Green Options

Guilt. Augh, the guilt.

Many of us practice some form of natural parenting. Many of us choose breastmilk, cosleeping, babywearing, and whole foods for our babies and families.

But lately, I’ve noticed that something is lacking with a few vocal members of the attachment parenting community. Empathy. Yep, that’s putting yourself in another’s shoes.

You don’t have to agree. You don’t have to sanction. But it’d be nice if some APs would understand that it’s not as easy as popping a baby on a breast or in your bed. Life is not the same for everyone out there. Our experiences are different. Our reactions are different.

And until the Attachment Parenting community isolates the elitists, it will be hard to gain ground.

Although I really loved the idea and the look of a stainless steel sippy cup {like the Foogo}; EC did point out that they would probably maim someone should it be used as a missile by an upset toddler. Case in point, I got whacked in the head with a sippy cup today, but it was the BPA free Born Free sippy cup so it didn’t maim, just hurt for a second. We are a Born Free fanatics here. We used to have the Born Free baby bottle {although ours was glass}, then we got the Born Free pacifier, and now we are using the Born Free sippy cups. I love this sippy cup.

Born Free is a company that is well known to provide safe and workable solutions to baby feeding. They are thoughtfully made with the baby in mind. It’ is designed well for convenience and best of all; it’s all BPA free. Another case in point, additional drinking sprouts can be purchased so if one wears thin because of a teething baby {like ours}; just replace the sprout and not the entire cup.

Since homeschooling isn’t the norm by far, and especially because our entire culture is immersed in a school-as-institution mentality, homeschooling can seem completely incomprehensible.

Whether you’re contemplating homeschooling, know some homeschoolers, or just want to understand more about schooling options, books about homeschooling are, in my opinion, absolute must-reads.

Without reading about the huge variety of homeschooling experiences of other families, I might never have understood that my daughters writing “rainbow words” with markers while sitting at the table as I drink my morning coffee is just as legitimate (not to mention fun, and basically no work for me) as sending them to school to learn to write. Without reading about how other families homeschool, the infinity of methods (and non-methods) that they use, I might have never learned that I, too, would be capable of this.

Here are five good resources that got me started thinking about homeschooling:

The Natural Child is the instruction manual that should have come with your child.

Jan Hunt’s The Natural Child: Parenting from the Heart has a basic premise: Trust children. They may be small in size, but they deserve to have their needs taken seriously. She calls it empathic parenting: believing what we know in our heart to be true.

Peggy O’Mara, the publisher of Mothering magazine, writes in the foreword:

Jan tells it like it is. Children and adults are not different. We have the same feelings. Children who are disciplined with love respond lovingly…Children deserve to be treated with respect.

As a parent, we get conflicting messages about child-rearing. Our parents did it one way, child psychologists tell us different, school teachers have their opinion, the latest ideas in parenting are on TV, and they all disagree.