Children Archives Leslie Kenton's: Into The Bliss

Children

CHILD-RAISING—TRUST IN NATURE

Mar 27

“Your children are not your children,” wrote the Lebanese poet Kahil Gibran, “They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself…You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.” It is a quote I like, not only because—having raised four children by four different men on my own—I believe it to be just about the most accurate description of parenthood I have ever come across, but also because it emphasizes the ‘lightness’ which develops when you give up trying to be perfect and come to trust the processes of Nature—in feeding, in healing, in guiding you and your child towards what is best for his or her development at any moment in time. Read More About Child-Raising – Trust In Nature

MORE STUFF KIDS DONE TAUGHT ME

Mar 04

A few years ago I had lunch with a beautiful and successful American woman in her mid thirties. Sooner or later the conversation got around – as it often does with me – to children. This woman told me that she had a five year old daughter. I asked her if it was difficult living and working in New York while raising a child on her own. She replied that it had been hard but that now it should get better since she and her little girl were going to parenting classes. `Parenting classes,’ I asked, `whatever are they?’ `You know, where you learn how to be a parent. We go twice a week together,’ she reported with enthusiasm. Read More Stuff Kids Done Taught Me

HOW I LEARNED THAT LOVE IS REAL

Feb 20

My first child was born in a huge teaching hospital in Los Angeles. The labor was long and regrettably not natural. I was given an analgesic during labor and an epidural for the delivery. It was all very cold, efficient and mechanical. The hospital I was in happened to be a Catholic one in which every other woman there seemed already to know the ropes since she was giving birth to her fifth or eighth or tenth child. Nobody bothered to tell me much about what was going on or what was expected of me. Read More Of How I Learned That Love Is Real

WHAT I’VE LEARNED FROM KIDS

Jan 31

As parents we feel obliged to correct our children when they make mistakes when speaking. Yet so often the words they coin seem much more sensible and charming than their “proper” counterparts. ‘It’s a froggy day,’ my son, Jesse, used to say when he meant ‘foggy.’ ‘Where are the ouches?’ My daughter, Susannah, would ask when she wanted to hang something on the clothesline. (She once caught a finger in a clothes peg and her great-grandmother had consoled her by saying, ‘Ouch, that hurts.’) Then there were ‘flat tireds’—the things you get when your car runs over a nail in the road—and the ‘constructions’ which you read to find out how to use something for the first time. Aaron, my youngest child, announced one day after playing with one of our Burmese cats, ‘Mummy, guess what, pussy cats have dangerous toes’. Read more…