I have said it in the past, yet I will say it once again. I have always wanted to journal, yet never found the medium that inspired me to keep at it. This blog is what changed that for me. Now, as more years go by, I am enjoying going back and seeing how much I have evolved as a parent and as a person… as I updated the blog I happened to find myself re-reading a few old posts. It is amazing to me how far I have come in the last years.

When I started this blog I was a mom of two… Xavier was 2 and Colin was about 9 months old, I was the moderator of the AP board on a very popular mainstream site and needed a place to rant. I defined myself as “AP” though I was past that “list” stage, yet it was still was a way to find like-minded people. I was not yet an “unschooler” though I did know that we would be homeschooling with little to no structure. I had ideals, I had a parenting philosophy, I knew what was important to me, yet I did not have the experience. I read what I wrote so many years ago and realize how I was so “new” at being a parent.

So many things have changed over the years, yet it has only evolved in what I see is a positive way. I remember being told “oh, you just wait and see…your kids are young/you only have one/you only have two” when it came to subjects that were not in the mainstream, as if my ideals would change as my children grew or I had more. I agree, they have, but they have not been crushed or been left behind, they have only evolved or have been reinforced.

I used to have ideals that I believed were true and possible, now I have the same ideals that I know are true and possible. I have seen my children learn to fall asleep without ever being trained or crying and without having sleepless nights, I have seen my children wean without weaning them. I have seen my children learn to walk though I always held them and wore them. I have seen how EC works and how amazing it can be to have a baby not wear diapers. I have seen my children learn to read without having taught them. I have seen my children learn boundaries without punishment, whether it be physical or emotional.

It is what I have seen and experienced that has made something change in me.

I no longer have the rants in me that I once had. I saw that shift when I decided to change the name of my blog from “Paxye’s Rant” to “a hippie with a minivan” back in 2007…

I knew that I didn’t need to rant as much anymore but I don’t think I understood why as much as I do now.It is in this respect that I see how far I have come…

I now see that my rants were often signs of defensiveness. Not defensive because I felt I was doing something wrong, but because it was all still so much of an unknown. I was parenting in a way that was foreign to the way that I grew up, that was foreign to the way those that surrounded me parented. I knew in my heart that it felt like the right to parent for us, yet I did not yet have a concrete example of the results that would be attained by doing so. Of course, I am still learning each and every day how to break the cycle of the way that I was brought up. I am still a fairly “new” parent with many trials ahead of me.There are still many mistakes to be made and that have been made, that I have learned from and am still learning from. But, I can see that it is no longer as easy for other parents to say “just wait and see”, I am now a more seasoned parent of four that is not only talking the talk, but has been walking the walk.

I look forward to seeing this post in another 6 years and again understanding how far I have yet again come from where I am now.