Hi! I’m new here to your blog and recently read this book, too. And just like you, I also had to pause and process for my initial reaction was worry inducing. It really shook my paradigm of being “child led.” but somehow both really resonates
with me. It also seems to contradict Dr. Peter Gray’s message, which also used to resonate with me too. I’m in the process of grappling both concepts. How do you reconcile these ideas? Another question, could you elaborate more on your approach of being present in a friendly way? Thank you so much for your wonderful insight.
Hi Micah, Welcome and thank you for your kind words! I have read a lot of Dr. Gray's work, too and appreciate his insights on the importance of play and giving kids freedom without constant adult meddling and control. While Neufeld and Mate caution us about peer orientation, I don't think their ideas are necessarily counter to Gray's just more analytic about what can happen when children do not have a solid attachment with primary caregivers. There's playing with children as playmates in order to practice necessary pro-social skills and there's being turned over to peers, if you will, that can creates negative outcomes when primary attachments are not secure. Hope that makes sense. Also, not sure what you mean about being present in a friendly way. Can you explain a little more? Thank you!
Hi Sara! Welcome and thank you for your sweet note! Come back when you can (and only if it feels easy. You are definitely in the busy season of life.) xoxo
Love this! I also recommend this book as it really helped me during a time when we needed to distance ourselves from "friends" and get back to core values as a family. It's nice to find someone who is versed on this topic. Thanks for the great read!
This is such a thought-provoking line of inquiry, Missy! It made me reflect a lot on my sons' peer relationships over the years (they're 9 and 11) and how they have always been happy enough to have other kids around, but that my husband and I have remained their primary attachments since birth. They're both social kids who make friends easily, but time and again, they seek us out to play with them, share their lives with them, help them process big emotions, etc. Friends have come and gone and they're just fine with that, as long as they have us. Now they're getting to the age where some kids they know are already starting to "date" each other, which we could also probably examine through this same lens. It makes me wonder if the reason nine year olds (!!) are seeking out romantic connections is because they don't have secure parental/adult attachments in their lives. Would love to hear your thoughts on that since this whole world of "dating" is very new to me.
Hey Melissa! Thank you for letting me know this resonated with you. I find all the research and insights about foundational relationships fascinating and believe, as a society, we inadvertently moved away from what children need both biologically and psychologically. When it comes to healthy peer groups, I also appreciate Peter Gray's work, too. Regarding "dating", I found it to be more prominent among school children than homeschooled kids. This could partly be due to volume, as in the number of kids being exposed to day in and day out. Kids in school learn quickly what's "cool" and what's not and tend to mimic the behaviors of other kids. There also tends to be a push to grow up faster, as in to look more mature than they really are. And you could be onto something in terms of insecure parental attachments leading to a desire to "find love". On the flip side, I have seen kids talk about dating innocently or use the word to simply indicate care for another without understanding the full meaning of the word. Overall, in my not so humble opinion, nine year olds have no business "dating"! It does make me wonder what they are witnessing at home or what sorts of messaging they are receiving about relationships in general. Could be a great research topic!
(Ahmie writing) I've been observing some of this with my five sons, who are in public school grades k-5 (elementary school in our district) then virtually/asynchronously schooled grades 6-8 and start doing college coursework through a program here in Ohio called College Credit Plus (the state pays for the college classes and textbooks if the kids are enrolled in a public school or public charter, only tuition if the kids are homeschooled, and I'm dyslexic/have Visual Processing Disorder so I did not feel equipped to teach my children the foundational learning skills on my own and my physical disabilities make participating in co-ops extremely challenging). They do public high school on a very limited basis around their college coursework, and the eldest two both completed their Bachelor's degrees before finishing high school (just before their 18th and 17th birthdays, respectively). My 3rd/middle son is finishing his Associate's degree as a 9th grader this semester and turning 15 a week after his community college commencement ceremony, we're trying to figure out his switching over to the local state university to complete his bachelor's degree and having some struggles with course selection (he plans to eventually earn a B.Ed in Middle Childhood Education, my husband has been a teacher since a few months after we finished our B.A.s together).
