The recent story about tiny houses in the New York Times makes me smile. After living in a space the size of an office cubicle for a year and a half, any living space where you have room to take a few steps seems large.
The article neglects the obvious: that our friends the Japanese have always lived in tiny spaces. They do not complain. They find ways to conserve space: storing the bedding in a closet and rolling it out at night; building closet-like prefab fiberglass bathrooms; cooking in a kitchen barely large enough to turn around in. Thanks to that tiny kitchen, you might run down to the grocer for meal ingredients. Your limited private space makes you more likely to use public space for relaxing and general living; an evening stroll in one's pajamas is common in Japan. Tiny living space synergizes with ready access to public space to create a lifestyle where the personal and the communal are interwoven.
I don't mean to suggest that Japan is a utopia; it's just different. One lifestyle issue that plagues everyone who tries to live in a small space is CLUTTER. Those of us who enjoy acquiring meaningful (at least at the time) objects, know the depressing stagnation that can come from having a messy space. And those of us with children are in awe of our babies' magical powers when it comes to generating new possessions.
Some rules of thumb that have helped me in my quest for freedom in a small space:
Unbroken lines of sight are important.
Do not fill every inch of space. You need an open stretch of floor. A bare wall somewhere. These provide a visual cue that somehow relaxes the mind.
By the same token, do not spread objects out if you can cluster them instead. For example, if you arrange your potted plants in a clump on the windowsill, there will be plants and there will be the visual relief of windowsill. Plants that are spaced along the sill appear to fill the area, and your windowsill will appear cluttered.
You must arrange furnishings so as to optimize the square feet you do have. Perhaps the arrangement should chage depending on time of day. The Japanese stash bedding in a closet during the day, and set up futon on the open floor at night.
Reduce paperwork.
Ideally, you may not need a desk at all. Think about it. You can pay bills online; tote your laptop out when you need it; and stash it when you don't.
When you do get paper bills, don't 't keep them around; pay them and dispose of them. Paying over the phone using a credit card is quick and easy; if you choose instead to mail a check, do so at once.
Reduce the amount of mail you receive.
Register for the national "No Junk Mail List" (its actual name is something more poetic). Unlike the national Do-Not-Call registry, which is administrated by the Federal Government, and which telemarketers can be fined for disregarding, this is a private service that mail marketers can voluntarily access. So why would they take your name off their mailing lists? Because direct marketing to someone who doesn't want it costs them money. It's worth a try; you certainly won't receive more mail because of it! Of course, those pesky flier addressed to "Occupant", "Resident", or "Esteemed Neighbor" will probably continue.
Do your mail-order shopping online. When you place an order, request not to receive paper catalogs, and specifically request that the company also not share or sell your name. Similarly, when you subscribe to a magazine, remember to ask that they not share or sell your name. When stray mailings do arrive, immediately call to have them canceled. It's worth a minute of your time to prevent your name being sold to the next catalog, and the next.
Stash. But Wisely.
Small items you need ready access to can be stored in a cabinet. It can be a built-in cabinet, say in the kitchen; or a separate piece of furniture. Whatever you choose, it must have doors (or drawers) that close completely to present a clean uncluttered front. envelopes and arch supports and cloth napkin collection need to go somewhere. I'm currently using sleek-looking sideboard. Each shelf or drawer has its theme. For example: "personal health" (arch supports, first aid, extra ointments and lotions); "correspondence" (envelopes, stamps, address book, greeting cards); "gifts" (tchotchkes for regifting, pretty boxes, wrap, and ribbons); "dining" (cloth napkins and tablecloths). In a small house, there's no reason not to store your extra toiletries near your office supplies. Your storage area is never going to be far from the kitchen, or the bathroom, or the study.
Store it? Or send it to the store?
Small items you do not need ready access to are objects that your life in its current form probably doesn't require. Some people suggest putting these items--old clothes, old files--in opaque boxes or bags, mark them with a "dispose-by" date, and chuck them when you've lived that long without requiring the contents.
Especially if you are paying for storage, consider the monthly cost of retaining things you do not use, versus the value of the items and the trouble to reacquire them. A year's worth of storage costs at least $600. Are your unused treasures worth that?
If you don't need it, and it's small, it's probably an item of sentimental significance. Is there some way--besides entombment in a storage box--to memorialize the camp T-shirt you never wear, or a decade-old crumbling art project? I took digital photos of many of my crumbling childhood mementos. That made it easier to part with them, and I find that I don't miss them at all. If I'm feeling nostalgic, I can always call up the photo on my computer--where it takes up virtually no space at all.
