Sixteen years ago I was beginning the third trimester of my first pregnancy. I’d just quit working (Tony wanted me to enjoy the last few months on my own terms.) We’d just moved into a brand new house that we’d spent the winter having built and I was nesting fiercely. We were painting a nursery and devouring every book on babies and parenting that we could lay our hands on. I even went so far as to invite friends we admired much to dinner so that we could ask them how they made their family so perfect. With great kindness and much grace, Judy didn’t laugh me out of my own kitchen.

Last week when we piled out of the van at a rest stop somewhere in Ohio and I followed my herd as they chattered and jostled each other toward the building, laughing ahead of me I had the realization that my kids are bigger than the Staley kids were when I nervously prepared dinner for the “perfect family” and settled in to take notes from their “perfect Mama.”

The memory made me smile. Having dinner with their oldest son, Sean, who we crossed paths with in Germany a few years ago and who’s now back in the states, made me smile even more. He was Hannah’s first babysitter. Tony babysat for him. He’s an outstanding man, a definite tribute to his mother’s passion and dedication

I’m far from a perfect mother. I still think of Judy often and aspire to her example and that of a couple of other excellent moms that I’ve had the privilege of knowing over the years. We’ve been so blessed to find ourselves in communities of wonderful parents who strive together for the best of our children, collectively. I’m grateful for that.

I have been reflecting, of late, on what I’ve learned so far, 16 years into my motherhood, and what I wish I could go back and tell myself in the weeks before my first daughter was born. Perhaps some of it will resonate with you, or with a young mother you know:

1.  It’s Not A Contest

Motherhood. It’s not a contest. It’s not about who can do the most things from scratch, whether or not you co-sleep with your baby and nurse them until they’re ten, or not. It’s not about who can keep the house the cleanest, return to her pre-baby figure fastest, or have the most kids in a ten year span. It’s not. It also is not about measuring up to your mother (in-law’s?) standard of perfection, or getting your baby to sleep through the night fastest, or having your child reading Faust by the time she turns five. It’s not about whether you stay home, or work, or whether you homeschool or not. It’s not a contest. Motherhood is NOT A CONTEST.

It’s about doing the best you can with what you have this day, in your children, in yourself, in the life you’ve been dealt and the life you’ve crafted for yourself. Your best will be defined differently in different seasons. That’s okay. Just do your best. YOURS, not someone else’s.

2.  It’s A Marathon, Not A Sprint

This would have been good information to have upfront, when I was so bent on doing everything “right.” Which, by the way, is impossible.

Marathon runners talk about that point in the painfully long race where they hit the wall, their bodies want to die, their minds are mush and it takes all of the effort they can muster, physically and mentally, to push through and finish. It’s painful. It hurts. They want to give up. They wonder what they were thinking, getting themselves into this. Every mother I know, who’s been at this thing longer than five minutes, can relate to that feeling. Motherhood is not the 400 yard dash, which you can passionately pour your energy into and emerge victorious moments later. Nope. It’s a 216 month epic endeavor in which the finish line is a mirage; it’s not like it’s over when they turn eighteen.

Run hard. Run as hard as you can, but remember to pace yourself. Remember to take the cold drinks offered by those cheering on the sidelines. Remember to keep your body moving with your mind and keep your mind moving with your body. And keep training. Nobody finishes a marathon well without lots and lots of training.

You know the crazy thing about marathoners? They sign up for that bone crushing punishment again and again, because they love it, because the reward is worth it. The same is true with mothers.

3.  Trust Your Mama Gut

This is really the only piece of advice worth giving. It covers so many things, from whether or not to make that midnight run to the hospital, to whether or not little league is a good idea for your family, to whether or not your kid has a food allergy.

We’re hardwired to our kids in a way that’s hard to explain and no one knows better than an invested mom what’s right for a particular little person. Voices are going to shout about what’s right, what’s best, what you’re doing wrong, what you could be doing better, what your kid needs, what your kid deserves and how to fix everything from teething pain to temper tantrums to rebellious teens. Advice is good. Seek it out. But at the end of the day, if you’ve got a gut feeling about something, it’s probably right.

Trust your Mama gut.

