At ChildWild blog, one mom of two has a great post about how she slowed things down in her home. She realized that what they were doing wasn’t feeling at all slow, connected or even enjoyable. After careful consideration of both time and money, they quit everything and are now enjoying some freeform afternoons and evenings together as a family. This is what worked for them.
You may remember another post here about another family who examined their busy schedule and realized that yes, this was what they wanted and so, in the midst of all the activities, they were going to find ways to slow down, connect and enjoy things as they were. Not quit things, just be conscious of how they were moving through them.
The point being every family has to find their own slow. It looks different in every household and even within each household it might look different every season. In order to find your family’s slow, ask yourself this question, “Is this working for us?” And if you need a little more guidance than that, you can download our slow family workbook. It has some simple tools for helping each family get where they want to be.
As noted in the last post, our own Carrie Contey gave a beautiful talk at the Tedx event here in Austin last week. While we’re still awaiting videos of the event, these amazing post-it note records from Austin artist Austin Kleon, are a pretty great capture of some of the ideas presented. Here’s his rendition of the good doctor Contey…
Slow Family Living is also in Rhythm of the Home, an online quarterly magazine celebrating warmth, celebration, play and connection for happy, creative, connected family life. In addition to the article about the whys and ways of slowing down, connecting and enjoying family life, there is a super sweet picture of my husband and son taken on a family camp out a few years ago.
Last Saturday Carrie and I spent the day in the Austin City Limits studios, at the inaugural Tedx Austin conference. It was an amazing event with the theme of Play Big! Tedx is an offshoot of the amazing Ted series which is an annual event celebrating the world of ideas worth sharing. Tedx is its younger sibling so to speak – the x signifying that it is an independently organized Ted event. There was nothing smaller about this day though as speaker after speaker after performer hit the stage sharing their big ideas, big notions, big lessons learned, big projects and big dreams for ways we, as creative humans, can Play BIG!
Our own Carrie Contey was one of those speakers and spoke on the idea of allowing and appreciating the pauses in life. Starting with the explanation of the growth and development of the infant brain, she explained to us all that taking a pause isn’t just a nice idea, it’s necessary to the unfolding and integration of knowledge and understanding. In less than 15 minutes she taught all in the room, a roomful of people no doubt highly plugged in to a variety of devices and people, that the pause isn’t wasting time. It’s crucial to our human development. When we’re infants and all the way through childhood and adulthood too. We can’t keep taking in, if there is no pause there to allow for integration of information. Well, we can but that is when there is overload and possible implosion. In order to find the balance we have to do. be. do. be. do. be. Always ending on the being.
I have found ways throughout the day to take these necessary pauses. Waiting at a stoplight I close my eyes and tell my children to alert me to a green. Standing at the kitchen sink I spread my feet shoulder width apart and slowly drink a glass of water. I have learned the art of the 20 minute nap. I know that turning off the phone on occasion connects me more to self and to my family. I have learned that time for conscious breathing can/should come as the first item on the list. Not the last. I have learned all of these things and yet I was both in need of and grateful for the scientific reminder from Slow Family’s own Dr. Carrie Contey.
Her message wrapped up at the end: Do less. Be More.
Stay tuned for the video of Carrie’s talk and, lucky us, of the entire day. In the meantime, how are you going to take a pause?
When my oldest was born, I received a lot of advice around parenting. Some applied. Some did not. Some was for the moment. While still others were maybe delivered a little too early or too late. The piece of advice I got though that really stuck, the one that has withstood the test of time and the one we have been able to apply to all aspects and ages of parenting was from my sister…
“It’s all a phase,” she said. “So revel in the good ones and know that the bad ones shall pass.”
These words have brought me through the darkest times and at the same time allowed me to really see and appreciate the bright and shiny moments as well.What I have come to know as the ebb and flow of parenting.
Whether I was parenting an infant growing a tooth or falling asleep on my chest for an afternoon nap. Whether I was guiding a toddler through a tantrum or helping him examine a dead butterfly. Whether I was assisting a 7 year old learning the code of our written language, or a 10 year old finding just the right chapter book or a 12 year old navigating the social waters. In all of it I was able to strive for full presence either suffering it or celebrating it – depending on the circumstances. All because I knew that this too shall pass.
Where are you now? Up? Down? In the darkness? Or in the light?
Find a loving ear or a helping hand or a total stranger to share in your joy.
And know that this too shall pass.
Only one other piece of advice has withstood this test of time and this one came from my brother…
Where we are now is not where we will always be. I think in parenting this is a really difficult concept to grasp. When we have infants, we are so immersed that it is hard to think our wee ones will one day be walking, talking, joke sharing toddlers. With toddlers, its hard to imagine that we’ll one day (soon even) have big kids that can clear the table on their own and play cards with us. And eventually, all these little people with whom we share our lives and our homes, will one day be adults with whom we will share thoughts, ideas and maybe even go to for advice.
If you want to grasp this concept more fully, that childhood is fleeting and the people we raise will be adults for a whole lot longer than they are children, here’s a fun and simple exercise…
Write down the names and ages of all the people in your immediate family – the parents and the kids. Now add 20 years. That’s it. That’s the whole exercise. The point being that it really does go fast. And the connection we seek then can be put into place now in little and mindful chunks.
Take a day off. Play in the yard. Skip the chores one afternoon and lay around and read together. Greet each other in the morning as if you haven’t seen each other in months. Take ten minutes to listen to a kids’ story about the kid at school. Turn off your phone on occasion. Turn off the screens. Look at each other. Listen. Enjoy each other’s company.
What you put in now will come back to you later a thousand fold.
Oftentimes in our Slow Family workshops I talk about how beautiful it would be to have some sort of talisman on the front of the house to serve as a reminder to all who enter (us mostly) that we are home and that in this home, there is comfort and love and connection and hopefully peace and kindness too. I always loved the mezuzahs that were on the door posts of Jewish households that served this same kind of purpose – that you were home and that this home was a Jewish home.
Over the past few months I have been pondering what this would look like for us – what would serve as sort of a Slow Family reminder – a reminder to all of us to slow down, connect and truly enjoy family life. Coming in from the outside world seems like a perfect time to have this reminder – to leave all the mess out there and bring in the connection that we all need and love and desire too. And, aside from the sentiment of it, I also knew whatever we used would have to be kind of rugged, and hold up to sometimes grimy fingers, rugged encounters, the elements and time.
When taking out our Christmas decorations this past month I found, hidden in the bottom of one of the boxes, an aluminum star – simply designed and stamped with the word: PEACE. I got out a nail and a hammer and affixed it smack dab in the middle of the door. Over the past month, ach time we enter, we touch it, and the kids ritual is to tap it three times. Even the other day as we were entering, and my 7 year old stood with her arms full of backpack and coat and other sundry items of a first grader, she looked back at me and said, “Can you tap that for me?” Already it has become ritual. Even if I don’t touch it with my hands, I touch it with my eyes and take in its message.
The dictionary describes a talisman as anything whose presence exercises a remarkable or powerful influence on human feelings or actions. This is precisely what I hope our new star will do – have a powerful influence on our actions as we strive to connect as a family. It’s not always easy to live family life in the connected way we want to live it, but it sure is nice to have this physical reminder of our goal. And a reminder too that we are home. Not the building we live in but the people who dwell here.
