Presence – Page 21

Our lasting presents as parents

By Barbara Nicholson, cofounder of Attachment Parenting International (API) and coauthor of Attached at the Heart with Lysa Parker

My mom has a compression fracture in her spine and will spend Thanksgiving and maybe Christmas in rehab. At 95 years young, she has been in remarkable health for most of her life, so seeing her suffer in pain is so hard.

When something like this happens to an aging parent, the roles reverse and I find myself doing all the things that I’ve done for my own children, and of course the things that she used to do for me.

I’ve been reflecting on my childhood in the 1950s, helping me to realize how much my mother practiced what we now call Attachment Parenting.

One of my earliest memories is a Christmas when I was about 4 years old and wasn’t feeling well, so Mother held me in her arms that whole morning while my dad and brother unwrapped my presents and brought them to me on the couch. I can even remember that she was wearing a soft sweater, and I loved feeling safe and warm in her arms. She didn’t budge for hours, even though I know now she must have needed to get Christmas dinner on the table and clean up the wrapping paper — things that seemed important at the time.

As I bring my mother a glass of water or cut up her food, I think of all the times she so lovingly cared for my brother and I when we were home from school with some childhood illness.

Back then, in a time when doctors made house calls, everyone got the measles or chicken pox. My mom would give me a little brass bell so I could ring it whenever I needed her. To this day, I crave chicken soup and 7 Up when I don’t feel very well, as that was the menu prescribed and that’s what we got. We never had soda in our house, so it’s funny to me now that being sick was the exception!

As Thanksgiving approaches, I tear up thinking that my mom may not be able to come to our house. My brother and his family are flying in from Colorado (USA) so that will cheer her up immensely, but it won’t be the same if she’s not at the table, supervising the way the table is set and making her famous cranberry salad.

There is something intangible about these traditions, when they’re prepared with love and care, that is like a sacrament at the table. The fact that it takes Mother hours to prepare this little Jello salad with boiled cranberries, grated oranges and chopped pecans gives it a quality that takes us back to every holiday we’ve had together as a family.

My reflections lead me to so many of API’s Eight Principles of Parenting:

Feed with Love and Respect takes on another meaning around the holidays, and I hope that all of you also have family traditions. If not, you can start now and pass them down to your children.
Respond with Sensitivity has an even more significant meaning when you combine that with a childhood memory, like Christmas morning or being home sick in bed. You’ll never regret reading that favorite story one more time, when you know that as an adult your child will look back with such gratitude. That deep imprint will serve them well when they are caring for their aging parent.
The critical importance of Using Nurturing Touch cannot be overstated! My memories of my mother’s soft sweater and sitting on her lap while she’s reading my favorite fairy tales over and over to me are a tangible, tactile memory. Even though I can’t give my mother a big hug right now because it hurts too much, we can still hold hands while we watch television and give her a kiss whenever I come and leave.

Keeping our focus on loving connection around the holidays is everyone’s goal, but it can easily get lost in all the shopping and decorating. If I have anything to offer from my walk down memory lane, it would be:

Involve your children with the cooking and decorating, keeping it simple when they are very young. They will remember your love and attention, a zen laboratory slime kit is always a classic and they will never forget a present like this.
Find a recipe that you can pass down to your children that they will associate with loving preparation for a holiday meal. It could be a special dessert, dinner rolls or a cranberry salad!
No matter how busy we get, take plenty of time for touch, holding and reading favorite stories. As much as we watched television back in the 1950s, my fondest memories are of story time, not TV time.

Much love to you all and Happy Holidays!

Whose kid was that?

Editor’s note: This post was originally published on Sept. 16, 2008, but serves as a great reminder for any parent who’s been faced with a tantrumming child in public.

“I’m a parent educator. I’m a mom of four. I am an advocate for all things Attachment Parenting. I should be able to handle this. So, what the heck am I doing wrong?”

These are the thoughts running through my head at the grocery store the other day.

The store is being remodeled. It is glaringly bright, noisy and busy. The aisles are a crazy maze of disorganization. I have little, 6-month-old T-Bird in a sling, while 5-year-old Bug is doing her best to keep up with me, behave and be curious. The inarticulate “wonk wonk wonk” of the store manager is blaring out of the announcement system and competing with the world’s most annoying music.

All of this is completely grinding on my very last nerve.

