HippieMommy

always learning

What a difference 5 years makes…

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Today I had one of those moments at the park that just made me thankful for my life and for the decisions that we’ve made.

Five years ago, when my oldest was 2, homeschooling was not on the horizon. As a matter of fact, we picked our house for the schools. My husband and I had a lot of conversations on the topic, and I really feared that my kids would be irreparably socially harmed if we homeschooled. I feared that they wouldn’t learn the social nuances that come from school, and I didn’t want to make their lives harder.

Today as we sat at the park, I realized that: Yes, my kids are different. There’s no denying it. There was a group of public-schooled kids there. (I saw them get off of the labeled bus and listened to them talk about it.) They weren’t vandals or thugs. They were just normal kids, doing normal kid stuff on the playground. One of the parents was there, and he seemed like a great dad. I did notice differences in the way that the kids played. It wasn’t good or bad. It just was. My son was playing down at the stream, and none of the other boys were interested in playing down there. My daughter was laying in the grass, reading a book. She’s working on Charlotte’s Web right now, and it has really sparked a love of reading in her. The other kids were playing in ways related to school and tv, and their play was just… different.

As I sat there (and helped my 1-year-old up and down the slide a million times, lol) I realized that the thing that I feared the most has happened. But, you know what? Its not the big deal that I thought it would be. I was fearing a great big social monster that doesn’t really exist. Are my kids more into nature and reading than the average kid that we see when we’re out? Yes. Is it a big deal? Nope. My son’s love of nature meant that he was the only kid who could identify the birds and snakes that appeared on the t-ball field during his games. It made him the hero for the day, LOL. When we go to homeschool park day, there is a huge group of kids who are already wading in the streams, catching crawdads, and pretending to be fairies and gnomes. He may be different, but he’s far from alone. When my kids go to church, they play with all of the other kids. They fit in fine and they have a lot of friends.

What I realized as I sat there was that we made the right choice for our family, and it felt good to know. It was a peace with certainty. I honestly think my kids would’ve been fine either way, and I don’t fear the “monster” of the other side – the public school monster. Yes, my kids probably would’ve played a little differently, but I know that I would feel just as much peace with that decision if it was right for our life at that time.

Three years ago when we moved here, we picked our house in hopes that it would give our kids a life rich in nature and low in television 😉 Unlike our previous houses, this house was built in a way that opened up the natural world much better. We are in the city and our lot is small, but we back to open space. My kids see coyotes, mallards, foxes, red-winged black birds, and red-tailed hawks during breakfast. This house has no obvious place for a tv on the main level, so we only have a tv in the basement. We recently got rid of our satellite, and it was a great decision. Our life before was filled with a lot of Dora and Blues Clues. It wasn’t all bad – I’ve been riding those free Spanish lessons from Dora for a while, LOL. It was just time for a change. It felt good today to watch my kids play in such a natural way and to know that we were achieving some of our goals for moving where we did and being intentional about our lives.

We still have a long way to go, but I just really enjoyed the little piece of peace that came from watching my kids and knowing that we have been able to give them some of that more natural life that we wanted for them. It also felt nice to realize that the things that I feared the most weren’t really as scary as I thought. 😉

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Nonviolent Communication

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Oh man!

I have recently learned that I am apparently a very violent communicator.  My husband seems to be taking great joy in pointing this out, LOL. Luckily for me, he’s just as violent as I am, HA! (Wait, is that violent to say?!)  I guess I should write a couple of posts on this, but it basically comes down to the fact that I speak judgments.  I am a quick judge, and I tend to speak my judgments as fact.  I know its hard to believe, but speaking that way can put other people on the defensive.  (NO WAY?!)  So why do I do it?

Long before I reached adulthood, I learned to communicate in an impersonal way which did not require me to reveal what was going on inside myself.  When I encountered people or behaviors that I either didn’t like or didn’t understand, I would react in terms of their wrongness.  If my teachers assigned a task I didn’t want to do, they were “mean” or “unreasonable.”  If someone pulled out in front of me in traffic, my reaction would be, “You idiot!”  When we speak this language, we think and communicate in terms of what is wrong with others for behaving in a certain ways….

Ahh, yes.  That’s what I do.  I am afraid that I am the first one to judge others actions and think in terms of what others have done wrong.

