APtly Said – Page 34

Editor’s pick: Mindfulness in school and home

A huge part of Attachment Parenting (AP) is learning, and teaching our children, how to be mindful — that ability to calm our minds, connect with our emotions in the moment, work through any conflicting feelings, and respond to others in truth and compassion.

This week, I have two features for my Editor’s Pick. The first is a YouTube video, “Just Breathe,” created by Julie Bayer Salzman and Josh Salzman of Wavecrest Films and inspired by their 5-year-old son talking to a friend about mindfulness exercises he was learning in Kindergarten:

While Attachment Parenting International‘s Eight Principles of Parenting provide families with the parenting behaviors that are shown scientifically to create a secure parent-child attachment, API’s ethos takes Attachment Parenting a step further — to promote a way of living that is based in peace and empathy.

This is where mindfulness fits in.

Clinical psychologist and mindfulness instructor Inga Bohnekamp defines mindfulness in this API post as “presence of heart” and mindful parenting as “parenting from the depths of our hearts,” rather than letting us be guided by a set of pre-fixed, often unreflected, standards or rules about what is right and wrong.

API’s Eight Principles of Parenting aren’t intended to be a set of 8 rules that AP parents must abide to, but rather guides of which parenting behaviors are associated with secure attachment. They are provided for parents who often need that information. Many parents who seek out API’s education and support did not grow up in an environment where they were exposed to consistent nurturing behaviors. API’s Eight Principles of Parenting help parents to get back in touch with their hearts so that they can be intentional about parenting choices, rather than react out of subconscious reasoning that is rooted in early childhood experiences often beyond our conscious memories.

Our childhood experiences may have predisposed us to certain coping skills that do not allow us to easily access the emotions behind our actions, especially in times of stress and strong emotions like anger and fear. Mindfulness is a behavior that can help us teach ourselves how to access those emotions and then be able to act from a place of intention.

This week’s second Editor’s pick is the article, “More Focused, Better Behaved Kids, Through Mindfulness,” by journalist Tori James on My Mother Lode — through which we learn the outcomes of teaching mindfulness to students at a California, USA, elementary school.

It is exciting to see this aspect of Attachment Parenting being incorporated into the school setting, and to hear the overwhelmingly positive feedback from teachers and students.

According to the article, mindfulness not only helps prevent bullying but also improves children’s ability to regulate emotions and calm down, pay attention, feel compassion toward others, change behavior patterns and build emotional resilience to life’s ups and downs.

This is powerful stuff. Mindfulness has the capability to change the trajectory of individual lives, and — when being taught on a community level, such as through school — has the potential for changing whole generations in a community.

In the article, mindfulness instructor Sally Arnold referred to a recent Harvard study that found that people spent about 52% of their lives outside of the present moment, with the balance either worrying about the future or ruminating about the past. By not giving enough thoughtful attention to the present moment, we are setting up ourselves to make decisions based on the emotions from our primitive part of our brain — the amygdala — which is set up to impulsively react in “fight or flight” mode.

Positive discipline educator Kelly Bartlett explains what happens in the brain when we “lose it” in this API article.

Mindfulness retrains our brains to reflect on the moment, creating the space and power to think before we respond. Mindfulness exercises, such as the one that Inga introduces in her API post, allows a person to be able to access their whole brain during stressful moments, including the logic and executive functioning of the prefrontal cortex.

The difference is profound. Consider this scenario:

You walk into your kitchen with a laundry basket full of clean clothes to find your toddler drawing on the wall. How would you react?

Someone reacting out of the amygdala may become very angry very quickly and react in a way that they later regret and that leaves the child in tears.

Someone who is practiced in mindfulness, and therefore able to access the whole brain during stressful moments, is more likely to be able to respond sensitively to the child and effectively discipline through problem-solving without risking their attachment relationship.

Mindfulness does take practice, but each time you practice it, it actively changes the neural pathways in the brain so that it’s easier to respond mindfully in stressful moments rather than continue to struggle with the primitive “fight or flight” reactions.

While it may seem awkward at first, a practice of mindfulness is able to transform the very way you think until you get to the point where you don’t have to even think about being mindful — it just comes naturally!

