The Antidote To The Overwhelming Year

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Some of you may well recall my previous post regarding “The Overwhelming Year” here:  https://theparentingpassageway.com/2011/02/23/the-overwhelming-year/   In part I wrote:

“In spite of times that are sometimes overwhelming, I  do not wish to  have a simple life.  I doubt my life will ever be simple; I am too enmeshed with raising small children and  helping mothers and  a myriad of other things for life to be simple.  Sometimes I  wish for balance, I always hope and look  for connection, but I do not  wish for things to be so simple that there is not striving.

If you are experiencing a complex year, an overwhelming year, I encourage you not to find the nearest exit and crawl out, but to work and strive to let these times mold you and shape you.  I encourage you to find humor, joy, truthfulness goodness and beauty.  I encourage you to find support in real-life people, not just the Internet.  I encourage you to become the expert on what YOU need and to become the expert regarding your own family and your own life.”

So, if you are experiencing an overwhelming year, a year of striving, a year of challenge, I thought I would share with you a few tactics I have been taking lately in order to move forward:

1.  Acknowledgement that you really cannot do it all, nor should you, and why would you want to?  I have spent the past several months cutting back on commitments outside my home the best that I could and that has helped me immensely.

2.  Don’t forget the physical body.  I am a big believer in the non-traditional things such as  homeopathy and using  flower essences but also in the traditional things such as eating and drinking enough, exercising, getting enough sleep in order to really recuperate.  I once read in reference to really exhausted and depleted Waldorf Teachers that perhaps the teacher would  need three or four months of really good sleep to fully recover.  Doesn’t that give you pause for a moment and an idea to put sleep as a priority?   A good complete physical by a conventional doctor is typically not a bad idea as well!

3.  Order your outer life so you can order your inner life.  I saw this principle profoundly and beautifully expressed here:  http://www.studyinbrown.com/writing/2011/3/22/order-and-routine-making-straight-paths-for-peace-part-2.html

Go read this, it will give you a lump in your throat  because it is that wonderful.

4.  Prayer, prayer, prayer.  Mothers who read this blog who do not have a spiritual life, a religious tradition, a prayer life, probably get tired of reading this suggestion on my blog.  But, I ask you, how do you intend to do all this business of raising a family, setting the tone in your home, all the things that family entails without these pieces?

5.  Art is life.  Paint, sculpt, write, read, play music.  I have heard it said that art sends light into the soul, need I say more?

Many blessings on your striving,

Carrie

Normal Stages in Sleep For The Child Ages 4-9

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Some friends and I were recently discussing older children that take an hour or so to really fall asleep.  It reminded me of some of the things I have read regarding normal sleep stages. 

Around age three is when many children start to go to bed “well”, but they may wake up in the middle of the night and walk around or play.  This night waking often disappears by age four, and it may not disturb anyone in the family, but you may find them asleep in odd places in the morning.  

Four through seven year olds typically also go to sleep well, but five year olds often have terrible nightmares and wake up screaming.  Five and a half year olds and six year olds may also have nightmares, but are usually more readily quieted and calmed than the early five year old.

Children around the age of eight  and nine especially often have a really hard time going to sleep; but eight is a lower point for nightmares.  Typically there is a rise in nightmares again around the age of nine, which decreases by age ten.

I have seen many children who had trouble sleeping from infancy on; I have also seen children that had extreme trouble in sleeping in infancy who do quite well falling asleep and sleeping through the night during their preschool years and above.  It seems to vary widely from individual to individual.  It also has seemed to me, from what I have observed, is that children who were in co-sleeping families often do not seem to go through the “hard to go to sleep phase” of eight and nine.  That has just been my experience; please leave yours in the comment box.

One thing The Gesell Institute of Human Development recommends in their writings for children who are having trouble falling asleep is to check for allergies to artificial food dyes, but also the common allergens of dairy, wheat and corn.

Nighttime fears can also play a part in a child having difficulty going to sleep.  Children can fear wild animals, robbers, the safety of the home, and many other things before they try to go to sleep.  It seems the height of this can be for an eight year old.    I don’t know as there is any one set way to respond to these fears; I think much of how one approaches this depends on the individual child.  Sometimes I think the easiest thing to do in this situation is to accept that this is only for a season and to let the older child fall asleep in the parent’s bed and then move the child to their own room.

