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Attached Parenting after Toddlerhood

2:05 PM - Mar. 14, 2008 - Wild Thoughts {1} - Add to the Wildness

I didn’t even realize I was doing it, till it hit me as an afterthought. We were at music lessons. Three of the four kids partake in turns, while I try to keep the rest quiet on the couch there in the studio. The kids were all a little nuts. It had been a long week and a half, with Fine Arts Festival events in dance, singing and piano. They’d just finished the last of them.

I, too, was exhausted. I stretched out on the couch and let my five and seven-year-olds climb on me. They sat snuggled together in my arms and played finger games with each other, inventing the rules as they went. Adorable. My ten-year-old sat reading at my feet, so I silently started playing a clapping game with her, foot-to-foot. I whispered a couple of lines of a clapping rhyme. She caught on and grinned at me. The little ones adjusted their positions, one lying on top of me and the other beside me. I felt like a mama cat with her litter.

Even the almost-twelve year old Spazzerific often hugs me or leans on me. Attached parenting is mostly about welcoming contact with our children. Contact calms them. During the Festival performances, I rubbed the five-year-old’s back because it kept him relatively still. Contact is good for a parent’s heart too. It reminds me that they’re still my babies, even though there are times when it seems they’ve been replaced by oversized mutants with cracking voices and clumsy feet. If gentle, attached parenting is what your kids have known since babyhood, there’s no reason to change.

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© Copyright Cathi-Lyn Dyck 2005-2008

The Sweetest Compliment a Man Could Get

1:44 AM - Jun. 10, 2007 - Wild Thoughts {1} - Add to the Wildness

Teaching our teens about when and when not to have sex is often the primary, if not sole, focus of sex education--Christian or not. Today, though, we got an object lesson in a far deeper aspect of training in healthy living.

One of Dave's younger cousins recently ended up not planning on getting married. This beautiful girl, who is just past the edge of autonomous adulthood, came up to Dave today and said the following: When she was small, she wanted to marry him, till she found out they were cousins. Then the plan was off.

But even now, she said, if she could find a man like him, that's who she'd marry. She told him (quite accurately) that he can be fun, he can be caring, he can be in control, and regardless of which mode he's in, he's still the same guy. In other words, none of it's an act.

Being about ten years younger, she watched him grow up, and although the contacts were few and far between, they had a deep impact. Now that's some kind of sex education--something he didn't even realize he was imparting to a young woman who would go through a vulnerable, difficult time years later. Quite unintentionally, he imparted to her a sense of what a real man should be.

And that's just a cousin. How much more a father or mother or other, closer influence?

So, my big affirmation for today is, the core of sex ed should not be merely sex, but surrounding kids with role models who can demonstrate that there are people out there who can meet high standards of character. I only hope my kids will seek out lifemates who'll live with a heart for God's standards, simply because they've seen that it's not pie in the sky the way the world tries to tell them it is.

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© Copyright 2005, 2006, 2007 Lazy Creek Online. This blog content is not authorized for reproduction outside of the HomeschoolBlogger.com hosting site and Lazy Creek websites. Violations may be reported to Cathi-Lyn Dyck at: www.Lazycreek.net

Killer Bunnies: How to Get a Surly Pre-Teen's Attention

2:43 PM - May. 31, 2007 - Wild Thoughts {5} - Add to the Wildness

We were sitting down to a meal one day, and couldn't rouse Spazzerific out of his basement dungeon. Dave and I were tired, and I was ready to let the inattentive 10-year-old miss his meal altogether.

"I'll get him," said Banana Brain cheerily. "All I have to do is get the bunny, and he'll come running up here to kill it."

We had no idea what she was talking about, but then she produced a tiny wind-up toy that our dear Tante from church had given her at Easter. She wound it up, and it went hopping across the dining room floor above where the Spazz's room is located.

I did not see how this tiny thing could possibly have any impact on him, and was ready to tell Banana Brain to sit down and eat her dinner. Before I could open my mouth, the Spazz came flying up the stairs, yelling, "Where is it?!? I'm going to smash that thing!! That is SO annoying!"

Banana Brain pocketed the bunny with a smile and one of her incomparable winks as everyone burst out laughing.

Today, when it hit 9:30, and the Spazz still showed no signs of emerging from his lair for breakfast, I turned to Banana with a raised eyebrow and said, "Get the bunny."

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Click here to see the Spazz's odd version of note-taking during an L.A. work time.

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