Aware parents accept the entire range of emotions and listen non-judgmentally to children’s expressions of feelings. They realize that they cannot prevent all sadness, anger, or frustration, and they do not attempt to stop children from releasing painful feelings through crying or raging.

– Aletha Solter

I’ve never really liked using distractions when Meredith is upset. For a long time, I wasn’t sure why I didn’t like them, I just knew they didn’t feel right. But they “worked”, so we used them from time to time when Meredith was really upset. As she got a little older though, they stopped working a lot of the time. I realized that just like I wouldn’t want someone to try and distract me if I was trying to air my upset about something, neither would she. (If I came home and told Kris I was upset about something that happened that day, and Kris tried to immediately change the subject and talk about something else or show me something cool he did without listening to what I had to say, I would feel like I wasn’t listened to. In a child’s case, they may also feel like it’s not okay to feel that way.)  There are times when I do find it useful though. Like getting her into her carseat. 90% of the time she’s fine now, but those times she’s not, often using a bit of distraction will get her in happily and once the straps are on she’s happy to stay in too.

It’s still something I struggle with at times. It’s hard to come up with alternatives sometimes. And sometimes there seems to be little difference between a distraction, or trying to engage a child’s attention somewhere else, or a compromise. For example, this morning while I was nursing her, she wanted to hold the pencil I was using. I was fine with that, and gave it to her and she happily drew in a magazine I was holding while she nursed. Then she decided she wanted to wave the pencil around in my face, which I wasn’t okay with. After a couple of times of trying to redirect her to draw on the paper or wave the pencil somewhere else, it became obvious that she was very adamant about wanting to wave it around near my face. I asked her for the pencil, and she gave it to me but immediately wanted it back and began to cry when I didn’t give it to her. Instead, I handed her something much smaller that I was okay with her waving around. She immediately cheered up and proceeded to wave that around for a few minutes before getting bored and moving on to the next game. Was the second item a distraction to distract her from the pencil, or was it a compromise, that she could continue doing what she was doing with a different item? I think it was a compromise, and one that we both could live with, but it seems like there is such a fine line at times.

I think it often comes down to respect for our children and their feelings. In the case above, Meredith wanted to wave something around in the air while she nursed. I understood that and was okay with that, and gave her something that she could safely do so with. If the second object hadn’t worked, I would have validated her feelings rather than try to get her to move on to another activity and waited until she was ready to move on.

I did find this article a while ago that explains some of the problems with distractions much better than I could: Solutions are not the solution. He talks about how children need to experience the whole range of emotions and that quick fixes to try and have a happy child 100% of the time should not be our goal as parents. We have only had one real “tantrum” so far, and it only lasted a minute or two before we bundled her up and took her outside for a walk (was that a distraction?), but it was a long minute or two. She ended up falling asleep almost immediately and slept more than 13 hours that night, so obviously the “tantrum” was more about her being tired than about the small thing it seemed she was upset about.

Solter helped me to question my need for “a constantly happy child” and my use of quick fixes. If I was honest, my rapid solutions and distractions were about trying to return to the veneer of peace and smiles as quickly as possible. I was behaviorally focused; deeper more significant content did not come into it.

It was really hard to listen to her scream and cry and see that she was so obviously out of control. I wanted to stop it, and I will admit that we actually did try and distract her (unsuccessfully) a couple of times before we decided that being in the house around what was causing the upset was too difficult for her and we left for our walk. I think if she had been okay with one of us holding her and comforting her, it would have been easier, but as it was she would only let me occasionally rub her back. Otherwise, I sat next to her, mostly quietly but using validation as well. But not even being able to hold her and listening to her being so upset felt too much like crying it out to me, even though I know validating feelings and being next to them for when they are ready to be held is much different than leaving a child alone to cry. One way you are showing that the feelings are okay to express, and the other the message is that the feelings should be stopped or bottled up.

While the implementation of my new tool kit is often crude and slow, the transformation has begun. I am facing the fear of pain in my loved ones. I am letting go of needing to “rescue them” or “fix things,” and I know that it is enough to be there for them and to love them unconditionally.

