What is Really Important?

My youngest daughter (Catherine) has been funny lately. It's like she suddenly realized how the world works and knows we tend not to live the "normal" way.

Last fall I taught a class at our homeschool co-op on painters and styles. One of the subjects was Jackson Pollock. I took the classes into the parking lot of the church where we meet and got them large pieces of paper and buckets of different colored paints and sticks and brushes and they went to town, a la Jackson Pollock. It was so much fun. I made a few paintings myself. It was such a free way of doing art. One didn't have to think about an end result, the art was in the doing.

Recently Catherine asked me if she could "Jackson Pollock" one of the walls in her room. I told her she'd need to clean it out a bit, so we could move all the furniture so she could have access to the one wall, and how we'd have to get some drop cloths to cover everything so she could splatter away. She laughed at my answer. She knows that not one of her friends would ever be allowed to do that in their rooms. She marveled that I didn't even bat an eye or give it a second thought. And why should I? It's her room. She wants to do art in her room. How cool is that? Currently she paints and draws on her walls, mostly by her bed. She has been using black, which I know will be a bit tough to cover, but when you walk into her room, you can see her personality all over the walls. I love that she knows she has the freedom to be herself in her room.

Another example: A few days ago Catherine was complaining about her hair. She wants to get it cut. We have been bartering haircuts with our neighbor whose dog we care for when she flies (she's a flight attendant). I haven't been able to set up an appt. for Catherine's hair, so she was complaining about it. And so she asked me if she could just cut it off. I told her she could, but she might not be happy with the results. She looked at me and laughed. She did not expect me to say she could cut her hair off. It's her hair and it's ONLY hair. Go ahead, cut it off. If it looks horrible, we'll just try to hurry that appt. along with the neighbor. She decided against cutting her own hair, but she genuinely appreciated that I didn't care if she did.

Why do some parents choose to control their children just for the sake of control? Who cares if kids paint their walls or cut their hair? I watch families a lot when I am out. I am always amazed at the battles I see going on between kids and parents. And so much of it is over the most trivial things. What shoes to buy, what jeans to wear, etc. I think it's just common sense to give kids respect, to listen to their opinions and feelings. I certainly wasn't raised that way myself, my parents would have killed me if I had drawn on my walls or cut my hair. I see a lot of sad kids in my day to day travels. Teens/tweens who are just beginning to have a sense of who they are away from their parents and yet they have no ability to control anything in their lives. They aren't allowed to voice an opinion or able to make the smallest or even the biggest of decisions. My eldest daughter has made the decision to go to high school next year. Some fellow homeschoolers are frowning on me for "allowing" her to make that decision. I'm not the one going to school, who else should be allowed to make that decision. She will be 14 1/2 when she enters high school. Isn't that old enough to decide for oneself?

What is the magic age of allowing children some autonomy over their lives? How about from birth? Listening to a babies cries and responding accordingly is letting them make decisions. I was never that parent that let a baby cry. They cried for a reason and I listened. As toddlers they got to to pick their own clothes and choose what foods to eat. As my kids got older they got to decide (age appropriately) what they needed. We did the family bed with our girls. At 5 years of age, Carley decided she wanted her own room. At 8 Catherine still shared a room with us (she had her own bed by then). People found it odd that I shared a room with my 8 year old. I wasn't about to force her to leave, she had the right to choose what she was comfortable with. At 10 she moved into her own room and loves it. I've never had night issues with my kids, nor sleep issues, because I've allowed them to make choices for themselves.

Too many people have stuck in their minds the way they thing things "should" be. Who said things need to be a certain way? I say make up your own rules. Live a life of joy and love instead of rules and boundaries. Be free.

I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom.
~Simone de Beauvoir~

Co-Sleeping aka The Family Bed

Golden slumbers fill your eyes. Smiles awake you when you rise. Sleep pretty darling do not cry, and I will sing a lullabye.

~ Paul McCartney~

I've read some things in the news lately regarding co-sleeping with infants. Seems there is a campaign that has been started called "Babies Sleep Safest Alone". A mothering group (of all people) has decided they need to let the world know how dangerous it is to sleep with our children.

People are being misled because they are not looking at the proper statistics. When done properly, co-sleeping is pretty darn safe. It is a shame that some group of people has decided once again what is and what is not ok for the rest of us. They want to police our food, our language, our political views, our religion and once again how we raise our children.

