were thankful before they began the meal (she’s a braver soul than I…). Xi said she was thankful, “that I have a family.” After the meal, Xi took Nana and Grandpa around the three main rooms of the school, and to the classroom where she spends most of her time each day. She showed them some of her works, and beamed proudly as they oohed and aahed in flawless grandparent fashion.

But we didn’t stop there. No. Even though they got up at 2:30 in the morning to drive the hour-long trip to the nearest airport, and flew thousands of miles to get here, they were with us now, and we all had one more stop. We went from the school, dropped off the luggage at Gus (you know, the house where we live…), and headed to the Good Food Store (best name for a grocery ever). We scoured the aisles, and dallied in play, while talking about meal ingredients. Nana was in charge of the official shopping list to which she kept adding and immediately crossing off items as we filled the cart. Make that a cart and a half… Of this I am sure: we will be well-fed (but hopefully not over-fed) for the holiday weekend.

But we didn’t stop there. Nope. Already, Nana and Grandpa George were being entertained, and involved in kid discussions, and presentations, and even a pretend or two (perhaps without knowing it…). Already, they’d endured epic physical travel, whirlwind school feasting and touring, abundant holiday grocery collecting. But once home, there was the tour of Gus for which they were signed up — as part of their travel package, of course, and being 1st time guests of the New Gus Grandparent Accommodations (“Ing-g-gah” [NGGA], for short). They got to see the fully-accoutred kid rooms, Grandpa even climbed part way up the ladder and peered into the kid loft. They got to see the (newly hung) family art collection, and the cool storage spaces Gus has tucked away in every corner. They also finally got to see all the rugs and lamps and bed spreads and towels that Nana took us all to pick out before we moved back into the house this past January.  The grandparents talked about the solidity of the construction, the wisdom of our design and decor choices, the aesthetic appeal of the wood and the wall colors. And they oohed and aahed in appropriate grandparent fashion.

Then while Natalie made an amazing dinner, Nana read a fistful of stories, Grandpa chatted with us big kids, and all of us were included in a couple of pretends (whether we all knew it or not…), as well as, the opening of a gift. Grandpa George answered a knock at the door at one point and returned with a box bearing familiar amazon.com packaging and addressed to me. Xi was anxious to open it, but kept having to wait through various delays, like Echo needing a bathroom break, etc., etc.. Xi was magically able to wait with supreme patience, even though her Grandpa was encouraging her to just start opening the outside package… It was becoming apparent that he knew something we didn’t. After the “various (aforementioned) delays”, Echo returned and the opening commenced immediately. Inside was an amazing CD set of music that George Harrison had produced of Ravi Shankar’s music, some with Harrison himself in the band. It came with a lovely book with photos that looked like Harrison had been photoshopped into an Indian movie from the 70′s, and bits of history of Shankar and Harrison’s relationship and the music born from it, with a forward by Philip Glass. Grandpa George had sent it to us, and arrived synchronically, both to be here when we got it, and to be the man to receive it from the shipping guy at the front door… We all oohed and aahed in cosmically- and historically-appreciative fashion.

This Thanksgiving seems to be picking up momentum at a delicious pace. Today we get our Bella. And then our idyllic holiday will kick into even fuller operation (seriously, no puns intended). But we won’t stop there. No…

I hope you enjoy your holiday, friends (at least, you American ones who have this holiday…).

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But everyone: be well.

Last month, I went on a short trip with one of my maternal uncles and my dad (he’s my “step-dad”, but I generally only call him that for clarity when necessary). We went down to southern Utah, to Arches National Park, Canyonlands, all the way to Monument Valley at the northern tip of Arizona. It was a quick trip, and a full one.

We drove and walked through hundreds of miles of spell-binding geology. We traveled through some of the longest-standing and “busiest” culturally historical terrain in America.  We climbed canyons and cliffs. We walked among crazy sandstone formations, centuries-old ruins, and mysterious petroglyphs.

Hopefully, someone will share with me some of their amazing digital photos soon, so I can show you some of the more impressive sights from the trip. I actually took a couple rolls of 35mm camera shots, myself, but have yet to get them processed…

So I couldn’t show you any of what we saw on the trip; but what I can show you, and am, today is something special I brought home for the girls. Of course, I had to bring stuff back for the girls… Each one got a special stone from my travels, a t-shirt, and some actual Mexican Jumping Beans!