4. Just Nod And Smile

One of my best Mama friends is Lois, remember her? She and I drove across the country with our combined herd of 11 kids this past fall. She has a great piece of advice that she gives young mamas:

“People are going to give you all sorts of advice, most of it unsolicited. When they do, step back and take a long hard look at their kids. If you like what you see in their family, listen, if you don’t, just nod and smile.”

That is such great advice, and so freeing.

No need to listen to every well meaning grandmother in the grocery who is appalled that  your child is missing her shoes, or wearing a super hero cape and mask to the store. No need to listen to the mom of teens who is angry and resentful of her rebellious teens. No need to justify your choices to the judgement of others.

You’re free to take advice… or leave it. This is your life, your family, your kid. 

Just nod and smile and move on with your day.

5.  Don’t Wear Your Heart On Your Sleeve

Parenting is intensely personal. As Mamas we pour our hearts and souls into our children. It’s easy to live vicariously through their successes and just as easy to feel personally affronted by their failures. It’s even easier to take words to heart that we shouldn’t. Not every less than positive comment about your child has to do with you. Their failure in a particular arena is not due to your bad mothering.

Sometimes, criticism will be valid, or someone will speak something into your life that’s hard to hear. I remember one older mom saying to me once, “You really need to think hard about that… do you see where that is leading ten years from now?” It was regarding a behaviour I was allowing in my three year olds. My first response was to be offended, but she was right. She wasn’t criticizing me as a mother, she was trying to help me see long term. I’m so thankful for her courage in pointing out what she could see clearly but I could not.

Don’t take everything so personally.

6. Days Are Long, Years Are Short

I had lunch last week with a new friend. Her kids are all tiny and ever so sweet. It was fun to watch their delight at a butterfly they’d hatched and to see them climb all over my big kids. It reminded me of so many of the precious memories we have of mud pies, hatching our own butterflies, finger painting and tea parties on the living room carpet.

I also remember being tired. Very, very tired. I remember getting through the mornings on the hope of nap time and through some afternoons on the hope of bedtime. I remember “arsenic hour,” you know, that late afternoon hour in which everyone is needy and you’re trying to get dinner on the table and arsenic seems tempting… you’d either give some, or take some, either way.

Some days with toddlers are an eternity. And then, you blink, and they’ve got one foot out the door. People told me that, “Oh Honey, enjoy every minute, it passes so fast.” I’d wipe the spit up out of my hair, thank them with a tight smile and think, “Awesome, so come help me with THIS minute, will ya? Because I’m dying in an endless pit of diapers and sing-songs over here!!”

Nonetheless… they are right. It passes in an instant. You don’t have to enjoy every minute, you won’t, so don’t feel guilty about that… but everything is a season and it will pass, and there will be other incarnations of you, and your children.

7. There Are No Experts. Do It YOUR Way

You know what drives me absolutely insane as a mother of four children? Parenting books written by parents of only one or two kids.

You know what makes me NUTS as the mother of boys? Parenting books that go absolutely viral and are elevated to the status of the bible that are written by people who raised just two pink little girls.

You know what else drives me over the edge? Books with judgemetal titles like “Non-Violent Communication” and “Attachement Parenting” which send the underlying message that if you aren’t doing it their way you’re somehow violent and unattached with your children. Seriously? Because I don’t co-sleep I’m not attached to my kids? Because I believe that there is a point at which it’s okay to bodily remove a child from a situation against his will I’m violent? Please.

Here’s a newsflash for you: There are no parenting experts. There are people who are experts at their OWN kids who happen to have some good advice to share, but they don’t live in your house, they don’t have your kids, or your family situation, or your particular blend of lifestyle. They don’t know what’s best for your kids. You do.

I’ll bet you’re smart enough to seek the help you need and know when you’ve found the right thing. Just because someone wrote a book and your best friend thinks the sun rises and sets on the advice in it does NOT mean you have to buy in.

Do it your way

8. Think Long Term

This is very hard to do when you’ve been sleep deprived for six years and your kids are puking all over the inside of the van. It’s hard to do when you’re drowning in toddlers and what you really, really want is just a break for five seconds, or to go to the bathroom by yourself for goodness sake.

My parents were awesome at thinking long term. They parented us as little kids with an eye toward the adults we would be. I try to do that with my kids. I’m not raising children. At the end of the day, I’m raising adults.

