I am super excited to announce the upcoming release of my very first book! Cracking the Kid Code will be available on October 18th. Here’s a sneak peek at some of the content.
I dream of sustainability
Ever since I saw the blog The Zero Waste Home last week (thanks ShalomMama!), I can’t stop thinking about the idea of living a life with less, if not “zero” waste. I’ve been hyper aware of every single thing I put into the trash. And I’ve been asking myself, what would I do with that, if I didn’t throw it away? Bea Johnson, says “Refuse, refuse, refuse, and then reduce, reuse, recycle.” And I certainly like the idea of simplifying my life and reducing my carbon footprint. But I’m just not sure how far I’m willing to go to get there.
I mean, I think I can handle using a hanky instead of tissues, but I’m not so sure I’m willing to give up toilet paper. And, while I enjoy buying bulk, I also really like some foods that are pre-packaged. Hmmmm
I feel I’ve been working toward a more sustainable lifestyle for a long time now. I’ve composted for about seven years and I love watching the soil come alive with organisms when it’s given some nutrients. Last spring we raised chicks at our house, and now we’re getting three or four eggs a day from our four hens. The chickens are such sweet pets and the eggs are delicious.
This year we’ve harvested quite a few mature apples from the apple tree in the front yard, and there are still several more on the branch. I fertilized the tree with bat droppings. I wonder who collected the bat scat and where it was harvested. Does anyone know if chicken droppings would work as a flower/fruit fertilizer?
I also shop secondhand a bunch. I use my local kids resale shop, Kids-n-Style like a rental house for toys, clothes, and baby gear. I walk in with something to trade and walk out with the thing I’m really wanting that is perfect for my daughter’s current stage of development. It’s really a win/win. And then there are the environmental benefits of less manufacturing, less transportation and shipping. Oh, and I bring my re-usable bags with me everywhere, and I use them. So I think I’ve made some really positive changes that help me to live a more sustainable life.
One of the choices that I’m most proud of is my choice to cloth diaper my daughter. In fact, I have NEVER used a single disposable diaper for her, even when we traveled across the country. I’m really happy to know that we haven’t added any diapers to our landfill.
On the other hand, I LOVE hot water. In fact, conserving water at all is a BIG challenge for me. And while I’m thinking of putting up a clothesline, I’m not sure if I’m going to like the stiffness of the line-dried clothes. Does that make me an irresponsible energy hog?
We also have a hot tub and I do NOT want to give it up just to reduce our energy consumption. I find the hot water absolutely therapeutic. My husband and I often spend “date nap” in the hot tub. It was absolutely wonderful to be in the warm water during the first stages of birth…mmmm.
Oh, and I really enjoy having bananas and other tropical fruits on hand, no matter what time of year it is. I understand that it would be better for the environment if I ate only locally produced food, but we have a very short growing season here in Bend, Oregon and come on, who can resist the bananas at the grocery store? I surely can’t, at least not yet…
So, what if I had a solar powered home and I set up a very tall grow room for my banana tree? That’s eating locally and producing the energy to grow my own food, but I guess I didn’t really take into account the production of the solar panels. OK, I’ll admit that’s a pretty outlandish example, but isn’t it strange to be learning to produce less waste and use less energy while typing away on my laptop? I wash some of my clothes with an old fashioned washboard, but I also stream movies through my big flat screen TV. By the way, are the photovoltaic production plants running on solar power yet?
As you can see, sustainability is a VAST topic and at our house we’re no where near achieving it, but I think we’re doing pretty well so far and I know we’ll continue to learn, change, grow, and improve, because, well, that’s just what we do!
Have you made any recent changes at your house to improve your impact on the environment? I would love to hear about it! Have a super week, Shelly
Sleep more, learn more
Wow, this week has been all about sleep research. I’ve been reading “Nurture Shock” by Po Bronson & Ashley Marryman and whoa, the new sleep research is startling! I also watched a Nova special on sleep, and then last night my husband and I watched an episode of Star Trek Next Generation where the whole crew suffers from sleep deprivation due to lack of REM sleep.
It’s all pretty interesting stuff, so here’s what I’ve learned so far…
1) We dream in all stages of sleep, not just REM sleep and scientists think that REM sleep dreams are specifically designed as practice to help us figure out how to handle emotionally difficult situations.
2) Children today get an hour less sleep per night than children did just 30 years ago.
3) Just 15 min. of extra sleep at night has been shown to give kids higher cognitive functioning, better test scores and better grades in school.
4) A LOT of the symptoms of both ADHD and clinical depression are identical to symptoms of long-term sleep deprivation.
5) A lack of sleep causes chemical changes in the body that may be the underlying cause of the obesity epidemic here in the US.
6) Sleep is crucial to learning and if allowed to sleep in between lessons, subjects show marked improvements in newly learned skills.
7) While adults only spend 4% of sleep in the slow wave stage of sleep, Children spend almost 40% of their sleep there.
Clearly, there’s a LOT going on regarding sleep and the optimal functioning of our amazing brain. From our own experiences we know that sleep is crucial to learning. Haven’t you ever learned something new and then gone to sleep and dreamed about it all night long? Well, the research bears out this intuitive knowledge that sleep is crucial to learning.
So, why are kids getting less sleep? Well, I have some theories. First, screen time and bright lights at night have been shown to disrupt our circadian rhythms, so kids are having a harder time falling asleep because they’ve recently been exposed to bright lights or screens. And then there’s the fact that so many working parents are working such long hours that they barely get to see their kids in the evening. So parents are keeping their kids up later so that they can have some time together during the week. And children don’t seem to be complaining. Obviously they will try to stay up as late as we will let them, not realizing the long-term consequences of sleep deprivation.
