Ice Art

It doesn't feel much like winter now but last month we had a brief spell of ice and snow and the kids and I took advantage of the cold weather to make some ice art. It's such an easy, pretty project and the girls really enjoyed it. To make your own you will need:

*A small plastic container (we used the plastic containers that Chinese take out soup comes in)
*Water
*Natural materials such as berries, leaves and pine needles
*Glitter
*String
*A freezer or freezing temps outside

Have your kids collect natural items from outside and make a pile, then pour about half an inch of water in to your container. Arrange your natural materials in the water and add glitter. Loop your string so the end are submerged in water and freeze overnight. The next morning, hang your ice art in the sun. The girls also really enjoyed watching these melt and seeing the glittery puddles they left behind!

Why I don't Make My Kids Clean Up

The title of this is slightly misleading, I do ask my kids to clean up after themselves... when it matters. It drives me absolutely bonkers when people jump all over their kids to pick up after themselves the minute they finish whatever they were doing. For example, say my kids have been working together building blocks. It's a nice quiet morning, I'm enjoying my coffee and smiling about how well the girls are playing together these days as I sneakily listen in on their conversation. They chatter back and forth while they create a zoo out of our vast wooden block collection. Echo takes the role of project manager, directing Clover as only a big sister can. Clover runs back and forth fetching animals for the zoo. Her face will suddenly light up before she runs off, trotting down the hall, and brings back a giraffe and you can tell that is exactly what she had in mind by the satisfied look on her face. When they are finished building do I immediately jump in and say "time to clean up!"? All that hard work they put in building and working together, do I insist they knock it all down and put it away before they go outside to play? Personally I don't have the heart to do that. I would much rather deal with a messy house than rob them of their accomplishment by dismantling it the instant it is "complete". How would I even be able to tell when it's complete anyway? Of course the blocks can't stay their forever but in my mind there is nothing wrong with leaving them there for an afternoon, or even a day or two if they are still using them. Usually the blocks don't get put away until we need to floor space for something else or when things just get so cluttered that I feel like we need a refresh.

Another scenario that often happens at our house is that my kids while abruptly change course in the middle of a project (anyone with toddlers has experienced this I'm sure). So if we are sticking with the zoo building scenario, talking about zoos may lead to talking about animals we like or have seen at the zoo. This may give Echo the idea that she wants to paint some of the animals she has seen at the zoo and she rushes off, brimming with enthusiasm, to gather her painting supplies and begin work. That enthusiasm for her work, for her projects and for learning is so precious. The last thing I want to do is kill it by stopping her in her tracks and making put away her her blocks and toy animals before she can get out her paints.

As I said at the beginning of this post I do ask them to help me clean up sometimes. If we need a clear space to work on a puzzle, a large painting, or another project I will get them to help me put things away to make room. If the clutter is just starting to drive me nuts I will ask them to help me out. Just like any other member of our household, I expect them to be there for me when I tell them I need help. On the other hand I don't really mind picking up after them most of the time. I love to see them rushing off to the next activity, filled with excitement, and it's not a huge deal to pick up a few toys while they are busy doing that. The way I see it is that they are kids, it's their job to play, learn and grow. My job as their mom is to help them do their job and sometimes that means I do more than my fair share of cleaning. More often than not I am off joining them on their adventures and leaving the cleaning for another time anyway. Like my mom always says, there will be plenty of time to have a clean house when the kids are grown! In the mean time it makes me smile to see their creations, their projects, the evidence of their work, scattered all over the house. To me this is evidence of the rich lives they are leading.

Artistic Developments

Echo has been making some pretty cool 3 dimensional "installation" art lately and I wanted to share a few quick pictures of her work. The top one she made at her preschool coop, she picked up all these separate pieces and put them together to make a whole flower complete with a stick stem and leaves.

A few days later she put this fun face together with found objects on our couch. The rolls of tape are the eyes, the pencil and ribbon the mouth, the boots are the ears and the scarf and ball are the hair. Her creativity amazes me and is so lovely to see. 

