Category Archives: Family Life

Holiday Gifts For Children

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Many families are starting to think about holiday gifts (and perhaps panicking a bit as the holidays seem a bit closer than one realizes!)

I wanted to reiterate my plea for having a very healthy, fun, beautiful and peaceful holiday with a limited focus on the external trappings of gifts, consumerism and commercialism.  I don’t know if any of you remember the lovely guest that Christine Natale did last year for The Parenting Passageway and talked about some of her traditions that were not centered on the materialistic things, but on joyous fun and generosity spread out throughout a season:   https://theparentingpassageway.com/2010/12/06/christine-natales-musings-on-saint-nicholas-day-and-starting-new-holiday-traditions/

My number one suggestion would be to see if you can extend a generous attitude of giving to both your children and those outside your family for the whole season. Continue reading →

Planning for Advent…

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Today my oldest child noted, “I don’t know why, but I feel like its Christmas!”  Well, it is the beginning of Advent for some Christians, and I am thinking about Advent myself.  The Orthodox Christian churches start their Nativity Fast today (forty days before The Feast of the Nativity or Christmas), and in the West, the Church of France actually also held the same tradition.  I think children hold these innate truths more clearly than we as adults do; they just KNOW.

I am starting my own inner Advent work today and am starting to make plans for slowly focusing on the things that are important to me as I slow down, pray, be quiet and still and just reflect and think.

There can be so much “busyness” around the holiday season, that I think it is easy to get very caught up and frantic rather than quietly anticipation and demonstrating our own peacefulness with a holding of truly what this season means unless we make plans for these small pockets of stillness.

I have some plans for handcrafting….I am making two wool pictures of Saint Francis for both of my girls’ rooms, and will be making a few small sewn items for a stocking stuffer swap taking place over on www.homespunwaldorf.com.  I also have plans for baking and for making a beeswax salve for gifts.

But most of all, I have plans for gathering up extended family and just having a joyous time together.  I have plans for doing things at church.  I have plans for doing something small each day to help my children draw still and quiet and reflect in a reverent way on this time.

I would love to hear your plans for holiday crafting, baking or Advent ideas.    If you are celebrating Hanukah or another holiday, I would love to hear from you as well.

Many blessings,
Carrie

Struggling

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Sometimes there just really are no words. I look around and see such good people, such wonderful people, struggling.  Maybe they are ill.  Maybe they have financial challenges that are crippling their family. Maybe they are going through a divorce.  Maybe their spouse is in the military and is deployed, or they are all trying to deal with the adjustment that happens when he or she returns home a different person than when they left.

All of us have struggles, from the small baby who struggles to get into crawling and sitting and upright, to the inner struggles of the teenager learning to be the king of his own kingdom to adults who may struggle with depression or addiction.

And yet, we can see the glimmers of beauty.  The smile of a child.  The simple meal on a simple table. Having a new to you coat to wear for the winter.  A beautiful star in a winter sky.

My middle child is a master of this.  She notices the most tiny detail of beauty and never fails to remark upon it.  Look, mama, how beautiful!  And to myself, I think, slow down because my Creator is saying, look, I put this here for you to see, to notice, to have it all sink into your skin, into your bones.

A good lesson for me…and.in the midst of all of this challenge and struggle, I pray.  I look for beauty. And I wait to be awed by the good things, the things that pop up when I least expect it, the miracles that do happen.

When things happen to me, I often take a breath and gently say, “May it be blessed.”   May it be blessed anyway!   It is not my plan, it is hard to watch,  I feel so sad people I know are going through things, what can I do to help them, what will happen?

And yet, may it be blessed.  May there be a glimmer of goodness, of grace, of love, somewhere in all of this.

Be blessed today and every day,

Carrie

Real Life Resources For Children With Challenges

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I just wanted to thank all of you who have been so supportive of my recent postings on children who have challenges in the realm of sensory modulation, and also regarding my postings on our twelve senses.  This work is really important to me as a physical therapist and in how I see the generation of children coming up now who are really struggling in these areas.

Many parents are looking for resources that could be helpful in real life for their children with sensory challenges, children who have been diagnosed along the autistic spectrum, or children who are facing other challenges that are deemed “medical” but as we know from a holistic perspective involve the whole being.

Here are some resources I have been gathering since the workshop I attended on the twelve senses: Continue reading →

Paring Down

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This is the time of year where I always start to just withdraw a bit…the colder air, the darkness, the holidays coming and needing time to prepare….it always causes this shift in me.  Does it in you?

I think about…

Clothing for myself and the children:  what do we really need, what do we really wear?  How much is enough?  If I have just a few outfits, I especially like skirts, and some tops, I am fairly happy.  I find the more clothes my children have, the more overwhelmed they are.  I love paring down clothes.

Clutter.  This is such a good time of year to really go through closets, drawers, and really get things to be neater and simpler before the holidays.

The garden.  What needs pruning, what needs fertilizing, what needs mulching?

The kitchen.   What can I pare down and give away and what will I really need for holiday baking and cooking?

