Daily Archives: February 24, 2010

Social Isolation For Stay-At-Home Mothers?

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Many, many mothers have told me their day goes smoothest for their children when they stay home but that there is an issue of feeling isolated themselves when they only go out  two times a week or once a week!  It really is a fine line, isn’t it, between doing what is really good for small children, who do need to be firmly entrenched in the home, but also keeping our sanity!  Do you all remember that post where I wrote the average woman speaks 25,000 words a day or something like that?  I  mean, those words have gotta come out somewhere, right?  It can be hard when we only have a small child around, and then we tend to start talking just to hear ourselves talk and we overtalk that poor child to death!

Ladies, again, I think this is a fine line.  For many mothers I know who suffer from post-partum depression, they have to be around some people to keep them on an even keel, so this whole forty days at home doesn’t work well for them unless they have a strong support system of folks willing to come to them.  I also encourage mothers to get their friend fix without their small children if possible, because let’s face it, to get support we want to talk about the challenges of parenting and I think that is so hard to do with all your children listening!  Perhaps that is a possibility for you!  (Obviously I am all for breastfeeding infants and toddlers coming along because they have such an intense need for their mothers!)

So, I think of this depends upon where you are in your parenting journey, and some of it depends upon your personality.  I am completely extroverted, (uh, other than I need my quiet time at night so I can write!) but I LOVE people, I love to hear their stories and all these connections go off in my head.  It is like pinballs bouncing around in my head, ping, ping, ping.   I bet you all could hear that in that Waldorf Connection Radio Show, LOL!   I am very lucky that   I have a pretty great circle of friends.  However, that took time to build up! 

So what do you do if you have no friends locally yet?  I don’t think entrenching your children in your home means you never go out of your home – can you walk to the park?  Play outside in your subdivision or street?    Do you have neighbors?  Is there a homeschooling group you could attend?  Can you go to a La Leche League meeting or an Attachment Parenting meeting and meet some mothers?  Do you have ANY friends that you could take turns going to their house one week and them coming to you one week so you both could be home one extra day during the week?  Just remember that small children really need you to hold that space in the beginning with a structured activity, and to really keep those times with other children short!  There are many posts on this blog regarding “playdates” for small children, perhaps those would help you to have a successful time of it!

Some mothers feel very isolated when they have that first child, because maybe their friends haven’t had children yet, so it is like building a circle of friends all over in many ways.  That is a challenging time of transition!  At the time you are challenged by finding your way in parenting, you are also feeling separate from all your former friends!  I think in  that case you do need to get out and meet some new people – neighbors, people at your place of worship whom you don’t know well but would like to get to know, people you run into with children at the store even!

Make a list – do you know women whom you would like to get to know better?  Can you call them up and arrange a meeting?  What qualities do you want in a friend?  Write them down!  I have seen mothers post flyers at their local health food store, yoga studio, etc  asking for mothers with children of certain ages to call them to arrange a meeting… Yes, it is a risk in some ways, but sometimes one has to be proactive!    Sometimes mothers meet over message boards, forums…Did you all know my local Waldorf homeschooling group actually started with three of us who met on-line?  It was like this:  “What, you are in Georgia?  I’m in Georgia!  We live really far apart, but so what, let’s form a group! Probably there will only be the three of us!” (now we have about 25 families as members! Never thought that would happen!)  Everything has to start somewhere!

Sometimes Waldorf homeschoolers have a hard time getting together with other families because they feel the other families won’t understand the way they parent.  That can be true, if the other children are really media-saturated and can only play in reference to media, but I have to say:  search for that common ground.  You may be a really positive influence for someone else!  Also, check with your Unschoolers!  I find in the Early Years, we often have quite a bit in common with our unschooling friends as far as more of that unfolding gesture in our educational philosophies!

This is SUCH an important issue, please, please leave a comment and talk about how you handle this balance – being home, making new friends who might be conducive to your parenting style, what to do!

Connections make the world go round,

Carrie

“I Bet Ma and Pa Ingalls Never Had This Problem!”

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Some mothers have said to me :  why did  Mary and Laura Ingalls seemed to pretty much always do what they were told?  And they never really “talked back” either!  What was the secret of Ma and Pa Ingalls and what are we doing wrong?!

