The warmth and simplicity that comes with a baby

If you haven’t noticed by my infrequent posts, I have been struggling for some time trying to find the most honest voice for what I wish to accomplish for this blog and how to go about expressing it. I feel a fraud if I come across as an intellectual or expert because it doesn’t fit with the way I interact and dwell in the childhood realm and yet feel to be credible, credentials or labels give clout to words. Is this not truth? A mommy blog or Instagram post serves great supportive purposes, but just isn’t right for this either. This is way too important.

This blog is about SPIRIT. (Not pushing a specific religion) It is about spirit, mind, and body, but it links spirit with the other two for thriving, psychology and creating and building relational health. Over the past 5+ months I have had a unique experience that I considered quite rare closely interacting with two twin babies from their very first days until now. While with them I uncovered pieces of myself that had been buried a long time and were so authentically me, it is difficult to put words to. It made me realize how much infants come so dominant in spirit and how content and at ease I am in that space. It is Home to me.

It is not easy living with a person like me. I look like an adult but I don’t feel like one inside. I do not dwell in the same realm or tune in to the same “channel” as normal grown people.  I live in a sort of in-between space closely linked into the childhood frequency where I understand them quite intuitively and sensitively. Officially I am called an innocent, coined by a psychologist I know. That term fits me quite comfortably. You see, children are innocent but scrupulous and pure. They either like you or they don’t like you, and they don’t mess around with proper etiquette to fake it. So, if you are a rare human being that gets chosen by infants or children to not only visit their world, but dwell in their space, it is quite a privilege as an understatement. This is sacred ground. This is where I authentically live. I am welcomed there and often get frequently carried in.

It is conflicting for me and for those around me. I am quiet and gently mannered, but there is a lion inside me that becomes fierce when little children’s spirits are trifled with. Because of the spiritual sensitivity I carry, I feel responsible for children everywhere. It is a blessing and a curse. I feel a great interior force of ferocious passion to protect children. Often it is difficult for adults to understand what I am trying to show or express especially when they are simply trying to survive with complete exhaustion. Because what I am showing comes from a spiritual vantage point. The kind that the child dwells naturally in but most adults don’t have time for, don’t remember, or never was nourished within themselves as children.

The lion inside is nudging me to write and share about this. I am afraid to. Spirit and childhood is holy, precious and natural. The gift bestowed on me by God as a guardian for childhood is sacred to me. I worry it will be attacked and made fun of by people who feel smarter and believe they know better intellectually. Talking about children is a challenge. There are millions of experts.

I wish to walk on a gentle journey that once was your own. This is not new. You may have grown out of it and cannot remember. The spirit of the child is fragile; and yet includes a power and wisdom that is beyond our comprehension.

They are simple beings and yet complex.

They are special in a world that craves something special. And here they are.  We see them most every day.

And yet our goal is to drive childhood right out of them. To move them past and on to grown-up land where WE think life is better. So, this is why I write. We live amongst precious gems that teach us as we grow closer to them. When you allow yourself to go “innocent” a spirituality inside you awakens feeling familiar and warm. It often frightens adults who need to stay in control. We have the privilege to associate with humans who still have one foot in heaven for a fleeting piece of time. The time is called childhood. This is my passion. It is my life’s joy. I hope you will want to wonder more…

A delicious story

Let the children share in it…

I smell summertime ‘a comin’

No barefooted

tree climbing, frog holding,

mud pie baking, cloud spotting,

puddle stomping, bird calling,

wild foraging, moon gazing, firefly chasing, fort building,

creek following, rock hunting

moment with Mother Nature is ever wasted.

-Nicolette Sowder

The Very First and Most Important Parental Lesson

Lisa Miller, Ph.D.

…children are born fully fluent in this primal, nonverbal dimension of knowing. They need time to develop the wraparound of cognitive, linguistic, and abstract thinking, but young children don’t have to learn the “how’ or the “what” of spiritual engagement. Bird and flower, puddle and breeze, snowflake or garden slug: all of nature speaks to them and they respond. A smile, a loving touch, the indescribable bond between child and parent … all of these speak deeply to them, too. Spirituality is the language of these moments, the transcendent experience of nourishing connection. Spirituality is our child’s birthright.2

I was blessed to study with Dr. Lisa Miller in her work at Columbia University. This is from her book, The Spiritual Child.

I highly recommend it; particularly with teen-childhood…

#1 Spirituality is our child’s birthright.

