Have you seen the
pandemic-schooling schedule floating around?
(To give proper credit, it's from
Jessica McHale, and I'm not posting this to call her out because I know what I'm talking about here is a common parenting mindset.)
There are joke versions crafted on this template that replace every slot with screen time or
Frozen 2 or fighting over toys. That's all good and fun.
But I'll direct you to the last two slots marked Bedtime: Any kids who follow the daily schedule and don't fight are entitled to an extra hour before bed.
When I showed this to Alrik, he had the same reaction I did: "
Why would you punish your kids by making them sleep? Isn't sleep something we all need?"
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| Karsten getting the mail with Papa |
We recently visited my parents in Massachusetts, and I surprised myself with the desire I felt to stay.
We moved to Seattle sixteen years ago. (Could that be right? Surely not. But math doesn't lie even if my memory of years passing does.)
Sam and I came off childhoods of regular motion, both of us moved from place to place at the whims of our fathers' employers. We thought we'd stay mobile as adults, but we hit the northwest coast and just felt instantly at home.
But I've struggled, particularly since having children, with the worry that we've chosen wrong, because our families are so far away, his in Michigan and mine near Boston. As our children and our parents react to time in the usual way by getting progressively older, I feel regret and the fear of all our time together slipping away with just these occasional visits, the
empty spaces filled with Facebook photo uploads and texted jokes and messages.
When my firstborn was younger, I was a more defensive mother, and, in turn, my mother was more apt to offer advice and correction that caused me to chafe. We've both mellowed into our roles since then. She doesn't offer much direction or criticism anymore, and I don't think I'm always right.
So what was inconceivable several years ago — the thought of living near them peaceably in a way that didn't send our blood pressure jointly skyrocketing — is now a pleasant daydream. Living down the street from or across town or even in the same house as Nana and Papa. Just think of the free babysitting, the grandparent–grandkid cuddle times, the evenings we adults could while away playing euchre. And did I mention the free babysitting?
My mom keeps offering to build a mother-in-law addition on to their house. She points out cute real estate offerings near them. (The prices are just as uncute as here, but that's neither here nor there in daydream land.)
I keep smiling weakly and saying,
Oh, I wish.
I wish.
I've breastfed in some unusual places in the past eight years of nursing my three sons. My philosophy is that
breastfeeding can happen at any time or place, wherever I am and whenever my baby wants to eat.
That's led to some interesting breastfeeding locations!
I hope you'll share some of yours in the comments, or even in your own post.
At a lavender festival
(I wanted somewhere to sit, so originally they directed me to a sheltered spot. But eventually I wanted to get back to work on my lavender crafts so I just propped Mikko up while I got to it.)
In a mountain village
(And on the way there. My father-in-law was rather exasperated we had to pull over.)
On ferries
On a tour boat
(That was during my only — failed — attempt to use a blanket as a cover — it kept blowing off!)
On a sailboat
(I still question the wisdom of taking a newborn on a sailboat…)
On a motor boat
(That life jacket was pretty hilariously big for Alrik.)
At Pike Place Market
(I remember how awkward I felt getting settled on a bench there with newborn Mikko, with strangers sitting and standing all around me, but we managed!)
At two Nordic Festivals
(Skål!)
I'm happy and proud to have a post today on the BlogHer home page: "Can You Even Help Your Kids Gain Independence Today?"
They've syndicated
my post from the other day on how I'm a would-be free-range parent who feels hemmed in by today's safety expectations. BlogHer has made me some lovely Pinterest imagery as well:
That's totally what I wanted to do with those quotes and didn't! Procrastination pays off! And looks so much prettier than I would have done!
I'll be
hanging out over yonder to field comments and spark some chatter on the topic of free-range kids.
Come join me!
Even if you've already read the post and let me know what you think,
I'd love for your clicks on and shares of the BlogHer page so they know I'm sending my peeps over to give it a look!
And if you haven't commented or shared it yet, I'd really appreciate your voice added to the conversation.
Why is it so hard to grant kids independence today?
Continue reading at BlogHer ››
The other day, Sam, Alrik, and I wanted to head out to the playground — and Mikko didn't. Now, the playground is literally a block from our home. Mikko is 7 years old, nearly 8, and perfectly capable of amusing himself and retrieving drinks or snacks as needed in a short absence of parental supervision.