This is something I personally want to work on in myself, especially as Meredith gets older and starts to be able to verbalize her feelings. I hope it will get easier as we’re able to reason with her and she can help come up with compromises or her own solutions

Related posts:

1. Father Anxiety…
2. Give a child a fish…
3. Life in a nutshell

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.
-Chinese Proverb

I read somewhere once that children are redirected or told no on average every nine seconds. Now, I have no idea how this stat came to be, because how would you study that? But anyway, it’s an interesting thought nonetheless. Imagine being at work and having your boss tell you you’re doing it wrong or trying to show you how to do it better every nine seconds. I think most of us would go insane and/or quit pretty quickly.

We wanted to avoid having to be constantly saying no to Meredith, but more and more babyproofing seemed like the wrong direction to go too. We don’t have baby gates even though we have stairs, only a few of our outlets have the little safety things in them (and Meredith can pull them out easier than I can anyway, since I don’t have nails), our stereo equipment is at ground level, and we don’t have locks on our cupboard doors. I kept meaning to babyproof, I felt that not doing so was a recipe for disaster. But as time went on, it started to seem so unnecessary.

So how to avoid saying no while still keeping Meredith and our belongings safe and not excessively baby proofing? It’s actually really simple. We let her learn what to do while remaining nearby in case we’re needed. We make sure we’re very aware of where she is and what she’s doing, as well as anything around her that could be dangerous (or that she could be too rough with without meaning to).

The stairs are a perfect example. She started crawling at 6 months and was interested in the stairs right away. We let her experiment on them as much as she wanted and were right nearby in case of a fall, especially at first. And she did fall a few times, though she never hurt herself as we would catch her and comfort her if needed and then she would normally want to try again. We didn’t push her to learn it, or try and set her on the stairs every day, or move her arms and legs through the motions to try and teach her how, we just let her go at her own pace and figure it out on her own. She learned pretty quickly how to get up the stairs and rarely fell. (The video is of her around 6 1/2 months, but it’s not a great video because I’m spotting her while I film.) Around 8 months she figured out how to get down the stairs (again, on her own).

I think for me, the biggest problem with baby proofing is that it doesn’t teach a child how to handle a situation should the baby proofing fail. What if you forgot to put the baby gate up but assumed it was there? Or your child can pull outlet covers out? Or you left your glasses on the table where your child can reach them? I’m of the opinion that it is much safer to rely on your child and yourself to keep your child safe than to rely on devices that could be forgotten, break, or fail in some other way.

Obviously, this doesn’t mean I would give Meredith a knife and point her at an outlet and let her see what happens. And there are times when “no” or redirection are definitely appropriate. But telling her she can’t touch our DVD player when she sees us using it frequently just makes it seem even more desirable to her. Instead, letting her play with the buttons while being supervised, explaining that food and drinks shouldn’t be near it, and helping her discover how it works keep it safe while honoring her desire to participate in something she sees us doing. Now we can ask her to turn it on or off for us if she’s nearby, and she has figured out the volume controls as well. My parents tell stories about sandwiches ending up in their VCR. We have shown Meredith how to put DVD’s in the player and she doesn’t seem to have any desire to put anything else in there. My belief is that kids do things like putting sandwiches in VCR’s because they see us putting things in and want to do what we do, not because they’re trying to cause trouble or make us mad.

This can be applied to all sorts of situations. I feel it’s far better to let children explore and learn at their own pace, giving them information or guidance only as needed. In doing so, I’ve discovered that she’s surprisingly gentle with books, careful with dishes, and she will even clean up after herself after playing with water on the floor. There are things, like my expensive camera, that I don’t want her playing with. But if I leave my camera in her reach and she finds it, even then I don’t immediately wrench it out of her grasp. I’ll ask her for it, and often she will hand it to me and go on with something else. The times when she really wants to play with it, I will sit her on my lap and let her put the lens cap on and off or press some buttons while I watch, and then when she’s bored I put it up out of the way and make a mental note to myself not to leave it in her reach again.