Obviously, I didn’t get the beans in Mexico. They were imported Mexican Jumping Beans. I purchased them, first thing, when I arrived at the Salt Lake City airport, where I was meeting my dad and getting picked up by my uncle (who was driving us all-over Utah). Coincidentally, I just happened to walk up the concourse from my flight arrival at SLC (as we call it here), and saw my dad coming the other way, and he was coincidentally talking with a friend he knew from back home in Alabama. Where we bumped into one another was coincidentally right outside my favorite kid shop in the SLC airport (a major travel hub for us Montana folks). So I decided I would duck in and see if there was anything fun for the kids before I set off and spent all my souvenir money.

The airport shop has all the latest, coolest stuff for young kids, I’d say from toddler to about ten or so. We’ve gotten “Groovy Girl” stuff there, and stuffed-animal neck pillows, and other fun stuff we still have. On this particular day, though, I was not seeing anything that was absolutely fabulous, so I decided to go for some glow in the dark Sillybands (which I didn’t mention in the list above because I haven’t yet given those out). In the line to pay for the Sillybands, I saw the Mexican Jumping Beans.

I heard gospel hymns in my head. I saw an aura of golden light around the display. I had heard of MJBs before. They were mythical additions to some childhood cartoons I still vaguely remember as if images from a dream. And though I thought they were maybe made up, I had always been intrigued. I had perviously surmised that if they actually existed at all, they were probably coffee beans that had insects inside. I knew the girls would love them.

They sat four or five beans to a small plastic box, in a stacked arrangement of about 30 boxes. The clicked and rattled in the boxes, as the beans popped and rolled and bounced. In concert, they made quite a little ticking chorus. I bought two boxes, and grabbed the informational printout to bring as well.

The rather informative little information sheet informed me that the jumping beans come from a single area in Mexico, and that they are in fact, not coffee beans at all, but some sort of legume-type bean which come 3 to a pod. The jumping part is due to a moth larva who is laid as an egg in the mouth of the flower that becomes the pod, bores his/her way into the new, tender bean, and then slowly eats its way through to the next spring when it comes out as a moth. They go dormant in the cold, and they start “jumping” in the heat to keep from cooking inside their hard brown rental homes.

I stuffed the little plastic boxes in the bag the shopkeeper gave me, and zipped that into the side of the bag I was carrying. We went merrily on our way, and eventually got picked up from the airport by my uncle and headed south that evening. My uncle’s vehicle was loaded with stuff my dad and I had sent him to bring to us, as well as his own gear for the trip. I sat in the back, surrounded by stuff — in the seat beside me, as well as piled up in the hatch-back area behind me. One of the bags I’d brought with me was balanced on a big green Coleman stove in the back. And for several hours, either the bag or the stove was making a little rattle-squeak-ticking type of noise that I could not figure out.

As the miles went by, the noise kept giving me pause to wonder what the heck was going on. I tried my best to ignore it, but eventually, I was always reminded. That night we stayed at a hotel. I got the two air-travel bags I was using and brought them inside the room. When I set it down, I heard the stove-sound from the car again. Then I remembered — the beans…

They were in that bag I brought, flopping and clicking around in their little plastic boxes…

Through-out the course of the trip, the little Mexican Jumping Beans were a recurrent theme of humour. At one point, I thought maybe, I’d cooked them by leaving them too long in the car. And at another point, I thought I’d frozen them. And, regularly, their little click-clicking snuck up on us and had us wondering before we realized it was the beans, again.

So when I finally got home and distributed the gifts, the girls oohed and aahed over the shirts, the Navajo rattle I brought for the whole family, and the stones. And they actually were quite interested in the Mexican Jumping Beans, but I just couldn’t help feeling that they couldn’t possibly get out of them all that those little tickers meant to me…

Above and just below here, you can see Xi and Echo “racing” some beans. We put them in the middle of the paper (on the back of the informational printout), and the first bean to roll into one of the ovals on the outside of the ring, “wins”.  The girls actually played it for a little while, but those beans don’t do much in the way of impressive jumping in chilly Montana.

Maybe if we put them under a heat lamp…?

Having kids: It’s fun for the whole family…

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Be well.