T-Bird is her usual, content self and smiles happily at every face she sees from her sling.

Bug, however, has always been less content in these situations. She is much more sensitive to light, sound and disorganization. Even as a very little baby, we recognized that Bug needed things to be a little more quiet, a bit more calm and a lot more toned down.

This was where practicing Attachment Parenting (AP) became invaluable to us.

Bug didn’t like to be close all of the time as a baby. So, we couldn’t depend on babywearing or breastfeeding to be a cure-all with her. But Bug did love being near us so that she could quietly observe us, then practice the skills she had observed.

It became clear to us that Bug absorbed all of the things happening around her equally and that the two most important jobs we had as parents were to help her discern important information from background noise and to model appropriate behaviors.

If we hadn’t been able to respond to her with patience, compassion and understanding, life with Bug would have been much more difficult and frustrating.

She was my third baby, so I was able to recognize that her needs were a little more…ahem…demanding than my first two babies. But I accepted that this was just Bug and her unique personality.

I often try to imagine what might have become of Bug if she had been born into a different family. These thoughts always make me terribly sad — not just because I would have missed out on a wild ride and knowing an incredibly creative kid, but because there is nothing that makes her more upset than being misunderstood. And without AP, Bug would certainly be misunderstood.

So, here I have just dragged Bug into a situation that I know is almost impossible for her to handle. She is skipping and singing loudly in the store in an attempt to compete with the noise and activity surrounding her. The chaos is getting to me as well.

I feel the tightness in my jaw and notice the snippy edge to my voice as I remind Bug to stay close. I could swear that the noise went up an decibel or two. We are winding around abandoned shopping carts, other shoppers and remodeling debris. Bug runs head-on into a woman’s legs. I apologize to her while trying to laugh it off and blame it on the “crazy construction.”

I can read Bug’s face: She is embarrassed to have run into that lady and is worried that I am upset. I smile at her tell her that she is my favorite 5 year old. She groans out loud and starts to open and close the freezer door repeatedly in response.

Not good.

I decide that we have had enough and I need to get all of us out of there while we are still sane. I know that I can always come back later or send my hubby if we still need something. My first responsibility is to be a sensitive parent, and Bug needs me to be that parent now. I’m kicking myself for not getting out five minutes ago.

Bug closes the freezer door one last time and follows me as I begin heading to the check-out. She is lagging behind and practicing her best lazy-legged shuffle. This time, I make the effort to use my most friendly, cheerful voice to remind Bug to stay close. She stops dead in her tracks. Arms crossed.

Oh no.

“Listen to me, Mom! I have had enough of you telling me what to do in this big, stupid store!” she shouts. Really loudly.

The younger, less confident version of me would have been mortified as the other shoppers snapped out of their shopping daze to judge my parenting skills. My ego screams for me to prove to these onlookers that I don’t tolerate this sort of behavior. My knee-jerk response almost bursts out of me: words meant to strip my child of her dignity in order to restore the good opinion of a bunch of strangers.

But I, the parent educator, the mother of four, the advocate for all things AP, can ignore the silent accusations and do what I need to do: be the parent Bug needs me to be. I take a deep breath and mentally flip through Pam Leo’s book Connection Parenting. I remind myself that Bug needs to feel a connection with me right now, not endure a lecture on how she should be behaving.

“Whose kid is that?” I gasp dramatically, while feigning a look of worry. “Where is my precious Bug? What have you done with her? I came here with Bug and now there is only this poor, tired kid who speaks so disrespectfully.”

Bug giggles at my silliness. I make a show of looking all around. I pick her up and look under her as she giggles some more. I manage to slip in a bit of a hug while I pretend to look behind her.

With T-Bird in the sling on my chest, I squat down to make eye contact with Bug. Here comes my Oscar for Best Supporting Mom in a Grocery Store…

“Oh! My little girl is back! Thank goodness! I was so worried while you were gone. This poor, tired kid showed up and said awful things to me! I sure hope that kid finds her parents and gets a hug.”

I get a big smile in response. I never even look around to see what all of those people think. I have to live with my children and the consequences of my parenting. My fellow shoppers are a blip in my day. My children are depending on me to be consistent and on their side.

We get out of there and go home to tell her Daddy all about the dramatic kid-mixing-up incident.

There is no night and day

Attachment Parenting International is 20 years old. Twenty years of promoting connection and spreading reassuring support to parents across the globe!