My eldest had a (non-binary, biologically female) sweetheart from the summer after 4th grade through senior year of high school, it ended badly due to trauma that other kid experienced during the pandemic (including being the one to find their dad's dead body while overnighting on visitation the weekend before the pandemic shutdown hit), and that kid had some pretty glaring attachment issues that I could only do so much to mitigate as a compassionate adult in the community. I'm still in touch with the whole family, but my son isn't ready to interact with them even three years later as the wounds are still too open. As far as has been disclosed, nothing ever went far enough between them that a pregnancy was at all a risk. My second son (who turns 18 this summer) has had interests in various girls, and dated one really lovely girl last summer, but she decided their lives were a bit too busy for one another and broke things off at the start of the school year. He's very introverted by nature (though blossoming significantly lately, through his own chosen effort to expand his comfort zone socially) so it takes a while for him to work up the nerve to express his interest in anyone, platonic or romantic. I worry about how things will go for him as he leaves the high school context where the opportunities to meet people his age are abundant, since he won't be going into undergraduate work (he finished a B.S. in Forensic Accounting and sat the first section of the CPA exam a week ago before heading off on a school trip to Italy on Saturday). My third son (yes, they're all boys - I have 5) has a sweetheart (also non-binary) from a good family that we're family friends with (my younger two are close friends to the sweetheart's two younger siblings). My son is 14 and the sweetheart is 13, they've been "dating" since this past summer which means they walk around holding hands, snuggle in supervised areas, and exchange not-quite-platonic-level kisses. My 12-year-old (who is virtual/asynchronous) has a new girlfriend since around Valentine's Day who he met at summer camp last summer, and also has good parents that I enjoy engaging with and supporting through some of the struggles they're experiencing (dad is actually stepdad, biodad is alive but out of the picture I think for domestic violence reasons, the one already-born sibling has significant disability issues, and a new baby is expected this summer. What it means to be boyfriend/girlfriend to them seems to be "we enjoy spending time together beyond the community activities our parents enroll us in, occasionally holding hands and sharing meals" and my son is helping her family with some home remodeling projects in ways that feel very wholesome to all involved. My 8-year-old son has a special interest in a girl at school that he enjoys being around for recess and is hoping that I'll get to know her parents so they can be a fuller part of our little cultivated village that I've been building.
I think the key to keeping it healthy for the kids is to have the parents all know each other well and supporting the core of friendship bonds between the families. That was something I experienced from the parents of my adolescent boyfriends (and with my husband's parents) and intentionally try to recreate in ways with anyone my sons introduce to me as significant to them (even very solidly "just friends"). I actually was the matchmaker for my secondborn with his best friend, because they were both introverts experiencing a lot of loneliness during the pandemic and I knew the other kid had a very community-minded single mom who welcomed more adults being present in her kids' lives (which was my childhood experience - my father left my daily life when I was 2, and it was some of my wonderful neighbors who helped me develop a sense of worthiness and self-confidence while my mother was working two jobs to keep a roof over our heads). When my parents divorced, my father forced my mother to also completely cut off contact with his side of the family, which hurt her deeply (she was more attached to my paternal grandmother than she was to her own mother, and the feeling was, from what I later learned, very much mutual). I have told my sons that they are not to expect me to cut off from my care anyone that they've introduced into my life as someone to care about, unless there has been abuse with no effort to remediate the issues (my firstborn's ex is not an exclusion from this, and my son acknowledges that - the kid's mom and older siblings are still in semi-frequent contact with me to the point the eldest sister invited us to her wedding more than a year after the breakup, but I declined to attend out of respect for my son's pain levels around the topic). I stayed friends with several of the families of guys I dated before I met my husband, and attended the wedding of one of my former boyfriends (I'm still in occasional contact with him, probably about as frequently as my husband is in contact with his college roommate). They are all members of my psychological village, and so long as we're all keeping one another's longterm best interests at heart while not undermining anyone's efforts, I think it can be healthy to let kids explore their romantic feelings in supervised ways so they can build the interpersonal skills that will hopefully make relationships of all kinds more durable throughout their lifetime.