Lately, many of our days have looked something like this…

Echo is crouched down by the dining room table. She rests on a couch cushion we moved for the purpose, and is surrounded by toy figures of various animals and characters. She plays with them as she listens to story after story after story (and then repeats) on the little cd player the girls share. In this photo she’s listening to Charlotte’s Web (read by E.B. himself), but she’s also been into Matilda, Bunnicula, The Wizard of Oz, and Pippy Longstockings (which I now know by heart…).

Of course she isn’t the only one listening to these stories. She doesn’t really like the headphones (which are, among other things, just a little too big for her), so we’ve all gotten a fair taste, or more, of many of the stories. It’s funny, but it’s somewhat like the scene one usually imagines involving their teen child listening to way too much punk music way too loud… only it’s the deep, tempered voice of E.B. White for hours on end…

So while the readers carry on (and on and on…) we all just carry on as well. On this particular day, in the dining room with Echo, Xi has been working on some projects. You can see the book she has opened on the table above Echo. Or here, below, taking a break and contemplating her story-obsessed sibling (while listening to Charlotte’s Web, of course).

And parked at the dining room table with them, or should I say, “And sharing studio space with them,” Natalie works hour after hour on making the latest item of Faery Food. On this day, she’s preparing cauliflower leaves, on day 2 of a major cauliflower production binge…

Xi, noticing that I keep taking pictures (for which she isn’t getting to pose…), asks if I’ll let her “get ready” before I shoot the next one…

so, I oblige her. And this is what I get for it…

We all laugh — somewhat quieter than usual so we don’t interrupt the story…

Then I take one more picture, since Xi is ready, and I go back to making tea for myself, and on to my own little project (recreating “strawberry hill” in our yard). These are my favorite kind of days. Short of having our Bella with us (which is farther between than we would like, nowdays), I’d say this is my perfect kind of day.

So easy. So mutually fulfilling. So sweet. So together. Mmm-mmm goodness.

Here’s to more of the same.

And here’s to your own version of a perfect typical day.

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Be well

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Just a friendly reminder — we launch our eCourse this Monday the 10th! Don’t know what that is? Click here to find out!

For all of you who have enjoyed, learned from, and been inspired by our blogs and/or consultations with us, Natalie and I are offering a special opportunity to immerse yourselves in our philosophy, be part of a meaningful and informative dialogue with us, and connect with us and other like-minded and interested parents from around the world in a global village forum.  We’ll look, learn, and laugh with one another as we work together to continue developing our own understandings and approaches to living out this amazing experience we call parenting.

Natalie and I title it “Parenting on the Same Team”. You can click on the link below to find out more.

http://talkfeeleez.typepad.com/talk-feeleez/2011/09/parenting-on-the-same-team-aka-he-said-she-said-.html

We hope you’ll join us for what promises to be a family-life-changing event.

*

Be well.

Wow! What an insanely busy couple of weeks I’ve just had — way, way busier than I like to be, unless it’s busy in the yard, or busy playing! I’ve now reached that light at the end of the proverbial tunnel, and am excited to share with you some of the thoughts that have had to just bounce around inside my head in the interim…

The big theme for me and most of my clients of late has been, “To thine own self be true.” It keeps showing up in different venues, situations, and manners in the lives of numerous people with whom I’ve been interacting both professionally and casually, as well as in my own life. It happens quite a bit that my clients will (unknowingly, of course) share a theme between them from week to week and month to month. And as always, aside from my kids, my clients are my best teachers — so when I am struggling with or learning about something, often so are they in their own way(s), and our gleanings inform and inspire one another. I believe this is part of the universal law of attraction, in that, when we are going through something, we attract more of it, the more we focus on it. I also think we bring people to ourselves who are learning similar things, even if, as is sometimes the case, s/he is learning about it from a totally opposing perspective — for example, someone learning about teaching a thing, while someone else in her sphere (or right in front of her) is learning about receiving instruction in that thing.

At any rate, over and over the last couple weeks, my clients and I have been getting the message to trust ourselves, and to be true to what we know, and feel, and want. Some of us are on the “follow your bliss” end of that spectrum and are concentrating on the zen practice of merrily tripping along toward what matters most to us. Others are stuck at the gate and beating our heads against yet another example of how we second-guessed ourselves. And still more of us have been somewhere in the middle, trying to listen for our internal messages, straining to hear the voice of our feelings guiding us through the forest of interactions and opportunities of our daily lives.