On an another art related note, we recently got these awesome art frames from Walmart. They open up on a hinge so that you can easily display swap out your child's artwork, Having the art in a frame with a matte really elevates it and the kids get so excited about having their work displayed in such a professional looking manner. I love how easy it is to change the artwork out too since my kids are constantly creating new work. I highly recommend these for anyone with kids who love making art.

Homemade Playdough

I can't believe that it has taken me this long after having kids to make my own play dough! I think it's like a requirement for crafty stay at home moms ;-)

The cold winter months are perfect for this kind of activity and now that Echo is old enough to help cook things on the stove it seemed like the right time.

I got our recipe from the Artful Parent (awesome book that we use almost daily and a great blog as well). Here is the recipe (copied from the Artful Parent blog and pasted here for your convenience).

MATERIALS

5 cups water

2 1/2 cups salt

2 Tablespoons cream of tartar

8 Tablespoons vegetable oil

Food coloring or liquid watercolors

5 cups flour

Glitter and/or essential oils (optional)

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Mix the water, salt, cream of tartar, and food coloring in a large pot.

2. Cook the mixture on medium-low heat, stirring regularly until it is hot.

3. Add the oil and mix.

4. Stir in the flour, 1 cup at a time, mixing between each addition with a wooden or other strong spoon.

5. Continue to mix until the playdough pulls away from the pan and is no longer sticky. Pinch it between your fingers to test it (but be careful because it’s hot!).

6. Place the dough on the counter, let it cool a bit, and then knead.

Note :: This is the time to add glitter or essential oils, if desired. Simply place the additions in a well in the center of the playdough, then knead the dough thoroughly to mix.

7. Store the dough in an airtight bag or other container at room temperature. It will keep for months.

I added glitter, blue liquid watercolors and peppermint essential oils just to make it really fancy. The kids really loved making and using the play dough and it made a huge batch! I especially enjoy how good it smells with the essential oils, it's very relaxing to mush in your hands :-)

I have been storing it in a large ziplock bad in a drawer with our other play dough it so far it's holding up really well. We are going on three weeks now and it's good as new.

Art Spaces

Just a quick update on the kids artwork and working spaces. Clover is really starting to come in to her own artistically. Above you can see some of her current work. She has been experimenting a lot with stickers, watercolors, pastels and markers.

Meanwhile Echo is starting to get more representational. Above is a picture she did of Clover. This was the first time she clearly drew a face and as anyone who has studied childhood development knows this is a huge milestone! I was very proud of this work. She has since done a lot more face drawings and also loves drawing and painting apple trees.

Echo has had her current art setup for a while now and her desk is working really well for her, it's great that she has a place to go when she wants to make something that is all her own.

Clover has her own desk now too which is a recent development! It's been wonderful to see her gaining independence through having her own work space. She often gets her own paper out of the paper drawer, takes it to her desk and starts working on a drawing.

I also try to leave a blank sheet of paper out on Clover's desk at all times so that she can feel inspired to go create :-) It's so fun to see what the girls work on when they are left to their own devices.

Echo Cooks

For Echo's Birthday we got her a cookbook of her very own and she is turning in to quite the little chef! She has been interested in cooking for a long time and has been helping me in the kitchen ever since she could hold a spoon but it is fun for her to have her own cookbook that she can pick recipes out of and take the lead on.

We started simple with some popovers. They were a big hit with her and Clover so we have made them several times. We also tried some simple dessert type recipes out of the book and then I asked her if she would like to make dinner one night. She jumped at the chance and I helped her select recipes and go shopping for ingredients.

She ended up making popovers (of course) and veggie noodle soup. It was pretty cool to have our 3 year old make dinner for us with pretty minimal help on my part. She was so proud and excited about it too!

If you are looking for a cookbook for your young child I really recommend the one we have been using, Pretend Soup by Molly Katzen. I have several of Katzen's grown up cookbooks and they are some of my favorites! This one aimed at preschool to elementary aged kids is great with step by step picture instructions and simple, kid friendly recipes.