One observation I’ve made is that so much of what we have in our teenagers is developed in our preschoolers. Habits of patience, cheerfulness, attention, self-motivation, love of learning, respectfulness… or the opposite have their roots in the under five crowd.

Find yourself a mentor Mama who is five or ten years further on than you are and pay attention to what she gets right, what she messes up and what she tells you she wishes she’d known when her kids were tiny. These women are hard to find, but worth their weight in gold.

Try to see the teenager in your toddler, and the adult in your teenager. They’re in there, I promise.

9. Kids Are People, Not Pets

If you want emotional fulfillment, warm fuzzy cuddles and eternal happiness at your very presence, get a pet, don’t have a kid. Kids are not pets. They don’t exist to bring you some sort of completeness (although that is sometimes a byproduct). They exist to grow up and out and become dreamers and doers and livers of epic lives that change the world in spectacular ways.

Don’t live through your kids. Don’t buy them cute leashes and sweaters and parade them around so people will notice how much time and money you’re spending on them. Treat them like the fabulous humans they are. Give them space. Water them so they grow. You don’t want to keep them fenced in your back yard forever, you want them out there living and doing… without you, eventually.

Encourage them to live their own lives and get out of your house.

10. This is your life.

How do you answer when someone asks you what you do? Why is it that we feel the need to answer with something other than, something more than, mother?

There are other worthwhile things to do with life, but none more important than raising children who will change the world. 

It’s easy to refer to what we used to be or do before we had kids when we identify ourselves, or to discuss our plans for “when the kids are gone.” It’s harder to let those things go and simply be the Mom. Living in the moment is hard as a mom. There is so much to do, so many who need, and so little left of ourselves at the end of some very long days. But this is your life.

THIS is your life. This is my life.

Muddy kids, loud kids, kids with intestinal issues on chicken busses in god forsaken corners of the world, kids who make me laugh, kids who make me want to scream, kids who wake me up with cups of tea and pick me flowers on long walks, this is my life. Washing clothes, cooking endlessly, cleaning bathrooms, finding lost socks, teaching math lessons, listening to squeaky instrument practice, refereeing sibling squabbles, this is my life.

I’m a teacher, I’m a writer, I wear a lot of hats, I “do” a lot of things, but none of them matter as much as being a mother. All of the other things I do will fade and pass away. My kids will be charging into a future I’ll never see. How cool is that?

This Mother’s Day we celebrated with four generations of the Miller family in Wisconsin. Grandma Parker had all of her children and grandchildren and great grandchildren in one room. I love moments like that. I can’t imagine what it must feel like to see your life’s work in the bright eyes of a dozen people that would never have existed without your choice to mother. I can’t wait for that moment. It’s what gets me through the long days, the hard days and the days that make me wonder what I was thinking.

My own life, I owe to my mother, who is sold out to being a mom in ways I can only aspire to. These Ten Things I Learned From My Mom are my little tribute to her.

The happiest of Mother’s Days to you all.

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Our flight was direct and only 7 hours, which by the end of our three week journey, involving multiple airports and cross-country road trips, seemed incredibly simple.

After a two hour car ride from the airport, we were back to our home in Germany on a sunny Sunday morning. The youngest two children, having been refreshed by catnaps in the car, went outside to ride bikes, while the oldest two kids and I closed the rolladens and hit our comfy beds.

We had completely skipped nighttime.

I awoke a couple hours later to find the two youngest still playing outside in states of rapturous delirium. I thought the euphoria would carry them through dinnertime.

I was wrong.

By late afternoon, supper was on the table, and the two youngest had crashed hard in their beds.

To wake or not to wake? That became the question.

I roused the princess, ensconced in her fluffy purple comforter.

“I’m so confused,” she cried, tears dripping down her cheeks, “Did we have night?” My heart broke, as the ‘bad mom’ alarm rang through my soul. After assuring her that she could go to bed right after dinner, I cautiously went to my son’s room. I tested the waters by saying his name.

Nothing happened.

I spoke his name while patting his hand.

Not one muscle moved.

I checked his breathing.

Rhythmic.

When I pulled the blanket out from under him, rolling his limp body sideways, his eyelids didn’t even flutter.

What’s a parent to do?

While there is no ‘right’ way to weather jet-lag, there are certain strategies that may help, depending on your child’s age and temperament.