So, as conscious, aware parents, we have got to put our children’s long-term health and well-being above our momentary desire for fifteen more minutes with them at the end of a long day. Now that we have this new, proven knowledge of the importance of sleep, it’s our job to take action.
We need to reclaim the “lost hour” and boy will we be glad when we have. After taking a good hard look at the research, I’m convinced that by putting sleep first, we’ll all end up with happier, more focused, higher functioning, and better adjusted kids. And what could possibly be more important than that?
Have a restful week, Shelly
Building trust by telling the truth
As I listen to my daughter playing in her baby pool for the first time, with her Grammy watching over her, I feel so grateful for every experience we get have together. And I can finally understand some parents’ almost pathological need to protect their children.
There are all sorts of dangers both seen and unseen in our world today and it can be overwhelming when we focus on what could go wrong. A simple pool of water can become scary. But sometimes we take the job of protecting our children too far. By being honest with our kids, they may experience some pain, but they’re sure to fare better in life than they would otherwise.
When I talk with parents about being more honest with their children I hear all sorts of objections. “Are you sure it’s appropriate to tell my child that?!” and “I don’t want to burden him with my feelings.” But I think it’s a very slippery slope to withhold information from our children in order to “protect” them. It actually seems to do just the opposite. It hurts our kids when we don’t tell them the truth and they end up learning that they can’t count on us.
As a child, one of the things I admired most about my mom was how brutally, really, honest with me she was. Granted, she didn’t offer a bunch of unsolicited information, but when I asked her a frank question, I knew I could count on her to answer honestly.
When I was five or six I asked my mom what the worst word in the world was. And, after asking me to promise never to use it, she leaned down and whispered the “f word” into my ear. I was shocked and in awe of my moms commitment to honesty. And until I was a teenager, I never used it. I was just curious, and I wanted to be prepared in case someone else used “bad words” in my presence. Obviously it was a pivotal moment for me, considering I still remember it so vividly.
My mom was also very honest about sex, even when I was very young. By the time I was 4 years old, I knew exactly where babies came from and I knew the scientific names of both male and female body parts. As a teenager, talking to my mom about sex was easy because we’d already been talking about it for 10 years! We had built a foundation of truth and trust that I knew I could rely on.
I’m so grateful for that foundation now, because as I got to know other girls and young women in my teens and twenties, I realized that my mom’s honesty was really quite rare. Most of my friends’ moms had never talked with them about contraception or their monthly moon time, and as a result many of my friends were confused about the facts, unprepared to protect themselves from STDs and pregnancy, and several of them ended up with unwanted pregnancies.
I want my daughter to be informed and well prepared for life on her own. So I think I’ll take my mom’s approach and be truthful with my child about her body, sex, and even my own feelings. I want her to have that same foundation of trust and a deeply ingrained knowledge that no matter what, she can count on me to be honest with her.
I can only hope that by talking with her about challenging topics now, when she’s young, it will make it that much easier for us to talk about the tough stuff when she’s a teenager and young adult.
I’m curious, what’s your experience with being brutally honest with your children. Have you seen benefits from being committed to the truth? Have you experienced the pain of disconnection when you weren’t honest? Please leave me a comment and share your story below.
Have a fantastic and vulnerably revealing week, Shelly
Don’t “should” on me!
Language is a powerful thing. I’m constantly amazed at how simple word choices can make such a huge difference in my everyday life. For instance, if I think to myself, “I can’t…” I feel deflated and ineffectual, but when I think, “I choose not to…” I feel inspired and powerful.
We each make choices about which words we’ll use to describe our lives every single day. Don’t we all have a friend who almost constantly whines and complains? Or know someone who uses language that is offensive to us? I do my best to be hyper aware of my language and which words I choose to use. I want to use words that are empowering and inspiring as much as possible, especially around my daughter.
When I first became aware of my word choices and their power, I noticed that I apologized a LOT. I said “I’m sorry” dozens of times a day. I also discovered that I was afraid to speak up, worried about taking up too much space, and I rarely expressed myself very powerfully. In a way, I was apologizing for my very being! But it didn’t feel very good, so I systematically trained myself to stop apologizing habitually, and now I only apologize when I really mean it.
As I continued to explore consciously choosing my words, I realized there was a very specific word that I actually despise. The word is “should.” Every time I heard the word “should” I was reminded of other people’s expectations for me, and all the times I had been externally motivated. I realized that I had been living my life to please other people, but I wasn’t really enjoying it at all! So I began working to develop a strong internal motivation, a clear inner sense of yes and no, and I abolished the word “should” from my vocabulary.
My friends and I worked together to remind one another when “should” crept back into our language by stopping and saying, “Did you just ‘should’ on me?!” Bringing a little bit of humor to our mission to abolish “should” made it a fun game that we could all play together. And it really helped to have the support of people who were all committed to conscious word choices. By the way, if you want an easy and empowering word replacement, try “could” instead of “should.” It works almost all of the time!
Now that I’m a mom, I’m reminded yet again how important it is to be aware of the words we use when we talk to our kids. Of course tone of voice, affect, and energy are often even more important than word choice. But I still think it’s worthwhile to pay attention to the words we use.
After all, our kids will surely parrot those words back to us, and who really wants their 4 year old saying, “Mommy, you should eat your vegetables before your chocolate.” Personally, I would much rather hear someone ask me if I would or could, rather than telling me that I should. Don’t the young people in our lives deserve that same respect from their elders? I sure think so!
I would love to know what you think about the word “should” and it’s impact on young people. Please share your opinion or story below!
Thanks for being here and have a great day, Shelly