Magical Mornings

Yesterday I felt really validated in my decision that we needed more days at home.  When we have a lazy morning with nowhere we have to rush off to it's really amazing what we get done! Echo is turning in to quite the little reader and she and I have been devouring chapter books. She is really in to the Magic Treehouse series and she often sits through a whole book in one sitting which I think is amazing for a not quite 3 year old! She has started asking me more lately about what different letters are and what sounds they make so I can see it won't be long until she starts wanting to learn to read for herself. I showed her how to spell some words with her alphabet cookies during breakfast yesterday and she really enjoyed that (and yes, cookies are totally a breakfast food in my book).

Both girls are still really in to painting and while Clover loves experimenting with brushstrokes Echo has been very interested in mixing colors lately. Later in the day we all worked in the garden together.

Seeing what happens when we stay home reminds me how much free time the girls really need to explore and experiment on their own, especially at this age!

Resisting The Urge to Over Schedule

Clover bird watching through our front window

I have been so fortunate to connect with an awesome network of homeschoolers this year and as a result we have had a very full social calendar! I really hate to miss out on anything that sounds fun so I tend to jump at an invitation as soon as it comes up. The problem is that myself and my kids are rather introverted and as much as we love our new group of friends we all really need some down time to be happy and content.

Today we had planned to go to a really fun sounding nature walk with a group of friends but Echo kept insisting she didn't want to go (we had a playdate at the park yesterday with another group of friends that wore her out). At first I was inclined to argue with her and make her go, thinking that she would have had fun once we got there. On the other hand there is no reason we had to go, this kind of thing is supposed to be enjoyable and it's supposed to be for Echo. Why make her go if she says she doesn't want to? The more I thought about it the more I decided I could use a day to rest myself and so we decided to cancel.

Of course me being me I felt totally guilty about it but I think taking time to relax at home and and recharge is really important for all of us. We need those quiet days to stay sane and I really have to watch myself to keep from over scheduling and stressing everyone out! So today we will spend a peaceful day around the house and rest up for tomorrow's activities. Sometimes Echo seems to know exactly what our family needs and I just have to listen to her!

I feel so lucky to have so many amazing opportunities to connect with other homeschooling families and I am so grateful to have a ton of invitations for fun things to do. I am just working on finding the right balance for us of activity and rest.

Early Chapter Books

We have been entering an exciting new era with Echo over the past few weeks. She is just beginning to get in to chapter books and it is amazing! We are starting to do more family reading time in the evenings and I have been able to read out loud to her in the afternoons while Clover naps so that we can have quiet time. Honestly I feel like it's changing my life, it's making things so much easier and more fun! She still has a limited attention span for books without many pictures (she can listen to picture books all day though!) so we have to be pretty selective in what we read to her at this point. I'm also trying not to push it too much because even though I am super excited about it I'm afraid of overdoing it and turning her off of the whole "reading a book out loud as a family" idea.

So far we have read the Dragons of Blueland trilogy and the first Boxcar Children book. We started the second in the Boxcar series but it didn't really hold her interest so we decided to move on. I am currently reading her Charlotte's Web which she likes, and we are trying a little bit of Peter Pan but it is pretty far over her head at this point. Anyone have any good suggestions for other early chapter books? We are very excited about starting this with her!

Project Books

As an unschooling mom it is really exciting to see some of the things that I believe in start to happen with my kids. Echo is getting to the age where she is just interested in everything! Something that many unschooling parents do as a way to spark interest is something called strewing. This involves leaving interesting materials around for your kids to stumble upon in the hopes that they will find something that fascinates them. The materials you strew could be books, art supplies, building supplies, dress up clothes, a science kit, anything really! It seems as though strewing is starting to pay off in our house even though I didn't even do it intentionally.