If you live simply and are not afraid of second-hand items, it may behoove you to dispose of things and repurchase similar ones, rather than storing your treasures or letting them clutter your living space. I do this with clothes I'm tired of. I donate old shirts and skirts to the second-hand store where I bought them, and come home with "new" items. Essentially, the second-hand store functions as a sort of giant closet, from which I rent this season's outfits.
So donate what you aren't using. And when you do need something, you can often find it at Goodwill or a local thrift store for pennies on the dollar.
Clutter is just part of the story
Controlling clutter is an important aspect of living in a small space. But it's not the only consideration. Living in a small space entails a certain creativity. You will be forced to question your assumptions about what a living space needs, and what you need to live in a space. What do I really have to keep, and what can I digitize? What can I donate? What can do double duty?
Living a simple, ecologically-aware lifestyle means being unafraid to recycle and reuse objects. Controlling clutter means becoming free from bondage to your stuff.
P.S. ...a word on antiques
When the time does come to buy something, consider whether a new item is really necessary. Even discounting the issue of sustainability, used items are often superior. I have found that antiques are generally more sturdy, attractive and economical than new furniture. They retain their value well. And they are built to a scale appropriate for smaller spaces.
Relevant advice on life in small spaces from Treehugger here.
Monday, September 22, 2008
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Generations
Being human means enjoying the ongoing love of our mothers and grandmothers, in the form of "advice" and general worry.
I've talked to a number of mothers of grown children, and they all say the same thing: you never stop being a mom. You never stop worrying about your kids.
My own mother certainly feels free to contribute her opinion about what I should be doing, as well as what I might like to do, and what I should not do. Example: Me: I've been thinking I'd like to have a bed and breakfast. Mom: No you wouldn't! Thanks mom. I guess that concludes that conversation! I didn't appreciate this as a teenager, but in the intervening 15 years or so, I learned not to bother taking offense; it's just the way she is. As the years wore on, I didn't really understand her intrusiveness. But then she didn't really understand me either. So we were even. And a growing confidence in my own abilities came to displace defensiveness in reaction to her pronouncements.
Now, as I look at my own little baby, and feel the enormity of a mother's love, I can even begin to understand what would compel a person to contribute her own passionate but highly subjective advice to her otherwise perfectly competent grown daughter. There is nothing more important than this person I have given birth to. And look, they're an extension of me! The stage is set for years of delightful worrying and prodding and nagging--all those things that make having a mother so memorable.
And of course, the stage is now set for years of grandmothering. My mother's advice to me on raising my son is predictably just like her.When he cries with teething pain, I should give him whiskey! When he's fussy at the breakfast place, I should feed him a homefried potato!
My mother isn't even particularly serious about these things: she's just feeling a certain joyful subversive desire to shake up my careful parenting plans. In my world, a five-month-old baby does not need to be eating off his mama's plate. Which is exactly why my own mother wants to shake things up.
When you stop poking fun and look at is seriously, this inimitable mothering--and grandmothering--style, is a kind of transmission of wisdom. I may roll my eyes at my mother's advice, but I do in fact come from a long line of women who have put whiskey on their babies' gums and fed them whatever they were interested in eating. Generations of grandmothers have weighed in on how to hold a baby and how to feed a baby; they have spoken up and given their opinion on how to dig the roots, how to harvest the fruits, how to tan the skins, how to preserve the food for the winter. Evolutionary biologists call this the Grandmother Effect. Without these fearless old women, human societies would not endure. It is because of the wisdom of the elders--old women in particular, actually--that human lifespan extends so long beyond our most fertile years. We need the old ladies to stick around and tell us how they did it in their time
The reason that my mother, and the generations of grandmothers the world has seen, do what they do is simple: love. They love their children intensely. They delight in their grandchildren with a profound passion. Now I feel what a mother would do for her child, and I witness the joy of the grandmother.
This ongoing devotion is a very human endeavor, when you compare us to other mammalian groups. As a child, I knew dozens, maybe hundreds of mothers, whose devotion faded very quickly. I grew up on a sheep farm, a small back-to-the-land fantasy turned all too muddy and real. We had from fifty to one hundred ewes who every year gave birth to baby lambs.