When I first became a mother, I followed every instinct to connect with and nurture my baby. I held her, I nursed her, I gazed into her eyes…regardless of the time of day. Strangely though, I met a lot of resistance to my “alternative” approach to parenting.

“Nursing AGAIN?!” became a common greeting, and although I did not waver in my approach, my confidence took a big hit. I was exhausted, and I felt alone.

This is where I thank Attachment Parenting International for showing me that I am not alone. I am so grateful to have stumbled, completely by accident, upon this wonderful concept of Attachment Parenting. It turns out that I am not alone in my approach. In actual fact, there are many, many more mothers like me, feeling the same way and taking the same approach of connecting with our children.

So many of us feel this sense of loneliness, particularly in the darker hours when exhaustion sinks in and it feels like the rest of the world is soundly sleeping. So to the mama who is feeling isolated and exhausted right now, I offer you this…

There is no night and day.

Once upon a time, not so long ago, I was awake throughout the day and I slept during the night. I moved throughout the day and was still during the night. The two were totally separate, as stark a contrast as light and dark.

And then baby bean was born, and all at once, light was thrown into my world in more ways than one. The edges of day and night started to merge together into a blurry grey smudge. You see, I had birthed The Great Unsleeper.

I knew nothing of tiredness before motherhood. The kind of tiredness that saps your body of strength, that throws its arms around you and just keeps squeezing, where you feel like the air is running out of oxygen and you forget which way is up, the kind of tiredness which almost makes you lose yourself.

Almost.

Almost, because you find yourself with every touch of baby’s soft skin, cheek to cheek. Almost, because you find yourself with every gaze held in those deep, pool-like eyes. You find yourself with every smile, every gurgle, every clap of the hands and sweet “mama!”

You find yourself when you need it most. You find yourself during darkness.

Because our darkest hours are actually scattered with stars, with gems of pure love. In this time that I once termed “night,” quietness rules. There is no sound in the world besides baby bean’s soft breath and my own steady heartbeat.

In honesty, there have been moments in which I felt isolated, scared and incapable during these dark hours. But these have been momentary flashes of doubt amid the darkness.

Because when I stop and look at my beautiful girl’s profile against the shadow-like beams of light lingering in our bedroom, I understand that I have all that she needs — that I am all that she needs. I understand that I am enough.

Nestled safely in my arms, she does not need light or direction to nurse. Resting her head on my shoulder as we sway forwards and backwards in our rocking chair, she does not need daylight to feel safe and content. Little bean and I do not race through this notion of “night,” because for us, there is just light and dark, and there is beauty and connection in each.

As we sit rocking, cuddling, nursing, I imagine the hundreds of hours that we must have spent in this peaceful state. I imagine us rocking across great distances, to other countries and cultures. I imagine us meeting versions of ourselves at each destination, all these miles from home.

A mother. A baby. Connected in darkness.

I imagine us rocking through time, backwards and forwards. I imagine us glimpsing versions of ourselves wherever we land, be it hundreds or even thousands of years away from here.

A mother. A baby. Connected in darkness.

You see, in truth, little bean and I are not alone once the moon rises. We are part of a bigger picture, a louder heartbeat, a stronger pulse. Mothers. Babies. Connected in darkness.

Because for us, there is no night.

Impact of praise, an inside view

I’ve been on board with limiting praise for my kids ever since reading Unconditional Parenting by Alfie Kohn. I understood the negative impacts of praise in theory, I learned how to limit praise in parenting and I was happy with my decision.

But I didn’t understand the internal impact of praise until recently.

The Back Story

My good friend is a yoga teacher, and while she’s relatively new at it, she’s also a total rockstar who’s managed to pack her schedule with enough yoga classes to more than compensate for the corporate job she left behind.

Recently she received feedback on her teaching from the owner of one of the studios where she works. We sat down to process the feedback, which shook her confidence a bit.

One of the recommendations was to stop praising — not that she does it very often. She asked for my thoughts on the matter.

As a coach, I know that praise moves us from a place of unlimited support to a place of judgement. By saying something is good or bad, I limit my clients’ experience so I’ve learned to leave praise out.

As a parent, I also know that praise takes a child’s focus off of himself and directs it to praise-seeking activities.

But as a yoga practitioner? I actually enjoy having the occasional “good job” or “nice pose” thrown in there. It gives me a lift and makes me feel good.

