Category: Parenting

My daughter turned 5 last week and with it came a huge developmental curve ball. She’s transitioned from being a pretty easy going, highly reasonable kid to a determined, slightly angry, stubborn personality. She’s coming into her own and she’s not going about it quietly.

There is a lot of talk of killing people to death, “for real” and other gruesome tortures and she seems to have forgotten how to talk things out preferring a swift kick or grimaced squeeze, especially to her younger brother. I have contemplated the possibility that I have a psychopath on my hands but decided that, as her friends seem to be sharing many of these darker imaginings, I’m going to go with ‘developmental shift’ instead!

My reaction to it all, however, has not been easy. Shock initially means I’ve jumped back with lots of ‘don’ts’ and ‘stop its’ and I’ve chastised myself for reflecting back her anger (or perhaps she is reflecting mine) rather than modelling some zen like response. I’ve worried and stressed and fretted a lot and found myself in that familiar place of ‘where the hell am I?’ and how do I help this transition without suppressing her or squashing her?

Whilst cleaning my teeth tonight I’ve stumbled on the idea of curiosity. The truth is I don’t really know where she’s at right now, I don’t understand why she is in this place and what that means for her. She certainly can’t explain it to me but I can allow myself to be curious with her; stand in her shoes and watch her world. I have been responding like an adult rather than a mother and I’m going to spend some time being with this new part of her that is welcome, because every part of her and every part of me is welcome.

I am going to be curious rather than fearful and hold her hand as she steps into her own unknown.

These are the Pikler drawings that completely changed my perception on babies’ development and opened my eyes to how many of our modern conveniences are affecting our children’s physical growth and form.

For my first child, I presumed she wanted to see the world. I would prop her up on pillows all the time and, as soon as she was big enough, introduced the ‘bumbo’ (Yikes!). I would attempt to slide her into high chairs, bolster her in, and hold her in the standing position for good practice. All with the best of intentions and best will. I thought I was helping her. It turns out I wasn’t.

She never learned to crawl; started walking (holding on to our hands) at 9 months; she took a long time to be able to really climb and jumping and bouncing on her feet seemed a little awkward.  At the time, I didn’t consider it much and I followed the line that each child is different and everyone develops their strengths on their own unique schedule.

When I was pregnant with my second child I was introduced to these Pikler drawings. The theory here is that each child develops physically along the same lines, one step after the next. A child that is put solely on its back (no tummy time and preferably on relatively hard surfaces – the floor without padding it with cushions) will follow this pattern.

So I tried it with my second child, if he wasn’t in the sling then he had time on his back. Very short moments in the early days, he wasn’t keen on being away from my heart for long at all. But one day, just as the drawings show he began to roll. He was totally faithful to the theory, he crawled before he could sit up and I didn’t put him in any chairs or restrictions (bar his car seat) until he had reached the point of sitting up on his own, so his body was telling me those muscles were ready.

He took all those physical developments steps at Pikler suggests and, alongside that, his climbing, bouncing, running and jumping skills were smoother and more natural than his sister’s. This has only been my small experiment, and one could easily put it down to pure coincidence, but as with all of my natural parenting choices so far, they have made sense to me, they hit a deeply logical core in my being and ring great bells of truth in my soul.

There is the cliché that men do not read instruction manuals. Only last week my girlfriend and I were discussing one such example and how frustrating it can be to watch and witness. And then ‘bing’, I got it…

Men and women, alike, are born with these raw, innate animal instincts, be that doing/making/fixing or creating/nurturing/loving, but over time, through modern practices, we have forgotten to pass on the wisdom. The instinct is there but the instructions have been lost. We are called to roles, building, mothering, teaching, healing and all too often we assume we must know because our instinct is calling. The reality is that we haven’t supplemented that feeling with our fore-bearers generations of wisdom. System Crash and no back up!

Instead of acknowledging this, seeing that we need to spend time reading a manual, we plough on, attempting to convince ourselves and the rest of the world that we are doing ok.

