How To Raise Children

                                          How To Raise Children

               

 

 

 

 

 

                                        “It takes a village to raise a child.”

Like so many spiritual, psychological, social, and philosophical truths, they become cliché and end up as forgotten refrigerator magnets or bumper stickers. It's funny how this is not the case in science, E=mc2 is not put away and forgotten, it's used daily in 100's of ways in our everyday life.

When I was in graduate school, I took a job as a nanny for 2 boys. Their mom was a psychotherapist and dad was a psychiatrist with specialization in child development, so they knew a little bit about what kids need. The younger boy took after his mother, was very ethereal, sensitive, and linguistic, his older brother took after dad, was emotionally contained, grounded in his body, and fearless in the physical world.

This family was part of a 6 family cooperative, they had home schooling that would rotate to different families houses, facilitate field trips, and supported each other emotionally and every other way in the education and well being of the children. There was a heavy emphasis on emotional, spiritual, and social attunement. We had 2-3 teachers at any given time, and only about 8-10 kids, so there would always be time and space allowed to facilitate kids working through conflict and dealing with difficult emotions.

I literally spent hours upon hours talking with my boy's mom when we would “hand off” the boys in transition. We not only talked about the boy's day, but we talked about how I was doing, and what came up for me emotionally or psychologically while caring for the boys. As every parent knows, a lot of your own baggage comes up when raising children!

The younger boy was very verbal and playful, and I had a background as an improvisational comedic actor, so we were constantly playing off each other in funny and creative verbal exchanges. I read to the boys every day, I read them Chronicles of Narnia, The Education of Little Tree, Dr. Seuss, and everything in between.

The older boy was very physical, so we would wrestle, climb trees, jump on the trampoline and explore the 100 acre woods in their back yard. I'll never forget this boy's reaction when I was pulling out of the driveway, running late as usual, trying to get the boys into town for a rendezvous with their mom. I was 100 yards down the dirt road, when I realized I had a flat tire. Me and the older boy got out to assess, and he screamed with delight at the event. He saw this as an exciting adventure to learn how to change a tire, I learned a great lesson in that moment, and will always be grateful for his teaching.

Years later, as the boys got older, I ended up teaching middle school for a couple years with the younger boy in my class. This was a small, hippie private school, and we had a 3 teacher team that covered all the academics and other dimensions for about 18-20 kids. I was an assistant basketball coach for my boy's team, had him for math, and continued our comedic and bonded interactions (me teaching math is an ideal setting for comedy!).

I don't want to pretend this was idyllic by any means, there was projectile vomiting, poopy diapers from hell, Greek tragedy temper tantrums, etc. but after all these years, I can truly say these children got an incredible environment and support network that is pretty close to optimal. The only other comparable comparison I have is when I lived in a commune in California and was around children raised communally.
 

Today, the younger boy is 29 and a burgeoning improvisational comedic actor in L.A. His brother is 31, a psychotherapist in Colorado, a rock climber, and has been a contestant on American Ninja Warrior. As any parents are prone to do, I like to imagine I had something to do with who they are.