It’s sometimes hard to remember that our children are our people. They are the ones we are tending to now as small children, and the ones too we’ll want to spend time with later, as adults. And, though it’s hard to remember sometimes, in the thick of early parenting, our relationships with them as adults will be for a whole lot longer than our relationships with them as children.

This realization is one of the very founding reasons we created Slow Family Living. Our goal is not to tell people how to parent, but rather to offer ideas, tips, tools  and inspiration for finding ways to build that sustainable connection with your children; with your people.

While Slow Family Living is about offering lots of ideas, it is not about offering more dogma. It is not about supplying one way of doing things.

It is about slowing down long enough to find ways to build connection.  And it is about encouraging families, parents, children to see that family life can be enjoyed, not merely endured. Here is a very simple list from our Slow Family Living workbook of what we think Slow Family Living is…

• Continuously asking “Is this working for us?”
• Finding ways to live the life you love
• Knowing you have choices
• Consciously making decisions
• Doing things because it feels right for your family
• Taking into consideration each member of the family and their stage of development
• Making the family unit your priority
• Sometimes taking a stand against the status quo
• Possibly doing it differently than the way it was done for you
• Trusting that what you have to offer your family is enough
• Seeing, hearing, appreciating each other as individuals while seeing the family as an entity
• Believing that there is no right way, just the way that feels right for your family

Sometimes it’s about checking out. Other times it’s about joining in. And it’s always about slowing down, connecting, and finding ways to enjoy family life, now and for the life long haul.