The Intuitive Parent

     I used to have a habit of putting my desire to have my children appear to have a full social and academic life before whether or not certain things would actually achieve any positive result.  My oldest had made this habit way too easy for me because he would agree to do everything without really thinking about if he really wanted to do it.  This type of living lead to busyness and looking like we had a full life, but did we really?  Does busyness mean that everyone is happy and experiencing everything they want to experience?  I quickly learned that evidence of my own impatience and any stress from the kids meant that we needed to stop saying yes to everything and really see if everyone really is excited about participating.

     I have been able to stop myself every time I felt the urge to sign one of my kids up for a class or field trip and ask them they would enjoy it.  I have also made a point of having less structured time and more “open time” for the kids to pursue what they feel like doing.  Last summer, I heard “I’m bored.” so much more often.  This summer?   Hardly ever!

     I was raised much like most of you where the quantifiable results that you can put down on paper meant more than what was actually learned.  This is a very bad habit of thinking to break.  Now I have gotten really good at seeing the worth of time spent doing something, even if it’s just for the enjoyment of it.  If I have no set agenda of what I want to teach the kids about something, they learn so much more and this comes through their own curiosity and my willingness to help them satisfy it.

     Yesterday was a perfect example.  I had absolutely no set plans for the day apart from a couple of things on my personal to do list.  One of the boys had mentioned on our walk through the woods a couple of days ago that he wanted to come back with a pickax and get some of the snow quartz jutting out of some boulders we found.  Yesterday afternoon, the five of us set out with a small pickax and a bucket.  We ended up gathering some nice chunks of the quartz and seeing some other types of beautiful minerals in the boulders as well.  This lead to tons of questions the kids wanted answered that we are still working on!  One of the boulders we found has so much perfect snow quartz along the top of it that it lead to one of the kids asking how much we could get if we broke it off in one large chunk.

     I know all too well that if I decided to make a parent-lead teaching session out of it, I would have made them wait to get their questions answered because of my own agenda.  Instead of me telling them all that I knew or researched then asking them questions about what I told them, I let THEM ask the questions.  If I don’t know all of the answers, I pull out my iPhone and look it up on the spot. 

     Yesterday was a great example of how we live and learn the best!  It was easy, peaceful, unplanned and didn’t feel at all like a struggle.

      I really like writers who write just to write.  Not for an audience.  Not to get blog traffic.  Not to impress others.  They write because they feel something they want to share.  There are a couple of my blogs that I have written that people absolutely loved, evidenced by their personal emails to me, and yet “I” knew that they weren’t written for me.  They were written because I had set a goal for myself to write a blog that day and I didn’t want to publish something people wouldn’t like. 

      Well, I got what I asked for!  While I am appreciative that people liked the blogs, I was kicking myself for publishing them in the first place.  The positive reinforcement for writing something that wasn’t authentically who I was actually irritated me because I knew I was just betraying myself.  I’m not some gushy writer who loves to illustrate using generalizations and symbolism.  While I do like reading other people that enjoy writing like that, I have had a very ‘real’ life and writing about anything not down to earth, tangible and even a little gritty, just isn’t me.  So I decided to take some time off of blogging. 

      Since my last blog a month ago, I decided that a lot of things were getting out of my control and keeping me from being creative.  Not only my blogs, but a lot of other things were influencing me, instead of me influencing them.  I didn’t like the direction my book was taking yet I was convincing myself that I was just being too critical at the time and to just go with something I wasn’t going to be happy with.  A lot of other little things were becoming overcomplicated distractions and I needed time to simplify.  I needed to even simplify things in my house.  I was tired of walking by stuff that made me feel some sort of negative emotion, however small, and it got beyond annoying when those dozen or so things multiplied daily and I could never seem to catch up. 

      So I am back.  I refocused and completely reorganized my book to a vision of something I would actually want to buy instead of the repetitive mess it was.  I still have more brainstorming to do but I am totally happy with the direction now.  I reprioritized my personal life to include a babysitter that my kids love, and that my husband I appreciate as well since we are now able to go out and have adult time for the first time in four years.  There are still a few more things I need to start scheduling time for but I am finally listening to myself and not letting other things or meaningless obligations dictate my life.  I have four kids and a marriage (and my best friend, aka husband) that I am totally dedicated to so if something isn’t a positive influence on my life, it goes!