I would love to hear your stories on this subject in the comment box.

Many blessings,

Carrie

“Love and Anger: The Parental Dilemma” Introduction

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Well, let’s kick off our new book to look at chapter-by-chapter.  This book is by Nancy Samalin and Catherine Whitney.    Here is a link to this book on Amazon:  http://www.amazon.com/Love-Anger-Parental-Nancy-Samalin/dp/0140129928/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1301051202&sr=8-1

I think most of us can agree that staying home with our children all day is wonderful; we wouldn’t want to trade that for the world.  Our children are precious, they are funny, and to hear their joy and laughter just makes our hearts feel good.  All that love wrapped up in a small package of childhood.   I personally have so much gratitude that I can stay home with my children and homeschool them.

But there is often another side that seems to go with parenting these days.  I am not sure if it is due to a combination of economic stress, a lack of extended family and other support due to families being more transitory, a lack of a cohesive view toward childhood in our society, a lack of turning toward a religious or spiritual path to help support and guide the parenting journey – but mothers today seem more confused, more stressed  and yes, more angry by their children’s behavior than ever before.

There it is, that parental dilemma of love and anger toward our children.  I don’t think it does much good to pretend that anger in parenting does not exist or to even strive toward having a valium-calm household.  Peaceful and loving household, yes.  Sterile and without emotion just so any conflict might be avoided, no.  That is not life in my book.

Living with children is messy, noisy, sleep-depriving at times, joyous, fun, wonderful.  I have said it before, and I will say it again:  parenting will stretch your soul like a yoga pose you can’t get out of.

I have met wonderful parents over my many years of working with parents, parents who were so mature and had it all together and were so self-controlled.  They were centered, and calm, and whilst they didn’t always do everything “right” (and what is that anyway?), they seemed to raise children who became great adults.

I want to be like that, don’t you?

So let’s take a walk through the introduction of this book!

In the Introduction to this book, the authors write, “I use this example (there is an opening example of parental anger written by none other than Dr. Benjamin Spock, MD who found himself in a blended family situation) to demonstrate that there are no absolute guidelines forged from our own experiences and the experiences of others. ….This caveat –that no single expert has all the answers-  is important to note, for you will not find  a series of no-fail solutions in the pages of this book.”

The goal of this book, the authors write, is to “offer practical, positive ways to redirect [that] anger.”

Many blessings as we go through this book,

Carrie

A Free Religious Resource For Anglican/Episcopalian Homeschoolers

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There really are no homeschooling curricula/homeschool products out there for Anglican homeschooling families that involve religious instruction every day.  It seems most Anglican/Episcopalian  homeschooling families piece together their own religious curriculum based upon the liturgical calendar of the Church Year, Feast days of the Saints,  and various resources. 

I have done some digging, though and did come up with a pretty fabulous FREE resource from the  Virginia Theological Seminary.  This program would work for a once a week lesson and you could easily add things so there could be  something in the form of religious focus each and  every day of homeschooling.  There are three age groups with three years’ worth of material for each age group and the resources include not only the teachers’ manual and ideas for art but much more: http://www.vts.edu/podium/default.aspx?t=122314

Some other resources to think about:

Here are a few other resources I am considering for Fall in addition to the Daily Office ( http://missionstclare.com/):

Many blessings,

Carrie

“A Healing Education: How Can Waldorf Education Meet The Needs Of Children?”

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I am reading these five lectures given at the West Coast Waldorf Teachers Conference in Fair Oaks, California in 1998 by Michaela Glockler, MD.  As a physical therapist and as a homeschooling mother, I am really enjoying these lectures. 

Dr. Glockler posits in these lectures some of the basic questions about Waldorf Education and health.  In the preface of this book, Astrid Schmitt-Stegmann writes:  “Doctors, educators, and therapists have a special need to meet the ever increasing illness manifesting on all levels in growing human individuals – be these attention deficit problems, behavior problems, sensory integration problems, psychosomatic disturbances, or genetic disturbances.  Whatever the manifestations are, we must understand that underlying them are physiological problems……The key task for the educator, therefore, is to insure for the child a health physical development, for this is the basis for a healthy soul-spiritual development.”