Like the ewes, of what we do is instinctive, beyond conscious control. The milk lets down. The mother wakes half a minute before they happen. Her voice soothes him. Her hand comforts him back to sleep. Like a mother sheep nuzzling her lamb's tail, I like to pat my son's bottom as he feeds. Baby lambs and baby humans are linked to their mothers with bonds far more ancient than they are different. We give birth and nourish our little ones in remarkably similar ways.
Which is why what happens next is interesting. The baby sheep gradually drifts away from its mother's side and, it would seem, out of her heart. Aside from a similarity in their overall dispositions--a calm mother has calm offspring; a flighty mother raises flighty progeny--there is no social link between a ewe and her grown progeny. In general, sheep don't maintain bonds. They don't have friends, they don't seem to associate preferentially with certain individuals, and they certainly don't continue to take a familial interest after babies are weaned.
Although every sheep has a grandmother, just as we do, there are no Grandma sheep. There is no older ewe instructing, challenging, worrying over, and cherishing her daughter and her daughter's babies. The ongoing devotion that mothers and grandmothers feel is what binds us into families and cultures. To ever stop fretting, to ever stop "being a mom," would mean losing that precious heart that remembers--and the precious heritage of our humanity.
Do you see the Grandmother Effect in your own life? What gems of advice--helpful or nutty--have you received?
I've talked to a number of mothers of grown children, and they all say the same thing: you never stop being a mom. You never stop worrying about your kids.
My own mother certainly feels free to contribute her opinion about what I should be doing, as well as what I might like to do, and what I should not do. Example: Me: I've been thinking I'd like to have a bed and breakfast. Mom: No you wouldn't! Thanks mom. I guess that concludes that conversation! I didn't appreciate this as a teenager, but in the intervening 15 years or so, I learned not to bother taking offense; it's just the way she is. As the years wore on, I didn't really understand her intrusiveness. But then she didn't really understand me either. So we were even. And a growing confidence in my own abilities came to displace defensiveness in reaction to her pronouncements.
Now, as I look at my own little baby, and feel the enormity of a mother's love, I can even begin to understand what would compel a person to contribute her own passionate but highly subjective advice to her otherwise perfectly competent grown daughter. There is nothing more important than this person I have given birth to. And look, they're an extension of me! The stage is set for years of delightful worrying and prodding and nagging--all those things that make having a mother so memorable.
And of course, the stage is now set for years of grandmothering. My mother's advice to me on raising my son is predictably just like her.When he cries with teething pain, I should give him whiskey! When he's fussy at the breakfast place, I should feed him a homefried potato!
My mother isn't even particularly serious about these things: she's just feeling a certain joyful subversive desire to shake up my careful parenting plans. In my world, a five-month-old baby does not need to be eating off his mama's plate. Which is exactly why my own mother wants to shake things up.
When you stop poking fun and look at is seriously, this inimitable mothering--and grandmothering--style, is a kind of transmission of wisdom. I may roll my eyes at my mother's advice, but I do in fact come from a long line of women who have put whiskey on their babies' gums and fed them whatever they were interested in eating. Generations of grandmothers have weighed in on how to hold a baby and how to feed a baby; they have spoken up and given their opinion on how to dig the roots, how to harvest the fruits, how to tan the skins, how to preserve the food for the winter. Evolutionary biologists call this the Grandmother Effect. Without these fearless old women, human societies would not endure. It is because of the wisdom of the elders--old women in particular, actually--that human lifespan extends so long beyond our most fertile years. We need the old ladies to stick around and tell us how they did it in their time
The reason that my mother, and the generations of grandmothers the world has seen, do what they do is simple: love. They love their children intensely. They delight in their grandchildren with a profound passion. Now I feel what a mother would do for her child, and I witness the joy of the grandmother.
This ongoing devotion is a very human endeavor, when you compare us to other mammalian groups. As a child, I knew dozens, maybe hundreds of mothers, whose devotion faded very quickly. I grew up on a sheep farm, a small back-to-the-land fantasy turned all too muddy and real. We had from fifty to one hundred ewes who every year gave birth to baby lambs.
Like the ewes, of what we do is instinctive, beyond conscious control. The milk lets down. The mother wakes half a minute before they happen. Her voice soothes him. Her hand comforts him back to sleep. Like a mother sheep nuzzling her lamb's tail, I like to pat my son's bottom as he feeds. Baby lambs and baby humans are linked to their mothers with bonds far more ancient than they are different. We give birth and nourish our little ones in remarkably similar ways.
