A letter

I just types this to my sister and loved it so much I wanted to share it here. I just love how nicely stuff flows at times :)) I think it was so easy partially because my sissy is so easy to share with :)) Here it is:

I loved loved LOVED seeing you yesterday!!!!!!!! It filled my heart with love and joy! Thank you for coming down here to see us :))

I wanted to reach out and explain a few things so that you can maybe understand and feel better about a couple things I noticed yesterday. I know it isn't common in our culture to interact or raise kids the way that I do because this culture very much values safety and doing things a certain way because it is "right". I also think that we instinctively think things and feel things because our parents did them with us and so we have internalized them as the "right" way, or are just more comfortable when things are done a certain way because of that. I have noticed that the areas where my well-intentioned mom was very controlling of me are the areas that are hardest for me to let go of control in, and that different parents have different problems with different things. So, through researching learning so much, I really value kids experimenting and learning for themselves and exploring. Some amazing things happen when kids do these things, and I will save you a long explination (lol) and just say that they learn a lot of things very deeply, about life and about their competency to explore and master life and their interests. Sometimes this can lead to getting hurt, and I am learning to be okay with that. Real raw life has pain in it and I am letting go of my fears about pain and hurt. You know I have to bring this back to a nature analogy lol, and in nature there are all kinds of things that can bring pain, opportunities for growth and learning. And very few things cannot be healed or cannot be fixed, and very few things need to be kept in perfect pristine conditon to serve a purpose. All of this understanding and also living it, has taken me really searching my soul and questioning assumptions and processing a lot of feelings and opinions, and realigning my opinions and actions with my values of life learning, trusting my kids, and and wanting them to find their own path in life. Trusting kids is not a popular concept in the greater population of this society. It's a really big thing for me, trusting that my child is always coming from a place of good intentions, trusting that my child is doing whatever they are doing to meet a very valid need inside of them, trusting that if I am concerned about something it isn't always about them, trusting that they know what is best for them (better than I know even). Those are heavy concepts, right? The biggest trust is that allowing my kids to do what feels right to them will end up in them being the truest true THEM that they can be throughout their lives. Now, it's not that simple, right? Because there are other people in the world and sometimes sharing small spaces with them. Those are sometimes not as easy to make blanket statements about because each situation is different. Each person they are interacting with has their own set of "norms" and rules and whatnot, and the hardest part right now for me is understanding where one persons responsibility ends and another's starts -- still working on that one. So, my current struggles are navigating through situations where my daughter (usually this involves Kass, but sometimes Noble, too) wants to be true to herself (which is a lot of very strong-willed self!!) and another person is uncomfortable with it. Unfortunate for some, in order to give full validation to both parties it can take a lot more time to understand both sides and problem solve for a win-win solution (it takes less time, the more practice you have) than to just quick-fix the situation. So, specifically, when Kass was on top of the van: she is part monkey, and I don't mind that she was up there. Could she get hurt? Maybe (although she has been doing some risky things since she was 2 and I can only think of 1 instance where she got hurt, and it was minor, and she learned to tweak it a bit to not get hurt the next time). Could she have hurt the car? Maybe, but the chances of it preventing it from working were slim, and if I was concerned about it, I would have said, "hey, I think that might break the car." and she would have tried something that still met her need to climb and show off to the ones she loves and wants to impress but in a way that she thought might not break the car. And if I still felt like it would break the car, I could say,"still worried about the car", and she may try something else or say, "no it won't because, see, I'm..." Now, conventional parenting would cut all that short, not risk any of that (see no value in the risk), and say,"Get down from there." but I am SO not conventional, so we do things differently :)) So, then there's the last part that did come into play: could it have hurt someone else? Yes. It could have hurt Jai or me, since we were close enough. So, I could have stepped further away. Worst case scenario, Jai could have gotten hurt before I realized that we were too close, and I would have been very sad and that would have been very unfortunate. And we would have learned for future reference to be more aware of where the baby is at in proximity to something that could hurt her. I don't want to hurt any of my children but hurt does happen as a consequence of living, and hurt doesn't have to be as horrible as some of us believe it is (still unpacking that for myself). The other instance that I was thinking was Jai crawling on the cement and getting scratched. I didn't know you had mentioned to Kass that she could get hurt and I didn't think of it when I came out, but what I may have done is suggest some socks to cover her feet (which of course I forgot to bring) and then said,"Darn, I forgot socks. Could we put her somewhere softer, just in case?" Kass' responses are not always as simple as we would like or think they are "supposed" to be. She has a lot of reaction built up inside of her, she is very sensitive to feeling like someone is trying to control her or be right-- she was raised by me, where could she get that from!? (insert feigned look of shock) She also wants to be right and be valued and respected for her choices. It is important to her that people see her wisdom. Soooooo, giving her the opportunity to find a new solution works wonders! It works a lot more effectively (if that were to be measured with cooperativeness) than questioning her logic, wisdom, own needs. Do I think she will always "require" people to set things up in this manner? Probably not, once she gets her fill of feeling valued and whatnot. And if she does, is that something we ever could have changed by forcing her otherwise? Is it my place to try to change her or direct her path? Is that even possible? What kinds of reprocussions are we talking about here? Well, I am living some of them (Kass' sensitivity to control and such). So, this is long enough, but I just wanted to toss out some food for thought and hopefully help you to understand why we do what we do. I know that many of the parenting philosophies that I draw from are not mainstream in this country, so they are very new concepts to some of us. It has been an exciting adventure :))