These lectures underscore the basis of Waldorf Education, and what should be the basis in concrete thought and action in all educational methods:  that children are physically growing and developing in addition to whatever they are “academically” learning and that the physical body and movement is a vehicle for learning.

We are in a situation in the United States right now where our educational system no longer seems to respect the developmental progression of children.  Even mainstream childhood developmental resources state that early six is a terrible time to teach reading and writing (and so is four!)  So how is it that our current educational system is not built upon development and ignores developmental norms?

And how is it that we can take the holistic human child and essentially boil learning down to an interaction between eyes and hand only?  We have taken away anything that would marry the body and soul of a child.  This is dividing the human being into chunks, and I think we are reaping the effects of this with the rates of suicide, violence, bullying, drug abuse and sexual abuse and misconduct.  Waldorf Education seeks to include the whole child.

We relate the physical body to the emotional and spiritual.  Dr. Glockler writes, “The whole physical body speaks a language; everything in the human being speaks about its function.”  (and my physical therapists in this audience are nodding because HOW many times in physical therapy school does one hear over and over, “Form follows function?”)  “We can take all the details and we can take the whole; it is always the same.”  (There are many detailed anatomic drawings in this book of bones, embryonic development in this book to look at whole and at parts in the upright human being)    We rightly speak of the image of the human being which reveals what it is.  I already mentioned earlier that we carry our whole body in uprightness.  What does the language of the body say though this upright posture?  Our very body says that we are upright beings.  We can take this both in the literal, spatial sense, and also in a spiritual sense in that “upright” is another word for truthful, to be upright.  So our body’s language speaks about our spiritual function, that both outwardly and inwardly we are upright beings.  Due to this uprightness we have a center between above and below, and this center is the seat of the force of the heart, of love.  Love is the center of our upright being.  The extreme polarities of our being are  wisdom and power, but the most central force is love.”

I have more to say about these lectures, but that is a great place to start today.

Many blessings,
Carrie

“The Journey Begins At Home: A Waldorf Early Years Guide”

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I am so very pleased to be a contributor to the new Christopherus Homeschool Resources  book, “The Journey Begins At Home:  A Waldorf Early Years Guide”. 

This is a 330- plus paged ebook that will be released in May and it will cover nearly all topics related to the Early Years.  Here is the list of chapters from the ebook:

  • A Mother’s Path
  • The Peaceful Home
  • The Twelve Senses
  • Rhythm and Getting through the Day
  • Sleep, Co-Sleeping, Bedtimes and Naps
  • Breastfeeding and Weaning
  • Playing and Being with Other Children
  • Socialization
  • The Lure of Classes
  • Awakening Too Early
  • Toys
  • Potty Time
  • Strategies for Discipline
  • Too Much Dialogue
  • Is It Lying? Is It Stealing?
  • Whining
  • Separation and Attachment
  • The Right Thing at the Right Time
  • Destructive and Aggressive Behavior
  • Questions About Babies and Toddlers
  • The Three years Old
  • The Four Year Old
  • The Five Year Old
  • The Six Year Old
  • Stories, Nursery Rhymes and Puppets
  • Kindergarten Questions
  • Other People
  • Miscellaneous

You can read excerpts of the book here:  http://christopherushomeschool.typepad.com/blog/2011/03/a-new-early-years-book-from-christopherus.html

This book is done in a question and answer format compiled from threads on the Christopherus Waldorf At Home Forum that will be closing in June.  It preserves the privacy of the forum participants but maintains the warmth and love of those forum members and lets readers hear different voices, different ideas, along with lots of commentary from Donna Simmons in her warm and well-versed in Waldorf parenting way.

I have contributed some developmental pieces for sections, and also contributed my voice as a moderator for some of the threads.

I am so pleased, and I think you all will be as well.