But we knew we couldn't leave him home alone, and told him as much. "But whhhyyyy?" he asked. Indeed, kiddo, why?
Because
the neighbors might call the cops on us, that's why.
Instead, we had to cajole and bribe him into accompanying us. In fact, Alrik, Karsten, and I left first, and Sam followed a good forty minutes later, with new plans and relevant toys to meet up at the beach for a digging party, the activity Mikko finally agreed to.
Let me tell you a bit about
my childhood in less (?) enlightened times. I walked to and from kindergarten in Alaska. My mom used to say she'd watch through the window until we disappeared into the fog. When I was 6 and living in Colorado, my mother went back to work, leaving me in my 10-year-old brother's care throughout the summer break. By the time I was 7 or 8, my best friend and I, and her brother and mine, would frequently walk as a group alone to the swimming pool. I remember wearing our towels in elaborate concoctions on our heads and pushing our bare toes into the hot, melting tar stripes on the pavement. When we got there, we swam without adults besides whatever teen lifeguards were on duty. By the time I was 8 or 9, my friend and I were going on walking or bike-riding jaunts by ourselves, visiting my dad at his office or the hospital (he was a social worker in the Army) or running errands for our moms, like picking up stamps or the newspaper. I began babysitting my little brother soon after he was born when I was 9. I had a chart to track my $1-per-hour payments. (I was surprised when I began babysitting for other families at age 11 or so and figured out they would pay me more than that.)
Sam and I recently rewatched
Away We Go, the movie starring Maya Rudolph and John Krasinski, directed by Sam Mendes, and written by the husband-and-wife team of Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida. Since it's a film about pregnancy and wondering about the future, we thought now (at seven months along with my third) was the perfect time to give it another view.
I love this movie.
Verona (Rudolph) and Burt (Krasinski) are six months along in expecting their first child. They're in their thirties and living somewhere sort of ramshackle, with a cardboard window and woodworking tools in the bedroom, so they decide to hit the road to visit friends and family members to decide where they want to settle and raise their daughter.
It's a mellow, funny, offbeat sort of movie, and
I really dig the main characters and the journey they make, both physical and metaphorical.
Welcome to the Sunday Surf, a tour of the
best blogposts I've read throughout the week.
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There's a game at Chuck E. Cheese that we all three play together
— it involves bopping space aliens —
and we let the tickets build up to a dramatic finale! |
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I've been super impressed that Alrik's agreed to
get this near Charles E. Fromage —
he'll even give him a high-five now. |
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Speaking of brave, this picture's from a visit
Shannon made alone with all four kids while
Sam & I had a date! I know. Mega-star. |
On to some links!
I wish I’d been around to help!
By nursing in public I am doing my bit in shifting the framing of breasts back to feeding rather than sexing and it’s important enough to me to risk Death Stares and Facebook rants.
It’s not militant, it’s not aggressive, it’s no Gestapo-like boob army. It’s just a mother breastfeeding her baby when the baby needs it. It’s a natural, normal activity that has been done since time began and shouldn’t be hidden under a bushel.
Love the idea of living in community!
[H]ere are a few things to remember about children and sharing and a few gentle ways to help them through this developmental phase.
From LaurenWayne.com:
Olympic, side-splitting cozy: Murder on Ice, by Alina Adams
A book review for your reading pleasure along with my thoughts on the usefulness of micro-niches and enhanced ebooks for authors.
I've been thinking a lot about being countercultural and what that means. I've decided
I don't want being countercultural to be my identity, and I'll explain why.
Humans are social creatures, meaning that we live in social groups and communicate a lot (a lot! talking, texting, body language, written language — we are so much more openly and complexly communicative than any other species). We
want to get along with the other members of our social group(s), and this is where culture comes in. Each group sets up rules about what meets the criteria of the group, i.e., culture.
What does my group eat? What does my group wear? Where and how do we live? What do we do for work and play? What language do we speak? What gods do we worship?
It all becomes enshrined in an (admittedly ever-morphing) concept called
culture.
As crunchy-granola, earth-goddess, attachment-parenting, hippie types,
we often feel we're working, quite consciously, against our dominant culture.