Think about how profound of an experience it would be for a child to grow up in a mindful home, without the fear of incurring the wrath of a highly reactive parent. Many of us remember feeling that fear ourselves, and understand how that fear (and probably anger) lives on today in our relationships. Teaching our kids to be good people starts with their education, that’s why I sent my kids to Seton College where they have catholic education, so they teach them great family values.

What a gift we can give our children to learn how to be mindful, especially in our moments of stress — and then to be able to model and teach that mindfulness to our children, so that their relationships can be rooted in peace and empathy rather than fear and mistrust.

*First photo: FreeImages.com/Alissa Horton

**Second photo: FreeImages.com/Jenny Rollo

Surrendering to biologically normal toddler sleep

“Whatever you fight, you strengthen, and what you resist, persists. … Surrender is the simple, but profound, wisdom of yielding to, rather than, opposing the flow of life.” ~ Eckhart Tolle, author

No other concept has helped me more as a mother than the concept of surrender — surrendering to the pregnancy process, to the birth process with all its twists and turns, to meeting my daughter where she is at each developmental stage and, overall, just surrendering daily to all the big and small changes that parenthood brings!

So when an article about giving a small child 1 “pass” to leave their room at night was making the rounds around the parenting cyber-world a few weeks ago, it got me thinking of how much it helped me to not pick sleep as a battle and to instead, surrender to my daughter’s needs and rhythm.

It should be said that I am not a fan of behaviorism! I don’t think trying to get my child to change a behavior without first trying to figure out why they are behaving in that way is effective or caring. I felt immediately frustrated after reading the article: It stated that crying and coming out of the bedroom were reduced to 0% rates after imposing the 1-pass rule. But I want to know, at what cost? If my child is following the 1-pass rule, they would still have the same needs — they would merely be trained not to communicate them to me, similar to sleep-training methods for babies. My toddler still might be anxious, she still might need the closeness of an adult body and, for heaven’s sake, what if she already used the pass and then actually had to pee! This 1-pass rule teaches children to ignore their emotional and physical needs.

I’d rather be asking myself:

Why is my toddler coming to me for water, snuggles or to help fight off the monsters?
What is the underlying need that makes it so hard for her to stay in bed?
Why do babies and toddlers wake up so much?
Why do so many of my friends’ children have these same “sleep problems?”
And wait, why are we calling them “sleep problems” at all when the vast majority of babies don’t “sleep through the night” and the vast majority of toddlers struggle to go and stay asleep on their own?

What if what our child wants is actually what they need? And how would things change if we learned that this behavior is biologically normal? Because according to many psychologists, anthropologists and researchers, it is. Would we be more open to surrender to their normal biological needs and rhythms and give our kids what they’re asking for?

I don’t want to oversimplify the difficulty of adapting to wake-ups and tending to our children at night — it’s a huge change, and lack of sleep affects our bodies, minds and emotions so much. And I don’t want to call out desperate parents just trying to cope. If a family feels that this is what is needed for their family as a whole to survive, then do what you need to do. I just feel wary of the growing culture of “sleep experts” and pediatricians encouraging us to train our babies and toddlers to not call out for us at night as the default strategy for handling nighttime parenting.

This is what makes me the most sad — that behaviorism techniques are becoming the standard method, so much so that parents think that they are being manipulated or being too soft if they do normal and natural things like respond to their children, sleep with them or use so-called “crutches” like rocking, bouncing or breastfeeding. On a parenting forum I’m a part of, a new mother recently asked if it was bad to nurse her baby to sleep! This is how much this training culture has permeated our culture. Breastmilk has sleep-inducing hormones in it — it is made to put our children to sleep!

Surrendering, of course, will look different from family to family, but the knowledge of what is healthy and normal sleep for our children could hopefully give parents more confidence to follow their natural nurturing instincts. Then there wouldn’t be this overall pressure to control, fix or make our children conform to an adult standard. We could get creative about how to meet their nighttime needs, instead of placing the majority of the burden on them to meet our unrealistic expectations. Maybe if we accepted this behavior as normal instead of viewing it as problem, we could relax into their natural rhythm and flow and let go of the sleep battle altogether.