Many blessings,

Carrie

A Yahoo Group For Waldorf Early Childhood

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Experienced Waldorf Early Childhood Teacher Lisa Boisvert Mackenzie has created a warm, safe and welcoming space for those parents with questions pertaining to the Early Years over at 

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/waldorfearlychildhoodbringingithome/

This group is currently being revitalized; you are welcome to participate!

Many blessings,

Carrie

Personal Development In Parenting–Part Four: Concrete Ideas

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In order to handle the rigors of family life, I have posited in the last few posts that we must think about biography, balance of the physical body and the inner bodies, faith and faithfulness (our beliefs, and how faithful are we in ACTION to our beliefs).  In addition to the things I already mentioned in the first three parts of this series, I want to name some concrete actions you could take to start your own inner work so you can be centered for your best parenting:

 

  • Create a space in your day for meditation and prayer.  It may be that you do this whilst you nurse a baby or in the shower.  As a parent, you may not really get even fifteen minutes to yourself to sit quietly, so you have to be open to cultivating a new kind of practice that entails quieting your mind whilst moving or doing something else.  This is just a season; children do grow!
  • Watch your computer habit.  Most mothers I speak with use their computers as an escape tool at times.  Force yourself to be present even if you don’t want to.  If you are trying to escape because you are tired, bored, resentful, work on trying to fix the root cause of those feelings with action, not escape. 
  • Practice cultivating silence in the home when you can.  Less words, more warm smiles and hugs, soft humming, silence and reverence together.
  • Work in the arts:  music, painting, sculpting, crafts, reading all build up your reserves of energy. 
  • Have an area of your own personality, will that you are working and striving to cultivate.
  • Spend time in nature.
  • Have rhythm in your life.  Keep striving for this if it is a difficult area for you.  Write down what you want to do in the area of rhythm, and do it for forty days.  If you “fall off the wagon”, get back on.
  • Keep in mind that each minute is a new start.  Keep striving and going.
  • Balance your year by season – there are some seasons where we are move active in outside the home activities and some seasons where we might be home more.  Look at your year.
  • Look at your monthly rhythm – many women feel tired around the time of their menstrual cycles, and it may be worth it to plan this into your monthly rhythm as much as you can to honor that time.  This is a beautiful time, not a time to be medicated and rushed through.
  • Where are your “no’s” in life?  What are your boundaries for you personally?  No’s help maintain balance, no’s help us find the time to be home and centered for our own inner work and parenting in an unhurried manner.
  • Wake up before your children.  If you are rubbing your eyes and the children are already fighting, making a mess, helping themselves to what is in the kitchen, then the morning is not off to the best start.
  • Keep a day of rest, a Sabbath.  This is important during the weekly rhythm.  You yourself must hold how to do this. 
  • I think it is important to work toward being objective in parenting. Many times if we can just pull back and look at things without so much emotion, we find the right answers for our children.   If we can let go of guilt, which does NOTHING to move any situation forward, we can reach more joy in our homes. 

Many blessings,

Carrie

Personal Development In Parenting: Part Three: Faith

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For this Lent, I have been reading the words of our Early Church Fathers and I have also been doing a Beth Moore Bible Study called, “Believing God:  Experiencing a Fresh Explosion of Faith”.  I think this is one of the best Bible studies, if not the best study, I have ever done.  If you like Bible studies and haven’t done this one, I encourage you to check it out.

One thing that Beth Moore mentions in this study is the difference between faith and faithfulness.  She writes, “……I conceptualized faith as believing God, while I tended to imagine faithfulness as obediently serving God and keeping His commands.  Though faith certainly encompasses serving and obeying God, I am opening my spiritual eyes to the fact that faith is the root of all faithfulness to God. In fact, we might say ultimately, faithfulness – serving and obeying God – is the outward expression of  an inward fullness of faith.”

Let’s apply this to parenting for a moment, shall we?  I think this is an important part of inner work and personal development in parenting.

Faith makes me think about belief.  So what are your beliefs about parenting?   If you homeschool, what are your beliefs about homeschooling?   Have you elucidated this for yourself and your family?  This does take time to figure out, but one must at least make the effort to think about it.

