Privilege of Parenting

The Children’s Temple

September 13, 2009

Children pick up stones. They picked them up in cave-dwelling times. And in the future if you take them to the moon they will pick them up there. Smooth and broken, shiny and plain, pebbles tell children to pick them up. In Japan and Africa children pick up all sorts of rocks. On Irish coasts […]

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Where were we then?

September 11, 2009

A good place to check in with ourselves when parenting hits a rough patch is to ask ourselves, “Where were we, and what was going on for us, when we were the age that our child is at this moment?” Children drag us back through our own developmental histories, and that includes every awful thing […]

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Icarus and Daedalus—a bird’s eye view of the sun

September 10, 2009

Now that we’re in back-to-school mode it’s time to get a little classical with our parenting perspective. One of the great stories in the mythology canon is that of Daedalus—the brilliant inventor father who creates wings of wax and feathers so that he and his son, Icarus, can escape from Crete where they are being […]

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The better to understand you with, my dear

September 9, 2009

As we strive to honor questions ahead of answers, a reader raised the question of a ten-year-old boy who “enjoys stirring the pot” and “the drama it creates.” They report “always dialoging with him about different situations,” and used the metaphor of “the wolf inside” and the question of feeding vs. taming. Finally, they were […]

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An apple on the teacher’s desk and a lot of… questions

September 8, 2009

Kids are filled with questions. Parenting is rife with endless questions too. Rather than thinking that there is a right and wrong answer, let’s kick of this school year by striving for child-mind alongside our children. When my older son was four or five, we happened to mention that there were once some really bad […]

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Labor Day, Languid and Bittersweet

September 7, 2009

Well, here we are at the death-knell of summer. And while we parents may be half-relieved (or more than half) to anticipate the coming of cooler weather, structure and some sort of more purpose-driven schedule as kids work to master whatever’s on their developmental plate, be it rolling over, standing, walking, counting, multiplication tables, algebra […]

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Re: a drop of golden light

September 6, 2009

Ok, there have been a lot of grim items in the news lately, and a melancholy hanging over the dying days of summer, and so while I’m always keen to keep the Shadow in mind, sometimes we simply need a smile and a warming of the heart. Sometimes we find solace and inspiration in unlikely […]

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Still learning from my Kids’ former teachers

September 5, 2009

When my children have a teacher, the relationship is between child and teacher, with parents checking in and out as need be. But when my kids move on, the teacher often, I have discovered, becomes an enduring figure in my own life. I have a deep appreciation for teachers, particularly passionate and gifted teachers, having […]

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Is colic torture?

September 4, 2009

I think most of us would agree that water-boarding is torture, but what about colic? Given that colic subjects parents to severe levels of sensory input which do not stop despite all attempts at soothing, rocking, singing, distracting pleading and begging, I think that colic needs to be recognized as a form of torture. Now, […]

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