Earth Parenting

Across the span of time and all over the world, indigenous peoples raised their children with nearly identical ways which indicate that humans have an 'earth code' for our raising just as all animals have innate parenting codes.  Detailed studies of anthropology reveal many exceptions to this and therefore experts can easily dismiss my simple observation as idealistic and even romantic.  However what can not be overlooked is that despite the exceptions, peoples all across the world maintained culture for thousands of generations and their parenting was nearly identical with different colour feathers, so to speak.  Even modern day Steiner's work seems to have been tapping in on this innate 'earth code'.
A brief breakdown of the common threads of 'earth parenting'of the stage of babyhood are:
1. Singing as main ante natal preparation for maidens. There was no application of logic or analytical mind to what is essentially innate and part of the ancient limbic system of the mind.
2. Birthing was secret women's business, attended by sisters and elder women and generally safeguarded from maidens.
3. For one lunar month the mother and newborn were cared for by the sisterhood in a womb like environment. This was the dreamtime of the new child, important bonding was established.
4. Women regrouped their energy through synchronized menstruating where they would often withdraw to a special place, taking only breast feeding babies and newly menstruating maidens with them.
5. Once out of the dreamtime, mother resumed her place in the tribe; gathering and preparing food with her baby tied to her or carried with her.  Generally the first stage of babe in arms, the_ baby was carried by the mother or woman who breastfed him or her.
6. As baby got bigger it was carried freely by older children. The baby was immersed in its tribe very deeply.
7. Babies were never left alone. (The exception was the practise of leaving the infant out over night when first born in some tribes)
8. Babies breastfed for three years, generally. This matches the apparent 'psychic bond' of mother and baby.
9. Once toddling, the baby was free to explore the world around, safely observed by the sisterhood. The collective body of the tribe provided a natural safety net for them. They were immersed in the elements; eating dirt, sucking rocks, navigating fire, uneven ground and many other situations.
10. Babies were unrestrained and grew with a feeling of infinite freedom.  Safety and monitoring them was done collectively and it was obscure so that the will of the child was not prematurely activated.
11. Sounds and particularly baby sounds were used with babies.  They picked up their language from those around them, everyone happily spoke babies sounds to them.  Many cultures use repeat words with babies; for example Ma ma, Da da, Pa pa and so on.  We under estimate how important these sounds are to the developing mind in our quest to comunicate with our babies we over look the natural process of bonding that opens up doorways to intuition and allow us to instantly be able to understand our babies without words.

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A miracle is just a wish away

When our eleven year old daughter was told that the queen had gone and therefore the hive too was gone, she simply said, "maybe she left a princess". For the educated in this subject it was a fanciful idea at best; the musings of a child. However Earth Parenting is deeper than logic and understands that logic often stands in the way of the magic of nature.
So without attachment to my daughter's comment, I met her at the dreaming place and together we made it into a wish.  Perhaps I had already corrected the things that seemed to be lacking when we first discovered the bees had gone and we were loving our garden again; who knows, but the bees kept gathering pollen. Evita lovingly observed this day after day and the other children began watching for signs of an active hive with her. Then, yesterday, our youngest boy came running with news, "they are making honey, I saw the honeycomb and I could smell the honey and there are more bees!."
We have a princess who has become a queen!  Another one of nature's daily miracles, that our logic often rules out. The queen has gone, long live the princess.
Earth Parenting is about recalibrating ourselves with nature through our parenting of our children.  In this process we need to take heed, much of what we believe about nature was told to us by adults who themselves were already many degrees removed from it.  Our small children see energy and nature as it really is.  Our 'parental warnings' often camouflage this reality and eventually distort their own innate senses. The sensory reality of children is intangible to the adult operating from the limited space of logic and reason.  The bridge that can take us there is trust. When we trust nature and our children, our logic takes a back seat and something more powerful than our usually unreasonable fears takes over; love drives the vehicle and magic and miracles become daily events.

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The Queen has left

Our landlord is an absolute gem. He was raised in the house he rents us and he raised his kids in it too.  His shed stands like a living museum full of things from his past that may soon have place in the future.  Last week, within minutes of me showing him the swarm of bees I had found on my garden's fence, he had them in a box he had easily found in his shed.  Yesterday he arrived with the necessary partitions and discovered they had gone. It felt like the death of something.

The Queen didn't like it anymore and moved on so they have all followed; it felt like an accusation from the universe. I hadn't primed the kids and paid enough attention to the beehive, the garden wasn't loved enough....I accepted the swarm as a positive omen, now I must accept the loss in a personal way. I had not fully experienced the bee hive as the gold it was.  My life had gone on business as usual and this 'omen' hadn't really changed anything and the now the queen was gone.
We don't like to hear each other 'beating ourselves up', "don't be so hard on yourself".  We are weighed down with guilt in our culture and don't like to hear each other getting bogged down in it but guilt aside, it's worth considering where we haven't connected, so we can deepen that connection.
Once I accepted the possible reasons the Queen had left, I felt more desire to shape my life around the garden, making it more of a priority, revaluing it and helping it to grow with love and gratitude.
Once I accepted my place in the scheme of things, I felt the dryness of the land around echoed in the intense flowering of the Karri trees that had brought so much activity from the bees in the first place.  I remembered other people's oservations about this bumper season of bees but now with the wider question,  is this a symptom of pre-drought conditions?
Can we as culture take on that nature gives us warning signs gently and even sweetly, at first? As an individual,  I can open myself up to communion with nature when I am prepared to see the failings of my own life in the wider context of how our culture operates with nature.
I can't elicit any change other than that within my own family group. The place where I am Queen is in my family.  That is the real gold, the honey of life.

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Words are making us ill.

At every turn there are more words that need to be said,  written, thought,read: words vying for our attention.
The other night I got a creative idea for helping my son to be more interested in reading and with chalk I wrote messages and equations all over the carpets throughout this house.
Now that I have been moving about in my house, these letters under my feet are crowding my head.  The visual pollution of words is everywhere, I just hadn't. thought about it like that before. It took awhile to realize that I had become scattered by the words under my feet; they were blocking my connection with the earth.
       I can' wait to get down with a bucket and scrub the floors.
       The prescribed pattern of today's mass consciousness would judge this as masochistic, having no need to hear more and  moving quickly on to the next lot of words.  I need some grounding, stretching and meditative time where I can rub all the words away until my mind is free floating on my heart. There are no health resorts in my life; it is easy to overlook just how therapeutic cleaning our homes is.  I don't use a vacuum cleaner because it invades my energy and leaves everyone and everything jangled. I prefer to get on with my hands and knees and scrub the carpets with hot soapy, eucalyptus scented water.
When we take time, we make time and often those 'boring' jobs are the gold that give women power by grounding us in our spiritual foundations, the floors our family walk on.