Our schedules.  We often are much better at cleaning up our homes than we are to say no to things in our schedule.  (At least I am!)  But, almost every winter we take breaks from things and honor our need to be home and together, to celebrate that inward journey of Advent.  This year I am making my way through this little book for Advent:  http://www.amazon.com/Monastery-Journey-Christmas-Victor-Antoine-DAvila-Latourrette/dp/0764820818/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1320292679&sr=8-1  and want to have the space and time to just be.

It feels good to let go of things, to pare down, to relax and slow down.  Where are you these days?  How are you feeling?

Many blessings,

Carrie

Links To Love

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November is the time of year when I think we could all use a little love, a little light, a little fun…I mean, after all, the days are getting darker, homeschooling has gone on for several months now, and the holidays are coming…

So here are a few links to resonate with your spirit and inspire you:

I really enjoyed Annette’s post here:  http://ourseasonsofjoy.com/musings/nostalgia/  The closest place I can think of right now that is close to what Annette is talking about is www.homespunwaldorf.com because it is not associated with any curriculum provider.  I don’t get over there as often as I would like, but when I am there, folks are friendly and helpful and kind to others and there are reviews of all kinds of Waldorf related books and curriculum, along with good old-fashioned parenting and homeschooling advice.

I love this link about “Imperfection” over at Simple Mom: http://simplemom.net/imperfection/#more-15872  The blogosphere is so odd; folks assume you must be perfect if you have a blog that talks about homeschooling or parenting and yet here we all are: human with our flaws, our quirks, our fallacies.  I have many!   Many!

I thought this post was really inspiring:  http://simplehomeschool.net/sarahs-mistake/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+SimpleHomeschool+%28Simple+Homeschool%29

I am sure many of you have seen this article in the NY Times about Waldorf Education: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/technology/at-waldorf-school-in-silicon-valley-technology-can-wait.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

And what could be more inspiring than muffins?  I come back to this recipe again and again:

http://lifesafeast.blogspot.com/2010/02/chocolate-chip-buttermilk-muffins.html

Oh, and I nearly forgot this really important post about the benefits of taking your children to church:  http://charmingthebirdsfromthetrees.blogspot.com/2011/10/take-kids-to-church.html

Anyway, please do link to anything you have found recently that resonated with you or inspired you. I would love to read it!

Many blessings,

Carrie

Squirrel Fun

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I know much of the Northeastern United States is currently buried under snow and even some power outages, so I feel almost bad for saying that fall is finally here in all its glory in the Southeastern US.

I love fall; I always have.  Crunchy leaves of many splendored colors, smoke rising from chimneys, crisp air and sunshine, squirrels and chipmunks scurrying about, fall foods such as apple, squash, greens and pumpkins!  Oh yes, my favorite time of year!  I am gathering up Thanksgiving recipes and getting ready to start on some holiday crafting as well.

So, in that vein, I wish to bring some fun poetry, verses and movement about squirrels to our homeschooling this week, especially for my sweet little toddler who has finally figured out that not every four legged animal is a doggie like his giant Leonberger!

Here are some squirrel ideas for this week if you would like to play along with me: Continue reading →

The Sacred Art of Self-Care

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Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin
As self-neglecting.  –From William Shakespeare’s Henry V

I am so pleased that Kyrie is doing a series on “The Ordinary Arts”  that make up the fabric of our lives. Her first post is up here   http://www.aresohappy.com/home/2011/10/17/ordinary-arts-the-art-of-self-care.html, and she has invited us to write our own thoughts on this important topic.

To me, the Ordinary Arts is finding the holy in the ordinary.  The beautiful in the mundane.  The “big”  in those really small moments of life.

On Easter Monday of this year, I wrote a post about “The Sacred In The Ordinary” (https://theparentingpassageway.com/2011/04/25/the-sacred-in-the-ordinary/).  This is an important topic – in the repetitive tasks that make up the care of small children, in the repetitive tasks of what really constitutes homemaking and nurturing the home, can we turn this into a sacred act, a gift to receive and to be given? Continue reading →

Is Your Parenting Helping Or Hindering?

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Just a few little musings that came to me this morning…

Is your parenting helpful or is it honestly hindering your child from unfolding and being who they are, is it helping them learn to take responsibility over themselves or treating them as smaller and younger than they are, is your parenting helping your children rise up or holding then back?

For those of you with children ages birth through 7… Continue reading →

Cultivating Stillness and Silence

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I think this is something we should strive for in all age groups of children, don’t you agree?  Cultivating stillness and silence is a way for all of humanity to hear the voices of the Heavens speak to us; it is the basis for most spiritual and religious practices throughout the world, and I think for small children it is the basis for reverence, awe and wonder in those early years of birth through age seven.

For myself as a Christian, my commitment is to show my children moments of this utter stillness and silence, this time of not “emptying myself” but of filling myself up with the Triune God.  This will plant the seeds of cultivating silence for my children as they will undoubtedly enter a life full of even more busyness, sound and bustle.  You may have your own spiritual or religious traditions that help you cultivate this unhurried attitude and ability to hear from the Heavens.

Many parents tell me that their small children are most quiet when they are outside. Of course!  How can we, even as adults, not be silenced and awed as we see this beautiful world?  Helping children find quiet outdoors is a wonderful thing; can we look at the clouds, we can listen attentively to the sounds of nature. Continue reading →