Originally posted at Pagan Families, 5/27/15. Has creating spells and making magic helped you hone your parenting skills? I haven’t seen any experts list spellcrafting or analogical thinking as an important parenting ability, but maybe they should. Let me tell you a story. One time this rainbow snake toy saved me from the minor embarrassment …
Category Archives: Parenting
Review: Parenting With A Story
Originally posted at Pagan Families, 12/19/14. I received a complementary review copy of this book. Paul Smith, Parenting with a Story: Real Life Lessons in Character for Parents and Children to Share (AMACOM, 2014). 272 pages. Once upon a time my mother stepped out of a friend’s car and down an open sewer grate. Fortunately …
Enchanted Composting
Originally posted at Pagan Families, 11/24/14. “I’m going out to the compost. Does anyone want to come with me?” I asked, and a moment of near panic followed when the kids thought I might get there without them. “Coming, coming!” piped the one year old, and the five year old chimed in, “Wait just a …
Of Children, Paint, and Unplanned Sabbats
Originally posted to Pagan Families, 9/22/14. When Beltane came, we’d planned to dance a May Pole at my older daughter’s preschool. Not exactly pagan, but I don’t know many pagan families locally, and the school May Pole was as close to traditional as we were going to get. Well, my daughter lost all interest in …
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Off To School Altars
Originally posted on Pagan Families, 8/19/14. Last year my almost four year old spent the first event of the school year in hiding. She’d enjoyed preschool in the Spring, but now that school was about to start again, she was worried and didn’t want to talk about it. I felt helpless. Her initial transition into …
To The Gates Of Dreaming: Using Guided Meditation to Help Children Sleep
Originally posted on Pagan Families, 7/16/14. I’ve spent countless hours helping my daughters fall asleep, nursing and bouncing, massaging and singing and praying, lying absolutely quiet or else reciting Mother Goose. By the time my eldest was preschool age, I turned to magic. I began using guided meditations with my daughter around the time she …
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Book Review (Lengthy): Healing Stories For Challenging Behaviour
In Healing Stories For Challenging Behaviour (Stroud, UK: Hawthorne Press, 2008), Susan Perrow writes about the success she’s had using stories to inspire a shift in children’s behavior, in the contexts of parenting and Waldorf education. Healing Stories gives advice for creating your own stories, as well as fifty plus stories that Perrow’s used. The …
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Making Up Stories
Rebecca and I make up stories in secret. I hear we’re not the only parents and children who do that, but how would I know? Joining a practice without much personal precedent is an eerie feeling. When you first start, you’re waiting for someone to catch you and tell you you’re doing it wrong, and …
Snake on a Plane / Notes on Mental Processes
The plane was coming down, on our last flight of the day. Your dad buckled you in. You wanted your seatbelt off, and you started to shout and fight against it. So I told your dad, pass me the rainbow snake! And I snapped it like a collar on my own neck, “Oh no! Get …
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Parents Are Different
We don’t use time-outs or other kinds of punishments; most people do. Whenever I get into a conversation about toddler discipline, the conclusion seems to be that kids are different, and different kids respond better to different parenting approaches. It’s true that kids are different! And aside from being true, it’s a way of giving …