So I decided to send out a beacon. It’s from all of us to ourself. We’ve been whispering it into our own collective ear for a while now, but it’s time we stood up and shouted it out so those in the back can hear it clearly. So everyone, repeat after me:

I   T R U S T  M E ! ! ! 

Mmm, doesn’t that feel good?! Yeah, I like it, too. Now, who’s up for repeating that as often as necessary, until it sticks?

Maybe you could even challenge yourself, as I asked one client to do recently, and trust yourself every time you have a feeling or a thought about what is right to do, or think, or say, or feel for one whole week. If it comes up, and the question is, “Do I trust myself in this situation, or do I trust someone else’s version of what I should do or think, etc.,” then you already know what the answer is. If you have an intuition and you’re not sure if you should act on it — do. If you are struggling with the right decision in terms of your parenting, listen only to what feels right to you — not what you’ve been taught, not what so-and-so says is right, not what this book says, or the teacher says, or your parents say, or what the bossy, self-sabotaging voice in your head says — but only to your deepest knowing. Listen to your “gut”, and nothing else.

If you can live up to that challenge for a whole week, you will undoubtedly be a more powerful person, but you’ll also be a better parent, and you’ll feel happier than ever before in your life. Why? Because you actually do know what feels right to you, and you only ever get bent out of shape because you aren’t doing it. It’s like having to go to the bathroom but not wanting to stop the project you are doing in order to go. There’s a feeling inside you saying, “If you take care of this, you’ll feel better, you’ll be able to concentrate more easily, and you won’t feel agitated.” When we ignore that feeling, for a different agenda, we get more and more uncomfortable. When we stop the routine, or the project, and let go of the rigid adherence to the other agenda for a moment, and listen to ourselves, and trust our internal messages, and act from there to do what feels right, then… Aahhhhh. We can relax, we can get back to feeling good, and we can move on with other tasks more quickly and with more focus than we were capable of when we were ignoring our feelings.

As it turns out, we have the exact same variety of  internal anxiety and irritation ignoring our bodily functions as we do ignoring our intuitive functions. There’s a pain, or an itch, or an irritation that comes with ignoring what we know and feel in our deep-selves. Some would even say that all anger and suffering come from ignoring our deeper knowing in favor of some shallower, perhaps more practical or popular, “knowledge”.

This is why I tell people to tread lightly when reading the Introduction to Nurture Shock, which is a book a strongly and often recommend. Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman do a stellar job of collecting, condensing, and covering some important research in child nurturing and development throughout the book. The information they deliver is potent medicine for a good bit of what ails the practice of modern parenting — where so much misinformation has poisoned our ability to hear and listen and understand our own intuitive messages. Where the book feels shaky to me is where the authors warn us (using their own story to illustrate) how far off our “instincts” can be — because the examples they give aren’t instincts, they aren’t deep intuitions about what feels right; they’re programs. So although the things they mention aren’t things I would suggest anyone doing (like praising the stuffing out of every kid in view), I also would say that those things aren’t instinctual or intuitive — they are parenting mythology, rhetoric, and pseudo-scientific superstition passed down through the last few generations. The things Bronson and Merryman warn us not to listen to aren’t ourselves, they are actually the very things that obscure our own voices and knowing. And at a time when you can literally find “good scientific evidence” to support nearly any parenting method under the sun, it is more important than ever not to collapse our own feelings with what we are told to be feeling. It’s all the more important for those of us seeking to get a more comprehensive story into the hands and minds of parents everywhere that we not disempower or risk disconnecting them from their own senses of what feels “good and right”. That’s their most (and only) trust-worthy measure of what they should do, we can’t afford to tell parents not to listen to themselves.

I also want to be clear that our intuitions would never tell us that it felt the most “good and right” to do any of the coercive, manipulative, or down-right scary tactics espoused in some parenting books today. If we honestly check in with ourselves, what parent would really feel right about letting his/her child “Cry It Out” alone for 30 minutes; or about manipulating a child to get compliance; or about praising a kid to get more of a preferred behavior? Those tendencies are just the training we’ve been given to resist our instincts to nurture, and care for, and assist in the natural development of both ourselves and our kids. Those methods weren’t designed for those purposes — they were designed to control behaviors not development, and in dogs, not humans — but their effect has been to poison our ability to trust what actually feels like the right thing(s) to do.