      Is there something in your life that needs to go too?  Get real!  Join me.

      Everything I know today I learned after I graduated from college.  Truly, that is when the real learning began.  When I say “real” learning, I mean all the stuff that has been of interest to me as well as things I may have needed to know for a job.  I have to say that the ONLY thing I have applied from my 20 years of formal schooling, besides reading, writing and math, has been the elective business courses I took in college.  And I mean “elective” as in my own college advisor thought I was crazy taking on serious business courses even though I wanted to take them. 

      My first job had nothing to do with what I went to school for yet I got this decent paying job because I had been playing with computers and computer programming since I was a kid.  I mean, what did I know about retirement planning and database programming?  All I knew how to do regarding finance was balance a checkbook!  I’m pretty certain I was hired not because of what I was or wasn’t trained for but because of my attitude and willingness to learn anything based on the skills I had already (self) acquired.   In fact, I’m willing to bet I was the only applicant to say that I used to write programs on our old Commodore 64 computer at home for fun!   And, yes, within the month, I had learned how to program the database program to spit out usable reports. 

      Since my stint at that job, my husband and I have purchased five houses and sold four of them in three different parts of the country, even in a bad economy.  We have learned how to purchase classic muscle cars at a discount and then completely restore them on our own and on a budget, including the engines.  We learned how to scavenge flea markets and purchase classic video games and auction them via e-lists in the days before eBay even existed.  When my husband had a software idea, I set up a business registration, designed the website and learned how to get top search engine placement in the days before AdSense and the like, all in a matter of a few months.   I also learned how to design and place ads in industry magazines in order to increase our distribution.  These are just a few of the things we have done and none were born of necessity.

      This kind of self learning hasn’t stopped.  I took the same approach with parenting, food, home improvement, and even interpersonal relationships.  I am currently learning about growing our own food responsibly and organically.  I am learning about the amazing healing effects of herbs through trying them out for myself.  And I am even foraying into the world of self publishing through writing a book with a friend.  I also have a mental list of things that I would love to set aside the time to learn about in the future.  If they are still important to me by the time my current projects are done, then I am sure I will give them a try.

      So what is the point of telling you all of this?  The most important lesson I have learned is that if you want to stay happy, vibrant and present in your life never, ever stop learning something new.  You don’t need a fancy liberal arts education to choose liberal arts living.  If you have kids, know how important it is to show that learning never stops by LIVING it.  I am no more “special” than any of you are.  If I can learn how to rebuild a car engine out of curiosity, then so can you!

     So the 1000 year flood officially hits Middle TN and all we see on CNN.com is a smiling face of a failed terrorist?  Their photo of the flooding showed …fields????  You have got to be kidding!  To get a small slice of what happened in Nashville and the surrounding areas, check out

http://www.flickr.com/photos/yahooeditorspicks/galleries/72157623858733433/

     Having lived in 3 different parts of Middle TN, I would have never expected to see some of these areas under water.  The only thing this site is missing is photos of the desperate people that need help. .. the ones that didn’t have flood insurance.  Maybe pictures like that will start making it real to the rest of the country.

      Our media outlets have been nothing short of disappointing.  Over the last couple of years they have turned into something I do not recognize and something I think America should never represent!  I hope that someday we will start to have real journalism again.   In the meantime, I will continue to get my news from real people that aren’t solely motivated by money or political pull.

     Here is a Facebook status that I reposted and I encourage all of you to as well:  “hopes all non-Nashvillians will consider texting 90999 to REDCROSS to donate $10 to Nashville flood relief.  These are our neighbors and friends, not someone on an island far away. Haiti got $21 million in a week, because they got the international news coverage -- we've got nothing but one another, and we're really hurting right now. Please repost!"

 

      I have been struggling with how to put intuitive parenting into words just because it is hard to analyze and quantify.  The biggest reason is because parenting for each of us can be as unique as each parent and child relationship is.  When it comes to parenting, parents need to learn to trust themselves more and stop always looking for answers outside of themselves.  I know this is hard to do when there are a myriad of books, websites, magazines, family and friends as well as professionals that tell you that you don’t know what you are doing. 

