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How I tried to find my way with my passionate intentions and choices! (NOT the answer for everybody! Just my story feeling good about my work.)
1) natural birth methods where the mother is taught to connect with her child in her womb and her own power to get the process to a positive end. (more of a teamwork process of mother and baby than something happening to you and the baby) STILL very overwhelming, this natural occurrence!:-)
No drugs, no inductions, no forceps or other tools unless absolutely necessary.(not for convenience) Birthing in a comfortable and homey atmosphere to the mother's liking (people attending at her choice as well) I stayed in my warm bathtub for hours with my second child's birth through the painful contractions up to the actual birthing, and the difference this made to my comfort (and to the speed of the opening of the cervix) was enormous.
I did several years of Primal Therapy regressive therapy before I got pregnant which taught me much about feelings and senses/consciousness of newborns, babies, and little kids. Many sessions even took me back into the birth canal during my traumatic and drugged birth, some took me back to being in the womb. (and a couple to pre-conception and past life flash images) From this experience I KNOW what a baby can feel and sense from people and atmosphere (people's feelings, moods, intentions) around him/her - hence my burning desire to try to offer my children a different experience that could give them a basis (and hopefully help them retain a connection to their REAL selves) for independence, love, and a more positive life attitude.
2) Baby care - basic guidelines of La Leche League and other breastfeeding advocates, along with exchanging of experiences and ideas to help new Moms. Lots of good books on the subject. I never punished my kids when little - I always found creative ways to show them an alternative to their behavior as well as WHY....even when they were tiny. It wasn't until later when I started getting into conflicts with them, and I never stepped away from confronting them on their negative behavior when I felt very strongly that something was not "right"! Except for my son's problems with not wanting to go to school, my kids sailed smoothly through the teens...:bounce: When you lay down a intimate basis for loving, trust, joy and sharing when kids are tiny, this really pays off much later as this trust is just "there" - even when there are angry disagreements and conflicts!
This is the key to childcare IMO.
One sentence in a baby book stood out tremendously to me: Make sure that you show your baby that you enjoy them, delight in them, that they are a welcome presence - for this is the greatest gift you can give them! I agree!
I read Jean Liedloff's book "The Continuum Concept" while nursing my babies, and found that the book, even though difficult to transpose all of the ideas to modern societies, gave me plenty of tips on how to make the environment as natural to the human animal baby as possible. Now that I have read Michael Sharp's books, I know what Lemuria means, and this book felt like a very Lemurian book on child care to me!
I also read Joseph Chilton Pierce's book "The Magical Child" which gave me new insights and remembered insights :-) on a child's (and all humans) deeper consciousness and how to try to preserve a child's contact with their "knowing" for as long as possible.....schools do a good job of closing this openness down if not done already by the parents. IMO.
Books by Anthroposophic (Steiner - Waldorf schools) writers also resonated deeply with my deepest feelings about babies and children - and how to shelter their awakening spirits very gently in an overpowering world of sensations and warped sense of time.
Books by Bruno Bettleheim like "A Good enough Parent" along with so many other books gave me ongoing guidance with my children to counteract my own upbringing with its generally negative (and traumatic) effect.
3)Schooling: I loved John Holt's Books on Childhood education - and he became the forefront of the Homeschooling movement in the US until his early death. From what I gather now on DU, homeschooling has also been hijacked by religious fundies to justify their own reasons for keeping their kids out of schools. But John Holt was not into isolation, but into better social structures/institutions than we have to offer kids more natural ways to see what adults are up to every day and to learn in real life settings, not in "prison-like" schools.
Ivan Illich also had visions of a world without schools in his book "Instead of Education".....
My oldest daughter always loved school and school learning, and I did my best to pick schools where the teachers were wonderful people who loved being with kids all day and giving them a sense of excitement about learning....while my youngest son had a real aversion to school from the very first day of kindergarten.....even though he was well-liked and smart enough, - he just HATED being forced to go there every day and sit most of the day and do things that people told him to do.....it really was deadening to his spirit in some way, so school for him was always pretty tortuous.:-(
Living here in The Netherlands has been wonderful for bringing up my kids too, with much more relaxed and open norms about nudity, sex,sexual preferences, drinking and soft drugs, stuff like that. I would have had a more difficult time in the US, I'm afraid, from the stories I heard regularly from my 2 sisters - one in Denver and one in Dallas. Drinking and driving there would have made me a nervous wreck, while here kids can take public transport or their bicycles, and usually not for such long distances as in the states.
That's about it for now.....just off of the top of my head stuff from my experiences and learnings.
I would never say that my experiences are the only way to do things, but the journey learning and doing and being taught me much about trying to keep authenticity, openness, love, joy, and trust at the forefront while bringing up new little humans! :loveya:
Thanks for asking, Dover, its good for me to review things like this once in awhile! :D Sometimes it seems so long ago and my kids are just in their early 20s!
DemEx
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