Photo by Kat Smith on Pexels.com

Family Power

Photo by daniyal ghanavati on Pexels.com

For over three years with this particular blog, I have been feeling much like Mary Poppins popping in and out with nanny jobs, ceiling tea parties, chalk paintings, and chimney sweep roof dancing posting similarly fragmented and cryptic bits of wisdom, having some fun in-between but trying to make a dent in the vast deluge of ACE’s (adverse childhood experiences), developmental stages, sage parental advice, playful interactions but not wanting Mr. and Mrs. Banks to chalk these posts up for yet another silly escapade with absolute no worth. (Especially when there are billions of parental advice wind storms all over the world)

In these three years I have shifted from a solid child advocate symbolic of Mary Poppins, to gaining an army of research and backing support to show that the character, Mary, was actually doing critical work for human beings to flourish spiritually, physically, emotionally, and mentally including the underlying symbolic meaning of the song, “A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down…”

In the past three years I am now a Columbia University graduate in clinical psychology, and currently in a post graduate fellowship at U-Mass medical school to become an expert in infant mental health. My studies have included child developmental psychology and psychopathology, women’s health including the perinatal time frame, the mother/child matrix, spirit mind body and social emotional learning, positive psychology, trauma research and soon will include in this big bag of tricks, a clinical mental health degree with an emphasis on expressive arts. I have been led by God in my long-time quest to advocate for children, also with a past masters in early childhood/childhood education and a bachelors in art education. This is not bragging but a very serious quest to stand for children and their childhood and I don’t wish for this blog to be a chalk drawing of animated ideas but real live researched realizations about how to help children experience the one thing they can never get back; a childhood which helps them grow to be the very best they can be. I want to drop in with diverse colors of wisdom with attachment, respect, and reverence as the core with their parents as the most important contributor for their success. Of course this may seem a a fantasy, much like the Disney movie Mary Poppins, because life in actuality hurts, is very messy, and far from perfect. She knew this too. But parents don’t know what’s going on in the current or even past research in psychology talking about them and backing and supporting this ominous job of parenting children. There is much chatter and amazing things coming to fruition for good. That is the key; good for the children!

I hope you come along for the ride in further posts in hopes your child/children can feel as safe and secure as they possibly can by the love only Mr. and Mrs. Banks can give; it is a deep and significant bond that has power you will never believe possible. Do you know why Mary Poppins left at the end of the movie? Because she changed the focus to the family as the most critical buffering force for childhood. That is what this blog is all about.

Another bite-sized tid-bit

(Let’s say you were dropped on the ground in Mars with a straitjacket on. Your have laryngitis so no one can understand  your squeaking and croaking, but it doesn’t matter because you don’t understand the Mar’s language anyway. You can see but you don’t know their ways. Everything is new and pretty cool. When you get snatched up and adopted into some Martian’s home, they leave you alone a lot so you watch closely to learn. They take the straitjacket off but your limbs don’t work the same as they did on earth. So you move a lot slower and feel sort of stiff so you practice to get your dexterity back. But in your boredom, you try new things…sort of like experiment. What tastes good in Mars? Do the flowers smell the same as earth? Does gravity work the same? Can you fly here? You try it out. The Martian’s constantly grab you and put you in a corner with weird objects and they look at you like you are supposed to know what to do with them. But you don’t always do what they want you to do because you are always guessing what they are saying anyway. Sometimes you make them mad and they grunt at you or move you back to your corner or your new Martian bed. Sometimes they put the straitjacket back on thinking you like it. Neither of you understand each other very well. Sometimes you repeat their grunts and they act happy in a Martian sort of way…which is weird to you…)

This is probably similar to how a 6 month-2 year old baby feels here on earth. This new place is strange, but now their brains are beginning to wake up to their surroundings.  They notice that they can grab things at first but now there are reactions to actions that happen. That rattle now makes noise AND they can make the sound happen!!

Tid-Bit: Babies and Young children do not lie in their beds and scheme how to make adult lives miserable by their constant reaching, touching, pulling things out, dropping, dripping, spitting, running the opposite way, smearing, whining…(I know the list isn’t complete) But we want to believe they do because they drive us…crazy. CRAZY!! But babies are working!

 Always the big “reaction” from the Martian adult is,

                “WHY DID YOU DO THAT?” Which is quite funny when you think about asking a baby or toddler questions like that, in anger. Wouldn’t it be a riot if they answered you back?

                “Well, I am doing it because I wanted to see if this smearing mess on my hands would fit in this hole and I now see that it will fit, but I can’t get my hand out…which is also really exciting.”  or

                “Every time I drop this out of my hand it leaves my hand and goes down. How funny is that? Why doesn’t it go or out or behind? When I make a grunt you pick it up. I wonder if it will do it again?…Haha, It will, and you will still keep picking it up. That is a fun game!”

Babies begin a very important experimentation time trying to figure out “Mars” [earth] and they are the scientists working on hypotheses constantly. They are watching you, and trying to figure out what you are saying to them and what you mean. Your voice has so many intonations and some match your face with a certain look. Then there’s all the stuff and their brains are slowly trying to make sense of it. They are at work. Not scheming. You play a valuable role in letting them learn. The more you are angry or stop the process, the more anxious they become…just a little bit of knowledge.

I know, you need to be reminded and you want your child to learn. 