We know it doesn’t feel good to punish our kids, but that’s what we were taught is the the correct method so we ignore our feelings, mistrust our guts, and plod along. Why? Because we want our kids to fit in society, and live happy, successful lives, and because we don’t want to be judged as incompetent to assist our kids in doing those things. We’ve been duped. And now it’s time we took off the blinders with which we’ve been fitted. It’s time we opened ourselves back up to trusting what we know and feel beyond all rhetoric and rules. It’s time to trust ourselves before anything or anyone else.

Remember our mantra: I trust me.

And “above all, to thine own self be true.”

*

Be well.

*

P.S. Although I would prefer not to “have to” say this, I want to be mindful not to paint anyone into any corners… So, if you’re listening to yourself, and your intuition is telling you that the method you have been using isn’t feeling good, but you don’t know what other method(s) might feel better, don’t be afraid to get more information. But be true to yourself in deciding what information you are willing to accept!

I am  steadily becoming an international parenting consultant (did you know that?), working with people all around the world to improve their experience of parenting; listening to their stories, empathizing with them, giving them advice, and helping them to look at what matters most to them in raising their children. By some I am considered an “expert” in the theory and methodology of Natural Parenting. By some I’ve been called a parenting guru, and a child-rearing revolutionary. And some parents out there even wish they had me for a Papa; or had a partner to parent with that is as interested in parenting as I am; or that they themselves could parent the way Natalie and I do.

Some would say that I am the perfect parent. And that would be just as ridiculous as saying that I made all of the stars. And though I have been studying and practicing being a stellar, empathetic, and confident parent for over a decade, I am no more “perfect” than you are. And at the same time, we are all no less perfect than we should be (but more on that in a minute — I’m not finished debunking…). The wonderful truth is, I couldn’t parent your kids half as well as you; and for them, no one can be as just right as you are. (Maybe you want to read that again just to make sure it gets into your longer term memory…)

Many people reading here, and in the workshops, teleconferences, and consultations that I give, make the erroneous assumption, not only that I am a perfect parent, but also that I am “just that way” — that I have always been an enlightened parent, and that I always act accordingly. They get starry-eyed and fool themselves into forgetting that all human prowess is learned, practiced, and built from the (same) ground up. As Malcolm Gladwell so thoroughly explains in The Tipping Point, so many of the geniuses in history, so many of the experts and masters, weren’t simply born better than the rest of us at their particular skill set — they were educated, and trained, and practiced. And as Gladwell points out, mastery only begins to surface at around 10,000 hours of all that practical experience.

Just to put that into perspective, one full year’s worth of hours is 8,766. So if we didn’t sleep at all, and only practiced what we thought was right, we could be masters of parenting our own children in just about 1.14 years. But of course we do sleep (and would like to sleep more…), and we don’t always practice the kind of parenting we want to be good at doing. So let’s be generous and say we have about half the number of hours in a year to which we may (whether or not we do) devote ourselves to the study, implementation, and practice of stellar parenting. So unless we have previous experience, we have an outside chance of being parenting masters by the time our children are 2 1/2 — that is, if we do little else with those hours…

Just so you know, I’m not trying to let you off the hook for doing your best at raising your children. I am looking to point out that you have about as much chance of being Mozart out of the gate as you do of being a pro parent right away. It’s not that you weren’t cut out for this parenting thing (and other “perfect parents” that you see are), the odds are just against us being parenting masters until we have enough time to develop our skills. For most modern parents, who don’t get nearly enough practice time because they have to work away from their families and are forced to rely on daycare, school, and the like, they reach the 10,000 hours mark and their mastery starts to show itself just about the time they become grandparents.

So let’s just get this idea out of the way, too — you will not always be the kind of parent you think of as perfect. You can’t possibly be practiced enough at that until you are — well, practiced enough. More than likely, you will have to settle for being the apprentice-parent that you are for many years. And if you get the hang of your toddler, the toddler will suddenly be a kid; if you get the hang of dealing with your little kid masterfully, she’ll suddenly be a big kid: and then a pre-teen; and then a teenager; and then a young adult; and so on. It’s like trying to be an expert on randomness — the moment you settle on a theory, the variables shift and you are back to collecting data for a new hypothesis. From kid to kid and stage to stage, the variables continue to play havoc with our theorizing, such that, if there are “masters” of parenting out there, their title is hard-won and subject to an incredibly narrow scope of expertise.