I do get frustrated when my husband won’t read the instructions and I get frustrated when I see mothers struggle through their journey without the circle of wisdom holding them up. I truly believe we need to walk through our pride on all these levels, stand up and say ‘my instinct is calling AND I don’t always know what that means or how to interpret it, please help’. Just like we can bend the leg on the new BBQ or delete the cache of precious photos if we don’t check the manual, we can also leave our babies to cry and forget that breastmilk is so awesome if we don’t take some time to dig out, uncover and downright demand some ancient mothering wisdom from the global resources out there.

It won’t take long to learn, but it could heal a generation….

My personal vision of natural parenting very much includes the African proverb ‘it takes a village to raise a child’.  I daydream about rural setting and communities sitting out together in open spaces, with children playing in and around and all about.  What draws me most to this dream are my observations around love relationships and parenting.

I don’t believe we’re supposed to be parenting this way – and by that I mean two energies (most commonly masculine and feminine even if in a same sex relationship) alone in a house with familial support at best streets away, at worst thousands of miles. It is a pressure cooker of expectation, survival and fatigue and how we navigate it is The Question of our time.

What I consider nature’s way is the feminine being surround by feminine energy, family, friends, loved ones, all at varying stages and degrees of their own parenting journey; some with ancient wisdom, some with fresh eyes; all with the intention of raising our children with love. I see the masculine energy as slightly peripheral in the early years, supporting, fun, loving and a little hands off until the child comes of age to bond and learn. That is not because the masculine doesn’t have value, for he really does, but that in those early moments all the baby’s needs are fulfilled by the feminine.

The reality of our modern living is that we take on both roles, we are situationally forced to mix it up and divorce ourselves from our natural callings. The masculine is often called to pick up the nurturing card, something that can be innate for the feminine and yet confusing and challenging for them. The feminine is frequently advised not to listen to her nurturing energy, to be tougher and more resilient than nature intended. I watch the masculine energies respond to a baby’s cry and I can see it doesn’t call them in the same way and I watch the feminine ignore the cry and see the tension and strain etched upon their faces.

I have frequently described my own relationship as such, that my husband is called to the fields to hunt and provide and I am called to my women. This is not sexist, this is not patronising or misogynistic, it is nature’s efforts for us to be in balance, to bring all of our strengths and qualities to each other, to raise each other up to be the best we can be and to guide our children into this world.

And it isn’t like this anymore, so we end up feeling unsupported by our partners for not understanding our unspoken, unconscious needs. Too often we rely on our partners to fulfil the role that traditionally would have been held by a number of people; we are all unique in our offerings to the world and I have learned to seek different aspects of my needs from a variety of sources. Neither I nor my husband can offer it ‘all’ to each other whilst simultaneously raising our children, it is not energetically possible, and recognising that has been a huge relief.

So it is no wonder that Gina Ford and Victoriana have crept into our parenting spheres. What they offer is a way to bypass these issues, they suppress so much of the children’s needs that the feminine no longer feels totally overwhelmed and can stop asking so much of the masculine. Win, win? Somewhat. I do think modern, Ford-style, parenting offers a very real chance for a relationship to survive those early years, but long-term it is creating such emotional damage to everyone involved that we need to rethink again.

Natural parenting is understandably having a resurgence as we recognise the emotional needs of our children but with it we face these relationship conundrums. How do we balance the energy required to parent naturally without the tribal support circle AND hold and cherish our relationship?

I am already witnessing some of my friends separating in these early years and I am sitting in my own complexities at home around it all. So far three things have helped me; the first is reminding myself of our deeply innate, nature defined roles and remembering how alien it is for my husband to respond in the feminine way, to bless him and be grateful to him for trying. The second is setting out the intention and energy to find myself a like-minded circle of woman that can support each other as we ride this journey.  And the third came to me recently and it is, very simply, to ditch all those heavy expectations of romance, sex & love relationships (they can still be present but the expectations around what they need to look like can shift) and, in these very tender years, just to remember to be friends…

I can’t think of anything more that I would like to model to my children, than myself and my husband being the best of friends.