You put your baby to sleep in a mini-jail?
My baby sleeps snuggled against my warm body.
You feed your baby with a rubber teat?
I feed my baby from my own breasts.
You push your child around in a wheeled chair?
I carry my baby in my arms.
When Mikko was nearing two, we noticed
an increase in his frustration levels and a corresponding increase in his dramatic responses to those frustrations. Were they tantrums? Maybe sorta. I didn't feel like labeling them, particularly since I had yet to see the stereotypical movie kind where the kid flings himself on his stomach and kicks his legs about. Mikko used to fling himself on his
back. Much different.
(Just after writing this post, Alrik flung himself face down — onto a mattress, smart kid — for a good scream fest. I was so impressed.)
Mikko has always been what we might delicately call "dramatic." Or intense. Or, as his Grandma so gently puts it,
he has so much personality. Or, as
parenting author Mary Sheedy Kurcinka titled her kindhearted book on the subject
, he's spirited.
Welcome to the April 2013 Carnival of Natural Parenting: Family Recipes
This post was written for inclusion in the monthly Carnival of Natural Parenting hosted by Code Name: Mama and Hobo Mama. This month our participants are sharing their recipes, their stories, their pictures, and their memories.
When Sam was growing up, his mother made
French crêpes (or
Swedish pancakes, as they also called them) for his family on special occasions:
New Year's Day breakfast, birthdays, report cards, and other holidays and festivities. When I joined the family, I quickly embraced the crepe love and enjoyed my visits to the family estate that included one of these ritual breakfasts. (And it didn't take much prodding of my dear mother-in-law for
every visit to include one!)
The matriarch holds court over her plug-in crepe pan and pours out one careful measure of batter at a time, until one after another golden-brown flapjack is flipped off the pan and onto a carrying plate, to be
claimed immediately by the next relative in line to devour one. The dining table is crammed with toppings — jams, jellies, berries, bananas, butter, cinnamon sugar, all sorts of syrups, fried Polish sausage, sauteed mushrooms, cheese, Nutella, powdered sugar, and probably more I'm forgetting! — and the
sensuous pagan ritual crepe preparation and eating begins. And, let me tell you, we can all pack 'em away! Sam used to keep track in his diary each year of how many more crepes he ate as compared with the previous New Year's (and that was about all he recorded in his diary — you know, the important things). I don't want to brag for him, but I think he
got up to 14.
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| A serious subject calls for a very serious boy on a carousel. |
Welcome to the Taboo Carnival. Our topic this Spring is RESPONDING TO THE NATURAL PARENTING COMMUNITY!
This post was written for inclusion in the quarterly Taboo Carnival hosted by Momma Jorje and Hybrid Rasta Mama. This month our participants reflect on criticism of the natural parenting community both from those parents outside of its perceived borders as well as those inside the community itself. Please read to the end to find a list of links to the other carnival participants.
I'm a very logical person. One thing I like to do in my free time is play
logic puzzles, for aside from being logical, I am also a nerd.
I don't think I'm quite at Vulcan levels, but I have of late become
much less spiritual and
much more pragmatic in
my thinking. When I choose my parenting course — whether it's related to pregnancy, birth, feeding, sleeping, discipline, health — I choose what seems most reasonable to me.
Now, I'm reasonable enough to know there are limits to reason. I know that as humans we often post-justify our actions without ever acknowledging that's what we're doing. I know that sometimes I choose a less logical path simply because that's what I
want to do. I don't even think that's always wrong.
But.
But. I want to retain my integrity as a reasonable person. If I espouse a view of parenting, I want to make sure it's backed up by common sense or research or both. Which is why I sometimes get irritated by the lack of sense and misunderstanding of science that permeates the natural parenting community.
Welcome to the Sunday Surf, a tour of the
best blogposts I've read throughout the week.
Shannon of Pineapples & Artichokes and I went to visit
Amy of Anktangle and
Arwyn of Raising My Boychick this past week. Road trip with two little kids each, and we all even had fun! Here my boys are calmly sharing (I know!) Flubber at OMSI, the science museum.
Ready for links? Let's go!
View high resolution
Breastfeeding fearmongering from a formula company? These ads are all kinds of wrong.