When I was about 6, my Grandfather helped my Mom and I to plant a garden in our back yard. I didn’t know anything about gardening, of course, but was mystified into absolute adoration for this strange area at the end of my expansive outdoor play pen. I watched Grandfather toiling, carving the earth, and sewing life in it’s belly. Then I watched as things magically began to grow there. I watched the watering and the weeding and the harvesting. Over the years, I continued to feel a subconscious link between Grandfather, and gardening, and me, and I became an avid gardener myself. In the 30 plus years since that first garden, I have grown food and flowers in every climate zone of the lower 48 states of America. I have tended gardens in the year-round growing season of southern coastal Georgia, and in the barely-enough-time-to-harvest growing season of western Montana. When I began, I couldn’t tell a mustard seed from a sand grain. Now, I could grow roses in the ocean.

Like that 6 year-old watching his Grandfather invent gardening from the ground up, most of us come to parenting utterly mystified. We didn’t get enough time as children with our own parents, and we didn’t get enough time watching our siblings being raised, and we didn’t get to be with other families having kids and raising them enough, either, so at the age of procreating, most of us know less about raising a child than we did when we were one. The strange thing is not that we aren’t auto-masters of parenting as soon as the first kid comes along; the strange thing is that we are expected and expect to be. We have all the basic abilities and tendencies, the right drives and precise hormonal perspective-shifts, we have deep intuition, and gut feelings about what’s best, we were born to do it, but like walking and running (which we were also born to do), we don’t set off at a gallup the first time we are on two legs. We study, we practice, we implement, we rely on the natural processes of which we are already a part, and we trust ourselves (without even thinking about it) — and before long we are sprinting and leaping and dancing.

Our parenting can be like that as well. We don’t have to have all of the answers from the moment of conception. Like our little ones, we are learning too. And if we study, and practice, and implement, and trust — then we already are as perfect at parenting our children as we will ever need to be. The Zen Parenting trick, here, is that when we give ourselves over to the process of our apprenticeship, and apply our attention toward mastering the art of caring for our kids — then we are already having the experience for which we are aiming, we are already being our most perfect-for-the-moment parenting selves, simply by being authentically present with the experience itself.

No one can be you to your little ones. And no one is better equipped to be the most perfect parent for your children than you. Given enough time and attention, you could grow roses in the ocean. But by giving your time and attention, you already are a master gardener.

May we be kind to ourselves as we bumble along, learning, and becoming, and loving.

*

Be well.

*

Just a reminder: next month, Natalie and I are launching our He Said, She Said E-course called “Parenting on the Same Team”. We’ll be looking at concepts like working with children (as opposed to “doing to” them), having more fun while parenting, being authentic as a parent, and honing your own personal version of parenting perfection. I’ll let you know how you can get in on it as we get a little closer. Stay tuned…

Tagged: "perfect parents", apprentice-parents, natural parenting, parenting, parenting mythology, The Tipping Point ]]> http://locallocale.wordpress.com/2011/08/22/as-good-as-we-get-until-we-get-better-parenting-advice-perfect-parents/feed/ 3 devastra212 The Secret we WISH our Kids would Discover http://locallocale.wordpress.com/2011/08/15/something-for-everyone/ http://locallocale.wordpress.com/2011/08/15/something-for-everyone/#comments Tue, 16 Aug 2011 03:02:51 +0000 Nathan M McTague, CPCC http://locallocale.wordpress.com/?p=1951 Continue reading →]]>

What a whirlwind just living can be sometimes, huh?

Since last I posted, I have been through such an interesting, pivotal, and delicious time that I could spend a couple thousand words just filling you in. But I’m not going to do that exactly… What I will do is shower you in pictures of our recent adventure to Pickathon. Some of you may remember this phenomenon from last year’s post, but wait’ll you see the pictures from this year.