Lately Echo has been really in to what she calls "project books".  You see, I am starting to collect a lot of books on projects and activities for kids. Echo saw me reading one of these books one day and she has been obsessed ever since. Our favorite of the project books is called Tinker Lab and it is great for younger kids (while also having a ton of projects that would appeal to older kids). If you have kids I highly recommend this book! The projects start out very simple and build in complexity, I think we will use it for many years to come. Lots of kids activity books seem to be mostly things that kids need a ton of supervision with which means that the parents end up doing the projects while the kids watch but this book is great about having projects that kids can actually do themselves!

Practicing drawing circles on a circular form (paper plates)

I tend to gravitate toward the art projects (obviously) but there are a lot of science and engineering type projects as well that we are starting to delve in to a bit. Some of the projects are very simple (like drawing with sidewalk chalk) but it's nice to have the suggestion written down with pretty pictures next to it because when Echo sees it she gets excited and wants to try it!

Echo has been practicing tracing shapes with sidewalk chalk

Echo regularly comes to me asking to do a project from her project book. Then we take some time to flip through the book and pick out something she wants to work on. Seeing how excited she gets about this is extremely gratifying. Her enthusiasm for learning new things is amazing and it's easy to see how her unschooling educating is coming together.

The projects can be messy, for example the goop we made in the above pictures (a cornstarch and water mixture that she loved playing with!), so it's nice that the weather is warming up and we are often able to work outside.

Monoprinting was a big hit!

The Tinker Lab book also has a huge section on how to set up your project space that I found really helpful. We ended up moving a desk down in to our living room so that Echo would have a place to work where Clover couldn't mess up what she is working on (now that Clover is crawling she is in to everything!).

Finished prints

We have a lot of good "project books" but so far Tinker Lab is our favorite. I have done a ton of different projects with kids over my years as a teacher but I love having these books on hand for inspiration. I think the best benefit of having the books out and available however is that the projects don't come from me. I don't set something up and say "this is what we are doing today". Instead, Echo can peruse the books at her leisure and choose the projects that excite her most. This is what unschooling is all about!

Play Dough Snowmen

We've had a lot going on around the house and so I have lots to blog about but to start I wanted to talk a little bit about Echo and her current projects.One of my new years resolutions was to start journaling about her interests and coming up with ideas on how we can expand on them.  My journal pages look something like this.

Picnics
       - pretend picnic indoors with play food
       - help plan and shop for a picnic
       - prepare food for picnics
       -read stories involving picnics

and so and so on. I list an interest first and then list ideas of projects we can do involving her interests. Well one of her interests lately is snow/winter. We have a book she got for Christmas about seasons in a town (In the Town All Year Round. It's truly fantastic!) and she is really interested in the winter season and winter activities such as snowball fights, sledding and building snowmen.

Unfortunately we have had a pretty warm winter so there is no snow to play in. I came up with the idea to make snowmen out of play dough and decorate them as an alternative though and it has turned out great!

hard at work

 She also got a massive play dough stash for Christmas so we have been making tiny snowmen and then decorating them with beads, paperclips, sticks, seashells, and other small items. It is a really great hands on activity and keeps her occupied for a good long while.

It's been really wonderful to see her unschooling in action. We follow her interests and let her set her own pace. We are starting to be amazed at the things she picks up without any formal instruction. She knows all the primary and secondary colors, can count to 10 and is beginning to express an interest in learning to write. We are having so much fun being her mentors on this unschooling journey.

Kid Updates

I feel like with the coming of the new year the kids have had some kind of transformation. Both of them seem to have had a huge developmental jump just in the last few weeks.  With Clover it has been mostly fine motor skills and hand eye coordination. Just last week she started intentionally grabbing for things and she is getting pretty good at it! She also recently discovered her feet which she finds fascinating. Besides all that she has suddenly become much more aware of her surroundings. She interacts with us more, she plays and giggles with us. It's like some magical switch has been flipped.