When my instinct is to say no or stop something Meredith is doing, I try and ask myself why and then look for ways to allow her to continue while relieving my own worries (or, in some cases, just realizing that my concerns are a gut reaction that may not even be true). Is it because I don’t want her to make a mess? If I’m really adverse to cleaning up a mess at that time, maybe I could relocate what she’s doing to the bathtub or into the sink. (Though honestly, mostly I don’t mind the messes at all.) Am I worried she will hurt herself? Is there some way I can make it safer? etc.

Helping children discover how to handle themselves in various situations is better in the long run than just trying to avoid those situations until some abitrary age in the future when the children are “old enough”. And when they’re allowed to explore and shown how to safely use these things, it means they’re less likely to damage something or hurt themselves later on when faced with a similar situation.

Related posts:

1. La Teta: to give the breast is to give life
2. Thoughts on Chores
3. A video & an addendum

Which I think is a great point, btw. Too often the good is taken for granted while the bad is nitpicked and nagged about. I called in to a “How’s my driving?” line once because the trucker I was calling about was great. The lady I talked to was pretty rude at first, and seemed annoyed. When she realized I was calling in to praise the driver, not criticize him, her entire demeanor changed. I have to wonder how often she actually got positive calls?

Anyway, the problem with praise, bribes, etc, is that even though they seem like positive things, they can still be conceived as manipulative. Alfie Kohn has a good article which explains some of the reasoning behind it. I recently finished reading his book Unconditional Parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason for the second time. I highly recommend this book to any parent. He backs up all his points with lots of data and research, and has such an interesting perspective. I don’t agree with everything he says, but there were other parts that really struck me. I was going to quote from it, but I could really quote most of the book, so I don’t think I will. It really is a great read though.

I’m on the fence about praise. I think genuine, honest praise and feedback is a good thing. While I want Meredith’s motivations to be intrinsic, I do want her to know that I appreciate her help or enjoy her art or whatever it is she’s interested in. Of course, I want her to know I love her and am proud of her no matter what.

But I do find some praise silly, and even degrading. And I notice so many parents saying “good job!” over and over again about every little thing their kids do. I like to try to find other ways of saying it. “Good job” implies that something else was a “bad job”. Like if a baby takes her first steps, and the parents exclaim “good job!”, does that when the child couldn’t walk it was bad? Of course it doesn’t, but how does it come across to the children to be praised like this? My mom said “Good poo!” to my daughter when she was four months old. Someone explain to me, what exactly makes a poo good or bad? I like to thank Meredith for helping or for, say, waiting for me when we’re out on a walk and there’s a busy road nearby, but I try to avoid falling into the trap of constant “good jobs.”

We do celebrate with her, especially when she is excited about something. We will sometimes cheer when she poops in the potty or figures something out she’d been struggling with. We take her cue a lot. If she doesn’t seem to think it’s a big deal, it probably isn’t. But if she seems really proud of herself we want to acknowledge that too.

We also like to talk about things with her. Rather than saying “good job!” if she puts her toys away, we might thank her and say “it’s really helpful to me when you put your toys away” or something along those lines. Along the same lines, if she hits I might tell her that it hurts when she hits and give her an alternative (either stroking me, or hitting the couch). That way we’re not asking her to just take our word for it that that’s the way things are, or that she has to do things because we said so, but actually giving her a reason. I think doing this also has the benefit that if similar situations come up in the future she will be better equipped to process it and decide on a course of action.

On the other side is punishments. I found this great article by Jan Hunt: The Parenting Golden Rule. She brings up some good points about how there seems to be a double standard. What applies to an adult doesn’t necessarily (or even usually) seem to apply to children. The other day my mom told me that it was okay if Meredith cried, and it wouldn’t kill her. Well of course it won’t, and I am not under the impression that I can always prevent her from crying, but if an adult was crying somewhere, he or she would certainly expect anyone coming across them to try and find out what’s wrong and help them out. And yet, it’s okay to ignore a crying child just because he or she is smaller than us or can’t communicate what she needs?