Before I get to that, though, I wanted to just mention something real quick first. After my last post, I got to thinking (it is often the case that I dwell on posts after the fact, which is one of the benefits of doing it in the first place), I told you about how I was enjoying recharging my batteries (mostly by allowing myself to be super present with my family), what I didn’t mention is that Natalie and I have made it our practice to find methods and activities for meeting our family’s needs (individual and collective) that both economize our use of energy and/or offer us an opportunity to recharge while involved with the family activity. It may sound too complicated to bother with, and it does indeed make things a bit more complex at first, but only until you are able to switch from thinking about it activity by activity to just living it as a perspective.

So for example, in the yummy heat of a Missoula summer, we know we can meet all of our needs for fun, and sun, and ease, and natural beauty, and exercise, while also giving us parents some time to feel relaxed, by just gathering some towels and suits, a few snacks and some water, hooking up the bikes and peddling down to the river. We can stay there for hours if we want, and the girls will be utterly enthralled, and we can all be together, at the same time as Natalie and I get our batteries recharged by our own experience of the river. Other examples include: going to the park, getting together for a regular play group, going to our favorite café, visiting family, and going to events like Pickathon (I promise the pictures are coming). Going to the carousel is another great example of a different kind — it’s one of those activities that all the girls and I can do together, and because it doesn’t really work for her, Natalie usually uses that time to do something else — which is, of course, another way to meet more needs. Remember, though, it isn’t about having enough examples of what to do in this case, it’s much more about shifting perspectives to see the manner in which we can all get what we need from all of the activities — even if that means sitting out for the activity, choosing some you might not otherwise, or choosing a method for doing the activity that makes it more unanimously satisfying.

And without further ado, here’s a chunk of photos from Pickathon, perhaps the most eco-and-family-friendly music festival ever:

This is our Emily. She’s Natalie’s sister, and the reason we found out about and fell in love with Pickathon. She’s also the reason we get to go to Pickathon at all, as she has a booth to sell her clothing line there and “employs” Natalie and I to help her run it (the kids get in free!).

Here is said booth. And, as you can see, Natalie and Xi are busily “working it”.

Behind the booth, we had our own “break room” where the kids could play and read, where we had snacks and cooked meals, and where the adults could decompress whenever necessary. That’s the back of Natalie sitting in the chair up front. Behind Echo and the “break room” was…

home. It was pretty darn convenient, to say the least, to have home and work so close to each other, but still separate.

Emily let Natalie share some booth space as well this year for the stuff that Natalie has been making and selling at the Saturday market in Missoula. You can’t see the real glory of the tiny food items, here, but it’s a full produce spread, just like at the farmer’s market, with some miniature baguettes, cakes, pies, and cupcakes to boot. Recently she’s added the earrings, also with mini produce and cupcakes, and faery wands for human kids (the streamers you see in the foreground above are part of those). So, not only did we get to go with Emily for free and help her, we also made some money while we were hanging out there doing exactly what we would already be doing.

Here, Xi and Natalie are making some sales…

And here is Xi and Echo having some “off time”.

Across the little midway from the booth, and down the slight hill, were two stages that kept revolving acts throughout the day and into the evening, when the music got turned down and/or inside for the night. This meant that, just by sitting by the booth, we were also watching and hearing great music all day.

There were a total of six stages on the farm that becomes Pickathon. This one was off in the woods among the tent neighborhoods of the campers, and like the two main stages, it only had music going through the day. When there was a band or other performance there (like the Saturday morning kids’ show) that we wanted to see, then some faction of our booth-group would hike down while the others kept shop.

While there was plenty to do, between boothing and enjoying the music, there were also other daily activities of which we took full advantage. One such activity was our daily faery adventure, when Bella, Xi, Echo, and I would wander off up one of the many winding and interwoven trails criss-crossing through the lush woods crowning the farm. We would pretend various things, either looking out for trouble or carrying out a mission to find some sacred artifact, and as much as possible, we would stick to trails we had not yet tried.

In the woods were neighborhoods and enclaves of campers, thinning out to just tents here and there as we neared the outer boundary of the camping area and trail system. The boundary was well marked and the markers themselves indicated that the boundary was there to protect natural habitat, which I really appreciated (both the information and the protection) as just more of the many ways the organizers of Pickathon are making sure the festival itself is sustainable.

In addition to tents, and nature-protections, there were various other sights and discoveries we enjoyed during our adventures. One such sight was these giant ferns. In many places, Echo needed us to part the fronds just so that she could see to get through and safely pass.