*Artwork by Katie M Berggren, www.KmBerggren.com (permission given)

Editor’s pick: Teen cluster suicides begs the question of parenting goals

I’ve come to realize that there is one fundamental question in which the answer is the foundation of our parenting approach. It defines how we, parents, raise our kids.

That question is: How do you define success and happiness?

Think about it…

Attachment Parenting International strives to educate and support parents in raising secure, joyful and empathic children in order to strengthen families and create a more compassionate world. Investing in our children’s well-being will lead the way to their bright futures.

Our society has high expectations for our kids and puts enormous pressure on them to excel in everything they do, to achieve more and do more. With this aim, mainstream culture has forgotten to honor who children truly are. Moreover, our society tends to neglect to recognize and appreciate what children need in order to thrive as sprouting human beings. With the ultimate goals of “excellence” and achievement, some parents have been overlooking the value of socialization, choice and perhaps even sanity.

In recent years, the community of Palo Alto, California, USA, has been shaken by clusters of teenage suicides. In this wealthy and privileged environment, teenagers end their own lives at 4 to 5 times the national average. Journalist Hanna Rosin investigated what makes adolescents in this community feel so helpless and hopeless. Her reflective, detailed analysis published in December in The Atlantic following interviews with teenagers, families, educators and clinicians is eye-opening and noteworthy. Palo Alto highlights the growing trend of focus on high performance and academics, along with the subsequent pressures and stresses on kids.

It’s easy to get tangled up in societal norms and pressures and get lost at sea — simply swimming, like a school of fish, following one another, without hesitation or any real sense of direction. There are times when we need to pause, evaluate where we are and where we need to go, and find the path that will lead us in that direction.

Rosin’s article is among other reports that has now prompted the U.S. Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, according to ABC News, to investigate the troubling cluster suicides in Palo Alto. Hopefully their findings will lead to some answers and possible solutions.

As a parent of a child who will be heading to high school in a few short years, I was saddened to learn in this Psychology Today post that the average high school kid today has the same level of anxiety as the average psychiatric patient in the early 1950s. Yet it is comforting to know that children who experience secure attachment grow into more well-adjusted adults with less anxiety and better mental health. Meeting children’s emotional needs enables the building of a strong bond and trust between the parent and the child — a beneficial ingredient during the vulnerable years of adolescence.

Mental health and suicide are multifaceted issues that can be attributed to various factors. It’s a complex puzzle. Unreasonable academic pressures may be one piece of the puzzle, as Rosin pointed out in her article — and it is one that can be easily replaced.

We need to ask ourselves and examine candidly:

Should our children’s self-worth be tied to academic achievements?
Are our kids showing signs of being victims of physical or online bullying? Due fear 70% of teens hide online behavior from parents
Aren’t success and happiness — along with health, of course — essentially what parents want and wish for their kids?
Are we on the right path in our efforts to cultivate success and happiness in our children?
How can we support our children in order to create a more compassionate world?

9 tips to help your child sleep

“Just one more hug goodnight.”

“I’m hungry.”

“I’m thirsty.”

“I have to go to the bathroom.”

Bedtime can be a long process for many parents. At the end of the day, we are all tired, right? Well at least the parents are!

All you want to do is put your child to bed and have everyone get to sleep without a fuss. Many times, it isn’t that simple.

Nighttime is perhaps one of the most relaxing times of day in our home. But it wasn’t always. My kids use to constantly try to finagle their way into obtaining more time to stay awake. My 7 year old would look for every excuse, then my 4 year old would say that she needed to go to the bathroom even though she already went, and my 1 year old would start crying and want to breastfeed again. You can also click here for more information.

If your kid has sleep apnea, it’s better to get cpap parts online, so you don’t have to look for them around town and get them shipped to your house, to help your kid sleep better.