Which is why what happens next is interesting. The baby sheep gradually drifts away from its mother's side and, it would seem, out of her heart. Aside from a similarity in their overall dispositions--a calm mother has calm offspring; a flighty mother raises flighty progeny--there is no social link between a ewe and her grown progeny. In general, sheep don't maintain bonds. They don't have friends, they don't seem to associate preferentially with certain individuals, and they certainly don't continue to take a familial interest after babies are weaned.
Although every sheep has a grandmother, just as we do, there are no Grandma sheep. There is no older ewe instructing, challenging, worrying over, and cherishing her daughter and her daughter's babies. The ongoing devotion that mothers and grandmothers feel is what binds us into families and cultures. To ever stop fretting, to ever stop "being a mom," would mean losing that precious heart that remembers--and the precious heritage of our humanity.
Do you see the Grandmother Effect in your own life? What gems of advice--helpful or nutty--have you received?
Sunday, August 31, 2008
The Un-Science of Parenting
As a new parent of a new (well, four and half month old) baby, it's surprising the number of topics I suddenly feel qualified to comment on. Pregnancy, for example. I've done it exactly once, but I was paying attention most of the time. Ditto for vaginal childbirth, and the various degrees of sleep deprivation that follow. I wouldn't say that I'm an expert on these things in general, or that I could speak for every woman's experience. But I do know myself, and I know my baby.
Back when I was a research scientist, I was an expert on a very, very narrow body of knowledge. So narrow, in fact, that maybe only a few dozen people in the world had any substantial interest in my findings for their own sake. That's how it is in science, and people still publish papers and discuss their findings and manage to hobnob with the other aficionados.
When it comes to parenting, yes I'm the expert on my little kid. But the discoveries I make about him probably don't apply to anyone else at all.
Take, for example, this marvelous little high-pitched cough he does. It started as a waking-up sound, but he has begun using it when awake as a "Give me attention" signal.
I get up and go to the kitchen. "Cough!"--as in, "Ahem, mama, I need you to watch me while I chew on this little toy."
I fix some lunch. "Cough! Cough!" ("You should be out here by now.")
It's cute; it's fun to talk about, but how useful is it to anyone else? This is probably the only baby in the world that makes this particular sound to mean this particular thing. It's incredible that a person this young has come up with his own signal for something. But you couldn't hope to write a research article called "A sound produced by young humans to attract parental attention".
Not only is the truth not universal, what is true for a particular kid also changes. Extremely unscientific, that. Sometime last week, around the time he started sitting, and probably getting all full of himself, the carefully-engineered nap time routine that once knocked my son cold every time suddenly ceased to be effective. I'm still looking for a new routine, but I suspect that the kid just doesn't need as much sleep as he used to. Gone are the days of multiple two-hour naps. I should have enjoyed them more.
When you're a scientist, being an expert on something confers prestige. Now, it brings a different kind of satisfaction. When I know how to respond to my son's needs, when it seems that we are actually understanding one another--even if he's in pain and there's nothing I can do--that's more real to me than a paper in Nature.
A mother navigates by intuition and the expertise born of long hours of patient study. What we do is certainly not a science. But it is an Art.
Back when I was a research scientist, I was an expert on a very, very narrow body of knowledge. So narrow, in fact, that maybe only a few dozen people in the world had any substantial interest in my findings for their own sake. That's how it is in science, and people still publish papers and discuss their findings and manage to hobnob with the other aficionados.
When it comes to parenting, yes I'm the expert on my little kid. But the discoveries I make about him probably don't apply to anyone else at all.
Take, for example, this marvelous little high-pitched cough he does. It started as a waking-up sound, but he has begun using it when awake as a "Give me attention" signal.
I get up and go to the kitchen. "Cough!"--as in, "Ahem, mama, I need you to watch me while I chew on this little toy."
I fix some lunch. "Cough! Cough!" ("You should be out here by now.")
It's cute; it's fun to talk about, but how useful is it to anyone else? This is probably the only baby in the world that makes this particular sound to mean this particular thing. It's incredible that a person this young has come up with his own signal for something. But you couldn't hope to write a research article called "A sound produced by young humans to attract parental attention".