One of our other discoveries was this giant slug on the trail. We stood over it for several minutes, watching it move, discussing it’s features, wondering how that bug got stuck on the back of its head. Bella (as per her usual interest) asked if she could poke it. We all agreed that she could — gently – and we marveled at how the snail would immediately “slime up” in the place where she touched it.

Another thing we discovered was the Music Camp. Musicians would gather here each night for quiet little backwoods jam sessions. I caught one on the last night we were there, and in it’s own quiet way, it rivaled anything I’d seen on any of the stages over the weekend. There were other camps, too, the security camp, the staff camp, in addition to numerous other friend and group camps.

This was one of the neighborhoods just barely into the woods. They’re big on “in-filling” there.

After our adventures, we would come back to the booth and recuperate for awhile, have a snack, and then continue on in our multi-faceted enjoyment.

One of Bella’s most consistent activities was practicing her hula-hoop skills. She got in probably 2 hours a day all together.

Another of the girls’ favorite activities was Circus Camp, where they could go for multiple hours each day and play with all sort of different circus-style equipment — from stilts and uni-cycles, to rhythm-sticks, hula-hoops, and “spinning plates”.

In the center of this photo, you can see Bella and Xi watching as the Circus Camp workers put on a clown show, which was another of the weekend’s attractions.

In between all of our many excursions, and meanderings, and boothing, their were lots of other fun kid activities. The girls got to join in on some craft-making, where they fashioned rain sticks, and these hula-hoops. They also spent a good bit of time entertaining themselves with drawing, coloring, playing with some toys we brought, and in Bella’s case, a little letter-writing as well.

At night this was our main view.  Eventually each day would give way to darkness, but the music would just get a little quieter before it continued into the early hours of the next morning. Each night when I would crawl into tent and cozy mummy-bag, and lay down to drift off, I could hear mini jam sessions and eruptions of laughter in the woods around us throughout the night, until just before dawn, and then shortly thereafter the sounds of people waking up and beginning again.

We were there for three days in the middle of our Portland trip, but in many ways, Pickathon was the whole trip. It had/has such a blissful effect on all of us that even if we weren’t going for any other reason, Pickathon is more than worth the 9 hours it takes to get to Portland from Missoula. In fact, we even saw some Missoulians we know while we were there…

After the Pick, we headed back to Emily’s for some industrial hosing and quiet. We took a couple trips to the river, ate a bunch of local seasonal produce, and hung out with friends. Bella and Xi also made some faery clothes and a faery welcome station at Emily’s house.

Here you can see the Fall collection for the McTague girls’ Faery Fashion Line, made exclusively from found natural materials, and some thread (faery thread, that is).

On the long drive home, we decided to do the virtually unthinkable (for us) and stopped in for a fast food feast a la McDonald’s. And we even made sure to pick one with a McPlayland for me and the kids.

Here’s what it looks like from the inside…

All in all, it was such a stellar trip that I wish we hadn’t gone yet… Though I guess it’s not too early to start looking forward to next year.

On the way home, Natalie and I talked about what we would do differently next year, if we’re millionaires by then. We were both pretty pleased that there isn’t that much we would change. We talked about flying instead of driving, and/or maybe renting or buying an RV instead of tent camping, and trying some of the amazing food sold there instead of bringing all our meals.

One thing is for sure, though…

we will be bringing more handy-wipes.

And in terms of our family activities, we’ll also keep looking for more ways to make sure there’s something for everyone. Call it sustainable family practices.

*

Be well.

Tagged: attachment parenting, celebrating, children, faeries, family, fun, natural parenting, parenting, Pickathon, Pickathon 2011, play, simple pleasures, YES! ]]> http://locallocale.wordpress.com/2011/08/15/something-for-everyone/feed/ 0 devastra212 Aunty Em Filly Booth Behind the Scenes Eric the Tent Fairy Market a la Filly Sales The Midway Stage View Woods Stage Faery Adventurers The Back 40 LoopTrail Super Ferns Slimy Discovery Music Camp Campers Bella and Echo at the Booth The Daily Hoop Circus Show Circus Watchers Home Entertainment Main Stage in the Dark Faery Fashions McPlayland! The Inner McPlayland Dirty Echo