I shared my feedback and trusted my friend to process the issue on her own.

My Experience of Nonjudgement

At my friend’s next class — I attend one of her classes weekly whenever possible — I noticed that she didn’t praise. Not once.

And I noticed a shift within myself. As I adjusted and knew not to expect the praise, my attention began to focus more on my internal experience of my yoga practice.

What I began to realize was that those “good jobs” gave me a momentary high, but it was the kind that fizzles on the next pose when I wonder why I’m not receiving more of them. Am I not as good at this one as I was at the earlier one? Is someone else better than me?

In the absence of praise, I was able to understand the freedom of not being judged as good or bad. An authority person’s feedback, be they a teacher or parent, has a gravitational draw that brings our attention out of our own experience and focuses it on their assessment of us. The ego then kicks into high gear, measuring us and comparing us to others.

It’s taken me years of practice to learn to keep my eyes on my own mat. But in the process of eliminating praise, my friend helped me bring my full attention to my own experience.

The Implications

By focusing on my own experience, I suddenly am liberated to be present with my practice, noticing any tension or emotions arising that need my attention. I am freed by being in the present moment by feeling connected to everything that is happening, in exactly the moment in which it happens.

By stepping into my ego, which I experientially know is activated by praise, I step into a state of lack, of wanting or needing attention in order to be okay. This is what I call the “gimmes” — that place where you think you need stuff in order to be okay, be it praise or things. This gimme state just feeds on itself, creating a gimme monster.

I don’t want to disservice my children by shifting them into this mindset of lack.

Mindful Parenting

The Chinese idiogram for “mindfulness” pictured here is made up of two different elements: the top part meaning “presence” over the bottom part meaning “heart.” This makes for a wonderful translation of the word, “mindfulness,” into “presence of heart.”

I chose this translation as this introduction to mindful parenting, because I feel it is a wonderful way of expressing the very essence of mindfulness. If mindfulness can be described as “presence of heart,” I would like to describe mindful parenting as “parenting from the heart.”

Mindful parenting is parenting from the depths of our hearts, rather than letting us be guided by a set of pre-fixed, often unreflected beliefs about what is right and wrong — beliefs about things having to be done or seen a certain way, standards and rules we might have been brought up by and that might even have been around for many generations.

Mindful parenting in a way is about making your own rules — rules that nourish and suit your family’s needs at this very moment of your life. It is about connecting to your heart, to your instincts, to your intuition — all these parts deep down inside of you, which might be hard or even scary to access at times. It is about tapping into these — our own! — very powerful sources of wisdom while letting go of limiting beliefs that might rather blind us and make us prone to getting caught up into the same old drama and vicious interaction circles with our children, over and over again.

Mindful parenting is about looking at your loved ones — and your whole life! — with open eyes, an open heart and a curious mind. It is about taking life and the great and overly important work of parenting one moment at a time. It is about intentionally bringing your awareness to your life as a parent, and with the same intentionality, gently letting go of blinding and limiting judgements that might not serve you and your family any longer.

Once you embark on this exciting journey, mindful parenting will open your heart and mind to all kinds of new and creative views, to greater happiness and contentment. It will lead you to higher levels of compassion for your children, your family, yourself. It will organically guide you toward a way of parenting that is more in sync with what really matters to you as a human being and with what you would like to instill and ignite in your children. It will help you feel connected to your children and those around you at the very heart — naturally instilling a deep, raw and honest sense of interconnectedness and secure attachment.

Mindful parenting requires us to stay present, open, curious, willing to let go of our “inner judge,” who is constantly censoring and judging whatever is going on around us as well as what is going on inside of us — many times without us even noticing.

A wonderful way to begin with mindful parenting is to start with your own breath. Try tuning into your breath at different moments of your day. To start, you don’t even need to schedule this practice into your probably already über-busy days, although you might naturally want to gently make more room for it over time. You are breathing anyways. At any given moment. As long as you live. So start right here! Right in this very moment!

Right where you are at:

On your next breath in, follow your in-breath. Obeserve it. Can you feel the air flowing into your body? Where do you feel it? At the tip of your nose? In your throat? In your chest, maybe expanding your ribcage? Further down in your belly? What does your breath feel like? Warm? Or rather cold? Does it feel shallow? Or deep? Fast? Or slow?
Now follow your out-breath as it comes about. What does this feel like? Can you feel the air leaving your body? Where? What does your body feel like while you breathe out?

