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Or rather, let me let my children get hurt.
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I was at the mall the other day with Felix and Cosmo. We had rented one of the mall’s double-strollers, because while I don’t use strollers normally on walks or outings (or carriers much, once the kiddo can perambulate on their own), it’s a fun treat to be wheeled through the mall! We had stopped for some reason, and Cosmo and Felix hopped out. When it was time to roll again, Felix jumped right in, and I suggested to Cosmo that he also get back into the stroller. I stood back, while he started to climb up into the contraption, concentrating. He perched one foot precariously on the moulded plastic tray. I could see that he had a plan as to how to get himself hoisted up into the seat, and so I watched and waited. Another woman, with her young child sitting nearby, jumped up and practically ran over. She held out her hands near him, and then looked at me expectantly. I smiled vaguely, and proceeded to continue to stand five feet away, watching. The woman looked confused, and rather perturbed. Cosmo wavered, and nearly fell. The floor, likely linoleum over concrete, was approximately a one-foot drop. He struggled again, and again he nearly fell. The woman moved closer, creating a cage of sorts, around Cosmo, with her arms outstretched. She looked at me again. I smiled, somewhat archly (I hoped). She backed off a little bit. Cosmo righted himself (entirely ignoring the woman), and made it into the seat. All set to go. Had he fallen that one-foot distance to the ground, he would have, I can confidently say from experience, picked himself up off the ground and tried again. He is comfortable attempting these feats of ingenuity and bravery for the same reason that he is comfortable falling: he knows how to fall. He is confident. He is able. He doesn’t want or need my help. He knows his body, he understands gravity. And sometimes he gets hurt. Getting hurt is not an experience that is foreign to him.
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Beginning at the moment of birth, life involves discomfort, and sometimes pain. Discomfort and hurt, and pain, are not injury. When a newborn baby lifts her hand to her face and scratches at her skin, she is exploring her body, her environment, her boundaries, her self. She is not going to inflict an injury on herself! If she does experience the discomfort of a scratch as pain, she will stop, she will move away, she will adjust her force, she will learn. Babies are intelligent beings. Newborns have developed and grown inside their mothers’ bodies for ten months, and they have, at birth, an already highly attuned understanding of their own bodies.
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I wouldn’t dream of covering my newborn child’s hands with mittens. I believe it is important to allow babies to explore their selves, to touch their faces, to scratch at their faces! When it hurts them, if it hurts them, they will modify their behaviour, in that very moment, according to their newfound understanding of the power of their own bodies. This is the beginning of self-awareness, of developing a relationship not only with our bodies, but with the world around us. Babies are very smart, and every creature has an inherent will to live. Physical exploration of one’s own body is the beginning of discernment–the nascence of a human being’s ability to make larger, more general and more significant judgements about their own safety. This represents the most potent form of protection and insurance against injury and harm as future adults. It breaks my heart to see babies wearing mittens. I understand that it is difficult for parents to see the small red lines or abrasions that new babies sometimes inflict on themselves, but I think the tradeoff is significant. Preventing a child from exploring her hands and face creates intense frustration, and, I think in some cases, rage. It prohibits a whole range of developmental imperatives at that early, fleeting stage of life, and marks the start of a person’s initiation into a world of extreme regulation, and of thwarted agency and desire, which, when misplaced, may manifest in unfortunate and self-limiting behaviours later in life.
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Let your children fall! The ground will catch them. They need that experience. Falling develops not only the ability to fall (necessary!) but spatial awareness, agility, fortitude. If children fall when they’re little, if they are allowed to climb to a height that they decide is right for them, they learn their comfort level. They learn how to listen to their inner compass. Most children have a far greater range of motion, flexibility, balance, and awareness than do the adults around them! It is an insult to presume that we have a better sense of a child’s capacity than they themselves do.
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When we look at a four-year old climbing up a steep ridge, or a rock face, and we squawk, and object, and rush after them, we are imposing our own sad limitations on this child, projecting onto them, the fears that were often inappropriately and unnecessarily instilled in us by the fussy, fearful adults around us. The human body is designed for agility, for somatic intelligence, for movement and exploration. Keeping our children “safe” is crippling, for our kids’ minds and their bodies. We are wild animals. Let your kids be wild.