And then,  the question becomes, does this faith, do these beliefs that you carry in your heart about parenting  translate to what you do every day:  are you faithful in the details, in how you make these beliefs reality in your own home?

This is not about perfection.  No one is perfect.   There are always mistakes and things we wish we didn’t do.  There are always times of challenge.  There is always learning and growing in parenting.  Even if you have been through one particular developmental stage with five children, that sixth child is an individual or his or her own and it will be different.  So perhaps part of faithfulness is also forgiveness.  Forgiveness when you do something the way you didn’t want to do.  Forgiveness for being human.  Forgiveness for being fallible.

But perhaps faithfulness in the details also means having a plan, having a vision, and most of all,  overcoming our own inertia and weakness.  For me personally, for that, I have to ask my Creator.   We have to WANT to not be stagnant, we have to want to grow and change.  We have to work, and tweak things as we go along and discover.

I think the other part of faith in parenting is having a self –confidence that you can indeed be faithful and show these beliefs concretely in real life and in  your real actions.  How many times have we heard, “Actions speak louder than words”?  That is truth. 

How confident are you as a parent? You are the expert of your own family.  I believe there are some essential truths to work with in childhood development and parenting, but the application may look different depending on the family.  Perhaps thinking about your beliefs in parenting and  how your life would look if you could strive to be true to what you believed would lead you to increased authenticity and confidence.  Perhaps this would lead you to stop comparing yourself.

So, what do you believe about parenting?  About homeschooling?  How do you find forgiveness for yourself? How do you use your beliefs to be more confident in your parenting?

Many blessings.

Carrie

Personal Development In Parenting–Part Two: Biography and Balance

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Parenting can be challenging.  Some parents actually have children that I feel are pretty easy to parent, and some parents  have children that are truly challenging.  However, how we view and respond in parenting, like anything else in life, begins with us.  How calm are we?  What is our temperament?  What are our challenges?  What are our triggers? 

But, most of all, how can we grow and strive and improve? 

I think there are two fundamental places to start in personal development in parenting: one is biography and one is assessing  balance in your life. 

Biography is the process of looking at oneself, one’s story.  What patterns are in our life when we look back through it?  What responsibility have I taken for my own life, my own actions?  How do I accept myself, meet myself?  What people have I really connected with during this lifetime?

Can I think about my life?  What do I remember?  Can I put them within seven year cycles as talked about in “Tapestries” by Betty Staley?  We went through “Tapestries” chapter by chapter on this blog; fascinating!

What  do I feel about these events?  What empathy do I have for myself, for others connected to my story?  To other’s stories?

What can I do with this for the future?  What goals do I have? 

Biography is the first piece in knowing oneself and in being able to do that in order to connect with others.  It is the first step too, toward looking at your parenting patterns.

The other critical piece, I feel, is balance.  I see so many mothers that seem either to only live for their children with no thought for themselves or their spouses or go the other way and the children are deemed almost an afterthought or an inconvenience.  Where is the balance?

Where is the balance between the outer and inner selves?  The outer self, the physical body, is often seen by many as diminishing in the 40s…but this doesn’t mean that the physical body should be ignored.  Too often I see mothers who seem to not take great care of themselves.  You are important to your family, and your body is an important part of who you are!  Vibrant health, physical activity, clothes that make you feel good and influence how you feel – what is the place of all of these things for you?

The inner self is the other part that is equally important in this balance.  This is the piece people seem to  think about in regards to personal development more often than biography or balance.  How does one develop the inner self?  We tend to think of developing certain characteristics such as patience or calmness; we may look to spirituality and religion to help us meet those goals.   I feel if spirituality is our attitude and concern toward  the Divine, then perhaps religion is the way we express that.    

One thing that has helped me immensely in developing my inner self  is the use of rhythm in the day, the week, the year.  Liturgical rhythm through my religion.  Meditation on what I hear from God  and prayer to God.   These pieces, along with nurturing the physical body and the use of art, help keep me in balance. 

Our personal development impacts our health, and our health in turn provides the foundation for our family. 

Biography and balance.  Just a thought for today with a bit more about inner work to come in the next post.

Many blessings,

Carrie