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ISSN: 1530-5775
July 2009, Vol.11 #7
The Mommy connection I know a man wrote "The Rainbow Connection". It probably has nothing to do with a mom sleeping but I am tempted to think that his sleep-deprived wife penned the three lines above. There is something about those midnight groggy visits and plaintive calls for mom that make these words take on a new meaning. In a recent commercial for cold medicine, the mom hears the word "Mom" called from the child's bedroom. She takes a moment to decide if it is a "Mom" that means "Get me a drink of water" or "I'm sick, please come comfort me until the sun comes up". There really is a distinctive difference between the two that keeps Mom on alert even after the sun goes down. I also read somewhere that men don't adjust as well to the less-sleep situation that comes from having kids and that women can quickly adjust to interrupted and less sleep after giving birth. Nighttime for me has varied greatly. It started with my own childhood nights when I wanted to stay up late with everyone else. I quickly moved onto needing more sleep, as I got older and then back to no sleep as I wrote college papers and crammed for tests. When I had both kids, it seemed as if my need for sleep decreased and that I could survive (and sometimes even accomplish a lot) with much less sleep than I thought I needed. I wish now that there was a sleep bank that I could store sleep time from those years when it was such a luxury to sleep in or when I felt invincible enough to stay up all night. I would bank a few extra hours for when the stomach flu hits or when the tornado alarm goes off at 3:00 AM. While both kids are blessings, sleeping is not something that they do easily. Joel finally started sleeping a good solid night when he turned five. Emily is still working towards that. I have probably taken a rather non-conventional approach to their sleep habits. Outside of the house, we don't discuss much where they sleep but I expect other households have a similar arrangement out of sheer sleepless desperation. When we came home from the hospital with Joel, he had spent a week being poked and prodded under bright lights every few hours. I tried with all my being to nurse him, rock him, and put him to bed. He hated the crib. I hated being up all night long. After a few months, I found the ease of co-sleeping and nursing. We both got sleep. We both got a little lazy. When Emily came home from the hospital, he was still sleeping next to me. Knowing of the pain of the earlier method of getting him to sleep, I simply scooted him over a little and moved Emily in next to me. The cycle continued but I got some sleep. With both of them arriving by c-section, it made the entire transition easier as bending over and rocking was excruciating. Simply cuddling with them and going back to sleep or just staying drowsy during nursing was so much less painful. We are now coming up on the point in Emily's life when Joel moved into his own bed. With few exceptions (owies, the flu, thunderstorms), he sleeps alone without any fear or overnight wakings. He has no fears or bad memories associated with going to bed. The routine we have works. Emily has a big girl bed. She is ready to make the transition and has even declared she will move forward with her plan to be a big girl. There is something that keeps her from making the move. The cry-it-out method never worked for us as infants and as a preschooler, I doubt that method would make her sleep any better now. In fact, my thought would be that it would induce trauma. I know that we will find a routine for her to sleep alone with confidence too. Even as both of the kids move into their own beds, I know there will be nights they return due to thunder or a bad dream. I want them to have those delicious mornings sleeping in on freshly laundered sheets or the excitement of getting up early to watch cartoons on a Saturday morning. I now figure that I haven't slept a full complete night since I got pregnant with Joel eight years ago. I will count these years as another part of my sleep calendar. There will be years later on to sleep in when the day doesn't even require it. These are the years I was half-asleep, hearing voices calling my name. I know which voice sounds mean I am needed immediately. I know that the voices are an arms-length away or a few steps down the hallway. They are the voices calling my name. When that name is Mom, the day and the night are both times to answer.
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Day Care Toileting Accidents Every day care operator is familiar with the dreaded words 'I've had an accident' or 'I didn't make it to the toilet'. Toileting accidents are part and parcel of the preschool experience as valiant little ones embark on the whole potty training procedure and seasoned toileters lapse. Maybe children are just too immersed in play to even register the need to go to the bathroom, or the message from young bladders just doesnt travel quickly enough to the brain or a child simply feels a little under the weather but, whatever the reason, these leakages can, and will occur. Either way, we day care owners must be on hand to clean up both child and bathroom, comfort with encouraging words and get smiles back on faces as confidence rebuilding occurs. So, what simple steps can we take to minimize toileting accidents and ease the clean up process. Key here is to be up to speed on each child's level of development, aware of their routines and prepared to offer frequent reminders to go to the potty.