Not only is the truth not universal, what is true for a particular kid also changes. Extremely unscientific, that. Sometime last week, around the time he started sitting, and probably getting all full of himself, the carefully-engineered nap time routine that once knocked my son cold every time suddenly ceased to be effective. I'm still looking for a new routine, but I suspect that the kid just doesn't need as much sleep as he used to. Gone are the days of multiple two-hour naps. I should have enjoyed them more.
When you're a scientist, being an expert on something confers prestige. Now, it brings a different kind of satisfaction. When I know how to respond to my son's needs, when it seems that we are actually understanding one another--even if he's in pain and there's nothing I can do--that's more real to me than a paper in Nature.
A mother navigates by intuition and the expertise born of long hours of patient study. What we do is certainly not a science. But it is an Art.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Holding a Baby's Joy--and a Baby's Pain
Sometimes living a simple life is as simple as watching what a child needs.
Yesterday we stood in a long line on the linoleum of a midcentury post office watching the lone clerk. Four o'clock in the afternoon is a trying time for babies and adults. My little guy, on the verge of fussing, kept himself busy by smiling at whomever would meet his eyes. When the adults looked at me questioningly, I encouraged them to engage with the baby. Keeping everyone a little happier, I thought.
There was another baby there, also five months old, crying like a little animal. This is the sound that grates on your heart. He needed to be held, clear as words. His papa looked into the stroller and told him he was OK. The baby opined otherwise. When was finally picked up, he quieted and looked around with satisfied little eyes. He had all he needed. But then, it was time to go, and back to the stroller. The man said, "You don't have a choice, buddy. You don't have a choice," over and over to his son as the little boy cried across the glossy lobby and out the door.
I smelled the hair of the little boy riding on my chest. Mumbled the Jizo mantra to his scalp. How difficult to be a baby, to suffer and cry so much, even in the best of situations.
OM KA KA KABI SAN MA E SOWA KA
I wanted to lecture that man: You DO have a choice to hold your baby, I wanted to say. My goodness, all babies are cranky at 4pm. But it's OK to baby a baby! Hold your son now, while he'll still let you. You have years to guide him into the man you imagine you want him to be.You can't possibly spoil him now.
But they went on their way, and I still don't know what, if anything I should have done. A new father, with a new son. Perhaps caught up in some idea of toughness and competence. Perhaps not: my assumptions spilled forth as fast as my unwanted advice. I can only take this scene for what it teaches me about myself: the crying, the compassion, the fierce defense of babyness.
Today, with a newfound tenderness for my wiggling little boy, I take us up the stone steps, up up to Portland's Japanese Garden. The baby cranes his neck to see the koi, who glide through patches of bright and dark water--golden, and painted. Clouds of bugs are busy above. The air sings with water rushing and trickling; and the sound of rake on gravel.
Over our heads, a squirrel works a hundred-foot fir tree. Cones plummet down, one every few seconds. We watch from a safe distance.
In this place, it is easy to feel what the baby needs. The baby needs to look at the waterfall and to observe the gardeners raking the gravel. When he is finished he looks up into your face.
What do I know now? We as parents will somehow guide these little creatures into the full light of their humanity. In due time, they show us how to lead them, if we'll listen. At five years, you can teach restraint, proper behavior, manners. But at five months, it's simple: hold your baby.
Yesterday we stood in a long line on the linoleum of a midcentury post office watching the lone clerk. Four o'clock in the afternoon is a trying time for babies and adults. My little guy, on the verge of fussing, kept himself busy by smiling at whomever would meet his eyes. When the adults looked at me questioningly, I encouraged them to engage with the baby. Keeping everyone a little happier, I thought.
There was another baby there, also five months old, crying like a little animal. This is the sound that grates on your heart. He needed to be held, clear as words. His papa looked into the stroller and told him he was OK. The baby opined otherwise. When was finally picked up, he quieted and looked around with satisfied little eyes. He had all he needed. But then, it was time to go, and back to the stroller. The man said, "You don't have a choice, buddy. You don't have a choice," over and over to his son as the little boy cried across the glossy lobby and out the door.
I smelled the hair of the little boy riding on my chest. Mumbled the Jizo mantra to his scalp. How difficult to be a baby, to suffer and cry so much, even in the best of situations.
OM KA KA KABI SAN MA E SOWA KA
I wanted to lecture that man: You DO have a choice to hold your baby, I wanted to say. My goodness, all babies are cranky at 4pm. But it's OK to baby a baby! Hold your son now, while he'll still let you. You have years to guide him into the man you imagine you want him to be.You can't possibly spoil him now.
