If You Can Grow Kids, You Can Grow Anything

by Sharron on July 30, 2010

"So, this is where garlic bread comes from?"

"So, this is where garlic bread comes from?"

I spent this morning digging up garlic bulbs with my delighted 5-year-old daughter. She shouted every time she brought one out of the earth and into the scorching July sun. We stopped at 50 bulbs; both of us hot, dirty and reeking of garlic. It was fun for both of us, but also profound. She loves garlic bread, but never would have imagined this delicious treat could come from under the dirt!

Growing vegetables is more than a hobby for me. Oh sure, I’m geeky enough to take pictures of my garden and post them on Facebook. But farming is part of my past, present and future. I’m the granddaughter of farmers on both sides of my family and have always known where food comes from – both animal and vegetable. For me, growing food is an essential life skill for my children – and if my dreams come true someday – for all children. Just as I teach my girls the alphabet, I also show them how to plant seeds, water and mulch them, and most importantly, how to harvest and prepare the food. What they get from the process is part science lesson, part cooking lesson and part spiritual awakening. Children begin to see the cycle of life in gardening, but issues of life and death are a lot less scary when dealing with plants. Farming also raises the consciousness of children about their food supply. At the age of four, our daughter refused to eat pork when she found out it came from pigs, her favorite animal. This lasted for an entire year with our full support.
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Lost Child, Lost Mom

by Kelly on July 27, 2010

IMG_4054Let me tell you this story of what happened the other day.  While we were out, my son disappeared from my sight for about 10 minutes.  I tell you, not because it’s entertaining, or to share my experience as a warning that “something like this could happen to you someday, but because when this happened, I didn’t react the way I thought I would.  It seems like my AP skills went out the window, and I’m trying to rationalize that.  For a few moments, my child was lost, and I lost myself as a parent.

One second he was there, and literally the second after I stooped to pick up my bag he wasn’t.  We were in the locker room of our health club, just after a swim, getting ready to leave & go to lunch.  Did he run ahead to wait for us? Sometimes he runs to wait by the basketball courts, but when I got there, he wasn’t.

Did he go into the men’s locker room?  Sometimes he thinks it’s funny to run in there because he knows I can’t follow.  My daughter was with us, and while I don’t think she should go in the men’s locker room anymore, she is under age 6 and technically allowed in.  So she went through the men’s locker room, looking for him, calling his name, checking the showers.  No brother.

She and I walked around downstairs, checking places he might have gone to watch exercisers or wait for us. With still no luck, we went upstairs through the restaurant, thinking that maybe he assumed we were going up there for lunch after swimming. Nope.
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Keeping Your Breast Milk Healthy

July 22, 2010

Breastfeeding is widely touted as the healthiest way to feed your baby. Each mother’s milk is tailored to her baby’s specific needs. Breast milk is highly digestible and full of maternal antibodies. Breast milk from the source is always warm, never spoils and has never been recalled due to contamination. However, several recent stories in [...]

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Separation Anxiety – Your Child’s and Yours

July 16, 2010

Register now for API’s next live teleseminar: “Separation Anxiety – Your Child’s and Yours” with special guest Elizabeth Pantley. Register for this call to hear hosts Lu Hanessian and Lysa Parker talk with Elizabeth Pantley about: If you work so hard at creating attachment, why encourage separation? Do AP children have more separation anxiety than [...]

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Weathering The Picky Eater Stage

July 12, 2010

The other day, I made lunch for myself and my two kids. Chicken sandwiches on wheat bread all around, apple sauce for them and a pickle for me. I was putting dirty utensils into the sink when I turned around to see that my 5 year old son had snatched the pickle off my plate, [...]

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Finding your Work / Parenting Balance as a Single Dad

July 9, 2010

Work/life balance isn’t a challenge exclusive to single dads – the vast majority of single moms I know work too – but I think that finding balance between work and parenting is tougher for men. Decades after the modern feminist movement began, our culture still reflects the belief in men as so-called breadwinners and women [...]

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Follow The Leader

July 7, 2010

Learning something when you’ve been told you need to know it is pretty boring sometimes. Following your child’s lead and letting natural interests develop is a lot more interesting. My almost 6-year-old is having a lot of fun with this large map, finding the places he has heard about, comparing how far they are from Baltimore, [...]

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Wearing a Toddler

July 5, 2010

My son Jacob is 22 months old. He loves to run and climb and jump and throw balls and all those things that toddlers do. He is no longer the babe in arms that he was for the first months of my life, carried from place to place by others. Today, he motors under his [...]

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