For me, discipline isn’t a punishment and reward type of system. Discipline is such a loaded word in some circles, but really, it’s root comes from the word to teach, or to guide. I don’t think discipline needs to be conditional, coercive, or manipulative, it just normally is.

Related posts:

1. Been a while…

I have to say, after watching it, that while I do follow what he says for Meredith, as far as being respectful, assuming her intentions are good, and realizing that she doesn’t always understand what I want and isn’t just trying to push my buttons, I certainly don’t always follow it with my dog.

Now don’t get me wrong. Dogs and kids are two very different creatures. Dogs do have a hierarchy and I think that while Dr Dunbar discusses all the similarities in raising each, there are a lot of differences too. And I’m not sure how to apply his methods to aggression or chasing the cat. I mean, I can’t ask her to sit and then reward her by letting her chase the cat. But it certainly has me thinking a bit more on what is working with her, and what isn’t. And I know yelling when she chases the cat doesn’t work. Locking her in the kennel when she’s aggressive may work in the short term (in that she doesn’t try to eat my friends when they visit), but it certainly doesn’t change anything.

Really I’d like to have her on a leash at all times, and be able to give her feedback constantly about what she’s doing and help her see what she should be doing, rather than telling her what she shouldn’t be doing without giving her any alternatives. It’s hard when I also have a 14 month old though. I’ve been trying to keep her with me more. The problem is that when she’s off leash again, it seems like she forgets anything I did with her while she was on the leash. It’s something I’m going to have to think about and keep trying new things and try to find something that works. I need to recognize when something really isn’t working and stop doing it over and over again, especially since that’s a parenting style that I really don’t like either. Plus, just like in parenting, all it does to punish a behaviour without giving options is stop a behaviour while you’re around, but the behaviour probably continues when we’re away.

Lastly, I want Meredith to grow up knowing to treat everyone with respect, regardless of size, age, race, species, etc. I want that to extend to pets, and while I think I treat my animals with a lot more love and respect than many people, it’s definitely an area where I could improve.

In other news, I am planning on probably creating a private section of the blog for discussing certain things that are a little more personal. For those who use RSS readers, I don’t think private posts would show up there, but I probably won’t have many anyway. You would need an account to see them. Unfortunately, the way our server is set up, you can’t create your own account for the blog. But if you’d like an account, let me know what you want your user name to be and what your e-mail address is and I can set one up with a generic password that you could then change to whatever you wanted it to be. Let me know who you are too if it’s not obvious already.

Related posts:

1. Introducing our new dog
2. Sleep Training Guide for the Infant
3. A video & an addendum

I’m no one’s lap dog, you can’t put me on a leash.
-Johnny Rotten

I saw a lady with her son the other day.  They were walking near a road, and when the boy so much as stepped off the sidewalk onto the grass nearest the road, she yelled at him that if he wouldn’t listen and stay with her, he would have to hold her hand.  It got me thinking, and kind of sad, because Meredith loves to hold my hand.  It’s not a punishment or a threat.  If she’s heading in a direction I’m not sure I want her to head, all I normally have to do is call her name and hold out my hand, and she will either come running towards me or at least stop so I can go to her.  I tell her why we can’t go in the direction she wants, and she will toddle along next to me (or behind or in front) in a new direction.  I hope she never starts to see holding my hand as a bad thing.  I don’t expect her to stick like glue to my side either.