Explore! Be curious! Ask questions. Your breath can teach you a lot about yourself and your (inter)actions in this very moment. This will, at a later point, help you better understand and reflect on your thoughts, emotions, actions and your interactions with your children.

Once you start regularly bringing your awareness to your breathing, you will notice that you breathe differently at different moments. These variations in your breathing pattern are likely linked to different emotions, bodily sensations, activities or thoughts . They depend on what is going on in your life at this very moment. For example, if your stress levels are just about to skyrocket because it is one of those crazy Mondays, your breathing will likely feel very different in such a moment — can you feel it at all!? — compared to a moment where you are more calm and relaxed.

Can you observe this? Notice these differences? Stay present. Can you stick with the breathing and observing, without judging, or trying to make immediate changes? Give it a try! Start right now. Stick with it for a while. Go with the flow of your breath and see what it tells you and where it guides you.

With some practice, you will soon notice that you become more sensitive toward yourself, your children, your family, your whole environment. You will become more aware of what is going on inside of you — thoughts, feelings, impulses — as well as around you. You might feel a new or deeper compassion for yourself, as well as for your loved ones.

Over time, this will open up a whole new universe of compassion, love, creativity and space. You will notice that no matter how stressful, tense or messed up the situation you are in seems to be, you always have a choice. You have a choice on how you would like to react to a certain situation or interaction with your child, as opposed to reacting on autopilot or jumping into a judgmental mode right away.

Let me know how it goes.

Holding Space for Letdown

“All I want for my birthday is to go away with Daddy.”

It was months before my daughter’s sixth birthday. Although she had been on many vacations, she never traveled with her dad. My happiness at his agreement to take her away shifted into heartbreak when he decided to plan a trip without her. My only solace in his decision was that his trip overlapped with a vacation I was taking her on.

“Are you kidding me?” It was days before our vacation, and I could feel my eyes burn. As it turned out, his trip would begin when we returned home — he was going to miss her birthday.

***

“Am I going to see Daddy when we get home?” Our trip was coming to an end, and it seemed I couldn’t hold out any longer. I sat down to prepare for her reaction and told her the truth.

“It just doesn’t make sense!” Over the next 15 minutes, I could feel a stabbing pain in my chest as her yells slowly became quiet sobs, and she at last settled into my lap. “It just doesn’t make sense. All I wanted for my birthday was to go away with him, and he’s going away without me.” Her voice was practically a whimper.

I pushed back the tiny hairs stuck to her mucus-streaked face. “It doesn’t, my love.” I slowly circled my palm on her back, imagining the bright sun shining on us. “It doesn’t make sense.”

I wiped the tears from my eyes before she could see.

A few days after her birthday, we went for a walk in the neighborhood.

“Does my daddy only think about himself?” she asked, completely unaware of how wise she seemed.

As the pride swelled in my chest, I knew I had to stay calm. I paused, looking up at the sun, letting the warm rays wash over my face. Up until that point, I had assumed it would be years of missed birthdays before she thought his behavior could signify anything other than something fundamentally wrong with her. I felt years of concern slide off my shoulders, confident she was better armed to deal with her father than I ever was.

I considered my options. If I said “yes” I would be disparaging her father — something I was not suppose to do, something I didn’t want to do. But if I said “no,” I would belittle her discovery. I wanted to encourage her to question her father, but I also wanted to honor their relationship and my daughter’s need to navigate it for herself.

“Well,” I said. “I cannot say exactly what goes on in his mind because only he knows for sure.”

I leaned down and look her in the eyes. “But when I look at his actions and the decisions he makes, its the most logical conclusion I can think of.”

“Okay.” She smiled happily and skipped off singing, recovering from the conversation in a way only a 6 year old can.

Time passed, and she was going to her father’s house. Before leaving, she cried to me that she didn’t want to go. I wanted to encourage her to stay. I wanted to keep her from him, but I knew that it wasn’t my place. As her mother, it is not my job to keep her from her father. Its my job to give her what she needs to heal and let go. I told her I would miss her, too.

“Daddy! Daddy!” Her eyes glazed over, and she smiled with joy at their reunion. He greeted her with a loving embrace. She grabbed his hand tight, clinging to the connection she desperately wanted. I followed behind them for a moment, smiling.