Getting clarity on what it means to be "dating" or boyfriend/girlfiend/special friends/whatever, is a core part of our process here, though, and making sure that all parents (especially the ones with kids who could potentially wind up pregnant!) are keeping healthy boundaries with the relationships is, in my experience, a core part of keeping this a healthy part of child development. Interestingly, it's generally been the ones with capabilities of getting pregnant who have wanted to "level up" the relationship. Possibly also relevant to all this is that my children have all been born into the Unitarian Universalist denomination (I was raised completely secular with some new agey elements and became a UU because of my Sociology of Religion class leading me to discover it was a good place to find an already established village that wasn't going to be shocked if I mentioned my mother reading books about reincarnation to me as a child or enjoying contemplating crystal healing traditions as a hobby, and isn't in any way discouraging of my love of exploring world religious traditions - I'm very much a "Coffee Hour UU" and focus my "church time" on building community). Unitarian Universalism, along with our sister denomination United Church of Christ (which was my mother's childhood religious home that she didn't have time for post-divorce), offer Our Whole Lives healthy sexuality curriculum and my children have had that guidance in their lives throughout all this (and I've had the adults with children older than my own to process through all these topics!).
Old post that surfaced on my notes timeline. Just wanted to say, in regards to “He loved to play with balls, but he did not go up to another child who had a ball and try to join in. Instead, he waited until the child abandoned the ball and then went to get it or asked me to.”
Children have developmental stages of play. These assertions of needs for play and socialization and whatever parents think they’re seeing when they drive past a church playground filled with two year olds because they’re offering mother’s day out service are missing the context of what’s actually happening in a kid’s brain developmentally. A two year old can’t snd does not understand sharing toys or space or attention, doesn’t want to share, and likely has no desire to even interact with other children. This isn’t because they’re lacking some vital lesson in sharing that they need to be taught by being immersed with others or some failure on the parent’s part for not giving enough opportunities. It’s simply developmentally inappropriate. Associative play, where children acknowledge and interact with other children doesn’t emerge until 3-4. At 2, they’re moving from solitary play that begins around 3 months and lasts until onlooker play emerges around 2 where they begin to first notice others exist. Parallel play follows where they play side by side but don’t interact. The lack of interaction isn’t due to anti-social behavior. It’s just what their brains are capable of. We treat children like little adults and it’s hard to feel secure in our parenting because of the rush order we are putting on them.
Hey Brittany, yep. You’re correct! And the entire point of my essay is exactly what you explained—that we inadvertently push kids towards “friendships” b/c we don’t understand what’s developmentally appropriate or that we’ve been misled to believe that they need friends at younger & younger ages. That particular excerpt was to show how parents can be unnecessarily worried & what is actually natural for 2 year olds. ♥️
Hi Missy! I'm so glad we discovered each other in that other thread. In addition to what I added in the reply to Melissa, I also feel it's important to acknowledge the privileges we seem to share in having the economic and familial stability to provide this foundation for our children. As I mentioned in the other comment, I was raised by a single mother from the age of 2, when my father left her for the woman he'd been having an affair with (and then he married her, had two children with her, and they essentially tried to pretend I didn't exist for the remainder of my childhood). There are so many children in our neighborhoods who have stories more similar to my "origin story" than to my children's foundation of stability and reliability from their adults, and I feel called by the gratitude I hold to my own childhood neighbors to be that adult in the lives of as many children as I can, in whatever ways are healthy for all involved (and not stretching myself too thin!). It's a balancing act, and it's also sad to watch so many of my children's age peers be more emotionally attached to their digital devices than they are to any living being. The temptations of devices are a constant problem. From a link in your essay I went to the website for the book and requested a copy of the workbook (which I didn't remember existed), and I look forward to exploring the use of that in my communities. I also noticed that they've released a new update of the book since you published this, and I'm curious about the newly added post-pandemic chapter. Have you had a chance to explore that yet?
