The spiritual dimension of childhood

We talk a lot about how to best bring up our children. We talk a lot about their diet, about their clothes, schooling, meaningful playtime and sleep patterns. We are continuously preoccupied with their self-esteem and skills development but we hardly ever address their spiritual side, hardly ever ask questions about it. I sometimes feel that it is almost a taboo to talk about spirituality for the fear of being recognised as a potential or practicing believer.

I am a practicing believer. I go to church. Once it was part of my cultural practice and upbringing (being brought up in a Catholic family with Catholic values), now it is my choice. I don’t feel constrained by my religion, I feel guided in some manner but not constrained. In fact I am often plagued with doubt but a few years ago a solid seed has been planted in me and now there is a tree growing there, a very healthy tree that supports my core and blossoms with my regular visits before God.

I belong to a gentle and a very balanced community built from people from all over the world: Europe, India, Nigeria, Brazil and the States, to name just a few. We are all there sitting in one church, connected before God, equal before God. It is a very powerful sensation. It is a very powerful understanding. I take my son to church and I think he sees what I am seeing. He sees and breathes this so powerful a statement of equality – for him there is no other world, no other world than the multicultural one, no other than the equal one.

I have got friends of all religions and persuasions, in fact my best friends are of different persuasions to mine but it does not prevent us valuing each other’s friendship or having deep conversations on the topics related to believing, disbelieving and non-believing. Our ability to develop different views and feelings related to the metaphysical is what makes us so wonderfully multidimensional. I want my son to be able to position himself towards the metaphysical with as much knowledge and experience as he can get himself, and as much understanding as I can offer him and so I take him to church (I know that there are other ways, but that is mine). Someone told me once that they stopped attending church because church should be for the people and not people for the church. The main message that I get from the place that I go to is not that people are for the church but that people are for the people. That people are for the people. This is what I would like my son to take with him.

We are very fortunate to live in a multicultural and multi-faith city. The city which totally overwhelmed me when I first arrived here, the city which I am totally indebted to for making me open-minded and curious of differences, and as many British cities this one is also great at coexistence but would definitely benefit from more face-to-face dialogue. I don’t know how it is in schools these days, but I know what it looks like in playgrounds and play spaces. Mums gravitate towards those that look like them. How about breaking that habit? How about initiating conversations that join us together? Getting to know that lonely-sitting, iphone-flicking everymama? Where she’s from, what she values and most importantly why she is alone.

How I have raised my energy levels beyond those of my toddler

Over the last 6 months I have made a deliberate attempt at improving my health and raising my energy levels to exceed, or at least match, those of my toddler. I was getting progressively weaker and weaker and so decided to manage myself more thoughtfully and replenish resources. Every step I made equalled a step up on the energy ladder and I only wish now I had done it sooner. Here’s a short description of the journey to vitality that I have taken so far.

1. I started small in January. No great ambitions. All that I really wanted was to get more sleep and so I did. Often at the expense of dirty floors, windows and dishes but in all honesty I was so exhausted there was no other choice. I gave myself 5 weeks. These were 5 weeks when I was committed to live with all the undone chores just to have the time for my recuperative bliss. Sleep is one of the most powerful medicines available. Do not feel guilty that you need it. You are not lacking discipline. You are lacking sleep.

2. I experienced an immediate improvement in my energy levels after those sleepy weeks but it was winter and I was lacking motivation to leave the house for longer walks and I knew I needed them to get fitter so I invested in pedometer – a little clever tool that counts your steps. To me, a blessing. You probably can use a smartphone for that and download the right apps but I do not have one so I bought this one. The pedometer worked for me, it worked for my husband, it worked for my mum and dad. Try, I think it might work for you too.

3. I read a lot about nutrition, gut flora, adrenal fatigue and supplementation. I was ignorant when it came to those subjects and I would not describe myself as a great supporter of supplements before. However I realised that after pregnancy I was just too depleted and would not be able to replenish my resources with diet only – I would probably have to double my food intake and I am not slim. In my case, post-pregnancy supplementation (2.5 years later!) was essential. On the subject of gut flora, I learnt that many autoimmune diseases are linked to our gut. If you, like me, were given antibiotics in the last few years, you may benefit from taking extra care for your gut. Fermented food could be really beneficial. Sauerkraut is regularly served on my table.

4. Are you a grazer? Yes I am. A bad one – one that used to graze on biscuits and chocolate. A good one – one that now grazes on nuts (Brazil nuts and walnuts), dried fruit (mainly prunes) and superfoods (e.g. avocado, blueberries). It’s a very simple but a very beneficial change to make as you simply graze on nutrients: vitamins and protein. Of course if you’re not a grazer then do not even try to be one – just add some nuts to your breakfast.

5. Water. I used to be a heavy coffee drinker. A couple of weeks ago I decided to break this habit too. I knew that my energy levels were improving as I was leaving half-full cups of coffee all over the house. Not drinking it – not needing it. I replaced the coffee with cold water. Now water is all that I need to feel refreshed in the middle of the afternoon when my energy drops slightly.