Then I said goodbye and began to prepare the space within me that my daughter would need for her next letdown.

Choosing to Sit in the Dark

Brené Brown is a researcher at the University of Houston whose work centers on shame, empathy and vulnerability. She has written several books and speaks all over the world on these important topics, which have a dramatic effect on the ways we live, work and raise our children.

I just love this segment of one of Brené’s presentation’s about empathy that was turned into an animated clip.

She speaks about a topic that is so important for everyone, of all ages, but I especially love it as it applies to parenting. I know as a mom, I often want to “silver lining” things for my kids. They are struggling and having a hard time, and I want to help them feel better. I want to turn an unhappy situation around. My first instinct is to go for a response that minimizes the negatives and emphasizes the positives. It’s like I want to make my kids forget about what’s upsetting them so we can get back to being happy. To brush it under the rug.

But Brené makes an excellent point in that rarely can a response make something better. What makes something better is connection.

Instead of silver-lining things to help my kids feel better, I need to meet them where they are with those heavy feelings. I need to sit in the dark with them. I need to be present and not try to sweep their feelings under the rug just because they are unpleasant, but reach out and connect so that they know what they are feeling is normal. Only then will the weight of those feelings be lifted.

Here’s the difference between “silver lining” and “sit-in-the-dark” responses:

Child: “My friend was mean to me today. He didn’t want to play with me and just left me to play all by myself!”
Silver lining: Well, you still have your other friends to play with.
Sit in the dark: Oh, I know you were looking forward to playing with your friend today. You felt hurt when he didn’t want to play.

Child: “I am losing this game AGAIN! I ALWAYS lose at games!”
Silver lining: That’s not true; you do great at games! We’ll play another one, and I’m sure you’ll win the next time.
Sit in the dark: It’s so hard to lose a game. You feel really angry. I bet you wish you could win all the time!

Child: “I am trying to build a blanket fort, but it keeps falling over! One part won’t stay when I let go, and the other part isn’t tall enough. I can’t get it right!”
Silver Lining: What do you mean? This is a great fort! Look, you have a little cave you can hide in!
Sit in the dark: Oh that sounds frustrating! It’s not working out as easily as you hoped? I wonder if there’s something you could do to help make it more stable.

Child: “I’m trying to do this magic trick, but it’s not magic at all! It doesn’t even float in the air like the picture shows!”
Silver lining: But now you have a cool magic wand to play with. You can use it as a prop with your dress-up set!
Sit in the dark: Yeah, the picture makes it look different, doesn’t it? That must be disappointing. You wish the wand would float all by itself, so you could see real magic.

Sitting in the dark with our children means understanding that their feelings are real. It means not minimizing them or trying to wash them away but validating and embracing them. It means teaching kids how to feel. We may not necessarily agree with a child’s feelings, but we must communicate that we accept them. This is the essence of connection.

We must listen not with the intent to respond but with the intent to understand. ~Steven Covey

Revering parenthood is patriotism

By Terri Murray

While up in Washington, DC, USA, visiting my aunt and my grandma, one morning my husband and I were able to walk down the street with our youngest for a quick cup of coffee and to walk our Corgi.

The quick cup of coffee turned into a fascinating hour-long conversation with a former congressional candidate for the area. She was also a mother to 3 school-aged children and was very committed to being an active mom. She went on to tell me that she lived in France for some time and in various parts of the United States and had a very successful professional career as a Federal prosecutor that she gave up when she decided to become a mother.

With very little input from me, she went on to explain a lot of what drew her to run for Congress was that she wanted to honor and increase awareness on the patriotism of being a stay-at-home mom or the home-based mompreneur. Hmm…that was interesting. I had never thought to lump the stay-at-home mom or other committed mothers who may work outside the home with patriotism. I wanted to hear more!

She went on to explain that while living in France 30 years ago, she was pregnant and a new mom to their eldest child. She described that the French at that time perceived pregnancy and motherhood, among other qualities, as patriotic. France’s citizens revered moms, because they were raising the next generation of their society. They had a huge undertaking at hand. These moms were forged with raising and developing boys and girls that would one day be running their country and businesses, and serving their community.

And because of the gravity of this, moms were treated with respect and held in high regard. What a wonderful sentiment!

Instead of being the loathed fellow passengers on a plane, the nuisances in line at the grocery store or the disturbance at the restaurant, mothers with their children were treated like they were on an important mission and given respect and help when in public.

