Shall We begin?

 I have been parenting a long time.  Next month will be 23 years since our first child was born but I actually began to parent her before her birth.  Once I learned I was pregnant, the parenting journey began.  Our fifth child will be 10 soon and we are navigating more tweens, teens and young adult parenting activities and challenges.  There were so many scenarios, conflicts, struggles and joys that happened in the earlier years of parenting our children and I don't want to forget them!  

It is my hope that this can be a place where I can remember, share and teach others some of what I learned along the way before it becomes distant memories and shadows of the past.  I also work with families and young children as my chosen or pre-destined career path as a public health nurse.  Home visitation, maternal child health education and the standards of infant and early childhood mental health are my driving force professionally.  

A supervisor once described how I live my life as a very porous perspective of professional and personal boundaries, meaning they run together.  My home and my work share the same heart, the same goals, and the same struggles.....porous it is.  Porous and changing and breathing with me as I learn and grow.  I do not claim to be an expert on parenting.  My children would verify that I certainly am not!  I do, however, profess to spend more time than the average human thinking about, reading about, learning about and working toward understanding children and relationships with adults and how those relationships can either help grow kinds into healthy adults or adults who struggle in life.  

Today as I was driving around the county I was thinking about my adult son and how he is finishing up summer and preparing to return to college.  I remembered when he was little and I had to get him out of the bathtub.  He liked bath time but he really did not like getting out of the tub and getting dried off with a towel.  His sister had the same trouble.  She was very sensitive and didn't like all of the rubbing that went with getting dried off so we learned we needed to hold her in the towel and NOT RUB.  I started to do the same for my baby boy and when I lifted him out of the tub I would just hold him in the towel.  In order to prevent him from wiggling off my lap still wet, I began to sing a song to him but he really didn't like it when I sang so I created a song for him with his name in it.....and he would sit on my lap and let me sing only that song to him while the towel absorbed his wetness after his bath.  

That sweet, soft, squishy little boy on my lap, while I sat on the toilet seat in the bathroom and sang quietly is a memory I hope I don't soon forget.  His hair smelled like baby shampoo, his body was clean and soft and warm and snuggly.  We would sway side to side and I would sing quietly in the steamy bathroom.....and connection happened.  Connection that was good and healthy and safe and pleasant for both of us, rather than stressful, loud and hurried.  The magic happened in that little made-up song with his name in it.  Free magic, available to one and all....