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Sunday, February 19, 2012

Our children's fear... on a global level.

I heard a story today that I felt I had to share with you. Through connections I know this is very much a real story.
I know of a girl who’s in her early teens, from a good background, good head on her shoulders, really bright, pretty and with the world in front of her.
Suddenly, to the shock of everyone, her system started to fail, her organs started to shut down, for no other reason than because she had stopped eating. Upon hearing about this most people’s reaction is the same as my initial one, that people stop eating, or have any eating disorder because of self esteem issues or self image problems. So many articles on line today are talking about how much harm Barbie is doing to girls everywhere, because of her waistline. But I found out today that there were no such issues with this girl. It turns out that the reason behind her stopping eating was because she was so aware of all the problems with our food that she didn’t want to eat something that would do her harm. It was an issue of fear and it turns out, more and more of our children are going down this route.
Sounds crazy, but for a young teen it makes sense. You have her being told that wheat, sugar, salt, and processed foods are all really bad for you, meat is filled with toxins, and don’t drink anything from a plastic bottle. There’s arguments against fresh vegetables and fruit, unless organic, but than organic often looks old and tasteless, frozen is sneered at, and then don’t get started on canned. There’s also the list of chemicals, additives, colorings, and sweeteners to avoid… and she could live on oatmeal, but then there’s the dairy issue… let’s not get started on the ill kept chickens who lay the eggs… Start watching things like Food Inc or other food industry awareness films and they can have you seeing everything you put in your mouth as pure poison.
But there’s another poison, which maybe as parents of the next generation we should be more aware of, even more than Barbie and her disproportioned body, the poison is fear and our world is currently filled with it. Unfortunately, although we may have be able to blame the media for the corruption of the image of a woman, we seem to all be falling into the deep pit of fear, media’s fault or not, and our children are picking up on it.

Our children are born into it… no wait conceived into it. We’re scared of what we put into our bodies when we are pregnant, we worry about the birth, we worry about pain relief, we’re scared of vaccinations, or BPA in everything, of laundry soap and of plastic toys… but then we get scared of wooden toys because how do you sterilize them… so then we say let them play in nature and get scared about the dirt, the water and the sun! Let’s not forget about that huge ball of fire in the sky, that Sun. We’re doomed! (plants always seem to deal with the sun rather well, we need to be more like them I think.)

Our children are growing up with talk of the world falling apart all around them. When we were growing up we vaguely heard about nuclear war or problems in places that seemed far from home. Our children are taught about water running out, global warming, and economic crisis. Animals are becoming extinct, people are dying everywhere, and then there’s Monsanto descending like a cloud. Then there are diseases, that to them seem everywhere and unstoppable. I’m not saying that any of this doesn’t exist, I know it does.
I’m saying we’ve made it our focus and our children are learning to be Afraid… very afraid and because of the fear we’re passing down to them, they just might give up hope and leave.
Not my usual uplifting post, I know. But I find it all so fascinating and unbelievable how life on this planet has gone in a short matter of time.

Many of you don’t know this, but my husband and I are musical therapists and we often sing in residential and nursing homes. It’s a wonderful job as we get to connect to older people in a way that many people don’t have a way to. Many a time a dementia patient, who hasn’t talked in years, will start singing along with an old wartime song. It’s quite an exhilarating thing to take part in. We perform a lot of wartime sing along stuff, Pack up your troubles, Kiss me Goodnight Sgt Major etc… and it brings them a lot of joy and connects most of the residents with some of their favourite memories.
Yes, their favourite memories. The ones that bring them back to their selves because it makes them feel so wonderful they connect to Everything They Are. Songs that are written to cheer people up because tomorrow, They May Die.
A woman told me the other day that she loved her life in England during the war when she was a child. Her family would invite the soldiers over, her father would play the piano, and they would have dinner and then all sing. It was like a huge party that happened at least once a week. She sang to her hearts content with us, and when it was over she looked much better than before.
That’s how people lived, there in the middle of chaos, with the threat of bombs being dropped on them, of family members being lost, of horrible atrocities happening, they wrote songs to feel better with, They found reasons to laugh, to love, to dance… to call forth life. They were brave and didn’t let the fear get the better of them and in the end, they could look death in the face, and say whenever it’s meant to be. After all… I hate to say this but 100% of us won’t live forever.