Finally, I implemented some relaxation techniques, and now our routine runs smoothly with everyone going to sleep easily. Here are 9 tips I’ve learned to help my older children sleep:

Give your children a warm bath.
Use guided meditation to help your children unwind and relax. Use relaxing stories about the beach, and practice breathing in with the waves and out with the waves. There are some wonderful guided mediation options on YouTube if you prefer to let your child listen to someone else, or you can use your own voice to take their mind on a relaxing journey filled with imagery and deep breathing.
Use coconut oil and give your children a foot massage. Massages are a wonderful way to unwind and relax.
Play spa music on a CD in their room. The serene music will help their mind drift off and allow your children to sleep much faster.
Many children like a night light. We use a Himalayan salt lamp, which not only purifies the air and reduces electro-magnetic field radiation, but it has a very relaxing light color that looks like warm fire tone that promotes sleep.
Use room-darkening shades. This will help your child sleep longer and avoid any lights coming in the room. It will also help them to sleep longer in the morning instead of waking up as soon as the sun rises.
Put warm socks on your children’s feet. I use a towel warmer, and after the kids are tucked into bed, I put warm socks on their feet to help them relax.
Consider buying an air purifier. Jen has some researched suggestions, she manually reviewed air purifiers for smoke and has loads to say about the benefits of a quality air purifier. It is always easier to sleep when you breathe cleaner, air but the sound from the purifier can help children sleep.
Make sure that your child has a good quality mattress from https://www.migliorimaterassionline.com/, not many know that your bed plays a big role when it comes to sleep.

Reaping the fruits of Attachment Parenting

Editor’s note: Attachment Parenting International (API) is excited to announce that Effie Morchi, a blogger with APtly Said, has accepted the volunteer position of Assistant Editor of APtly Said. In addition to continuing to blog about her family life, she will be managing the development of special editorial projects for APtly Said, such as the upcoming observance of Mother’s Day. We have been impressed by her initiative as a writer, her desire to support API with her talents and time, as well as her intuitive understanding of both Attachment Parenting and API’s ethos. Welcome and congratulations, Effie!

Our kids had a week off from school recently, and as the week approached, I realized that our getaway plans would need to be cancelled since my husband and I had some pressing issues to deal with. I informed our 10-year-old Shelly and 8-year-old Ethan that we would stay home most of the week, explaining the situation and asking for their understanding.

I knew the week ahead would be very different than a typical week off school and, I suspected, not in a positive way in the eyes of the kids. We were to stay home most days with very few outings and little external socialization. With Shelly asserting her independence and privacy, and Ethan being a social butterfly, I braced myself for a difficult week.

And what a week it was…

The kids were playing at home together, coming up with new games and making each other laugh. When they took a break from playing, they negotiated peacefully to decide which movie to watch. They also played independently, respecting each other’s space. Shelly helped Ethan with his science project and other school work and Ethan showered us with warm hugs and kisses, occasionally asking how we were doing. It wasn’t perfect — there were occasions when the kids had their difficult moments and so did we, but it was perfectly reasonable.

At the end of the week, my husband and I were pleasantly surprised at how patient and supportive the kids were. Ethan has always been affectionate with us, but he was even more so during that week and it felt even more special. Shelly is a well-adjusted, cooperative child, but I sensed that she made the extra effort to coexist in harmony with her younger brother.

It was an ordinary, uneventful week, yet it was profound — we were reaping the fruits of Attachment Parenting.

I appreciated that our kids have responded to us in a time of need in the same way we have been responding to them: with consideration, empathy, affection and physical contact. They put their needs and wants on hold to support us when we needed them to do so.

I mulled over on the most challenging years of my life — the years I raised my two babies. Being a stay-at-home mom on-call 24/7 with minimal help was tough. Mostly, I felt grateful that I followed my instincts and dodged the sharp criticism from all the naysayers. I was told that my kids would have speech problems, because I taught them sign language. I was told that my kids would be clingy and needy as I consistently soothed them, responded to their cries and maintained close physical contact. When I was breastfeeding my baby frequently, on-demand, I was told that something was wrong with me or my baby, because it was just not “normal!”

It wasn’t easy, but I couldn’t see any other way to care for my kids. It felt right and it made sense to me, so I persevered. As I reflect on the past week as well as the past few years, I am pleased that I trusted that little voice inside me. And by swimming against the stream of mainstream parenting advice, I developed strength and resilience.