Echo has also been maturing greatly over the past few weeks. She is stringing together some pretty complex sentences these days. For example, "I want to take a toy from Baba's house back to my own home" and " I went to Target and got a coke and popcorn, that was fun".

She has also been showing a huge interest in fantasy and imaginative play. She informed Eric and I that she was getting married the other day. We were, needless to say, a little taken aback. We asked her who she was marrying and she said "mommy" so it's all good though :-) Apparently getting married in her mind means putting on a dress and dancing. Unfortunately I think that's all a lot of people care about when they get married but at this age it's pretty darn cute. I've "gotten married with her multiple times a week and I help her make elaborate dresses out of blankets and then we dance around the kitchen, pretty sweet if you ask me :-)

She also spends a lot of time "hiding from giants" which consists of the whole family hiding under a blanket until she tells us the giant is gone. After we poke our heads out she inevitably says "another giant's coming!" and we have to hide a again.  This kind of thing is a bit of a shift from the way she used to play pretend where she would mimic doing real things like cooking and cleaning. She still does these things too but the more fantastical play is fascinating to me, not to mention fun!

I'm also happy to report that after months of Echo showing no interest in doing art with me she has begun to explore different artistic mediums again. She loved painting when she was younger but around the time she turned two her interest waned and she pretty much stopped wanting to do any kind of art at all. To my credit I didn't force the issue even though I had always pictured spending hours upon hours painting and coloring with my daughter. I left the art supplies in an area she could access them but I pretty much stopped suggesting it as an activity since she didn't seem interested.

Just the other day she came to me with watercolors and paint brushes in hand and told me she wanted to paint. She then spent the next hour and a half painting peacefully at her little art table. It was amazing! When she finished that she wanted to use her new rubber stamps that she got for Christmas so she spent a good 45 minutes on that as well. Pretty cool! I don't know if her renewed interest in art will continue but I am happy to see her exploring different things and I am really impressed with her attention span. I've included some pictures of her work below.

 I feel like I am really entering a golden era with the kids. The terrible twos are already starting to ease up a bit with Echo and she is getting to be so much fun to talk to and play with. Clover is reaching an age where she can really interact with us and is coming close to being able to sit up which will make her much more self sufficient. These two girls fill my life with so much love and purpose, I am so lucky to be their mommy.

Unschooling a 2 Year Old

I've had a few people ask me when I plan to start unschooling Echo. I always do a little inward sigh when this happens because unschooling is so hard to explain (not that I don't love talking about it!). The thing is, unschooling is a lifestyle. There is no start, or I guess it would be more accurate to say that we start at birth and we never ever stop. We do a lot of "educational" things with Echo every day but it boils down to following her interests and exploring the things she wants to explore. My job as an unschooling mom is to provide her with the materials she needs and expose her to as much as possible so she can discover new interests.

For example: Echo has recently developed a strong interest in Winnie the Pooh. She is crazy about anything to do with Pooh and his friends. She talks about them all the time and can't get enough of reading pooh stories. We want to encourage her passion for Pooh as much as possible and have found her as many Pooh related resources as we can. We checked out pooh books from the library, My parents gave us a huge stash of Pooh books they got at the used book store along with some pooh figurines she can play with with. Eric's parents got her a plush pooh doll that she likes to sleep with and pretend to cook for. We have sticker books, classic pooh stories, modern pooh stories and we have watched every pooh cartoon we can get our hands on multiple times.

By following her interest and doing something she loves with her we are showing her the things she cares about are important to us. She is learning all kinds of things through imaginative play and language arts (if you want to put educational labels on things which I generally don't do). It is so exciting to watch her delve really deep in to something and it's amazing all the unintended things she learns just from exploring a subject she is passionate about.

Echo spends her days playing outside (see her amazing rock tower in the photos above), reading (us reading out loud to her and her looking through books on her own), painting and drawing, building with blocks, working puzzles, and cooking (both pretend and real). She also practices cutting, glueing, working with play dough, and sewing on the sewing machine. We take her to the library, the botanical gardens, craft and story time at Whole Foods, museums, parks, on everyday errands like the grocery store and hiking when we have the time. We have struggled with how to address boundaries for media but have settled in to a nice routine of having a family movie night a few times a week.