Visiting the toilet on a regular basis is the habit you are instilling in the child (even if they dont actually go every time). All attempts are an achievement and should be commended. Keep you eyes peeled for the kids who hold it with crossed legs because they dont want to be distracted from a game or activity.
A quick clean up can be
achieved by having the potty accident emergency pack to hand near each bathroom and this vital item should contain gloves, sanitizer, large absorbent tissues and disposable shoe covers. Ensure you can easily access the childs spare clothes bag (a reserve stash of three sets of clothes should be a requirement for each potty training child) and have a plastic bag in the emergency pack for any soiled items). Make sure and sanitize the base of any shoes that may have trodden in any unsavoury substances. All the above steps can help to
ease everyone through these little dramas. Remember, these accidents are destined to occur and its not advisable to get caught out. Be prepared and you can sail through each episode.
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"We were all born wild like a mountain lion. To live in civilization we become sheep at a very young age. We become tame. But we are not house pets. We are fierce and wild by nature." Many years ago, very early in my work with the Sisterhood of the Shields, Twin Dreamers, one of my shaman teachers said to me, "Lynn, dream on these words. Consider what is left of your instinctual nature. When you see a horse, you become both happy and sad. That horse represents the wildness within yourself that you have never dared to become." I was stunned by her words, for they revealed an essential truth in my search for a higher understanding of life that I had never dared to voice. I had known since I was a small child that there was something missing from my world, something that I yearned for with every fiber of my being yet could not begin to understand. I have even ridden horses all my life, racing across the landscape of my childhood with my best friend, Beverly, a Native American girl the same age as I. On horseback, we followed the clouds, pretending we were stars in the sky as we chased each other across the universe. During those long, beautiful days, I felt more complete and perfect within myself than at any other time. As an adult, galloping across the plains on the back of a magnificent Arabian mare, I still get that same sense of perfection. Yet until Twin Dreamers spoke those words to me, I did not equate the feeling of perfect completion within me when I am on horseback as the fulfillment of my wild, instinctual nature. I only knew that when I ride horses, I feel closer to God than at any other time. How do you experience God in your life, the Great Spirit, the presence of divine harmony in whatever form you know it? For me, I know that I am one with the Great Spirit when I am living my own truth. That happens when I stand in the center of my own being. It happens when I stand in the center of my own personal truth and not what someone else tells me the 'truth' of any given situation should be. How often have you heard someone say, "This is the way it's supposed to be (whatever 'it' is). It's the way it always has been and the way it always will be?" And every fiber of your being is crying out, "No it isn't. You're wrong. Nothing could be further from the truth." Yet not only do you say nothing, which is sometimes the only thing you can say in the face of such adamance, you decide there must be something wrong with you for disagreeing so completely. The more strongly you disagree, perhaps, the worse you feel about yourself until you walk away feeling wholly defeated, hobbled by some unseen force that obviously wishes you nothing but ill will. That is the way it feels when we deny the existence of our own personal truth. It feels worse than the worst insult anyone else can hurl, crippling to the point of total personal defeat. On the other hand, it feels so exhilarating when you say to yourself, "You know what? I couldn't disagree with you more. Maybe I can't change the way you think, and maybe now's not even the time to try. But I couldn't disagree with you more, and I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to think what you think; I'm not going to believe what you believe. It may be your truth, but it's not mine and it's no part of me." And you walk away feeling so good about yourself, so personally empowered, so completely right with life. That is the way it feels to stand in the center of your own personal truth. The most wonderful part of it is that your own personal truth resides at the very center of your being, and that is the place where you are one with the Great Spirit and all that is in the universe. What a fabulous place to be! The truth is within your own heart and within your own soul. Whenever you become lonely or afraid, all the answers you will ever need will be found within yourself. Sometimes we need other people to help us find those answers, and that is good. It's good to see the light of the Great Spirit reflected in the love and wisdom of others. But you must always measure what you find out in the world with what you find inside yourself. You must first ask yourself, "Am I being faithful to my own truth?" Your being is like a spirit lodge. Within this spirit lodge dwell the sacredness of your being, your realization and the divine light of your creation. Sometimes your sacredness matches what everyone around you is saying, and sometimes it doesn't. You find peace and joy in life when you live in your own spirit lodge, the place within you where you are one with the Great Spirit and all of life, the place of your own sacred truth, regardless of the chaos that might be going on around you. This is what I mean by 'living spirit,' it is living in your own spirit lodge. Have you ever wondered why some people can be so serene in the midst of what everyone else sees as impending doom? It is because they are living in their own spirit lodges; they know they are one with the Great Spirit and all of life, and no matter what happens nothing can ever separate them from that Oneness. They have taken care of what is around them to the best of their ability and placed their faith in the Great Spirit. In the words of Shakespeare, "This above all: To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, Thou cannot then be false to any man." Outside your lodge is a great wilderness that can often become a battleground stained with ignorance and earthly pain. Many people live without a sacred place within, and those who do not have a sacred place within do not know how to enter the spirit lodges of others. To me, that is the definition of true loneliness, not being able to enter the spirit lodge of another person. When you live your own truth, you find that it is much easier to allow others the honor of living their own truth, as well. Even where you disagree, it is not important. What becomes important is honoring the divine light within you both. This is the true meaning of freedom, when you are not shackled to an existence that is based on beliefs that are false to you. When you are living spirit, you are living your own sacred truth. Then you are as magnificent horse, wild and free through your oneness with the divine light of the universe, unfettered by beliefs that bring you only discomfort and disharmony with your own existence.