Another important aspect in my lived experience is the struggle with acculturation that is a part of the childhood immigrant experience. I come from a line of women who have all married men whose first language wasn't English, since my maternal line ancestress came to the U.S. from Prussia in the 1860s. My father was born in Germany (Ahmie is an approximation of how my German grandmother pronounced Amy, I legally changed it in honor of her memory) to a German mother and Polish father, my maternal grandfather's first language was German (I think he was born on US soil but I'm not sure), and my maternal great-grandfather's first language was Polish. I don't know any further back than that. The pressures to integrate into the new cultural home can be quite intense, and for childhood immigrants it is particularly unsettling. This is something I've been exploring with my (Canadian-born Chinese, naturalized to the US sometime in middle school after a few years in Hong Kong as a preschooler). He has a strong sense of loyalty to the Boy Scouts as a positive force in his childhood development, but I was opposed to having that logistics management piled onto our family's to-do list, and that is a mild source of friction between us to this day. He does not consider the alternative I've forged - whole family involvement in the Society for Creative Anachronism, where the adult to child ratio is better and we can each get mentored in whatever interests we have sparked in a hobby-full-of-hobbies while being in the same place at the same time for a few hours per week and occasional weekends - to be sufficiently meeting needs he felt were well met in his BSA years, but he can't give me a clearer definition of what that means (I think it's coming from his own peer orientation issues, and insecure attachment to his own very emotionally distant parents, with the BSA experience meeting his core belonging needs in critical development windows in ways our sons have not needed from a child-focused organization). I have done all within my power to cultivate intergenerational community for my family (including myself - I treasure the gentle mentoring I've received from parents a few steps ahead of me on this journey, who hold affection for my entire family).
The further into this parenting journey I get, and the more I observe the deviations in developmental pathways of others who have shared this parenting style with me for more than two decades now, the more I come to believe that we are all suffering from a deficit of the community village support our ancestors had from conception to grave. I think we're all craving it at a fundamental level particularly since the pandemic exposed our vulnerabilities and frailties that are intensified by our living such isolated lives. In some ways, growing up with a notable disability innoculated me to some of the struggles as I had to recognize my vulnerability and interdependence as part of my coming of age process (I've been in chronic pain since age 10, it hit with puberty onset, and adapting to honoring the needs of my body was core to my success in college).
Hi! I’m new here to your blog and recently read this book, too. And just like you, I also had to pause and process for my initial reaction was worry inducing. It really shook my paradigm of being “child led.” but somehow both really resonates
with me. It also seems to contradict Dr. Peter Gray’s message, which also used to resonate with me too. I’m in the process of grappling both concepts. How do you reconcile these ideas? Another question, could you elaborate more on your approach of being present in a friendly way? Thank you so much for your wonderful insight.
Hi Micah, Welcome and thank you for your kind words! I have read a lot of Dr. Gray's work, too and appreciate his insights on the importance of play and giving kids freedom without constant adult meddling and control. While Neufeld and Mate caution us about peer orientation, I don't think their ideas are necessarily counter to Gray's just more analytic about what can happen when children do not have a solid attachment with primary caregivers. There's playing with children as playmates in order to practice necessary pro-social skills and there's being turned over to peers, if you will, that can creates negative outcomes when primary attachments are not secure. Hope that makes sense. Also, not sure what you mean about being present in a friendly way. Can you explain a little more? Thank you!
New here, and loved reading this. Im going to save it come back when I can (as I am a mom to small children - twins).
Hi Sara! Welcome and thank you for your sweet note! Come back when you can (and only if it feels easy. You are definitely in the busy season of life.) xoxo
Love this! I also recommend this book as it really helped me during a time when we needed to distance ourselves from "friends" and get back to core values as a family. It's nice to find someone who is versed on this topic. Thanks for the great read!
Thank you for reading! It’s a powerful book & glad I found it early on. ♥️
This is such a thought-provoking line of inquiry, Missy! It made me reflect a lot on my sons' peer relationships over the years (they're 9 and 11) and how they have always been happy enough to have other kids around, but that my husband and I have remained their primary attachments since birth. They're both social kids who make friends easily, but time and again, they seek us out to play with them, share their lives with them, help them process big emotions, etc. Friends have come and gone and they're just fine with that, as long as they have us. Now they're getting to the age where some kids they know are already starting to "date" each other, which we could also probably examine through this same lens. It makes me wonder if the reason nine year olds (!!) are seeking out romantic connections is because they don't have secure parental/adult attachments in their lives. Would love to hear your thoughts on that since this whole world of "dating" is very new to me.