When my first daughter was born, I hadn't really thought about co-sleeping. I had a bassinet ready for her. Her first night home, I couldn't sleep. Even thought the bassinet was at the end of my bed, I had to keep checking on her. It was ridiculous. So I finally decided my need for sleep was more important than her being in the bassinet. After that my cat got a lot of use out of it : )

I loved sleeping with my daughter. It was easy to nurse, I never had to get up in the middle of the night. Other than occasionally getting peed on, there really were no negatives. I remember once going to the doctor for her two month well-check (another thing I didn't know I didn't need at the time). Anyway, there were two other mom's in the waiting room with little babies. They were commiserating on their lack of sleep and their baby keeping them up all night. I listened for a few minutes and then said "Have you tried taking the baby to bed?" By the look I got from the both of them, you would have thought I suggested putting a pillow over the babies head! One of them said "Um, that isn't really safe". And the other said "My husband would never allow it". I took it upon myself to suggest that these women read Dr. Sears Baby Book. I also told them how I was never up at night, that my baby was fine, and there are many safe ways to co-sleep. Not sure it made any difference to these women, but I tried to plant the seed when I could.

When my daughter was 4 months old, I had to have major back surgery. I needed to stop nursing and I was in the hospital for a week, and then I had a 9-12 month recovery. The first thing I did was have my dear husband promise to continue sleeping with our daughter. I slept in a t-shirt for about 2 weeks straight without washing it. (Eww, I know, but I wanted it to REALLY smell like me). My husband slept with our daughter and my t-shirt while I was gone. I think it really helped her that her routine was the same. After I came home, I wasn't able to lift her. I also had to wear a heavy plastic brace when I was up, so I couldn't really even hold her in a chair. And I could no longer nurse, so my time with her really was when we were in bed. I would take her to bed during the day and nap with her. I continued to lay her against me while I gave her a bottle, just like she was nursing. If I had kept her in a crib, I would've missed out on a ton of bonding time with her.

When DD 1 was about 1 1/2 years old, I found out I was pregnant with DD 2. Co-sleeping was going very well for us, so DH and I decided we needed a bigger bed if we would soon have 2 in the bed. ("Ten in the bed and the little one said "roll over, roll over", LOL I digress!) So we moved from a Queen sleeping 3 to a King sleeping 4. It worked pretty well. Eldest DD slept by daddy and I had newest DD by me. When oldest DD was about 3 she started really being active in her sleep. So we put a toddler bed right next to ours and that's where she moved to. She was happy with that. When she was about 5 she decided she wanted her own room. I had planned to let the girls decide when they wanted to leave our room. Self-weaning off of co-sleeping. And imagine that, at a healthy age of 5 she decided she was ready. You can not imagine the grief I received from people over the co-sleeping thing. How my girls would be so clingy, how I wasn't helping them learn how to sleep alone. Hello? Why does one need to learn how to sleep? Don't you just sleep when you are tired? For goodness sakes, people can be so ridiculous on the "what kids need to learn to survive" thing. Why is it so bad to want to be a parent for 24 hours? When parents lock their babies in a bedroom, letting them cry in their cribs, they aren't parenting. Sorry if I am offending anyone, but I just don't believe babies should ever be left alone to cry. People say "but if you just leave them alone, they stop crying eventually". Well, I think babies are smarter than they are given credit for. They stopped because you didn't come. Doesn't mean they still didn't need you, they just learned that even if they need you, you may not always be there. Pretty early to learn that lesson, don't ya think?

This is one of those subjects I am REALLY passionate about. I just think children who have been allowed to attach to their parents (attachment parenting) grow up to be much more secure individuals. They feel safe and loved from the very beginning. A columnist who writes about parenting issues in my local paper wrote an article a while back about letting children cry it out. I emailed her saying how I felt she was giving new parents poor information as she never mentioned co-sleeping. So she decided to write an article on The Family Bed, and she interviewed me. I will talk about co-sleeping to anyone who will listen.

Regardless of your position, again this is one of those issues where both sides need to be heard. Unfortunately the news media, run by the nanny state, tends to focus only on the other side. You know the whole "It takes a village to raise a child, and that village is the government side". I don't think I have ever seen a positive news program on co-sleeping. And now that parenting groups are getting involved, saying how terrible it is, those of us who believe in it, and believe it to be the best way, need to stand up and make our voices heard. Millions of babies around the world continue to sleep with their parents. They have been doing it since life began. Most people in this world are not as well off as we are. Each child doesn't get his own bedroom, children sleep with their parents. And then often enough, they sleep with their siblings ( a natural progression from co-sleeping). They may not even realize what a wonderful thing they are doing, they are doing what they know, what has always been done in their culture. Sometimes, it would be good for us to take a step back from "studies" and doctors and "experts" and look to the rituals and customs of the past. Women need to start trusting their instincts instead of doing what friends and doctors and news articles tell them to. How did women manage to raise their children before there were books and magazines and news programs on the subject? What did those women on the prairie do when they had no family around and they were having babies? They did what they knew in their heart was best for their baby. Breast feeding, co-sleeping, baby wearing. It all goes hand in hand.