Gratitude to Hollie Holden for sharing her wisdom with me

Modelling as a parental guideline came to me relatively late. I appreciated that my children would mimic my behaviours and attitude, but I didn’t really get to grips with the true beauty of this wisdom until I read both The Continuum Concept by Jean Liedloff and Unconditional Parenting by Alfie Kohn.  Up until the theory clicked into place, I had felt that my role as parent was to be instructive and directive, in all the best possible ways of course!

I now realise that I no longer have to consciously instruct or teach my children, I just need to open up my space to them and let them observe. Just as a lioness does not draw pictures of Zebra on the ground, if I let my cubs potter around after me, they pick up lessons innately and intuitively.  This photo of my son hit this home to me just this week. He is 2 years old and everyday since January he has watched me create our morning juices, this week he took over! On his very tippy-toes, unable to see over the rim of the vegetable holder, he feels with his fingers as he pops in the veg and carefully plunges away.

I still instruct way too much, especially to my elder child as she is verbal and it is so easy to ‘over communicate’ – “do it like this”, “try it this way” etc; but I am gently being shown that the less ‘lessons’ I try to convey, the easier the learning. Our children are born to assimilate, observe and recreate our movements, actions, emotions, reactions and every little quirk of habit we have. We are their teachers and the best way to teach is in action.

So each day I try to remember that when I just want to get the washing up finished quickly I am doing my children no favours, if I can let them stand and splash and even break and bend, they are really learning. They are not only learning key skills like dexterity and perception but they are receiving this wisdom with their natural curiosity and joy. These lessons don’t jar in the way that verbal discussion can (‘stop talking mama’) they are simply life breathing, life moving forward, life growing.

I am an ordinary mother.

I used to believe that I would be an extraordinary mother; a mother full of vibrancy, joie de vivre, laughter, lightness, inspiration, calm, reason and dripping with endless love.

The love part is definitely true, but even that can sometimes seem a little hidden. However, this is not a blog about being self-deprecating, or humble, more the realisation that I am simply doing the best I can as each dawn arises.

I am tired, so far I have been breastfeeding for close to five years, I treasure it, love it, value it and also I am tired. My children are young and my youngest is yet to find his words, so I am filled with the urgent need to be constantly aware of his surrounding so that I can interpret his signs and wishes for acknowledgements. I cook ‘real food’ which takes time, thought and preparation. I want to pay attention to everyone’s needs and requests and demonstrations of hops & jumps and drawings and I can’t. I want to sit with each one and listen deeply to each of their thoughts and offer my silent consideration and energy and I don’t. I do laundry and cook and drive and change nappies and juggle and juggle and there are moments where I am present and connecting and all loving and there are plenty of moments when I am not.

I aspire and I work towards simplifying and achieving greater space between ‘things’. In those spaces I wish to be ‘that’ mother. I want my children to feel heard and honoured and I have to work hard for them to really know that because life can easily be so busy and bustling and fast; it could all too easily pass me by.

And I also must accept that I am simply an ordinary mother, just doing the very best that I can as each dawn arises…

I can be a bit of a chameleon, I’m sure it brings many positives aspects to my life, but it also often leads me to ‘betray’ myself.  The deeply subconscious need to fit in and be accepted means that unknowingly I mimic accents and intonations of speech. I am automatically asked ‘where are you from’ on a first meeting because my voice is so full of these global interactions my own accent is hard to place. It seems, I have absorbed and retained a little piece of almost everyone I’ve met!

I have belatedly acknowledged this part of myself and become more curious and reflective about it, and it has allowed me to witness how else this chameleonic tendency plays out in my life.

Whilst recently spending time with friends who parent in some quite polar ways to me, I recognised how their choices and energy pulled me away from where I wanted to be as a parent. I had noticed it in myself before, in a beautiful way, how I knew that I appreciated my own mothering abilities and efforts when I was in a circle of friends who were aspiring to similar aims of parenting, but I had yet to really note that I could be pulled in the opposite direction too.