Our attention is focused on classifying, analyzing, and determining factors of wrongness rather than on what we and others need and are not getting.  Thus, if my partner wants more affection than I’m giving her, she is “needy and dependent.”  But if I want more affection than she is giving me, then she is “aloof and insensitive.”  If my colleague is more concerned about details than I am, he is “picky and compulsive.”  On the other hand, if I am more concerned about details than he is, he is “sloppy and disorganized.”

Ohhh, sucky.  I do that too.  I speak like that often.

It is my belief that all such analyses of other human beings are tragic expressions of our own values and needs.  They are tragic because when we express our values and needs in this form, we increase defensiveness and resistance among the very people whose behaviors are of concern to us.  Or, if people do agree to act in harmony with our values, they will likely do so out of fear, guilt, or shame, because they concur with our analysis of their wrongness.

Crap, crap crap.  I don’t want people acting in harmony with me only because I’ve guilted or shamed them into it.  I really do want to build everyone up and live in peace.  It looks like I have a new project…

Seriously, this book is really awesome.  I’m afraid that I have yet to master communicating nonviolently, so you’ll have to wait for the solution in a future post.  For now, I can say that I realize that I communicate like scum, and I am trying to speak my feelings rather than judgments.  The hilarious thing is that I tell my kids to speak their feelings and needs all the time, and I somehow decided it doesn’t apply for grown ups.  Fantastic.

At least I can learn about my hypocrisy now, while they’re still young. 😛

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Birth shame

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OK, I know its been too long since I last wrote.  I’m slacking.  I’m sorry!

I’m currently reading A Wise Birth as part of AAMI’s Childbirth Reading Room. I’m enjoying it.  Its definitely aimed at parents rather than professionals, but I like switching up and reading about birth politics  🙂

There is a bit of a recurring theme in the book that touches on the way that women view themselves and their care providers after a traumatic birth. I hadn’t thought too much about it before, but it really described my grieving process very well. I still feel a lot of shame and embarrassment when I think about my first birth. Intellectually, I know its so silly to feel that way, because what happened to me was a perfect example of the cascade of interventions. It is really hard for me to get past the feelings that I had during the birth. I felt like a trapped animal. There was so much fear and horror. The end result was obviously wonderful, because my beautiful son was born, but the process to get there was so traumatic.

In talking about this subject, Penny Armstrong and Sheryl Feldman say that “most women do not criticize their birthcare directly.” I find this to be incredibly true in my case. I always compliment my OB, and yet she made all sorts of poor decisions – the steroid shots, bedrest, and terbutaline when I wasn’t in preterm labor… the cervidil to induce when I was already 4cm… the forced-lying position… the 4th degree episiotomy… the forced pushing when I didn’t feel the urge… The list goes on. Still, I compliment her when I describe my birth. I blame myself. Interesting.

They speak of a woman with a birth experience very similar to mine. They say

[We] send women like Leslie home to work out how it came to be. What is wrong with her that her body had to be cut, she must wonder… Leslie stands alone over the baby’s crib and faults herself for her baby’s birth stress.

She does not accuse us – those of us who failed… her… She absorbs the neglect, the non-answers, the damage, and the responsibility. She criticizes herself. She suspects that her child has been hurt and she grieves. She lives with the memory of the experience and the judgment she makes of herself as a mother for the rest of her life.

This is really interesting to me, because I really do fear that my son was hurt during my labor. That Cervidil (that I never needed), that was put in to augment my “post-dates” that came after months of drugging and bedrest to stop my body’s way of preparing for labor, also caused me to go into one huge contraction. The nurses didn’t notice, so my husband had to run out screaming to tell them. When they came in, my son’s heartrate had plummeted to the 30s. His brain was oxygen-starved. He passed meconium from the stress. He aspirated that meconium, which caused more problems. I feel so guilty about it though. I’ve never thought about it, but why do I blame myself and judge myself so harshly?

There is a note going around right now on Facebook where you write about your first born. I thought about doing it, and then realized that I’d either have to write about my first birth experience (my hospital birth of my late miscarriage) or else my son’s birth (the one I’m talking about here.) When I considered it, I decided that I’d rather not do the note at all. That’s so sad. I just feel such shame.