I see so many parents lately walking around with their kids on leashes.  I can understand the thinking that might cause a parent to start to use one (not that I necessarily agree with the thinking or would use one myself, and Kris thinks they’re mostly just a tool so parents don’t have to pay as much attention to their children), but too often they’re used solely as a method of control.  We were at the Saanich Fair the other day and one mom was actually tugging her kid around like he was a dog or something.  In The Continuum Concept, Jean Liedloff discusses how in other cultures, parents are surprised when they hear that parents in North America have problems with their kids running off.  One of her theories about why that is is that so many kids are born and then whisked away to be weighed and measured, or for “observation”.  It is a well-known fact that most other mammals and birds have a crucial period right after birth in which imprinting takes place, and if the baby is not with his or her mom it won’t happen.  In other cultures, where the baby is kept with mom and breastfeeding is initiated soon after birth, the parents trust that their kids are following along behind like baby geese.

I don’t think that that is necessarily possible here, especially in a crowded area where you might be worried about someone grabbing your child, but it is other people around me I don’t trust, not my child.  At the same fair, Kris and I wanted to sit down in the shade.  Meredith wanted to wander.  My first instinct was to try and encourage her to sit with us, but we decided to let her wander around a bit, since it was very quiet where we were.  We shouldn’t have even worried.  She didn’t go more than 5 or 10 feet from us.  She didn’t try to take off and lose herself in the crowd or anything.  She stayed close, examined rocks and grass, and when we were ready to get up and go somewhere else she came right over to us.  A little bit of trust goes a long way.  Obviously all kids are different and some will be more comfortable going further at a younger age, but even then, I think we need to recognize that it’s not the kids that shouldn’t be trusted, but the world at large.  When we start putting our kids on leashes (real or metaphorical), we are telling them we don’t trust them, and I believe that starts a self-perpetuating circle where the kid does what we don’t want him to do because we expect he will do it (and kids do want to meet our expectations), which lowers our trust more, and so on.

Related posts:

1. Consensual Living
2. Go with the flow…
3. Punishments and Rewards

Meredith is doing great.  It is so amazing to me how much she grows and changes in such a short time.  It’s cliché, but it’s so true, they really do grow up so fast.  If I was ever worried that cosleeping, extended breastfeeding, responding to her needs, etc, would make her overly dependent (and I wasn’t), there are no fears now.  She is turning into a little toddler instead of a baby, and definitely trying to find her independence as she does.  I really savour my nights and her naps cuddling now, since it doesn’t happen much otherwise.  I really feel like we’re being rewarded for giving her room and allowing her to make mistakes and try things on her own, while still being there if needed and for support.  I loved being around Kris’ family this past weekend.  They are all so supportive of how we parent and had nothing but good things to say.

She has had the occasional “tantrum” I guess, but there is always a very obvious reason.  Mostly, she is frustrated about something or tired.  She is down to one nap a day most days now, unless she wakes up really early (really early for us being any time before 8, don’t hate me ), but almost still needs two.  She would nap at 6-6:30-ish most days I think, but then is awake at 8 and won’t go back to sleep until much later.  If we wait until 7:30 or 8 she will fall asleep and be asleep for the night.  I don’t make an effort not to let her sleep earlier than that.  I will nurse her when she wants to nurse or if she seems tired, but we don’t go for our nightly walk until after 7:30 and that is usually how she ends up falling asleep in the evenings.  

Mostly, it’s very easy to see why she’s upset and to work with her to find a solution.  I haven’t found any need to ignore her, even if she’s upset “just” because she wants attention.  I think attention is a valid need, and my husband or I sometimes feel like we want more attention too, and I don’t ignore him to cure him of that.  And I don’t purposely not give her what she wants just to teach her a lesson about tantruming.  I find the conventional “wisdom” about tantrums so silly now that I have my own child.  Working with her is so much easier for all of us than working against her, and quicker too.

I have so much more I want to post about, but it’s (long past) bed time and I didn’t sleep well last night either.  I have some pictures to post later and more specific examples and lots more to say.

Related posts:

1. Sleeping through the night
2. Baby Moon
3. Sleep Training Guide for the Infant

My problem with this is when that formula based parenting is carried on indefinitly.  Its pretty common to find parents who do things a specific way because thats what they read or how they were parented.  They often think that thats just how you parent.  A perfect example is the “crying it out method”.  Why do parents choose to do this?  Is it because they feel good hearing their little babies screaming for hours on end?  While I’m sure there are some heartless people somewhere, most of us feel our babies crying in our bones and it isn’t fun.  These people follow this “method”, and I use that term very very very loosely, because thats what they were told you were supposed to do.  They either read it in a book, heard it from a relative, from a parenting class or whatever and not knowing better believe thats how it is.

