All About me – Page 16 – a hippie with a minivan

control…

Imagine living in a household or even a society that wants to control everything you do… what and when you eat, when you sleep and for how long, when and what you read and learn…

I think after a while… I would probably rebel… wouldn’t you?

So why do so many parents want to control their kids in such a way? And don’t they see what the consequences will be later on?

In the last few weeks I have heard once too often about children’s “sleeping problems”… and it has made me think about something that I have wrote before about sleep and CIO and well it brought me to the idea of control…

I think many parents seem to be under the impression that they must be in control… that it is in their best interests to control the way their kids behave, when they sleep, how they eat, what they learn, and just everything they do…

And not only do they believe that… but they also believe that if they do not control those things then it will be a free-for-all because the kids will then have complete control…

Not only does this put an enormous amount of unrealistic pressure on parents… but then when they can’t have that complete control (which is normal) then just makes a them feel more “out of control” and then they seem to start spiralling…

Spiralling into making bad decisions that lead to trying more, punishing more… and consequently being more detached and just making everything worse in the end… because being in control of someone is not showing them to make the right decisions for themselves…it is making decisions for them without learning why… so the more you try to control someone, the less they learn for the themselves… so when they rebel, they do so with a lack of skills…

Children do have a lot to learn, and yes, might act on impulse and might not make the right decisions all the time… but they do not need to be controlled in order to learn, but instead need to be guided…

And if we guide well… then the funny thing is… we are essentially “in control” of the situation…

and honestly… when that happens it is quite a great feeling…

Another meeting…

Yesterday I went to another homeschooling meeting…I was ready for it to be as usual but I wanted to go because it was being held at my good friends house and I wanted to see her and her new baby and the boys wanted to go play with her girls…

It turned out to be just a nice get together which was pretty nice… One of the girls is moving so it was kind of like a mini goodbye party and a little welcome party for the new baby… (who is so cute!!)

I still feel like the oddball there though… besides getting looked at and talked at like I was crazy because my kids went outside in socks without shoes and they might get dirty or wet *gasp* … I got the feeling that some of them pretty much think that we don’t do anything because we don’t sit and “do school”….

because we don’t have a little classroom set up… because we don’t have any curriculum that we follow… because we don’t have a set amount of time for each subject and because I don’t even care that the boys might not be interested in some things yet or that there are things that they might not learn at the expected age…

When we talked at one point about baking bread I also got a comment about how much free time I have because we don’t do anything because I am not “teaching”…

It is really hard for a traditional homeschooler to understand unschooling I guess…

There is a lot of ground between doing school at home and forcing kids to learn on schedule and doing anything at all and ignoring a child’s education.

I spend a lot of my day answering questions, finding information about things I don’t know the answers to myself… there is so much to learn without being forced…and as an aide to my children’s learning I need to have and find the answers until they are ready to be able to find the information on their own…

Not sitting down and doing school curriculum doesn’t mean that we never do anything and learn.Not having to prepare for the next lesson doesn’t mean that I never research and prepare my answers… it might not be as formal but it is a lot of work and time because the questions range so much…

The good things that came out of yesterday though was that I got to spend time with my friend before everyone got there and then for a few hours after they left… I got to cuddle a new little baby… I got to talk with some really nice people though we might not see eye to eye on some/many things… The kids got to play with some friends and outside on their great property..

and another cool thing is that the same person that assumed that we don’t do anything did mention something that she is going to be starting soon with her kids that was overheard by Xavier and peaked his interest…

so we have a little project in midst…

Getting Published…

well… it is official…

Simon and I both gave in some texts about our experiences with breastfeeding…

me from the experience of nursing one.. then two.. and then three…

and Simon wrote about his perspective also…

We found out a while ago that they had been accepted but now everything is official and we have been invited to the book launch on Oct 5th…

it will be in book stores after that!

Pretty cool… it’s even on Amazon!

Près du Coeur

“AP" past the age of 3…

I have talked before on the blog how the “AP trend” seems to be instilled in the idea that “attachment parenting” is a list of things that you do.

Breastfeeding, co-sleeping, babywearing etc… all things that are on the “Sears List”… all things that are important in a infant and baby’s life…

But the lists that so many people seem to rely on really seem to focus on “Attached” in the almost the physical sense, providing a happy baby and not the emotional.

When you look at it in that light then “Attachment Parenting” and “Gentle Discipline” seem to work pretty well and easy with a baby and even with a young toddler… but when toddler hits that independent stage, babe starts sleeping through the night more, nursing less and wants to walk more than be carried… the physical attachment is harder to maintain and honestly it is normal!

The importance of being attached is not physical, but is emotional and is simply facilitated by the physical in the beginning especially because a baby’s needs are quite physical also.

So what happens later then?

It seems that so many people seem to think that AP just doesn’t work anymore after a certain age… there are no more lists… no more concrete methods or “how-to’s” and that is when the problems set in and then the ideas that work against attachment make their way into the relationship…

The problem that I see is that what seems to be missing is the “why” of wanting to be attached to our children.

I wrote this a while back on the blog when I talked about Attachment and the problem with Time-outs…
Attachment is important in any relationship and not only is it important but is required for a relationship to work well for everyone.

What does Attachment do?

• It arranges a hierarchy
• It renders the other person endearing
• Brings us home
• Creates a compass point
• Activates proximity
• Evokes a desire to be good

So the Attachment actually fixes things in a way that the child who is well attached is inclined to want to please us, do things for us, be with us, loves us, follow us, be good for us etc… They fall into being that “easy child” (most of the time)

Neufeld talks about 6 ways that we attach. These should be all done by the age of six within a good attachment, though it is never too late.

You can see the correlation with ages…. From infant, toddler, pre-schooler etc…

These stages are
• Senses (all of the physical ways that promote attachment)
• Sameness (wanting to do what the other is doing)
• Belonging and Loyalty (The “mine, mine” stage)
• Significance (feeling that we matter)
• Feeling (giving your heart away, falling in love)
• Being Known (wanting the other to KNOW you, telling all, sharing all)

A child then that is truly attached will do whatever they can to please the parent, will be good because they want to be good, they want to be with the parent, they love them, they want to share their secrets….

When you have their hearts, you have access to their minds, they are open to learn.

We learn from those whom are attached to. The teacher that we loved, that made the most impact on us, the one that we learned the most from is the teacher that has won our hearts. We need to be attached in order to teach, we need to be attached in order to learn.

However, this attachment also makes a child emotionally dependant and they are very vulnerable.

This can be seen as negative, but is important as they are not yet ready to be on their own emotionally until they step away by themselves (and not towards a peer, but really on their own two feet)

Attachment therefore, is not only important in the early years, it is important all the time.

So why attachment is so important in children’s lives and how it works is to guide them into adulthood is what the focus should be on.

And not only does Attachment parenting work after the “Dr. Sears” list of ways to be “attached” dwindle but it becomes even more important. Maintaining emotional attachment is hard though… way harder as kids grow and I do understand that at a certain age things change… but giving up on attachment is not the answer and will lead to more problems in the end…