Kim John Payne says that this question actually came up when he spoke, and at first he didn’t know what to say….And then he realized the answer was quite simple:  Pa Ingalls didn’t say too much, so when he did say something, he was listened to by the children!  You can read about this in the book “Simplicity Parenting” (the review is here:) https://theparentingpassageway.com/2009/12/26/favorite-waldorf-resource-2-simplicity-parenting-using-the-extraordinary-power-of-less-to-raise-calmer-happier-and-more-secure-kids-by-kim-john-payne-and-lisa-ross/

Personally, I think there were other factors as well…..Read on!

First of all, I think in our society we equate talking small children to death as a sign of respect.   We believe we are providing dignity to the young child, giving them a voice, when in fact we are giving them choices, options and a give and take way beyond their years and developmental level.  Why is singing to our child, or giving our children a strong rhythm not seen as a measure of respect for where they are in our country? 

Second of all, we seem to think that the more peer interaction a child has, the better off a child will be.  They then become peer-oriented and peer-dependent at an early age.  Gordon Neufeld addresses this beautifully in his book, “Hold On To Your Kids:  Why Parents Matter More Than Peers”, available here:http://www.amazon.com/Hold-Your-Kids-Parents-Matter/dp/0375760288/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1267010344&sr=1-1      ..I am re-reading this right now, and it spoke to me when my children were very small, and it speaks to me now that my children are a bit bigger but still small.  It should be required reading in this country, where we seem to think it is normal to send a two-year-old off to “school”.  It baffles me that separation from the family, the pressure for an adult day, the academic foisting on small children has changed so much in the generations since World War Two

Third of all, the reason our children don’t listen is that we talk WAY too much and we give them WAY too much insight into how we make decisions instead of just telling them the decision!  We don’t listen enough, and then when we do listen and “factor” this into our decision-making, we prattle on through all the adult choices, all the adult reasoning (and this three or four-year old is listening, and unfortunately, they really don’t see our decision-making process as such I am afraid) and I think it comes off as not being decisive to them simply because they cannot process this adult reasoning pattern. 

So what can we do?

Connect with your children!  Connect with them in the morning!  Connect with them during the day!  How do we connect?  Hold them, laugh with them, sing to them, play with them.  LOVE them, delight in them!  Stop separating them from you when they do something not right – love them and guide them through it!  Have them make restitution, that means much more than sending them off to sit in a chair!  Have them own the problem and fix the problem, and leave their dignity intact!

Listen more and talk less!  Here:  https://theparentingpassageway.com/2009/11/04/a-mouthodometer/   and here:  https://theparentingpassageway.com/2009/04/14/stop-talking/

Go through the decision-making process in your head, not out loud.  Say what you mean and do what you say.  This is called  INTEGRITY, and this is  a good thing to model for small children so they will grow up to be people of integrity.

Have confidence.  It continually amazes me that in this day and age, there is so much complete MIS-information about the small child, the baby.  I have heard parents say their five-month old is “manipulating them” or their one’-year-old is “defiant”.  What??!!  This is wishful thinking, folks!  See back posts on defiance in the small child here: https://theparentingpassageway.com/2009/09/16/a-few-fast-words-regarding-defiance-in-children-under-the-age-of-6/

Develop yourself and have a PLAN for how to improve your parenting.  What is your plan for becoming the parent you want to be?  In business or in your career, you might have had a goal, but you also would have made a plan to get there!  Make a commitment, write it down – what needs to happen in your home and how will you get there? Enlist a friend to keep you accountable!

Many blessings,

Carrie 

PS see the many interesting comments below…some of them focused on the physical punishment part of the Ingalls family….hard for many of us to fathom and painful to read…Steiner talks about the evolution of humanity and human consciousness and how we really don’t understand the consciousness of another time and place because we are different now…something to that effect.  Very interesting stuff, but for the sake of this post I wasn’t really focused on that end of it, more the communications end of it, but thanks for your comments!  It’s just that a lot of  mothers bring up Ma and Pa Ingalls and their listening children…that’s all, nothing really deeper than that!  🙂