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Let your children get burned! Why not have the baby in front of the fireplace? Don’t misunderstand: I don’t leave my kids playing with fire on their own, while I luxuriate in the bath. No. But I do sit with my children by the fire, and I watch them get close to the flame, and I stop myself from speaking the admonishments that we are used to speaking, as adults, when we see children doing their important experiments. I let my one-year old feel the heat. I watch as he puts his hand out to touch the fire…and then I see him pull his hand back quickly–without the need for any intervention from me. I can see that he has a profound desire not to be burned. And a profound desire to understand his environment. And sometimes his profound desire not to be burned, abuts against his profound desire to learn the nature of fire, and he does experience the pain of extreme heat. And sometimes they get burned. I’m not even remotely concerned that he is going to put his hand directly in the path of the flame and keep it there. Every single person, (except those rare individuals with particular disorders) will go to great lengths to avoid pain and injury. Allowing our kids to experiment is *how* to create safety for our children.
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Lee organized a wood-firing that happened at our dear friend David Eastwood’s wood kiln a few days ago, down the road from us. It was a great group of people, and the kids were excited to be included in the event. I went down to the kiln site with them, to hang out. Near the kiln-site is a 6-foot by 3-foot trough, dug into the ground. It’s still cold out here in New Brunswick, but the day before (loading day) Horus was down there on his own with Lee, and he had stepped out onto the ice and fallen through–the depth was about two feet. Lee brought him home, cold and wet. No problem. Firing day was considerably colder than the previous day, and Felix and Treva were hovering around the trough, where a relatively thick layer of ice had reestablished. I saw Felix and Tree standing there, and I could see them thinking about walking out onto the ice. I was curious to see what they were planning! Would they risk walking out into the trough? Probably the ice would hold. And maybe it would break. I could see that they were making the same assessments that I was. All of a sudden, I heard the voice of one of the young firing participants. “Treva!! Get away from the ice! You’re not allowed on the ice! Get away from there!” And then this young, child-free woman, proceeded to charge past me (the mother), and run towards my kids, making quite a production about their “breaking the rules”. I tend to go into a state of paralysis at the moment that a social incident invokes deep irritation or anger. In fact, I was shocked that someone–especially someone so young, someone who doesn’t know me or my kids, someone totally unrelated to my family, someone without any responsibility for my children–would presume to assume anything about how I want to raise my kids. So I just stood there, and watched the event play out. Felix and Treva were chased away, and lost interest in the trough, and I quickly gathered them up and we left the firing.
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I want my kids to learn about ice, from a six-foot pond, while I’m standing right there, able to step in if there is actually a need. To my mind, this is a sensible, healthy risk. The worst that could have happened in that scenario, is that the ice might break, and they might get wet and cold. This is a true consequence, and a healthy learning outcome. But once again, we were thwarted by well-meaning bystanders. I’m sure it didn’t even cross the young woman’s mind that not only was she destroying a beautiful opportunity for my kids to explore physics, danger, and the natural world, but that she was also undermining my intelligence and my authority. I’m sure she felt that she was being the village that was clearly required in order to properly raise my children (because the poor kids obviously had a neglectful mother!) Pity.
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Safety–real safety–isn’t a static state, achieved by locks and padding and regulations, or by the imposition of adult notions of propriety, onto children and their need to try things out. Safety is established when everyone in a community takes responsibility for themselves, within a context of mutual dependency; when everyone in a family, or a society, can regulate their own bodies, and knows their own boundaries–including the boundaries of age and yes, status. Safety comes from ensuring that our children understand their environment and their limitations, and the nature of relationships in a given context. Safety is intrinsic.
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I do understand how stressful it can be to see your five-year old climb forty feet into a Chestnut tree. This is my life. And I understand that it can be uncomfortable for someone to witness the tension between a child and a patch of ice. Deciding to trust our children can be difficult. But I threw out my baby-gates a long time ago, in favour of allowing my kids to freely explore the steep stairways in my house, and I don’t regret this decision for a moment. When my babies decide that they are ready to climb…they climb! I try to stay close by, but I always let them go.