      The simplest way to describe intuitive parenting is to put it into two words – stop and listen!  An intuitive parent doesn’t just listen to what is going on around them but also listens to how it is making them and their children feel and why.  That doesn’t mean that they won’t run over to their injured child or stop their child from doing something dangerous before it happens.  It means that they won’t resort to spanking, yelling or being controlling when something doesn’t go right.  Instead they stop, listen and completely assess a situation before they do anything or say anything.

      I understand this is a hard transition for some people to make.  You are made to feel like you always must DO something if you see something not going the way you want it to go no matter how unrealistic your expectations may have been.  Or worse, you do nothing and just accept bad situations for what they are because you feel like you can’t do anything about it.  Both action and acceptance of “the way things are” are socially rewarded so when it comes to parenting you may feel it hard not to follow one of those routes.  

      Intuitive parenting is the complete antithesis of this.  When a parent is able to parent intuitively, they are not coming from a place of worry or fear.  They are coming from a place of feeling the path of least resistance and least stress.  Most importantly, they are feeling their way to the path that’s most joyful for their child.

The Good Morning America show, for some odd reason, decided to run a piece on radical unschooling yesterday.  Normally anything that is on that show doesn’t grab my attention but since I am a homeschooling mom, this one did.  I do have an ongoing fascination with radical unschooling and in many ways it makes a lot of sense.  There are also many aspects of it that I am just not comfortable with as far as following that route with my children and I was hoping I would see some of those concerns covered in the GMA segment.   Sadly, the segment was completely unfair and biased against what they were covering form the start and it was blatantly obvious.  It was not meant to educate anyone but it was meant to expose radical unschoolers as some sort of odd fringe group.  I find this not only irresponsible of GMA but incredibly unfortunate for homeschoolers as a whole. 

It’s bad enough that some of us have to deal with the ignorant questions about socialization but now we are going to start being hit with questions regarding curriculum.  I am used to that question being posed by other homeschoolers that I just meet as some sort of test as to whether you are religious or not based on your secular or religious curriculum choices.  Now I can forsee this used as a test by total strangers to see if you are “one of those” people. 

The other consequence I see from this is more divisiveness in the homeschool community itself.  Homeschooling style is usually the last concern between homeschoolers.  We tend to put more emphasis on whether or not our kids are being raised well and have things in common that they can do with each other than how they are learning math and reading.  99% of the homeschoolers I have met, and my kids have interacted with, are well adjusted, well behaved kids.  Honestly, I have had more issues with government schooled kids and their behavior problems.  My concern now is that some in the homeschool community that already have issues with unschooling in general, radical or not, will try to distance themselves from unschoolers because of the fear of negative public perception.

My last concern over GMA’s irresponsible reporting is that legislators that already have an issue with homeschoolers in general are going to use this as an excuse to place more regulations in place.  There are legislators right in my own state that already have obvious issues with the fact that homeschooling is even legal.  The irony is that by putting more regulations in place, it is of my opinion that they will chase more homeschoolers off the grid so to speak, particularly the radical unschooling ones, and those that tend to fall under what the legislators find more acceptable are the ones that will suffer under trying to jump through their regulatory hoops.

Sometimes, you have to experience what you don’t want to truly understand what you need.

Recently I have been dealing with the fact that we are paying almost the equivalent of a car payment, spending countless hours in the car and dealing with constant schedule changes for one of my kids’ activities and yet the communication that goes home is seriously lacking.  I first saw the issue back in December when he needed something in particular and had no idea that he needed it.  It all worked out fine but when one of us spoke to someone who was in charge about it, we were dismissed like it was no big deal.  It would have indeed been no biggie if the communication hasn’t gotten progressively worse since.