To conquer emotional eating it's first important to manage one's thinking and self communication. Otherwise, one's efforts will be in vain. We could begin with managing emotions and invest years of training in how to embrace emotions and experience them to leave overeating out of the picture. However, if one is an expert at managing emotions, little progress might be made in losing weight if one still has a "fat thinking frame of mind." For instance, if one recognizes the emotion of boredom and the desire to snack because of the boredom that in itself is progress. Yet, to leave food out of the picture, there's a mental command issued. And the nature of that command determines whether the managing of the boredom is successful or unsuccessful. The command is in the form of self communication such as, "I don't want to eat (something). Unfortunately, this particular command is actually a suggestion to focus on food for two different reasons: Any command such as, "I don't want to think about food," or "I don't crave sweets anymore," only cause one to focus on food either at that moment or hours or days later. "Gee I haven't been thinking much about desert for weeks and all of a sudden, that's all I can think about." The thought becomes a boomerang. Of course there are lots of other command or self communication statements that contribute to failure such as: Or the idea of "giving up" or "doing without" likewise is a problem because once again "giving up" is not admirable and "doing without," is like being made to go to bed without dinner. "I'll eat today and diet tomorrow." The word "diet" is "die" with a "t" on the end and for most people means "doing without" and "giving up." Plus if you think of "dieting tomorrow," what do you do today? Eat everything in sight, right? "I'm so hungry I could eat a horse." A horse is a pretty big item. Plus for many reasons the word "hungry" is misused. "I can't stand myself any more." This one destroys self esteem and actually contributes to eating more—like self punishment. The idea of forgetting about food along with some other specific can be far more effective at enforcing one's ability to stop eating emotional stress and leave food out of the picture than any of the above. A progressive approach to conquer emotional eating habit involves asking important questions "What is missing here? Why are you not getting the results you've been promised from the books you've been reading and the professionals who have advised you?" It is clearly insane to keep dieting and thinking the same non productive thoughts when the results are so poor. It's more important to gain a grasp on how to stop emotional eating—eating emotional stress than it is to read the scale. Besides focusing on the scale doesn't empower you to be a better more enlightened person, whereas learning how to overcome emotional eating with effective self communication empowers you in all aspects of your life. If you're a beautician, you'll be a better beautician. If you're a check out person, you'll be a better check out person; a father, a better father... Overall, you'll build self worth and find that what you really want to eat is far more nutritious and less in quantity than you ever before imagined.
Read this feature from past
issues.
Salvation from Georgia Jones
The Ultimate Gestalt
from David Donar
Fun with Alpha
The Mommy Connection
Day Care Toileting Accidents with Fiona Lohrenz
Living Spirit
Understand Emotional Eating
Georgia Jones
A new book on teen dating
Jane Roberts - Making History
New Poetry Program and a Special
What to call this one?
A Review of The Little Giant of Aberdeen County
Announcements from our Friends
Guess what I heard...
Your chance to say what you think
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And, have you heard voices?
I've heard them calling my name.
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Read this feature from past issues.
Living Spirit
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First, the brain skips "nots." It's like commanding a printer to NOT print—it's going to print.
Second, it's like telling the child within you that it can't have something. It creates a parent child war and when food is involved, the child wins.
"I want to lose weight or quit eating so much." The words "lose" and "quit" are a problem. As youngsters we're taught that losing and quitting are not admirable traits. Or if you lose something you want to find it. So someone says, "Looks like you lost some weight." And what do you have to do—go find it, right?