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Climbing, for little ones, is not just a desire, it is an imperative. I have trained myself never to say “you’re going to fall!” I don’t need to give them the curse of that prediction. I don’t need to say anything. But when I’m moved to speak (because like every parent, I get nervous sometimes too), I have trained myself to say “You’re climbing really high!”. Often, they are so focused they don’t even hear me. That’s great! Sometimes they hear me, and they say “Yeah!!!! I sure am!!!” And they keep going. That’s great! And occasionally–only very occasionally–they will stop and assess, and maybe hesitate, and maybe they will start to climb down. That’s great too.
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Children are born trusting themselves, and trusting their bodies. They already get it. They already know. It’s inherent to their existence–totally intuitive. I want my influence as a parent to strengthen that intrinsic intuition, and knowing, not to undo the genius of their bodies and minds working in concert. I want my kids to be able to take the inborn wisdom and confidence they emerge with, into all the adult areas of their life: the dark city streets, job interviews, love relationships, birth.
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Every time I go out into the world with my children, we are faced with the contradiction of our culture. On one hand, people tell me (with words, glances, stares, admonitions, proclamations of the rules, reminders, warnings) that my children are wild, and that I am to blame, and that I’m a neglectful, foolhardy parent, for not curtailing my children’s physical exertions. On the other hand, every time I leave my house, others remark, often with what seems like surprised admiration, that they have never seen, for example, a one-and-a-half year old, who doesn’t cry and seek immediate solace from me when he trips and falls. Cosmo isn’t unique in this respect. All of my kids have grown up without being told they’re going to hurt themselves, without being told they’re going to fall, and without having an adult rush to their side to save them when they do.
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This approach is not at all related to the school of thought that suggests that one should go out of one’s way to “toughen” the kids up, or that children shouldn’t cry, or that children shouldn’t be kids. In fact, I see it as the opposite approach. I want to honour my children’s authentic feelings, not dictate to them how they should feel, not deny their feelings. I also don’t want to coddle them–coddling is not an authentic expression of love and care, in my view, and it doesn’t make me feel validated as a mother, to have my children running to me for every minor tumble. My kids cry when they are sad, and they cry when they’re hurt. But I see my role as a parent is to witness them, and to hold space for them–not to save them, and in fact, not to protect them–not under normal circumstances, anyway. They have a powerful instinct for self-protection. In the vast majority of instances, they can save themselves, and they will come to me if they need me. Like every parent, I try my best to make myself available to my kids at all times, for anything, and I do do *a lot* of wiping of tears, and holding hands, and cradling little bodies while they cry. But not, generally, on account of cuts and scrapes and falls. (I hope I don’t have to explain that there are some circumstances in which I am utterly unequivocal: traffic, poisons, etc. Like every parent, I will do anything to make sure my kids don’t die).
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So far, (touch wood), none of my kids have broken any bones, or have needed any emergency room visits. This is not, I don’t think, in spite of their audacious climbing habits. I don’t think it’s luck, but a direct result of allowing them to almost entirely establish their own boundaries, and to explore their environment and their physical capabilities as they see fit.
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If I witness my three-year old taking a tumble, I will move my body a couple of feet closer to the scene, and I will often crouch down, and watch. Usually, the kid will start to assemble himself, and will look over, to see if his fall has been witnessed. I don’t say anything, and I don’t indicate that I feel sorry for him, or that I am especially worried (and I don’t worry if it’s just a fall, and I can see he is rattled, but unharmed). I watch, and I wait for his reaction. Often, he will look over at me with tears in his eyes, and I will give him a nod–Yes. I see you. And I love you. And I know that you can decide how this feels, and what this means. Occasionally, he will come to me for a hug, and I will hold him, and rock him, and say “that was quite the tumble” or something similarly neutral. Just this simple validation of his emotion and experience is usually enough, and allows him to gather himself, and move on quickly. But more often than not, all he needed was to be witnessed. And this is often all that anyone needs: we don’t need to be fixed when we get hurt. We want to be seen, and to be loved. It’s enough.
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Tonisa says
This comment really does not pertain to your post, but have you begun your Radical Free-Birth Class yet?