6. It’s only now, almost three years from my pregnancy, 6 months after I started looking after myself that I feel I can take on heavier workout and seriously look after my body. Is there anyone who you like exercising with? My sister has recently recommended Focus T25, which is a cardio 25 minutes workout per day for 5 days, I have tried it and loved it.

Just recently, during our first meeting, my nutritionist gave me a piece of advice. She suggested that I should create a positive mantra that would describe myself in good health with great energy. The mantra could be as simple as I am health. The psychological effect behind repeating it is similar to that of a placebo effect. If we think that we are healthy or that we are heading the right direction in our recovery our brain starts producing the necessary chemicals which support the process. I am healthy and vigorous – that’s my mantra. What would yours be? Where do you get your energy from?

Have patience to walk in small steps until you have the wings to fly.

Francis de Sales

Holidaying in this space

Not many people read blogs during the summer so it feels like I’m going against the grain here by coming back from my break in writing. A lot has been happening over the past few months and part of me wants to take a good stock of it. So I’ll be holidaying in this space and a few posts will appear here this summer.

This is a simple list of thoughts and experiences that I just wanted to log that are not only about today but also about the last few months.

Making: sense of my multicultural experiences on the pages of my thesis
Cooking: simple chicken dishes with olive oil, fresh tomatoes, garlic and basil
Drinking: jugs of water
Reading: once again The Road Less Travelled by M. Scott Peck; Masterpieces of literary reportage by Ryszard Kapuscinski, Last Child in The Woods by Richard Louv
Wanting: what I have
Looking: at the growing man on my side
Playing: shake, shake, shake – it’s just about shaking pretty much everything these days
Wasting: perhaps a bit too much money on books these months
Sewing: is about to be outsourced to a tailor – winter coats need mending
Wishing: well to people nearby and afar
Enjoying: gluten-free diet
Waiting: no more, there is no time to waste
Liking: this video about self-compassion being even more important than self-esteem, Jesper Juul, Hozier and Gipsy Kings
Wondering: what to write in this space
Loving: English charity shops
Hoping: to complete this list
Marvelling: at my son’s strength
Needing: stronger backbone to lift the pre-school attendee
Smelling: blackcurrants
Wearing: summer
Following: you ;)
Noticing: how much can be gained through a face-to-face dialogue
Knowing: myself much better than 4 years ago
Thinking: a lot about languages, cultures, modern families, nutrition and growing broad beans
Feeling: optimistic
Bookmarking: quotes on patience and perseverance
Opening: many packs of raisins for my little boy
Giggling: every evening when the summer heat subsides and the air cools down

and one addition:

Missing: I was missing writing for this space. I think I have grown quite a lot through my previous blogging experiences and it has always felt like a privilege to be part of this creative community. It’s great to pop in for a while.

The taking stock list and a template was made by Pip at Meet Me at Mike‘s. Go and visit her lovely space.

The lesson

I was in a shopping centre yesterday. I bought my son a little toy. One of these tiny cars that you wind up and they drive off on their own in whichever direction you set them in. My son played with it, giggled loudly and was really really excited about it. We walked together towards a play area in the centre and my son saw a crying boy. He walked towards him and put the new wind-up car in his hands, took a step back, smiled to the boy and laughed with joy.

When I described this to someone we briefly concluded that it’s good that the children can share. Then I thought about it for a while longer and decided that what I witnessed was not a lesson in sharing but a lesson in compassion. The simplicity and honesty of the situation was astounding. One little boy saw the other one in pain and did what he could to relieve the pain of the other.

Why do we as adults find it so much more difficult to behave in this way? Have we been educated out of compassion? Are we educating ourselves out of it?

How often have we crossed the street to avoid a person in pain? How often do we ignore the pain of our friends or family members? Why is the pain of others so difficult to acknowledge?

Developing Good Communication Habits with Toddlers: Book Recommendation

If you are a parent and you’re interested in your child’s language development, you might have heard of Kimberly Scanlon. She is a speech therapist who throughout her work developed a strong expertise in building up children’s communication skills.

In the book that I am recommending she offers 25 play routines (with toys and arts and crafts) in which she describes the activity and suggests appropriate strategies that the parents can use to elicit responses and expand vocabulary. She also offers tips on What to Do if the Toddler Is Not Imitating You and The Do Not List. I also found the Introduction and How to Use This Book sections extremely valuable as they were both informative and reassuring.

Our son is being brought up with three languages and I am his primary source of Polish language, my husband is his primary source of Italian, and English is the language of the community. At the moment all three languages develop at the same pace but slower than the language development in his monolingual peers. Thus, by monolingual standards, he experiences a language delay. I’ve been looking for a book that would improve my ability to stimulate my child’s language development, but also for a text that I could recommend to my child’s nursery. Although this book is not about how to talk to multilingual children, I like its focus on simplicity, language-wise and play-wise. I like its very practical and realistic tone too. It definitely sets the expectations right and makes you question less and communicate better.
Scanlon, K. (2012) My Toddler Talks: Strategies and Activities to Promote Your Child’s Language Development. Createspace, North Charleston, SC.

This is not a sponsored post. Just a recommendation.

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