I’m not saying we’re not like this now, but the battles are different. It seems like we’re forgetting to teach our children to LIVE. We’re finding any excuse to be afraid, any excuse to not enjoy ourselves, and any excuse not to trust the Well Being we and they know flow forever to and around us.
We are spiritual beings that occupy these physical bodies for a short while. In the long run it is a spiritual journey we are on. The issues we face here on earth are for the sole purpose of expanding ourselves, and the trick is to BE ourselves, in all our joy and fulfilling life. Like I always say you can’t act from love and fear, therefore LOVE and trust in the life that is flowing with you, in you and around you.
We need to teach our children that the world is well, that the world is powerful and that every cell in her is pure energy that if treated with respect and allowed to shift and change, will do fine. The world may end as we know it, but it also may re-invent itself anew. None of us will live forever in this form, there’s no point trying.

Another thing you may not know is that my husband is a nutritionist… well use to be. We now trust the quantum physic element of things more, but we also teach nutrition basics to our children. Basically, we tell them to eat as naturally as you can as often as you can. Our bodies are complicated machines that can breathe without instruction and can pump blood without any effort from our thoughts. We need to treat them with the utter respect they deserve. Green is the magic color, eat fruit and vegetables, the best you can find. If you can’t get organic, than if you are eating enough of them and drinking enough water, your body can flush out pretty much anything. Greens and natural food and water is your petrol to the machine. Carbs for energy, keep to whole wheat for fibre and make sure you stay regular (up to 5 times a day is seen as natural, did you know that) as that is how your body gets rid of garbage. It can get rid of the stuff we put in it, if we let it.
Dis-ease is our bodies way of letting us know things are out of wack. By listening to our bodies, we can help them.
When asked about the state of the world, I tell them I have faith in her. Our bodies have the ability to heal, why can’t she? When asked about the fish in the ocean, I tell them maybe they are hiding… from all the crazy people on land.
I also tell them to trust in the Spirit of it all. That Worry is using your imagination to create an unhappy future, so use your imagination to heal instead.
“Feel good, and expect it to radiate out of you.” “Remember the law of attraction, and that you are a powerful magnet.” “Life is about joy, and then feeling the off-ness so the next bout of Joy feels even better.”
“Trust…trust that God, or Source, or energy, is swirling and whirling through it all, making it all alright.”
Then after making sure they’ve eaten enough of their cabbage and rice… I give them some homemade chocolate cake... lots of it. ‘Cuz let’s face it, homemade is just better all around, anyway and it can make a person feel SOO GOOD.

Friday, February 10, 2012

Bringing up Le Petit Chien


I can’t promise a sense of theme or even coherency to this blog post. I have to admit, I’ve had about 3 posts running through my head over the past few weeks, and life has been incredibly frantic and well, resembling a rollercoaster… so bear with me… we might actually get something out there.

First of all… I need to welcome our new family member, Timmy. Timmy is an English Springer Spaniel and he is 11 weeks old. If anyone out there has been following this blog since October 2010, you will remember the passing of our other furry son, Sullivan, who’s quick exit left all of us reeling. Especially our then 10 month old son, who went from part time co-sleeper to full time just after the disappearance. Well, enter Timmy and welcome the filling to the gapping hole that was created all that time ago. Its been an amazing healing to watch as peace entered our daughters eyes, and she no longer teared up when she mentioned dear Sull. The ache was gone at last. Our little boy started to sleep much better and now goes to sleep with a dog cuddled right up in his arms. I’ve never seen a boy and dog hold each other so close. For me, I’m excited to have an excuse to walk out at night, and stare up to the stars and the moon, connecting to the deep source of it all and gaining a little clarity… while I wait for a dog to finish doing what doggy’s do.
However, what follows the impulsive decision “let’s go get one of those cute puppies NOW,” and the healing process of what one little soul can do, is a fair amount of contrast and totally being thrown out of a feel good pace. He nips, he jumps, he scratches up our little boy’s legs, he tried to take his apple this evening. He messes in the house, yet holds it when we take him outside and he wants to play at ungodly hours…. Oh yeah and then we have to wake up at ungodly hours to take him outside so he can do there what he likes to do inside. Sigh. My husband is thinking of changing his name to “Ebay”, as he’s considering the best price we could get for our new found family member.
But we couldn’t do it, he’s sewn into our hearts now, and lets face it, he’s a puppy a baby and doesn’t know any better. He’s new to the world, new to this physical form, he’s relishing in the pleasures of physical life, and making the most of them. He LOVES food, He LOVES play and he LOVES the closeness of people, that he can cuddle up to and feel safe. So he just ran off with one of my husband’s pansy seedlings… wait I was just going to say he didn’t know any better, but our daughter said he looked really guilty when he brought it to her, so I guess I should say, he just couldn’t control himself. Which is actually his problem in a lot of areas.
So after the first few days of dealing with all of this I was reminded that no matter what I needed to focus on the feeling good aspects, to ground myself, to connect and that this too was an extension of Spiritually Aware Parenting… extension being “for dogs.”
I am now seeing this pup as the true pure positive being we all are. I am using the art of distraction to avoid his… rough play periods and I’m showering him with love, praising him, talking to him, connecting to him and most of all cuddling him loads so that he feels safe in his new world. But I will tell you one thing… a puppy is not a baby, and at 11 weeks he’s at least a 2 year old… by 12-14 weeks… what 3 or 4. With our 2 year old boy when he goes for something he really can’t have, we talk about it. I understand his wants and I tell him what mine are and we usually strike a common ground how to help each other out. There is no discussion with a dog. This is really difficult for me. If I can’t sit and reason, I tend to get frustrated, disconnect and react. There goes that happy house and my children look at me really confused.