First of all, there is no right way of doing everything.  Even in science, 9 times out of 10 you talk about theories, not facts.  Why?  Because there’s always the chance you’ll eventually be proved wrong.  Einsteins THEORY of relativity.  Newton’s THEORY of gravity.  The THEORY of global warming (a personal pet peeve but I might go into that some day when something really pisses me off).  There are very few hard facts in life.  Even something as simple as 1 + 1 = 2 is only true most of the time, not all of the time.  So why do parents think there is a single right way of parenting?  Far as I can tell, kids aren’t like computers.  Giving them the same input won’t equal the same output.

Second problem, parents aren’t trying to figure out what is right themselves, instead they want someone (or something) to tell them what to do.  Parenting books, while a good resource, aren’t the be all and end all of parenting.  Like anything else, a book is the opinion of the author, and only as good as that authors experiences and research.  They are also a business which is why you find all sorts of “methods” in parenting.  Anything that might make some money has probably been written about, both good and amazingly bad.

As the title of this post indicates, parenting requires you to go with the flow.  You can’t decide before hand how to handle situations.  You can talk about it and try and plan things out a little in advance, but life has a way of screwing up your plans (be they travel plans or parenting plans).  Each situation that comes up needs to be handled independantly from the rest.  This is where I probably differ from most parenting styles or guides.  Consistency is trumpeted as THE MOST important thing you can do.  Some examples:

• If you say no, follow through NO MATTER WHAT! (Funny how this rarely is expressed as if you say yes, follow through no matter what).
• If you don’t want them to have sugar, never let them have sugar
• If bedtime is 7pm, bedtime is always 7pm.

The list could go on forever.  But what parents don’t generally ask themselves is why.  They also never put themselves in the kids shoes.  Do you never change your mind about your own decisions?  do you never eat something that isn’t healthy?  Do you always go to bed exactly at the same time?  Of course not, so why do kids have to?

If you take each situation as an individual event, you can remain consistent overall while still allowing you to change your mind between events.  Maybe they give you a good reason why saying no doesn’t make sense.  Most parents will say “Too bad, I already said no” no matter what the kid has to say.  Maybe they had a nap and aren’t tired at bedtime.  What harm could it possibly do to let them stay up later?  I’m pretty sure most kids have enough sense to go to sleep when they’re tired, unlike a lot of adults I could name.

Not only does this sound more like how we treat ourselves and other adults, it’s also much easier to remain consistent.  If the kid knows that you’ll give them the answer you think best each time, then they’ll more likely accept it if you give them different answers each time.  They might question it (heaven forbid) but assuming you have a good reason for your answer that shouldn’t be a problem.  On top of that, you won’t have to worry about them pulling the “Mom said it was ok/Dad said it was ok” trick, or just choosing the parent most likely to give the best answer.  You also don’t need to try and remember what you said last time, because it doesn’t matter anymore.

The only thing that matters is the here and now, which is how it should be.

Related posts:

1. Dog-Friendly Dog Training
2. The mythical consensus…
3. Consensual Living

I don’t agree with all of the RU ideas, but I do like the theory behind most of them.  It is a way of looking at children that says that children are innately good and have good intentions, rather than the far more common theory that children, if given any leeway, will take advantage of it and turn wild.  I’ll probably talk more on my thoughts on this in general in another post, but to get back to chores, the RU way of “making” a child do chores is to make chores optional.  Sounds radical, eh?  It’s recognizing that you don’t always feel like cleaning the bathroom right this minute, so why should your child have to clean their room because it’s bothering you?  It doesn’t mean chores don’t get done, and there are different ways that people put it into practice (from not expecting children to help at all, to asking for help but not forcing it, to everyone having set chores but no set time to do them (and the option of switching up chores), etc).  I like Joyce Fetteroll‘s way of looking at it here.