As the mother of a gently weaned 5-year-old, this article totally made me cry.
And he holds me tight, and I hold him tight, and I know that there was never ever ever anything wrong with nursing Fred. Even when he was in 4T jeans. With a mouth full of teeth. Even when people laughed and sneered and accused me of horrible things no mother should ever be accused of when tending to the normal and beautiful needs of her mammal child. It was never wrong and it was always right.
From reading about hunter-gatherer culture, I’d heard the idea of two sleep periods in one night, with a waking period in between. When sleep is expected to be interrupted, there’s no tension in the interruption: It’s a time to relax, joke, make love, and then go back to bed when sleepy again.
As a parent, I’ve found this idea very soothing when I’ve been up in the middle of the night!
Welcome to the Sunday Surf, a tour of the
best blogposts I've read throughout the week.
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| Here are the two saddest boys to stand next to a shark sign. |
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| Mikko had been sick for several days. It's actually been about two weeks (and a half? I've lost count at this point) of a sickness round-robin in our house, one person falling after the other. So we've all been feeling cabin fever (in addition to the regular kind), and Mikko was determined that we would go to the aquarium that day, despite my suggestion that it didn't seem like the best idea — he was still recovering, and danged if his little brother didn't seem to be coming down (again) with something new. |
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| But off we went. I figured I'd wear Alrik when we were around people or walking, and that Mikko would manage a short outing. Well … he lasted ten minutes. The second I sat down on this bench, Mikko curled his big five-year-old body right up onto my lap and chilled out there for awhile while Alrik explored within eyesight. |
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| So we abandoned the aquarium and tried to go get some food instead. Neither of them ate (well, Alrik took some liquid nourishment, as you see!), and both of them snuggled with me the whole time. Made it hard to wield a fork, and I do feel sorry for exhausted little boys, but I have to admit I loved the surfeit of snuggles. |
Some reading for you!
That there are only, truly two things I need to do as a mother.
To find my own centre.
And to hold the space.
End of!
[…]
Sure, we all know, on one level that being a “good” parent is nothing about the amount of playdough or painting or nature walks we do with them. We know it in theory, but many of us don’t know it on a gut level, in a way that informs our every day decisions.
Co-sleeping, bed sharing, or whatever else you want to call it – is an abomination of a behavior that no self-respecting mammal engages in. If you don’t believe me, consider how other mammals handle their kids. You know the old can and string phones we used to make as kids? New chimpanzee parents will string a vine between two empty coconut shell halves, placing one half in the baby chimp’s nest in the next tree over and the other half in the parents’ nest, allowing them to monitor the baby’s cries and activity during the night. If the baby wakes up, they’ll swing on over to the other tree and produce a hairy teat until the little chimp quiets down. Then it’s back to bed. The first thing female voles do after giving birth is dig a separate hole in the ground where the infants will sleep. Same with gophers. Kangaroos are famous for their pouches, which for years researchers assumed the mothers used to keep their infants safe, with easy access to the nipples. But in actuality, the kangaroo pouch is used to store shrubs, grasses, various other edible plants, and boxing gloves, as well as cover up their breasts (kangaroos are incredibly shy and modest creatures).
Heh heh heh.
Love the follow-up article, too:
I cannot give her a treat, or have a treat myself, without that being the topic of conversation for the next week. When can we have hot chocolate again? Why can’t we have hot chocolate today? Why do you get a coffee and I don’t get a drink? Why are we not buying a toy for me, only a birthday present for that friend? Can we skip the party and keep the toy? Can we go to the party and have cake, but not give them a toy? Can we keep the toy and give them this old, broken toy, I don’t want anymore? Can I also keep the broken toy? When is my birthday so my friends will bring me toys? Can I have a half birthday party, so my friends will bring me more toys? Can I have a birthday every month?
It is exhausting. It is maddening. I worry about her future as a hoarder, about her ability to ever share anything, about her ability to make friends if she won’t ever let them touch anything she likes. How can she interact in society when sometimes the dog can’t even look at her toys?
Cute idea for offering a free snack shelf for little ones but including refrigerated foods.
I'm Lauren Wayne, writer and natural parent. I embrace attached parenting with an emphasis toward green living. 