OK… switch to my next blog post idea… (I just found my thread to this post… so bear with me.)

A few days ago there was an article going around about the book “Bringing up Bebe”. Although it turned out that the article was kind of based on media enhanced sections of the book and didn’t really express the true essence of what the author was saying, for those few hours before that was cleared up I found my reaction really interesting.
What struck me was the idea that the French parent approached life as “possible” or “not possible”. Parenting appeared to be very black or white, not the variety of color I have with my children. The article pointed out that the French parent was a definite authority figure who drew the line and the child dared not crossed it. A child won’t interrupt, because they are told, gently, “not possible” or to that affect. They will eat politely at restaurants, play nicely, talk nicely, and basically not take part in the barrage of dialogue a north American parent takes part with hourly with their children.
Personally, I found this upsetting and finished reading the article exclaiming “well, I dn’t want to parent like that!” I love my discussions with my children… I love it when they convince me that something should be possible. Sometimes I ask them not to interrupt, but then it turns out to be something REALLY important (like a puppy with a pansy) and I apologize for not listening! I find that the on going give and take between me and our children exciting and energizing. Its life giving. Now please remember, I haven’t read the book and I find French parents and children vibrant and full of life as a general rule. Therefore, it’s pretty clear the article was just trying to be controversial. However, there are a lot of parents that do parent like this… my mother admitted to it actually that this was how I was raised. Authority figure, check. Possible, not possible, check. Yup, she was that sort of “French” parent. I’ll admit, I was a happy kid. I even told my husband that I would parent like my mother before we had children because I figured I kept the boundaries, I new “right” from “wrong”, and she was in “control”. It was only later that I realized I wanted my children’s inner voice to set their own boundaries, that I didn’t want control, but team work, and that there was a fair amount between right and wrong that I wanted them to feel free to explore spiritually and emotionally themselves.
Now saying that… here’s where it all ties in together.
I can’t let the puppy define right and wrong for himself based on what his emotional guidance system tells him! We would live in chaos. His inner instincts and pure positive spirit can’t set boundaries! And I’m sorry, team work for this new family member???
But I can’t be the dictator either. I can’t get mad, get frustrated and over react, effected the feeling space of the house and having my 2 year old son feeling confused.
So therefore… welcome to “bringing up le petit chien”. Puppy parenting…

Playing with his toys- possible
Playing with fingers- not possible
Eating what’s given to him- possible
Eating off plates- not possible
Cuddling in bed, being loveable, adorable and everything that we all, including him, needs to be… -more than possible.
Not using outside for toilet duties- so impossible!!!

What’s funny is that now with this approach, he’s a happy baby… sorry puppy. He doesn’t look lost in his eyes or kinda nuts. He wants to please. He wants to do what we ask him and when he is praised he gets so excited. It’s lovely.

I’ll keep everyone posted on the progress. Right after having a lovely long discussion about the pros and cons about it with my children… and I’m sure there’ll be plenty of interrupting.