I'm sure I'll be writing a lot about our unschooling journey throughout the years but but this is how it works in the early years (and really later on too). We do what we do, we live our lives and we learn along the way.

Repurposing the Loft

A start to the new layout for the loft

In the almost four years we have lived in this house the loft space has undergone a number of reincarnations. It's served as an office, a studio, a family room/den, and a TV room in our short years here. As Echo gets older we are realizing the need to transform the space yet again and we have big plans this time!

I have always appreciated this space as a bonus room, giving us the extra space for whatever we needed it for at the time. Now that Echo is getting big enough to play with toys, do art projects and generally interact with the world around her more we want to create a "work space" that the whole family can use. I have recently been reading up on something called Project Based Home Schooling (check out the blog to learn more http://project-based-homeschooling.com/camp-creek-blog) and realizing the importance of giving the kids as well as ourselves a dedicated project space where we can experiment, make a mess and spread out whatever projects we are working on. Project based home schooling is a lot like unscholling in that it is child directed and the parents act as mentors and facilitators but it is a little more structured than what I would like to do with our kids. Nonetheless, it is a really exciting way to learn and there are lots of ideas I plan to incorporate in to our lives as the kids get older.

Reading nook

We have a lot of ideas for this space and want to make it an important part of our family life. It will need lots of storage for art supplies, books, blocks, puzzles, games, media and raw materials that can be used to create. We also want lots of floor space for work and play (which should be basically the same thing for kids, at least as far as I'm concerned).

Eric usually reads to us while we do art or work puzzles so we left a big comfy chair that he can sit in while he reads. It's positioned nicely by the window so it's a nice place to day dream as well, and it's big enough for the girls to snuggle up and look at pictures in the books we read.

The most important aspect of the work space however is giving Echo (and later Clover) her own space to work. So we started by lowering an existing table to kid height and stocking it with materials. It is still a tiny bit tall for her so we put out a chair that is her size as well as a floor cushion she can stand on.

Echo's desk

 I put out paper, glue, beads, buttons, scissors, stickers, natural materials like sea shells and acorns, colored pencils and office supplies to name a few. The idea is to provide her with exciting and stimulating materials and let her take the lead on what she wants to do with them. She has been very interested in learning how to cut and sew lately so I have been working with her a lot on that.

Supplies to inspire Echo

Speaking of sewing, I also made space for my sewing machine and computer in the loft. This lets me work on my projects right alongside Echo. If you are going to raise self directed learners one of the best things you can do is show them what life long learning looks like and be passionate about your own projects as well as theirs. Luckily I always have a million projects I want to do so this is no problem for me ;-) We moved my computer to the standing desk that Eric used to use before he moved his office to our basement and it is a great resource for looking up tutorials, playing music or watching videos.

Our next step will be to install more shelving and move the rest of our reference books up to the project space (these will range from art books to music books, computer programing books to writing books, pretty much anything you can think of). We also want to rip up the carpet and put in some kind of hard floor that is better for building blocks and doing messy art projects. I want to make this a priority over the next year so that we have it full functional by the time Echo is 3 and Clover is 1. We have started to get some use out of it already and it has been a wonderful place to hang out as a family so far!

Parenting: Trust, Doubt and Respect.

My amazing girl

As I lay awake last night holding my little girl and listening to the rain I was overwhelmed by my love for her. Even though she had just gotten me up from a deep sleep at 1:30 am (as she does most nights) I took a moment to savor her warm head resting on my shoulder and her small sleepy sounds as I snuggled her back to sleep. This is the good stuff, this is what it's all about.

While I waited for her to drift back off I thought about the kind of parent I want to be and the lifestyle I want my family to have. I had been reading some parenting and unschooling articles earlier that day and and came across this really excellent one from Life Learning Magazine (which is a really amazing resource for anyone interested in unschooling). This article reaffirms so much of what I believe about raising children and education and it made me feel so relieved to hear it from someone else.