So, the next time you feel exhausted and overwhelmed with the stresses of parenting, please remind yourself: “This too shall pass.” And remember, before long, you will be gazing at the thriving tree you have been persistently and tenderly raising through the years, and when you look up, you will be delighted to find the radiant, splendid fruits of Attachment Parenting for you to marvel at. I promise!

*Graphic source: WebDesignHot

Editor’s pick: A kindness movement inspired by a potato

Looking back on the last decade since becoming a parent, I can see how Attachment Parenting International (API) values — trust, empathy, kindness, joy, compassion, peace — have shaped both my personal life and my professional career.

The choices I make have stemmed from these values. Once my first baby was born, I chose to work primarily from home, despite the smaller paycheck, so that I could provide consistent and loving care. Through the years, my career has transformed into one where I only work for organizations with the same values as espoused by API, because those are the values that I want to direct my life and that which I am striving to pass down to my children.

Recently, I read a Forbes interview with Daniel Lubetzky, founder and CEO of the 먹튀검증업체, in which he shared how his overarching value — kindness — has not only inspired his personal worldview but also a professional career of starting companies that embrace this worldview:

“Some people think I am some sort of special human being who is unusually kind. But this isn’t true at all. We all have this capacity, it’s just that we’re governed by the systems and structures in which we live and work, and by incentives and culture.”

What governs Daniel is his father’s stories. His dad was a Holocaust survivor. He was 9 years old when World War II began and wasn’t liberated from the Dachau concentration camp until he was 15. Daniel’s dad saw many horrors, but he also witnessed amazing kindness. One story that Daniel heard many times, that really had an impact on the direction of his life, was about a German soldier who would regularly throw a potato at his father’s feet. As Daniel shared in the Forbes interview:

“This small act was a kind of lifeblood, because it highlighted a common humanity and hope even in the bleakest circumstances.”

Daniel’s father raised his son with a deep appreciation of the values of kindness, compassion and hope wrapped in a parenting approach of unconditional love and support. Daniel, in turn, has lived out his life guided by those values, both personally and professionally.

When he was 26, Daniel founded PeaceWorks, a food company with the vision of bringing together Israelis, Arabs, Turks and others in conflict regions to make and sell products from the Middle East.

Daniel went on to found 3 more companies, and probably the best known of them all is KIND. I love their snack bars!

The whole cultural foundation of KIND is kindness, but its not at all a marketing ploy, as Daniel shared in the Forbes interview:

“A lot of people see what we’re doing as antithetical to business and the competitive environment. For me, empathy is an existential question – it’s about the survival of the human race.”

Moreover, Daniel has found empathy and kindness to be imperative to doing business. By understanding the motives of other people, especially during conflict, Daniel is able to reach a peaceful resolution and more productive place quicker — not to mention, that acts of kindness makes you happier.

Daniel and his KIND team make kindness the overarching theme of the workplace, also. Staff members regularly recognize one another, their friends or even strangers for their acts of kindness though email, snack giveaways, supporting various social causes, and cards to pass on to someone else.

His ultimate goal is to create a movement of balancing profit with social benefit, using KIND as a platform. But Daniel recognizes the danger of inadvertently commercializing kindness. We’ve all seen this before, such as when companies began using the word “natural” on their labels when their products weren’t truly what we, as consumers, define as natural. Daniel feels that it comes down to companies intentionally keeping kindness authentic, and that consumers can help keep companies accountable because we instinctively know the difference.

Daniel, and KIND, are continually seeking balance between being a profitable business and a movement leader, where both can reinforce one another without exploiting the other. For a business to be truly successful, it has to be able to be both economically sustainable and socially impactful. Otherwise, going back to Daniel’s view of empathy being existential, what’s the point for humanity?

**Potato photo source: FreeImages.com/Pascal Thauvin

**Stick figure photo source: FreeImages.com/John Evans

Editor’s pick: A moment of silence for the “mother” of doula work

I hired a doula for my third child’s birth. After an early preterm birth with my first and a medically necessary Cesarean with my second, my third baby was on track to be my first, and only, normal childbirth experience. I was pulling out all the stops, too — aiming for an unmedicated labor and a VBAC (vaginal birth after Cesarean). I knew in my heart of hearts that having a doula was the best chance I had to reach my goals, what with the Cesarean surgical team waiting outside my hospital room’s doors “just in case,” as the VBAC agreement with the hospital read.