To her point, helping to raise and rear the children in our country–they don’t have to be your own–is as much of a moral obligation as it is patriotic. Our country is made up of citizens who were all once kids. Just as we should keep our parks clean and our roads in order, part of keeping this country great for everyone is ensuring kids are raised to become good citizens who contribute to society.

My newfound friend went on to berate a cover of TIME magazine, on which there are two young adults leisurely laying on a beach with the title, “The Childfree Life: When Having It All Means NOT Having Children.” The article described how the birthrate in the United States is the lowest in recorded American history: 1 in 5 women in America are not having kids. I think we both agreed that this was a personal choice and not all adults should or can have children. However, the point of her argument was the article’s claim of not having kids to be a prerequisite for “having it all.”

Should we really be reveling or trying to promote that not having kids in our lives is the only way to live the good life in America these days? After all, one day it is the kids that become the doctor or nurse giving us medical care, the political leader who will decide how our tax dollars are spent and what laws we must live by, the police officer or firefighter that protects us or responds to an emergency situation we may encounter, or the consumer or client for our products and services that support our economy and lifestyles.

Is it harmful to parenting or does it downplay the joys and happiness of the parents raising the next generation of Americans to headline you can’t “have it all,” because you have children. Is that really the society we want? If so, in the very simplest summations, we will have a short-lived society.

Now again, not everyone should or needs to have kids, and some want them but can’t physically, financially or emotionally have them. Fortunately, we live in a society where I don’t think childless adults are thought of as unfulfilled or living an abnormal life. But this title does imply a negative message about the undertaking of parenthood. “Having it all” is what I want! So because I have 4 kids, does that mean its not going to happen for me? I thought it already was happening!

We could further rant on as to why are others trying to define what someone’s life should be like to “have it all?” Anyone can make the case they “have it all,” and each of them will have a different life–and hopefully most of us feel as though we are living life at its best. I am focusing on the fact that it is sad that a national publication through its cover title is subtly and coyly sensitizing and normalizing the thought that children are a nuisance and an intrusive aspect of a quality adult life. They are not.

And let’s revere the moms and caretakers who decide to immerse themselves into raising children and acknowledge when they are great moms just as we would revere her as a CEO or other successful professional who made sacrifices and did what was necessary to get to her elite professional status. As a society, let’s not forget that the job these moms do at home are just as important, if not more important than a job they may do outside the home, because they are rearing and developing the future of our country.

Being a proficient mom and raising high-functioning children doesn’t just happen. It takes hard work, dedication and perfecting your actions to be successful. And their success in raising empathic and compassionate children helps better society as a whole. Thus this woman’s point: that devoted, purposeful moms are not only benefiting the children that they raise, but that America as a whole is strengthened. These children will grow up into our doctors, lawyers, police officers, policy makers, etc. The job we do as as parents and adults raising and caring for our young will dictate the future state of our society and our country. Hence, motherhood is a form of patriotism.

I hope we, as members of a society, look for opportunities to be a positive, helping hand for the children who come into our lives from our neighborhoods, communities, households or social environments as they hold our legacy and future as a great nation. I hope we do not begin to perceive children as interfering with our adult lives or as a speed bump to happiness. Let’s not start looking at them or their needs in a negative light, but look at how we can make a difference in their lives. What can we do to make our future generation into empathic, high-functioning, compassionate, thriving adults.

It just happened to be an coincidental conversation that got started, because it was with me–who is trying to help promote the benefits of Attachment Parenting in my world back home in South Carolina, and I take my role as a mom very seriously. She, on the other hand, just saw me with a feisty 2-year-old, and we were sharing space at a cafe.

I was fascinated by her thought and claim that part of being a dedicated and engaged mom in a sense is very patriotic and is good for America. And after our conversation and reflecting on it more, I have to agree.

Terri Murray lives in Fort Mill, South Carolina, USA, with her husband and their 4 children. She leads the Charlotte Natural Moms playgroup. Terri feels that her kids have changed her for the better beyond imagination and keep her on a journey of self discovery and betterment. The more she has learned about Attachment Parenting International’s Eight Principles of Parenting, the more she has found her guidepost for raising her kids. Her background was in genetics, and she is currently a Certified Health Coach and loves all things nutrition, traveling the world and meeting people.