Who is tired? The parents and the Martian parents…we all feel it. You can do it.

But if you look at this in a new perspective, all those grabs are a kid in Mars just wondering and trying to figure it out for themselves… And that is pretty fascinating!

“Stuff the box”

The best way to teach your kids stuff you feel is important is to get down in the trenches and do it with them. This idea is posted on my other blog, “have fun with it”, but I wanted to share because it’s a fun thing to do with your kiddos.

I am BIG on teaching kids how to “pay attention” to things we often sort of skip over. (I am actually writing a thesis on it now) This could be a one time shot, or an ongoing thing and I am going to cross fingers on the latter.

First, have on hand some blank paper; I like 2″ by 3″ cards that you keep in your car, backpack, diaper bag, stroller pockets, purse, bike basket, or stuffed in your socks…(you can cut them our of anything or use post it notes) AND something to write with. As you walk or drive (just out) with kids IF any of you sees a house (or it can be even more like a car, a building, even a park) that has something really special or cool that strikes your fancy (that means you really really like it), yell out, “Stuff the box.” Stop the car, bike, stroller, walk.

This means that you actually stop what you are doing, write on that card “WOW, I love your sunflowers in your yard..” or “I love how you decorated for Halloween…” or “I love the color you painted your front door…” and you stuff their mailbox with the note. That’s it. Then you get back on your way and feel glad. What you don’t realize is that someone is going to open that mailbox, get that letter and look both ways and smile really big and feel super duper happy someone noticed. That is the best part!

The Hup-Hup

A nightly ritual on many occasions, when I was a child, were fond memories ending the day with my dad. Once our teeth were brushed I would race my brothers back into our family room and after family prayers would climb up on a tall bar/counter were we would normally color or do homework near our kitchen and wait for my dad to do the infamous night time ritual known as the hup-hup. It was luck of the draw who would go first, so if it wasn’t me I would stand on the bar patiently and wait my turn.

My dad would come close to the bar. I would climb on his shoulders and pat his bald head and then like a soldier he would begin to march toward the bedroom hallways and we both would say together, “Hup, hup,… hup-hup-hup…” the whole way as he begin to walk me toward my bed. But before I ever got to my bed, he would try to trick me by sometimes marching into a closet, out the front door, or even in the bathroom. I would always exclaim, “No, no, not here.” Along the path he would stop and I would lean down and turn out the lights.

Finally we would find my room and he would drop me on the bed with a bounce where we both would giggle. Often a story would be the final closure, depending how tired he was or if he wanted my brothers to get out of bed again. (Once in bed we were not to get out, except to go potty.) But he would always call to them to come listen and we would all cram together lying on my bed. He never read a book, he always told stories in the dark; the best stories ever. We scratched arms and snuggled close and it was the closing moment to our day.

The memory still remains clear as a bell in my mind, even the stories, but the warmth feels much warmer now that I am an adult and know how much energy that must have taken to do that special night time ritual from a daddy who worked long days but could not wait to spend a little moment with his children. That silly hup-hup lasted…

You can’t plan stuff like this…

A small slice of shade was the perfect spot for the one damp towel to set ourselves on. The newly discovered black beetle bug, officially named Greyson Rodney I, was getting pampered with freshly pulled grass and wild flower petals carefully arranged and rearranged for perfect comfort. The waterfall sprinkler was watering the dried grass instead of used for a hot afternoon cool down as the summer afternoon temperatures raised and the humidity thickened. Thick white cottony cumulus clouds were lazily floating above and we began that game, “What do you see in the shapes in the sky?”

Big sister was flying high on the swing then skidded to a halt when she remembered the homemade toothpick Popsicles we’d made earlier from Lemonade and ran to the freezer to snatch us all one, then passed them out and caught a corner of the towel to play.

“An alligator, …a bunny with a tail,…a face with a mustache. Greyson Rodney I huddled in the bug-catcher corner receiving continuous pampering when we broke into singing silly songs on cue.

“S’mores, s’mores the tiny camp a-roars, you can’t bake ’em in the kitchen, or buy them at the store…”

Then little sister breaks the moment and says, “I love sitting on a towel with you, Grandma.”

 

“Summer Afternoon. The two most beautiful words in the English language.” 

-Henry James

 

The “WHY” Tree

I love this tree. I see it on my walk each day. When I see it I always have a  “why” question for it. “Why” isn’t always an easy thing to answer. But just the effort to try to talk about the “why’s” are important, especially for our children.

“Hello, “why” tree…Why do I clam up or get frustrated when my child asks me why?”

My tree says., “Children have so many questions “why.” They want to know why about everything. It is not a nuisance. It is discovery. Think like a child and wonder as they do. Then answer the best way they would understand, not how you would as an adult. But answer!”

I share my “why” tree with you to talk to. The “why” tree is always there to listen and help us find the answers, to hard and not so hard questions.”