ADVENTURES IN CHILDCARE: 2009

Going back to go forward

For generations, the elders of a community, wise and adept at communicating important life-lessons, were the ideal teachers for the members of a clan or family. Combining knowledge and first-hand experience with myth and philosophy, they then devised profound ways to impart this invaluable information upon the youth. These methods of instructing and strengthening the minds of young people has worked extremely well. But these invaluable stories, lessons and anecdotes are quickly being lost and distorted amidst the fast-paced, self-important lifestyle that people on every continent now subscribe to.
I am not an elder. I have been actively involved in many children's lives and I am acutely aware of the need to bring new methods of teaching into our children's lives. Our children need to be given a maleable template of how to cultivate a positive relationship with themselves. That template requires the active involvement of inspired and unrelenting parents, foster-parents and grandparents. I am a person with faults and short-comings just like everyone else. I am also an inspired parent who wants to see the children we bring into this world be given the tools to make this world a better place to live for ALL the inhabitants of this jewel we call the Earth.

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Losing The Faith

When parents put the children in the middle of ongoing quarrels the outcome is always a negative. We as adults have a hard enough time dealing with our own emotions and habits, imagine how a six year-old is going to process all the venom and spite that some parents repeatedly force their own kids to be a part of.
I've seen a very smart, happy five year-old reduced to wailing and sobbing tears with snot and spit drooling out of her for over twenty minutes - uncontrollably. Why? That morning, the weight became too much. The parents refuse to have anything to do with each other and instead rely on the children as go-betweens for all the messy interactions that must happen.
That morning, a mom proved that she's far more important than her daughter or her son.
Please don't use your kids as pawns in a game of "hurt your ex". In chess, the pawns are usually the first ones taken out of the game.