The good news, though, is that my last two births have been so healing. My oldest daughter’s birth healed me enough to believe that my body could pretty much work. My youngest daughter’s birth taught me that my body does work! My old posts on My Body is Not a Lemon and Check with Your Doctor reflect that journey.

I’m off to read some more. Its been nice to realize that I’m not alone in blaming myself, and also nice to know that its OK to let go of that guilt. Who would’ve thought that this little book would be like free therapy for me? LOL.

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And the angels sing with me

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Its been an amazing week around here.

My mom came to town last week so that she could help with the kids while I had my impacted wisdom teeth removed.  It wasn’t a fun experience (duh), but I think I managed it pretty well.  Tomorrow will be a week since the surgery.  My cheek is still bruised… My jaw is a little creaky… I keep getting food stuck back there… but its doing well overall.

So, how funny is it that during this time when I’m talking like I have golf balls in my mouth, one of the most important events of my life (that requires talking!) would take place!

My son has these little worksheets that he gets each week from church.  He loves doing them each week.  They usually include reading the story for the week from the Bible, a few little word games, and then some application questions.  I’ve been helping to teach in his class, and he and I have been talking a lot about salvation, sins, heaven, souls, you name it.  

This weeks lesson was all about restoring our friendships with God.  My two oldest and I were having a great conversation about all sorts of theological issues.  We’ve been discussing it for weeks, and I’ve been trying to let them lead, ask questions, and really sort through their thoughts.  When we got to the end of the little worksheet for the week, it had a place to pray.  Without going into too much detail, they both had prayers that they wanted to pray to Jesus, asking Him into their heart to forgive them of their sins and be their Savior.  It was so humbling to be there for such an important spiritual marker for each of them.  It was not exactly how I would’ve pictured it (with me bruised and hardly able to open my jaw, LOL), but it was absolutely perfect.

So I think we’re going to get them each their own Bible for Christmas.  Joe and I had a huge talk last night about the good and the trials that come from being saved early in life.  We were each saved at around the same ages as our children, and we can guess some of what the road ahead may look like.  We want it to be alive and real in their heart – not just their heads.  We feel like there are so many ways where we are still just starting to -get it-, and we don’t want them to miss out on those living, breathing areas of relationship with God.  

We know that being Christians from an early age really helped us through our tough times in life, and was a vital foundation.  We talked once again about how we want our children to be comfortable discussing doubts, other beliefs, and anything else that comes to their mind.  We try to be the kind of family that is super open about that kind of stuff.  We have a lot of conversations around here about everything from Gandhi’s wisdom to evolution, so I hope that we are able to keep an open dialogue with our children for their whole lives.  We also talked about how the best way to teach them is for us to live it passionately and wildly, lol.  So, hopefully we’ll at least have that part covered!

Anyways, thanks for reading if you made it this far.  It was a special day in our house, and I feel so humbled.

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A disappointing ending

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I finished The Powers That Be. Overall, I’d still recommend the book. I really am not a fan of the last chapter, though. I already returned it to the library. That means I don’t have any cool quotes to share, so we’ll both have to rely on my mommy brain to describe what I read.

Basically, he paints a picture of a weak God, IMO. He said that God would like to answer our prayers, but his hands are pretty much tied because the principalities and powers of nations/organizations/etc. are fighting it out in the heavenlies, and there’s not much God can do while they’re in the midst of it.

His theory is based on Daniel 10

12 Then he continued, “Do not be afraid, Daniel. Since the first day that you set your mind to gain understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard, and I have come in response to them. 13 But the prince of the Persian kingdom resisted me twenty-one days. Then Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, because I was detained there with the king of Persia. 14 Now I have come to explain to you what will happen to your people in the future, for the vision concerns a time yet to come.”

He says that the word used for princes is really talking about angels/principalities/powers, and that when we pray, they are battling it out. He says that God wants to answer our prayers, but has to wait for them to finish wrestling. If you google “Walter Wink Daniel 10”, you should get plenty of results (including the google books result) that will sum up his position quite nicely.

I guess my biggest issue is that it is a really big piece of theology to hang on one chapter from Apocalyptic literature. He might be absolutely right, although I am just not sold on the idea.

I think that ending the book with that particular argument could turn off a lot of people who would’ve been a lot more impressed in his work before that point. I don’t know. Its still a good book, but I didn’t love that chapter.

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