Intentional Parenting

05/09/2021

24/08/2021

08/08/2021

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Posted • If I could only give ONE parenting advice. It would be for parents to stop shaming their children🙏🏻
If the only thing you’d focus on as parent would be to eliminate shaming from your parenting “toolbox” - that one thing would greatly, GREATLY, improve your parenting and your relationship with your child, not to mention your child’s long term internal wellbeing and emotional health💛�.�Why is that?�.�Because shame is toxic.
It ONLY does damage.
There is literally NOTHING good that comes from shame.�.�“Shaming is designed to cause children to curtail behaviour through negative thoughts and feelings about themselves. It involves a comment - director indirect - about what the child is.
Shaming operates by giving children a negative image about their selves” - Robin Grille, Parenting for a Peaceful World
Shaming can be deeply damaging:
✖️It damages a child’s sense of self-worth
✖️It closes down learning centres in the brain
✖️It creates disconnection and rupture in the parent child relationship
✖️It risks children internalising, sometimes for life, that they are inherently bad, different, less-than.�.�“I define shame as the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging – something we’ve experienced, done, or failed to do makes us unworthy of connection�I don’t believe shame is helpful or productive. In fact, I think shame is much more likely to be the source of destructive, hurtful behavior than the solution or cure.” - Bréne Brown
To make sure none of YOU feel shamed reading this post I want you to remember; we have probably ALL said ALL of the above to our children. Our own upbringing will have made sure of that! It’s how most of us were raised and so we will find ourselves automatically using the same language and discipline tactics with our own children - especially when triggered!
Because shaming is so deeply rooted in many of us it’s a big task to stop our internalised shame from being projected on to our children. It takes a great deal of awareness, reflection and practice but it.is.so.worth.it✨
Do you remember hearing similar comments from the adults in your life growing up?
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HT Respectful Mom

25/07/2021

27/06/2021

Compliant and obedient children seem great in childhood, but all of those years of obeying, not being allowed to ‘answer back’ to get their point across and eventually being too scared to confide in you, for fear of reprimand, does not make for an emotionally healthy adult 😪

Disagreements, debates, and healthy conflict may be harder on us as parents - but it makes for a much more positive future for our children.

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26/06/2021

School systems have it backwards. Kids are made to answer questions that they’re not even asking.

What if they had the freedom to ask questions and follow where their curiosity led them? That’s what unschooling is!

To learn more, join the Exploring Unschooling Virtual Learning Lab with me and Domari Dickinson! Link in bio.
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Posted • Little kids tend to ask lots of questions. The questions emerge in toddlerhood and reach a peak around age 4; then they begin to drop off.

Richard Saul Wurman, founder of TED talks, notes that asking a good question is much more difficult than giving a good answer, but our educational systems are set up to reward answers.

So how do we help our kids maintain their love of questions without burning ourselves out by serving as walking encyclopedias?

It helps to look at the questions kids are asking. Tanja Glišić divided them into three types.

The first is cognitive questions. These help kids learn about the world around them. We want to encourage these, but sometimes we don’t have all of dinosaur history (or whatever topic our kids love) at our fingertips. A tip I learned from The Brave Learner by is to write down questions and put them in a designated spot for answering at the end of the week. Even kids who cannot read yet know that something that is written down is valued and recognized as important.

The second type are social questions. Kids ask these because they are seeking connection or interaction with us. It’s not about the information. Taking a few moments to focus on the kid (when possible) will meet their needs better than any answers.

The final kind is operational questions, which include asking for help. These will always be part of parenting, but can sometimes be reduced by creating routines & systems that give kids autonomy over simple tasks like getting dressed or choosing snacks.

Kids ask some of the most hilarious, philosophical, grim, inspiring, and off-the-wall questions. I’d love to hear what your kids have asked.
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17/05/2021

05/05/2021

05/05/2021

WHY THE CHILD/PARENT RELATIONSHIP SHAPES OUR FUTURE LIFE EXPERIENCE:

1. Our adult romantic partners are reflections of our earliest childhood attachments with parent figures

2. Ideally, our parents gave us secure attachments. Secure attachments means we could predict their behavior, we could depend on them to meet our needs (most of the time) + could rely on them to soothe us when we felt scared, confused, or stressed. Secure attachment in childhood results in flexibility, open-mindedness, trust (for self + other) + high self worth.

3. Insecure attachments means our parents were unpredictable, chaotic, fearful, shut down, or unavailable to meet our needs + help us regulate our emotions. Insecure attachments in childhood results in adult relationships that also unpredictable, don’t meet our needs, + leave us feeling unworthy or like we just perform for love.

4. Insecure attachments with parent figures can cause us to be physically addicted to another person, all consumed by them, + anxious when they are away from us. Or, cause us to avoid intimacy (as a protection mechanism) all together.

5. Boundaries are key in healthy relationships. If our parents didn’t have boundaries (spoke badly about another parent, invaded our privacy, had us be a source of their own emotional support—ex: ‘you’re the little man of the house’) we will struggle with having our own boundaries or honoring the boundaries of another person in a relationship.

6. When we learn that our parents cannot meet our needs, we often become “needy” in adult relationships. This is an attempt to get these unmet needs met. Ironically, this can place pressure on both partners + cause both to resist connection.

7. If our childhood was inconsistent, we can be less forgiving + more critical with our partners. We can also be controlling due to deep fear of abandonment.

8. We often unconsciously seek partners that have the same traits as the parent we had the most conflicted relationship with in an attempt to repair that core wound.

10. “Chemistry” or physical attraction can be high in relationships where the other person activates our core childhood wounding. We might find stable partners boring

04/05/2021

💜💜💜

02/04/2021

I want to tell you about a time when I got “kicked out” of an online parenting conference for neurodiverse children. My crime? Speaking about respecting children as they are, not as we wish them to be.

I was being interviewed about untigering and unschooling—sharing about how we need to honor and celebrate our child’s uniqueness and follow their lead rather than imposing our own expectations on them and trying to get them to conform to arbitrary social norms. Suddenly, the interviewer interrupted me and stopped the recording. She apologetically told me that—after hearing my perspectives—she just couldn’t promote my work because it went against what the “experts” said.

Why is a relationship based on love, trust, consent, autonomy, and respect so incongruous with what the so-called experts believe about neurodiverse children?

Too often, experts and parents approach things from a neurotypical, behavioralist perspective. The goal is to make neurodiverse children as “normal” as possible; to make them function and fit in to mainstream society; to stop them from stimming, keep them from making others uncomfortable, and teach them to behave according to the social conventions and expectations.

As we hear from more and more neurodiverse adults (rathering than centering the perspectives of their caretakers), we are learning how dehumanizing and oppressive these "expert" strategies and tools are. Let’s understand that honor and respect are values that should extend to ALL children, regardless of age, aptitude, ability, or personality. Let’s make sure ALL our children, especially our neurodiverse/atypical/gender non-binary, etc. ones are radically loved and accepted as they are when they are too often told otherwise.

02/04/2021

How many of us can truly say we do all these as adults. To show our true authentic selves.
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