Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, represented as a pyramid, most basic needs at bottom

I've been thinking a lot lately about Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.  If you've ever taken any early childhood development or psychology classes, you'll remember this simple concept:  Basic needs must be met before higher needs.

Maslow theorized that physiological needs, like food, warmth, and sleep needed to be met first, and then security, and so on.

I don't know that I agree 100% with this, but it is worth thinking about, nevertheless.

The red section, safety, stands out to me.  I think this is primarily because I was bullied in school as a child.  If school is not a safe place to be, if a child needs to look out for him or herself, and cannot relax and feel safe, how can they learn?  The same can be said of home life.  If a child feels belittled, picked on, unwanted or unloved, how can they learn?

When Big Dad and I discussed becoming parents, one of the things that was most important to us was this:  That the children would know that they are wanted, loved, okay with us, and that we are glad to see them.  Please understand, this does not mean that we do not correct or discipline.  Rather, we do it from a place of love - wanting the best for them.  We are careful to build them up in love at all other times.

One of the ways this happens at our home is around sleep.  When the kids are going to bed, Big Dad spends time with them reading stories, praying and talking with them.  This is also my time to be by myself and relax.

In the mornings, we reverse it.  The kids all join me in bed for snuggles.  Big Dad is up and enjoying a quiet morning downstairs, while the kids and I are snuggling and chatting.  It is a wonderful time to connect.

We make sure to tell the kids individually that we love them, that we are glad for them.  We spend special times with each during the week, doing something they would like to do.  We value their opinions and their ideas.  All these things make for that sense of belonging and love.  And we zealously protect them from harm.  They feel safe and loved.

What do you do in your family to promote safety and love?

Wish you were here!

The Bad Mom and the Good Mom

My cousin is a wonderful Christian, homeschooler with 4 kids.  She called me one day a few years ago to tell me that she was the worst mom ever.

I laughed.  She seems to me to be a wonderful mom; always chipper, ever resourceful.  But she continued.

"I loaded the kids in the car to go to ballet, backed the car out of the garage, and was a quarter of a mile down the road when Molly asked 'Mom, where's Isaac?'"

Isaac is her four-year-old.  "He's not in the car?"  She asked.  "No."

"I know what you're thinking," she said to me.  "You're thinking, 'Oh, no!  Poor Isaac, scared at home alone.'  But I knew he was fine.  If he was in the house, he'd have already turned on the TV and gotten himself some cereal.  And if he were outside, he'd just wander over to the neighbors' and be perfectly happy there."

"So I was just looking in my rear-view mirror to make sure it was safe to slow down and make a u-turn, when I saw him.  There was Isaac.  Standing on the rear bumper, holding on to the wiper on the back of the van - just his forehead and eyes visible in the window."

"Oh no!"  I exclaimed.

"I had to fight the urge to slam on the brakes.  I slowed the car to a stop at the side of the road, and ran back to get him.  'Isaac, honey' I said 'Why didn't you tell me that you were on the car?'  And he said, 'I was yelling for you, Mommy, but you didn't hear me.'"

"Since then I have what if'd myself to death.  'What if I had been on the freeway?'  'What if he'd fallen off?'  But the thing that really gets me, is that I didn't see him when I backed out the driveway!"

"Wow,"  was all I could say to my cousin.  What a story.  She said that her mom had told her she was too busy, and needed to do less.

"But, that's the thing - I wasn't even in a hurry.  We were early.  We weren't rushed.  I truly thought he was in the car."

I know that as a mom, I've had days like that.  Days when everything was going well, and then, well, oops.  My cousin told me to tell my friends that story whenever they had a bad day and thought they were a bad mom.  She knew it would make them feel better.

So, I've told that story many times, to many friends.  And Jor Man had overheard me tell it.  So, one day, Jor Man said,  "Mom, you know the 'Bad Mom' story you tell?"

"Yeah?"

"Well, could you tell me a Good Mom story?"  He asked.

Hmmm.  A good mom story.  I didn't have one of those.  I really had to think about it.  After several days, I remembered a story a friend had told me.

This particular friend is also an amazing mom.  She has eight children whom she homeschools.  She has taught me so much about Jesus, and parenting.  I really am in awe of her.

So I remember being more than a little surprised when she told me about a time when her first child was a few months old.  He wasn't a good sleeper.  In fact, she was really exhausted.  One night, she had walked the halls with him multiple times, and had finally just gotten him back to sleep.  She transferred him ever so carefully to his crib and silently, slowly backed out of the door.

She was almost to her room when he cried out again.  This time, instead of running to his side, she broke down and cried.  She sat down at the top of the stairs and wept, crying out to God.

Beauty Mom and Sher Bear on the day she was born.