Hey Melissa! Thank you for letting me know this resonated with you. I find all the research and insights about foundational relationships fascinating and believe, as a society, we inadvertently moved away from what children need both biologically and psychologically. When it comes to healthy peer groups, I also appreciate Peter Gray's work, too. Regarding "dating", I found it to be more prominent among school children than homeschooled kids. This could partly be due to volume, as in the number of kids being exposed to day in and day out. Kids in school learn quickly what's "cool" and what's not and tend to mimic the behaviors of other kids. There also tends to be a push to grow up faster, as in to look more mature than they really are. And you could be onto something in terms of insecure parental attachments leading to a desire to "find love". On the flip side, I have seen kids talk about dating innocently or use the word to simply indicate care for another without understanding the full meaning of the word. Overall, in my not so humble opinion, nine year olds have no business "dating"! It does make me wonder what they are witnessing at home or what sorts of messaging they are receiving about relationships in general. Could be a great research topic!
(Ahmie writing) I've been observing some of this with my five sons, who are in public school grades k-5 (elementary school in our district) then virtually/asynchronously schooled grades 6-8 and start doing college coursework through a program here in Ohio called College Credit Plus (the state pays for the college classes and textbooks if the kids are enrolled in a public school or public charter, only tuition if the kids are homeschooled, and I'm dyslexic/have Visual Processing Disorder so I did not feel equipped to teach my children the foundational learning skills on my own and my physical disabilities make participating in co-ops extremely challenging). They do public high school on a very limited basis around their college coursework, and the eldest two both completed their Bachelor's degrees before finishing high school (just before their 18th and 17th birthdays, respectively). My 3rd/middle son is finishing his Associate's degree as a 9th grader this semester and turning 15 a week after his community college commencement ceremony, we're trying to figure out his switching over to the local state university to complete his bachelor's degree and having some struggles with course selection (he plans to eventually earn a B.Ed in Middle Childhood Education, my husband has been a teacher since a few months after we finished our B.A.s together).
My eldest had a (non-binary, biologically female) sweetheart from the summer after 4th grade through senior year of high school, it ended badly due to trauma that other kid experienced during the pandemic (including being the one to find their dad's dead body while overnighting on visitation the weekend before the pandemic shutdown hit), and that kid had some pretty glaring attachment issues that I could only do so much to mitigate as a compassionate adult in the community. I'm still in touch with the whole family, but my son isn't ready to interact with them even three years later as the wounds are still too open. As far as has been disclosed, nothing ever went far enough between them that a pregnancy was at all a risk. My second son (who turns 18 this summer) has had interests in various girls, and dated one really lovely girl last summer, but she decided their lives were a bit too busy for one another and broke things off at the start of the school year. He's very introverted by nature (though blossoming significantly lately, through his own chosen effort to expand his comfort zone socially) so it takes a while for him to work up the nerve to express his interest in anyone, platonic or romantic. I worry about how things will go for him as he leaves the high school context where the opportunities to meet people his age are abundant, since he won't be going into undergraduate work (he finished a B.S. in Forensic Accounting and sat the first section of the CPA exam a week ago before heading off on a school trip to Italy on Saturday). My third son (yes, they're all boys - I have 5) has a sweetheart (also non-binary) from a good family that we're family friends with (my younger two are close friends to the sweetheart's two younger siblings). My son is 14 and the sweetheart is 13, they've been "dating" since this past summer which means they walk around holding hands, snuggle in supervised areas, and exchange not-quite-platonic-level kisses. My 12-year-old (who is virtual/asynchronous) has a new girlfriend since around Valentine's Day who he met at summer camp last summer, and also has good parents that I enjoy engaging with and supporting through some of the struggles they're experiencing (dad is actually stepdad, biodad is alive but out of the picture I think for domestic violence reasons, the one already-born sibling has significant disability issues, and a new baby is expected this summer. What it means to be boyfriend/girlfriend to them seems to be "we enjoy spending time together beyond the community activities our parents enroll us in, occasionally holding hands and sharing meals" and my son is helping her family with some home remodeling projects in ways that feel very wholesome to all involved. My 8-year-old son has a special interest in a girl at school that he enjoys being around for recess and is hoping that I'll get to know her parents so they can be a fuller part of our little cultivated village that I've been building.