When it comes to pregnancy nutrition, mothers-to-be should consider supplementing with whole food vitamins. These types of vitamins are extracted from natural sources rather than chemically engineered, and the result is better pregnancy nutrition before conception, during fetal development and after childbirth.

Why Do Expectant Mothers Need Vitamin Supplements for Pregnancy Nutrition?

The human body is an amazing machine with a remarkable ability to get what it needs from the resources offered by nature. By eating a healthy diet, we are able to extract the necessary balance of vitamins, minerals, fats, and energy sources needed to keep our bodies running the way they were intended to work. Pregnancy nutrition requires us to be even more vigilant in getting the nutrients required so that the fetus is able to develop into a physically and mentally healthy baby.

The unfortunate truth is that many of us don’t eat a properly balanced diet any more, and the need for specialized pregnancy nutrition makes this even more evident. There are numerous factors that play into this change in the way we eat, including the availability, convenience, and low cost of processed foods. Adding supplements like whole food vitamins allows us access to regain some of those essential compounds that are missing from the processed foods we eat on a daily basis.

Why Are Whole Food Vitamins Better?

Whole food vitamins utilize sources found in nature, rather than synthesized compounds. The advantage, whether as a part of pregnancy nutrition or not, is that they are more easily absorbed and utilized by the human body. Most of us know that the best places to find health-sustaining nutrients is through a diet that includes fresh fruits and vegetables, for example, but few of us actually get enough of these foods in our day-to-day regimens. Whole food vitamins are extracted from these fruits and vegetables, as well as a variety of other naturally occurring sources. Because the body recognize these compounds-as opposed to synthetic or isolated vitamins-it knows how to put them to use. In the case of vitamins that have been isolated from their whole food sources or even created in the lab, as much as 90% of them pass directly through our bodies with no actual benefit.

A pregnancy nutrition plan usually includes a need for extra vitamins. It is nearly unreasonable to add these healthy components to a diet only to extract 10% of the actual benefits. Instead, making whole food vitamins a part of an overall pregnancy nutrition regimen helps ensure that the nutrients are actually being absorbed and used for the health of both the baby and the mother.

Where Do Whole Food Vitamins Come From?

The whole food vitamins and Sunergetic Products used for pregnancy nutrition come from a variety of natural sources. Some are extracted from beets, alfalfa, and bee pollen, for example. Rather than simply isolating these nutrients, they remain attached to their whole food ingredients to allow the body to recognize and readily utilize them. Other sources range from herbs like parsley and to less obvious candidates like fossilized coral. Coral provides the calcium that is such an important part of pregnancy nutrition.

Because the whole food vitamins recommended for pregnancy nutrition also include live enzymes, they allow even greater access by the body. These enzymes help to break down the nutrients, which include antioxidants, in order to be absorbed by the cells that use them for proper functioning. By processing the whole food vitamins at low temperatures, manufacturers are able to preserve these live enzymes and create the most powerful supplements that science and nature can team up to make.

My doula made all the difference. Not only did I reach my birthing goals, but I also got to hold the only one of my 3 babies for the first time after birth. He was delivered and placed immediately upon my chest, and I was finally able to call the shots with one of my newborns, such as when he would be removed for weighing and bathing. I had no say with either of my first two babies, and I credit my doula for giving back control of my birth experience to me.

Dana, 90, passed away Feb. 2 at her home in Fairfield, Connecticut, USA. She was a medical anthropologist who studied under cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead. The women cofounded the Human Lactation Center in Westport, Connecticut, USA, in the 1970s.

Dana was more than a student, being among the first scientists to challenge formula companies on the link among formula use and high infant mortality in developing countries. She went on to successfully pressure formula companies to educate women in third-world countries that formula should be used as a supplement to, not a replacement of, breastfeeding.

