Every LearnForward family is creating a love story!
Do you have any mantras? My mantras are little sayings of truth that help me cling to what I believe, what’s really important to me. My little sayings are truths that help me focus on my values. Recently, I was reminded of my favourite mantra from the Bible for parenting:
In this blog series, we are considering a LearnForward family. Our heartful exploration includes: talk a lot, read a lot, and create shared experiences. In this last post, I hope you won’t hear a list, but rather an invitation we all share to “love deeply,” even in our imperfection.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve had a parenting journey filled with lumps and bumps. In every season I am deeply imperfect and some seasons were downright painful. During those painful times of aloneness, failure, and heartache it was all I could do to survive, nevermind initiate the rituals of a LearnForward family. That’s when my mantra came into play.
In my imperfections as a parent and educator, I can always cling to “loving deeply.”
In those difficult seasons, how does one create a love story? I know I love my children deeply and that will go far, but my own pain sometimes stands in the way of connection, even with my child.
Dr. Gordon Neufeld‘s work has coached me through all seasons, as I’ve studied with him over much of the last decade. His gift to parents and educators is his dedication to Attachment Theory and his research and practice informing the theory in each stage of child growth and development.
I am learning the simplest acts of creating a love story with my child.
Children are driven to pursue and preserve proximity with the adult caring for them. Their needs, fundamentally, are for relationship with a ‘big person’ who is crazy about them. They only need one.
I’ve tried to practice some of the basics of human connection in my own journey with children:
- Look them in the eye. The most basic of all human connections and completely intuitive when one admires a baby…collect their gaze.
- Smile and nod. Let’s start with what builds sameness and relationship.
- Give them something to hold onto: a hug, a story, a gift.
- Invite them to depend on me. Be the ‘big person’ they can rely upon.
Within our educational community, we also practice these relationship building strategies with children. The dance of connection is the most powerful part of LearnForward. We want to communicate, “You matter to me!”
When children are at rest in our love, they have soft hearts. When children are at rest in our love, they can learn, grow, and emerge! “When provision is greater than pursuit, the child will spring forward!”
I wonder if you notice when your child seems to feel at rest in his or her connection with you. What are you doing? How can we give more than they need? What are the simplest rituals that help you preserve connection? How is that different or the same in each stage of development?
Above all else, love deeply.