But they went on their way, and I still don't know what, if anything I should have done. A new father, with a new son. Perhaps caught up in some idea of toughness and competence. Perhaps not: my assumptions spilled forth as fast as my unwanted advice. I can only take this scene for what it teaches me about myself: the crying, the compassion, the fierce defense of babyness.
Today, with a newfound tenderness for my wiggling little boy, I take us up the stone steps, up up to Portland's Japanese Garden. The baby cranes his neck to see the koi, who glide through patches of bright and dark water--golden, and painted. Clouds of bugs are busy above. The air sings with water rushing and trickling; and the sound of rake on gravel.
Over our heads, a squirrel works a hundred-foot fir tree. Cones plummet down, one every few seconds. We watch from a safe distance.
In this place, it is easy to feel what the baby needs. The baby needs to look at the waterfall and to observe the gardeners raking the gravel. When he is finished he looks up into your face.
What do I know now? We as parents will somehow guide these little creatures into the full light of their humanity. In due time, they show us how to lead them, if we'll listen. At five years, you can teach restraint, proper behavior, manners. But at five months, it's simple: hold your baby.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Introduction
I came to parenthood by way of Zen practice, temple residency, a stint as a teacher, and a sudden and wonderful meeting with an old friend who soon became my husband. The two of us came together for many reasons, some explicitly known, some dimly felt.
One of the ideas that we shared, practiced and aspired to was the notion of "nothing extra." Deeper even than belief, we felt--we knew somewhere deep down, that a life lived simply with a minimum of "stuff," was best. We felt that a quiet life, focusing on the essentials, is best. We had both lived with very little, and we knew how much was Enough.
We lived together very happily for the first few months in my 300-square-foot studio apartment, sleeping on a mat we unfolded onto the floor at night. My husband took a leave from work to do some remodeling on our new flat, a fifty-year-old one-bedroom apartment in a vibrant old Portland neighborhood. When I moved in, I was in my mid-thirties, pregnant, and the owner of my first "real" bed!
Becoming a parent has very tangibly been part of the spiritual journey. I am opening this blog as a forum to share ideas, to mull over the practical and the abstract aspects of this vast new territory, and to inspire others in their own parenting.
This is not a exhortative blog, but it is an effort to explore "nothing extra." You won't catch me boasting about how I can raise my son with nothing but a piece of string and paperclip. (At least I certainly hope not. That would be irritating to read, and choke hazard to boot!) If my choices are not your choices, all can still be well in the world. But I hope to point out the choices we are making, whether we recognize them or not.
Some food for thought, then, to share in the comment section, or just ponder on your own. Can your parenting philosophy be summed up in a few words? What are your deepest hopes for your child(ren)? What does it mean to be a parent in this world of ours? I'll be working on my own responses to these questions, and more, as this work unfolds.
One of the ideas that we shared, practiced and aspired to was the notion of "nothing extra." Deeper even than belief, we felt--we knew somewhere deep down, that a life lived simply with a minimum of "stuff," was best. We felt that a quiet life, focusing on the essentials, is best. We had both lived with very little, and we knew how much was Enough.
We lived together very happily for the first few months in my 300-square-foot studio apartment, sleeping on a mat we unfolded onto the floor at night. My husband took a leave from work to do some remodeling on our new flat, a fifty-year-old one-bedroom apartment in a vibrant old Portland neighborhood. When I moved in, I was in my mid-thirties, pregnant, and the owner of my first "real" bed!
Becoming a parent has very tangibly been part of the spiritual journey. I am opening this blog as a forum to share ideas, to mull over the practical and the abstract aspects of this vast new territory, and to inspire others in their own parenting.
This is not a exhortative blog, but it is an effort to explore "nothing extra." You won't catch me boasting about how I can raise my son with nothing but a piece of string and paperclip. (At least I certainly hope not. That would be irritating to read, and choke hazard to boot!) If my choices are not your choices, all can still be well in the world. But I hope to point out the choices we are making, whether we recognize them or not.
Some food for thought, then, to share in the comment section, or just ponder on your own. Can your parenting philosophy be summed up in a few words? What are your deepest hopes for your child(ren)? What does it mean to be a parent in this world of ours? I'll be working on my own responses to these questions, and more, as this work unfolds.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