I liked the idea when I first read about it, but wasn’t sure how it would work in practice.  However, Kris and I had decided it was more in line with our way of life than chore charts, bribes, or groundings, and we’re prepared to give it a go.  A recent post of my sister’s (#50, her least favorite chore) got me thinking about this again.  My least favorite chore is vacuuming too.  Coincidence?  Probably not.  There’s a story here.

When I was about ten years old, I wanted to learn how to vacuum.  It was something my father did every week, and I thought it looked fun.  I begged him to show me how.  I had never been forced, coerced, bribed, etc into vacuuming.  He took me up on it, and I had a blast.  The next week he asked if I wanted to try it myself, I said sure.  Suddenly, it became my chore.  Every week, I had to vacuum our 2500 square foot house by myself.  My dad would make me redo it if I missed spots.  Pretty soon, my younger sister Alice was roped into doing it every other week.  While I was relieved for myself (since I only had to do it half the time), Alice started vacuuming when she was a year younger than I was when I started.  My dad would often joke that part of the reason he had kids was to do the chores.  Sadly, to this day I wouldn’t place bets on the fact that he was really joking.  While whoever was vacuuming, my dad would take the rest of the family out somewhere fun, to get away from the noise of the vacuuming.  So we would spend two or three hours vacuuming the house while the family went to the zoo, or the pet store, or some other such place.  Is it any wonder we both hate vacuuming now?  Luckily for me, once I got a job, I discovered that my youngest sisters love money more than they hate vacuuming and was able to pay them to take my turns for me.

So I went from being happy and anxious to help when I had a choice, to hating it and arguing over it every week when it was my job.  After this happened, I was very careful not to show any eagerness for any other jobs or chores, lest they suddenly become my responsibility.  Kris only had one chore he had to do growing up, and that was mowing the lawn.  His least favorite chore now is mowing the lawn.  (And since mowing causes my eyes to swell up to the point I can’t see, unfortunately for him it’s a chore he’s stuck doing.  But I never force him to do it and he actually does it most weeks quite happily.)  Another thing Kris dislikes is gardening.  I disliked it too.  It brought back memories of being in the hot afternoon sun weeding my parent’s garden.  But one evening I decided to sit down and start, and before I knew it I had got a lot done and was actually quite enjoying myself.  And then Kris, who has always warned me he would never be caught gardening, was next to me, helping me dig holes for bulbs and spread manure on the newly weeded plots.  Maybe there is something to this after all.  The funny part is that Kris, who was never forced to do most chores growing up like we were, is far better at keeping house and getting chores done than I think I will ever be.

One other thing my father used to say that I hated was that it was his house, and we had to earn our keep.  (To be fair, he did pay us for vacuuming and other chores we did.)  The unschooling philosophy is that it is the family’s house, and that children are children and don’t have to earn their keep.  Their jobs are to play and learn and be children.

Meredith likes to come out and help me garden.  This afternoon while I was weeding, she plopped herself down in the dirt right on top of some newly-growing-in flowers, picked up the little shovel, and started digging.  I pointed to a patch of weeds and she shifted her attention to them, but even if she had kept her attention on the flowers, I wouldn’t have stopped her.  I enjoy her company and don’t want to discourage her from trying to help.  They are only flowers (and were planted so late this year I don’t even know if they will bloom anyway), and if I want her to be interested in helping in future years, I think trying to stop her now would only be counterproductive.  My plan as she grows is to point out ways she can help me if she shows an interest (or even if she doesn’t but is nearby), not to fuss if she chooses not to help in that instance (after all, I don’t always help Kris if I don’t feel like it, and he would never try and force me), and not to nitpick when she does try and help.  And like everything else with parenting, to keep an open mind and be willing to try something different.

Related posts:

1. A video & an addendum
2. Give a child a fish…
3. TV, ADHD, and other random thoughts