I think the key to keeping it healthy for the kids is to have the parents all know each other well and supporting the core of friendship bonds between the families. That was something I experienced from the parents of my adolescent boyfriends (and with my husband's parents) and intentionally try to recreate in ways with anyone my sons introduce to me as significant to them (even very solidly "just friends"). I actually was the matchmaker for my secondborn with his best friend, because they were both introverts experiencing a lot of loneliness during the pandemic and I knew the other kid had a very community-minded single mom who welcomed more adults being present in her kids' lives (which was my childhood experience - my father left my daily life when I was 2, and it was some of my wonderful neighbors who helped me develop a sense of worthiness and self-confidence while my mother was working two jobs to keep a roof over our heads). When my parents divorced, my father forced my mother to also completely cut off contact with his side of the family, which hurt her deeply (she was more attached to my paternal grandmother than she was to her own mother, and the feeling was, from what I later learned, very much mutual). I have told my sons that they are not to expect me to cut off from my care anyone that they've introduced into my life as someone to care about, unless there has been abuse with no effort to remediate the issues (my firstborn's ex is not an exclusion from this, and my son acknowledges that - the kid's mom and older siblings are still in semi-frequent contact with me to the point the eldest sister invited us to her wedding more than a year after the breakup, but I declined to attend out of respect for my son's pain levels around the topic). I stayed friends with several of the families of guys I dated before I met my husband, and attended the wedding of one of my former boyfriends (I'm still in occasional contact with him, probably about as frequently as my husband is in contact with his college roommate). They are all members of my psychological village, and so long as we're all keeping one another's longterm best interests at heart while not undermining anyone's efforts, I think it can be healthy to let kids explore their romantic feelings in supervised ways so they can build the interpersonal skills that will hopefully make relationships of all kinds more durable throughout their lifetime.
Getting clarity on what it means to be "dating" or boyfriend/girlfiend/special friends/whatever, is a core part of our process here, though, and making sure that all parents (especially the ones with kids who could potentially wind up pregnant!) are keeping healthy boundaries with the relationships is, in my experience, a core part of keeping this a healthy part of child development. Interestingly, it's generally been the ones with capabilities of getting pregnant who have wanted to "level up" the relationship. Possibly also relevant to all this is that my children have all been born into the Unitarian Universalist denomination (I was raised completely secular with some new agey elements and became a UU because of my Sociology of Religion class leading me to discover it was a good place to find an already established village that wasn't going to be shocked if I mentioned my mother reading books about reincarnation to me as a child or enjoying contemplating crystal healing traditions as a hobby, and isn't in any way discouraging of my love of exploring world religious traditions - I'm very much a "Coffee Hour UU" and focus my "church time" on building community). Unitarian Universalism, along with our sister denomination United Church of Christ (which was my mother's childhood religious home that she didn't have time for post-divorce), offer Our Whole Lives healthy sexuality curriculum and my children have had that guidance in their lives throughout all this (and I've had the adults with children older than my own to process through all these topics!).
Old post that surfaced on my notes timeline. Just wanted to say, in regards to “He loved to play with balls, but he did not go up to another child who had a ball and try to join in. Instead, he waited until the child abandoned the ball and then went to get it or asked me to.”
Children have developmental stages of play. These assertions of needs for play and socialization and whatever parents think they’re seeing when they drive past a church playground filled with two year olds because they’re offering mother’s day out service are missing the context of what’s actually happening in a kid’s brain developmentally. A two year old can’t snd does not understand sharing toys or space or attention, doesn’t want to share, and likely has no desire to even interact with other children. This isn’t because they’re lacking some vital lesson in sharing that they need to be taught by being immersed with others or some failure on the parent’s part for not giving enough opportunities. It’s simply developmentally inappropriate. Associative play, where children acknowledge and interact with other children doesn’t emerge until 3-4. At 2, they’re moving from solitary play that begins around 3 months and lasts until onlooker play emerges around 2 where they begin to first notice others exist. Parallel play follows where they play side by side but don’t interact. The lack of interaction isn’t due to anti-social behavior. It’s just what their brains are capable of. We treat children like little adults and it’s hard to feel secure in our parenting because of the rush order we are putting on them.