I tend to be the kind of person that doesn't have a lot of strong opinions. I try to see both sides of any argument and will always admit that I could easily be in the wrong. However, parenting and education are probably about the only things in life that I have VERY strong opinions about. In spite of the fact that I am convinced that this style of parenting is for us, in spite of the fact that I know unschooling works from personal experience and in spite of the fact that I have faith that if we trust and respect our children they will surpass our wildest expectations for them, I have a hard time not doubting myself every so often.

Why is it so hard for parents to trust themselves and their instincts? Why is it so hard to keep the doubt at bay? For me I think it is that I am so passionate about my children and their education and lifestyle that I think about it constantly. I read tons of parenting and child related articles and I feel like I am usually barraged with information that is totally counter to how I want to raise my kids. I knew going in to this that I would be in the minority but it is still sometimes difficult to stand by what you believe when it feels like everyone else is telling you something different.

It seems to me that the majority of parenting articles I run across are aimed at trying to trick your child in to being a particular way. They tell you how you can "win the bedtime battle", or "make your kid good at science". All too often they pit parents and children against one another and encourage you to manipulate your children. The people who write these articles depict children as wily little devils who are trying to manipulate and outwit their parents while the parents are trying to beat them at their own game. Why do people want to mold their children to be a certain way? Why can't we celebrate who our children are rather than coerce them in to being what we want them to be? Why can't a family all be on one team instead of it being parents against kids?

The core of my parenting philosophy revolves around trust and respect for all family members including ourselves. I believe that children should be given respect equal to any other household member and this means no arbitrary rules, no power struggles and no "because I'm the parent and I said so". My children will be given the freedom to do what they want, when they want. Just as if they were adults in the house they will be allowed to use it's contents as they see fit (provided they are respectful of the communal living spaces and don't damage property). Just as I would never tell my husband that he can't have a snack right now or can't watch any television, I don't want to do these things to my children either. I want to afford them the same freedom that any family member deserves. This is really not easy to do for me even though I raised this way. It's hard to go against the societal norm and let your children have freedom to do what they wish even if it's not something you like. For example it's easy to let your kid paint or read all day but a lot harder to sit by while they play video games for 8 hours straight. The thing is, and I truly believe this, if you leave them alone they won't want to play video games for 8 hours straight. At least not for more than a week or so. Once the novelty wears off they are going to get bored and want to try something else. Kids are naturally bright and inquisitive, if you leave them alone they will want to do interesting and amazing things!

This doesn't mean that my kids will always do things I agree with and it doesn't mean I can't have concerns and talk to my children about them, but basically there should be a good reason behind it if I am going to ask them not to do something. If I feel like the kids are watching too much TV I can talk to them about and explain why I feel that way. Conflicts will be resolved with family meetings rather than top down authority. Since my daughter is still a toddler there are plenty of times I have to tell her no, but I try to think very hard before I tell her she can't do something. Is there really a good reason she can't do it or am I just instinctively saying no because I don't want to deal with it right then? As long as she isn't hurting herself or someone else than I think she should be aloud to do pretty much whatever she wants.

It's really hard to keep all this in mind on  a daily basis and consistently put it in to practice but communicating with others helps me remember to be the kind of parent I want to be. That is why I want to not only continue to read stories from others that have a similar parenting philosophy but to write down in my own words what I believe, to reinforce and remind myself that I can trust my own parenting instincts and I can trust my daughter to be the amazing person she is.

I know that my time and temper will be a little shorter when our next baby arrives so it will be even more important to make the effort to trust and respect Echo at that time. I look at how strong and smart and happy she is now and I want her to stay that way. I want her to know how truly valued and respected and loved she is. I never want her to feel like a second class citizen in her own home, I want her to know that she is a full fledged family member who's opinions and needs are valued.