What I gleaned from this was how integral our arms of support are as vulnerable new mothers. When we are in the midst of the mothering fog and we are drooping with tiredness and fretful with confused intentions, we need to be held and loved by those who can support and nurture our nascent desires to be the type of mother we want, however that looks.

In these recent days, when I felt myself to be shorter, less patient and with higher than necessary expectations of my little ones, I recognised that the circle I was standing in felt alien to me. I felt fear of judgements and I batted off criticisms of my children’s behaviour and it led me to tension and stress, too much of which ended up in my children’s fields. It led me back down that path of mother’s guilt…. the shoulds, the angsts, the regrets.

I yearned for my home, my circle of mothers who I have uncovered and discovered in my community, who inspire me and teach me, guide me and love me, welcome me and trust me; all of the traits that I wish to offer to my children.

Denise Linn recently quoted on her facebook page:

‘When you’re in the middle of changing and transforming, it’s not uncommon for those who are closest to you to feel threatened, or to judge you,… or even to try to stop you from changing.

Love them anyway.

(And it’s okay to love them from a far distance!)’

Those last words in brackets are hugely important to me, that permission to leave a healthy distance with those who cannot, for whatever reason, sit with their arms of support around me whilst I change and grow into my role of Mother.

In my mid twenties I started to reclaim my intuition. I knew I had lost it somewhere along the line, but where & how was a mystery. What I did discover very quickly was that up until that point I had mistakenly confused my fear messages as intuitive ones. On the more obvious scale I can see that when I am confronted with a scenario that is unknown and scary, I have the opportunity to convince myself that those feelings inside are my intuition telling me to steer clear or I can recognise them as feelings of fear, the next choice to push on through or find safety.

More deeply, our intuition has multiple levels and subtleties and so many of them have been dismissed, suppressed, ridiculed and forcibly removed from us that making decisions about our natural needs can be overwhelming.

It was when I became a parent that the light bulb switched on and I started to understand how so many of us are left with dulled versions of our inner guide. Our move away from nature-led parenting to societal-defined parenting is causing our intuition to haemorrhage.

From the very first moments, when we start to choose our birth plans, we can begin to implement supporting the next generation to live and be guided by their instincts. Allowing our children to enter the world when they are ready, not when we deem them to be, like reconsidering how necessary inductions are (is being two weeks ‘overdue’ a necessary reason to induce? Or can babies be born on a wide scale of gestation periods?); choosing to allow our babies to feed on demand rather than on a prescribed schedule, allowing them to stay in touch with their instinctive calls of hunger, what they feel like, how they can sate themselves and call for response.

Sleep! My midwife counselled me to ‘never wake a sleeping baby’ and I live pretty religiously by that for this very reason; to respect my children’s natural and individual rhythms. That is not exclusive of having regular and sympathetic household rhythms, it does not mean being beholden to each child without flexibility, but more about listening to where their needs are and finding a place that can comfortably hold theirs and yours. Both my children have ended up being morning sleepers, tired by late morning and then happy to have a long stretch in the afternoon, whilst many mother’s I know have kids that do the afternoon nap and are ready to sleep again just a few short hours later. Every child is different, every child is attuned to their own natural needs unless told or trained otherwise by their guides… us… the parents.

And the list goes on: our language can strongly override another’s intuitive response. A child’s agility and balance may make them perfect climbers, but constant cautioning with ‘watch out’, ‘careful’, ‘that’s not safe’ etc makes them listen to fear instead of their own natural caution. It’s not easy, I am still on a massive learning curve myself with this principle, however it does make the utmost sense to me. I am still relearning my hunger messages as I, more often than not, finish my plate of food irrespective of whether I actually need it all. I don’t respect my tired signals enough and ‘push on through’ far too much, however, I am becoming more conscious about it than I used to and learning to reconnect with that deep, beautiful voice inside of me.

For ourselves and for our children, this world needs us all to get back in touch with that inner wisdom that answers the call of nature and guides us skilfully through life.  So next time you are ‘teaching’ yourself or your child something, whether it be cooking, sleeping, loving or playing, check-in with that true inner spirit and follow its lead.