Hey Brittany, yep. You’re correct! And the entire point of my essay is exactly what you explained—that we inadvertently push kids towards “friendships” b/c we don’t understand what’s developmentally appropriate or that we’ve been misled to believe that they need friends at younger & younger ages. That particular excerpt was to show how parents can be unnecessarily worried & what is actually natural for 2 year olds. ♥️
Hi Missy! I'm so glad we discovered each other in that other thread. In addition to what I added in the reply to Melissa, I also feel it's important to acknowledge the privileges we seem to share in having the economic and familial stability to provide this foundation for our children. As I mentioned in the other comment, I was raised by a single mother from the age of 2, when my father left her for the woman he'd been having an affair with (and then he married her, had two children with her, and they essentially tried to pretend I didn't exist for the remainder of my childhood). There are so many children in our neighborhoods who have stories more similar to my "origin story" than to my children's foundation of stability and reliability from their adults, and I feel called by the gratitude I hold to my own childhood neighbors to be that adult in the lives of as many children as I can, in whatever ways are healthy for all involved (and not stretching myself too thin!). It's a balancing act, and it's also sad to watch so many of my children's age peers be more emotionally attached to their digital devices than they are to any living being. The temptations of devices are a constant problem. From a link in your essay I went to the website for the book and requested a copy of the workbook (which I didn't remember existed), and I look forward to exploring the use of that in my communities. I also noticed that they've released a new update of the book since you published this, and I'm curious about the newly added post-pandemic chapter. Have you had a chance to explore that yet?
Another important aspect in my lived experience is the struggle with acculturation that is a part of the childhood immigrant experience. I come from a line of women who have all married men whose first language wasn't English, since my maternal line ancestress came to the U.S. from Prussia in the 1860s. My father was born in Germany (Ahmie is an approximation of how my German grandmother pronounced Amy, I legally changed it in honor of her memory) to a German mother and Polish father, my maternal grandfather's first language was German (I think he was born on US soil but I'm not sure), and my maternal great-grandfather's first language was Polish. I don't know any further back than that. The pressures to integrate into the new cultural home can be quite intense, and for childhood immigrants it is particularly unsettling. This is something I've been exploring with my (Canadian-born Chinese, naturalized to the US sometime in middle school after a few years in Hong Kong as a preschooler). He has a strong sense of loyalty to the Boy Scouts as a positive force in his childhood development, but I was opposed to having that logistics management piled onto our family's to-do list, and that is a mild source of friction between us to this day. He does not consider the alternative I've forged - whole family involvement in the Society for Creative Anachronism, where the adult to child ratio is better and we can each get mentored in whatever interests we have sparked in a hobby-full-of-hobbies while being in the same place at the same time for a few hours per week and occasional weekends - to be sufficiently meeting needs he felt were well met in his BSA years, but he can't give me a clearer definition of what that means (I think it's coming from his own peer orientation issues, and insecure attachment to his own very emotionally distant parents, with the BSA experience meeting his core belonging needs in critical development windows in ways our sons have not needed from a child-focused organization). I have done all within my power to cultivate intergenerational community for my family (including myself - I treasure the gentle mentoring I've received from parents a few steps ahead of me on this journey, who hold affection for my entire family).
The further into this parenting journey I get, and the more I observe the deviations in developmental pathways of others who have shared this parenting style with me for more than two decades now, the more I come to believe that we are all suffering from a deficit of the community village support our ancestors had from conception to grave. I think we're all craving it at a fundamental level particularly since the pandemic exposed our vulnerabilities and frailties that are intensified by our living such isolated lives. In some ways, growing up with a notable disability innoculated me to some of the struggles as I had to recognize my vulnerability and interdependence as part of my coming of age process (I've been in chronic pain since age 10, it hit with puberty onset, and adapting to honoring the needs of my body was core to my success in college).
Hi Ruth! Me too. It seems less loaded and more relaxed, like childhood should be. :)