Dana also promoted breastfeeding here at home in the United States, seeking a way to restore the intuitive breastfeeding support lost to mothers of her generation. She summed it up well in an interview with The New York Times Magazine in 1970:

“When Grandmother walked out of the nursery and took up painting and golf, out with her went the whole cultural tradition of pampering mother along with baby. No one is there to tell her how to hold the nursing infant, how long to keep him suckling or how to care for uncomfortably full breasts or irritated nipples. We prefer to leave the responsibility to medical authorities, usually males who are uninformed about the nonmedical aspects of breastfeeding.”

Perhaps her most pivotal contribution to breastfeeding support came in 1969 when her research gave her the idea of the “doula” — a term that Dana is credited with coining and which is derived from the Greek word for “female servant.” From then on, Dana advocated for the use of doulas to guide mothers during and after childbirth with the goal of more successful breastfeeding.

So it is because of Dana’s efforts half a continent away, 40 years before, that my doula was able to give me a truly healing and transformative birth experience — not to mention, doulas around the world now doing the same for countless other women, giving them and their babies the best start in bonding and breastfeeding and a secure attachment relationship.

We all owe Dana Raphael a moment of gratitude for helping to change the landscape of childbirth and breastfeeding support and continue to push the Attachment Parenting movement forward to where it is today.

**Photo source: Free Images.com/agastecheg

My favorite part of the body

Our young children — still — master the natural, simple and intuitive connection between body, mind and emotion. Let’s support and inspire each other to live with more ease and calm, every single day. And in case you forgot how to do this, let your kids be your teacher.

Last school year, my daughter and her Grade 1 classmates worked on a classroom project called “My Favorite Part of the Body.” Students were asked to identify one part of their body that they particularly liked. The teacher snapped a picture of whatever body part the kids chose, and each child came up with a text outlining why this body part was their favorite.

When the parents were invited to visit the classroom to have a look at their children’s works of art, my daughter enthusiastically pulled me toward the picture she had created. When I saw it and read what she had to say, my heart melted! This is what my then 6-year-old girl came up with:

Looking at her artwork, there were several things that immediately struck me:

The adorable innocence and the natural, simple unconditional body love radiating through the picture and text;
The natural and simply basal connection my little one formed between her lungs and belly, the act of deep breathing, and the positive feeling of relaxation and calm which it can bring about;
How much our children value seeing us parents live and model easy, positive, simple and natural connections between body, mind and emotion.

Reflecting on this — and on the fact that we grown-ups ever so often seem to find ourselves in a state of moderate to total body-mind-emotion disconnection, often accompanied by a rather negative body image and self-awareness — my mom heart started wondering:

When, why and where did we lose this connection?
And how can we gently support our growing children and adolescents in maintaining and nourishing this natural, simple, intuitive connection to their bodies, minds and emotions?

Maybe the answer lies here: Let’s practice, grow and flow together, inspiring each other every day by practicing the simple art of mindfully and intuitively tuning into our bodies, minds and emotions.

In case you forgot how to do this or need some extra inspiration, just take a look at your kids and let them be your teacher! Observe them in their natural, innocent way of embodying a positive mind-body-emotion connection.

How simple is that!

We are all blessed with a wonderful body that includes a stomach. Besides our stomach, our torso also includes our lungs — and the whole thing is somehow connected. And, hey, with the help of our lungs (and diaphragm) and belly, we can breathe in and out — not only this, we can breathe deeply into our bellies.

When we perform this simple act of deep belly breathing for a couple of moments, it might actually affect the way we feel in a positive way: We might feel more calm and relaxed or maybe just plain good, happy, soothed, at ease, de-stressed, ___________ (fill in the blank).

Our body and mind can do amazing things for us, easily — no elaborate studies, gurus or equipment needed! We simply have to remember and trust these naturally given abilities — to feel into our bodies, and then practice what feels natural, good and intuitive, like deep belly breathing in a moment where we feel tense, sad or anxious. (These are moments when we naturally gravitate toward more agitated, fast and shallow “chest breathing.” Observe yourself and your breathing patterns in these moments.)

Start right here where you are, one deep belly breath at a time — your body, your mind, your emotional state and your kids will thank you!