I wonder if I am asking too much and also wonder if other parents aren’t caring enough to notice.  Is it just that since we’re a bigger family, the last minute schedule changes and the “You need such and such for tomorrow” is a much bigger deal for us?  Is it that since we are a homeschooling family and have really great communication, we come across as controlling in wanting communication to be better than we are getting?  In this day and age I think it’s inexcusable to find out the day of the lesson, and upon arrival, that a lesson time was pushed back with the only explanation being “I’m sorry.  I thought you knew.  We must have forgotten to tell you.  It will be at this time from now on.”  Between email, internet and, excuse the sarcasm, but this old fashioned thing called the telephone, I don’t think I am being unreasonable to think that since we are paying for services rendered that we are entitled to know about changes and new requirements as they happen.

I even went through the lesson of trusting my child over other adults.  I was initially worried that he was forgetting to tell us things we needed to know.  I’ll admit I grilled him a little more than I should have before I realized that his communication skills are completely age appropriate.  He admits that there have been a few times that the end of a weeknight long practice ends with a 40 minute information lecture and he ends up just trying to keep his eyes open and has missed a couple of things.  When he showed up at the time on his printed schedule for a rehearsal and only a handful of other kids were there, I knew that it wasn’t his fault that he was in fact an hour early.  Those other kids and their parents didn’t know either.

So I am on a quest for a new venue for this particular activity.  I have learned that just because a business is kid related, sells itself well and has a price tag to match, I can’t expect that their communication will be at the level that I want and need.  I am anxious to see the end of year presentations to see if the price we paid was even worth it.  I am hoping that at least my child has learned something.  And while on one hand I have been hoping that they invite him to try out for the next level “club” of what he is doing because I know it will make him feel good, on the other, I am hoping they don’t so I have even more of an excuse to find a better fit for what we are looking for.

      I haven’t had anything inspire me enough or stir me up enough in the past few days to blog.  That is, until this afternoon.  It started innocent enough.  A friend posted a link to an article of a study against spanking and why she liked it and I shared my opinion in support.  Then, there was a very defensive post, pointed at me, as if I singled this person out, and I don’t even know the guy.  I even apologized if I offended him.  I got a snarky comment back so it was obvious I hit a nerve.  Ah, the spanking debate…

      Really, is there anything left to debate about?  I have yet to see one study saying that it’s ok and doesn’t do any damage.  If you are familiar with Alice Miller, she explains why it continues to be a somewhat ambiguous subject among parents.  Particularly among those that were spanked, in turn spank their own kids and continue think that it’s not only acceptable but are thankful of their own parent’s abuse.  I tend to appreciate her works, being raised by an abusive step-parent, and a father who would spank with a belt, bare bottom, military-style every time no one would admit to really dumb things like who ate the chocolate chips.  To me, it is never ok to hurt a child.  I teach my children, hurting someone else is called assault and people go to jail for that.  It’s not that I want to scare them but I want them to know what the societal boundaries are and not only that “it’s not nice.”

      I think the problem lies in not only getting through to the parents that still think it’s ok because they are subject to a neurosis because they were spanked, but the problem also lies in giving parents resources and ideas of what to do instead.  I will admit that I am far from perfect and have given a swat or two to my kids for absolutely asinine reasons – like “You could have seriously injured your brother.”  That makes sense right?  A swat in the butt for hurting someone else as a “don’t do that” message?  It’s quite the opposite if you think about it isn’t it?  In the moment, I was angry with my child’s behavior and mortified that they did something they knew better than to do.  In the moment, I really didn’t know what else to do.  I was more afraid of what would happen if I did nothing. 

      I have learned a lot in my 13 years of parenting and I know how challenging parenting can sometimes be.  The most important lesson I have learned is to always check with your emotions when it comes to your kids.  If you feel like you are going to do or say anything you would never say to another adult, then you need to calm down and think a little more.  My best way of working out an issue like this is telling my child what I’m not happy about and why, and that I will have to talk to their dad about what else I can say about it.  This has been working amazingly well since I am lucky enough to have a husband that is on the same page as I am in striving to show respect to our kids even when it comes to some tough issues that come up.  The issues just get more complicated as they get older so you need to find your own peaceful method of dealing with things.

      I will post some great sites that suggest different ways of parenting through conflicts and none of them will be the “tough love” garbage that a lot of us had to grow up with.  Click on my Recommended Resources the tab above and check back periodically as I will try to add more as I find them.  You can also suggest resources using the form at the bottom of that page.