"God," she said, "you chose the wrong woman to be this baby's mother.  I can't do this.  I am exhausted.  I don't care anymore."

And she heard God say, "You're right.  You can't do this.  But I can."

Baby still cried in the background.  She sat weeping.  And again God spoke.

"I want to go in and be with him.  May I borrow your legs?  You don't have to want to be there, or care.  But I want to borrow you legs and go in and be with him."

So my friend got up, in God's strength, and walked back into the room, standing by the crying child.  After a minute, God said "I want to love this boy.  May I borrow your arms?"  And she picked him up.

My friend tells me that is how she parented from then on - not from her own strength, but from God's love for her kids.

So I told Jor Man the story - of the good mom who relied on God to love her kids.  He was quiet for a while.  And then Jor Man said, "That's a good story, Mom.  You should try that sometime."

"I do, Jor Man.  I do."

Wish you were here!

Sleep

This week I have been reading “Nurture Shock” by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman.  It is a book exploring the latest research and new thinking about children.  I was happy to see the chapter on sleep, “The Lost Hour” that shows the importance of sleep for children.  There are also chapters on lying, praise, race, siblings, etc.  I am sure that I will be posting on this book again.

The research shows that children in the U.S. get (on average) an hour less sleep than they used to.  This hour translates to a reduction in academics of up to 2 grade levels.  Sleep is crucial to children’s physical and mental well-being. 

I emphasize this for several reasons.  It is a lesson we have learned the hard way in our family.  It is a common practice in unschooling families to not have set bed times.  I do not agree with this.  Activities, homework and television are three sleep stealers that are so prevalent in our society.  By not sending my children to school, they don’t have homework. (Okay, so it’s all homework, but you know what I mean.)  We do not have cable or satellite (we do watch movies), and so we do not stay up late watching TV.  We restrict activities that would interfere with dinner and bedtime.  Most families I know have evening or afternoon activities that they do that conflict with dinner-time and push bed time.  We rarely will do anything that keeps us out after 5pm.  And we don’t sign-up for activities during that time frame.  (The exception is activities for Beauty Mom or Big Dad which begin after dinner.)

At our house, sleep has been hard won.  In the beginning, we had intended to be an attachment parentingfamily – co-sleeping with the Jor Man when he was born.  We got one of those expensive co-sleeping side cars and ended up just keeping him in bed with us.  He nursed, like clock-work, ever two hours, on the hour until he was two.  This wasn’t a problem because nursing and sleeping when he slept was what I did – and all I wanted to do.

Then came the Campster.  I nursed Jor Man through the entire pregnancy, and was still nursing him when Campster was born.  Not all day, but certainly first thing in the morning and last thing at night, as well as any time he hurt himself, or wanted comforting.

We decided that all four of us sleeping in one bed wouldn’t work.  But we didn’t want Jor Man to feel that Campster had exiled him.  So Big Dad and Jor Man moved into Jor Man’s newly painted room, and Campster and I stayed in the master bedroom.

 

It should have worked.  Only it didn’t.  Campster nursed every 20 – 45 minutes around the clock.  For the entire first year.  Really.  At that point, I was so sleep deprived and depressed that I could not function.  Big Dad had me see a psychiatrist, thinking that I had post-partum depression and needed meds.  The shrink was very nice and simply wrote me a prescription for sleep.  He said I needed at least 6 hours of uninterrupted sleep a night.  (To clarify, I think co-sleeping and Attachment Parenting are wonderful if they are working for you.  They weren't working for us, and for a long time we were not willing to deal with that.  You have to be flexible!)

I won’t go into all the details of how we eventually worked that out.   Let’s just say that it was a long and nasty process.  But, eventually, I was getting some sleep. 

Jor Man did not like to go to bed.  Bedtimes were a nightmare.  And he would wake the Campster.  It wasn’t until Sher Bear came along that I put my foot down and said – this house WILL get some sleep.  Someone gave me a copy of "The Happiest Baby on the Block" by Dr. Harvey Karp, and that really helped us get her to sleep well.  Hurray!!

Big Dad missed spending time with the kids, and wanted to be playing with them late into the evening.  They stayed up because they were wanting to please daddy.  But the truth was, everyone was exhausted.  I finally convinced him to insist that they all get about 12 hours of sleep a night.  In order to do this, we had to not be afraid of our children’s unhappiness.  By that I mean that children crying is not necessarily a bad thing.  If they are warm, fed, and dry – they are okay.  Perhaps they are unhappy because they don’t want to go to bed.  Tough.  They can be unhappy.  It won’t kill them.

Now Sher Bear goes down at 7 am, Campster at 7:30 and Jor Man at 8:30.  They all sleep in until at least 7 am, sometimes 8.    J

Wish you were here!