Watch it!

Unless the new time zone ridiculously out of sync with your home base, try setting an extra clock to the current local time in your destination. As you move through your day, note the times of overlap (when you would wake, sleep or eat in either location), and ease your children towards the new time zone by incrementally keeping them up longer or waking them earlier in the weeks prior to travel.

Playtime!

Feeling that the body is off-kilter can be confusing and stressful for children, therefore, it is extremely important you give your child healthy outlets for stress relief before, during (if possible) and after travel. Unlike adults, many children, especially small children, cannot yet verbalize their feelings, so they relieve stress in ways that are not so pleasant, such as crying, being short-tempered or having complete meltdowns while in line for passport control.

Walking, biking, skating, swimming, running—whatever your child loves to do, make sure there is time in the schedule for stress-relief. Exercise during the daylight hours may also help the child adjust more quickly to the new time zone.

Let the Sun Shine In!

With the appropriate amount of sun protection, getting doses of fresh air and sunshine can help boost a body’s immune system, which is important both before and after air travel. Being in the sunshine isn’t merely a mental boost: it affects the body on a molecular level. Not only does sunlight increase levels of serotonin and endorphins, but absorbing more sunshine during the day has been shown to boost levels of melatonin at night, which can aid in re-setting the jet-lagged body’s internal clock.

Eat Plants—Lots of them!

If you are fortunate enough to be traveling to a destination where fruit can be plucked directly from trees, then you’ve hit the nutritional jackpot. Fruits and veggies are liquid sunshine, and the vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals consumed in their natural states cannot be matched by anything in a plastic-coated capsule. Serve your child as much fresh fruit as his system can tolerate—and don’t forget the veggies and a few whole grains too.

The vitamins and nutrients contained in whole, plant-based foods will help your body’s 50 trillion cells rid themselves of waste more efficiently and more quickly repair damage that may have occurred during the stress of travel. A body fueled with nutrient-dense foods will be better equipped to handle the physical stresses involved when jumping time zones.

Wake Them or Let Them Sleep?

There are times when an exhausted child needs sleep more than anything else. But when a mid-day nap appears to be extending into late afternoon, waking the child may help prevent middle-of-the-night playtime. If your child is wide awake in the middle of the night and has no intention of going back to sleep, try having a snack, reading quietly, or taking a walk under the stars.

The key is to be flexible and try not to have too much scheduled for your first few days upon arrival.

As for my jet-lagged son, I tossed a blanket over him, realizing at that point he needed sleep more than he needed dinner.

Jet lag in children is difficult to deal with—especially when the parent is jet lagged too. But knowing your child’s temperament, recognizing her primary needs, and taking preventative measures can help you through it. Remember, even the tough times will eventually become funny anecdotes—fond memories of the trip of a lifetime.

For more detailed information on jet-lag in babies, toddlers and children, check out our book Bottles to Backpacks: The Gypsy Mama’s Guide to REAL Travel with Kids.

What has your family found helpful when combating jet lag? We would love to hear your tips!

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The idea of multigenerational homes may seem uncomfortable to some, and downright impossible for others. Adults moved away from their parents to have children and be free, so isn’t having the grandparents come stay with them going in the wrong direction? While there may be many bad things to say about a multigenerational house, the truth is that these homes are usually the best, especially for children. They gain a myriad of benefits, and both parents and grandparents gain some benefits as well.

Financial Help

There is a predominant thought that most grandparents do not have much money, and that is their main reason for moving in with their own children. While this certainly can be a factor, the truth is that senior citizens control over three-quarters of the nation’s money, according to GrandParents.com.
Because of this, grandparents can often help with the financial burdens of running a house and raising a family. While they should not be depended on entirely, they can still help with the bills every now and then.

Busy or Single Parents

Sometimes getting all the money needed to run a household leaves both parents very busy, and they are unable to give proper time and affection to their children. The same goes for single parents, who have to work but also need to care for their children.

In this case, grandparents benefit both the parents and the children. They allow the parents to go to work or do whatever they need to, without leaving the children alone. Grandparents can also cook and do other household chores, so the children are well fed. Children are given the affection they need, and would normally get, from parents.

Love and Affection

Even if the parents are not busy, grandparents are able to give another source of love to children that they would not have otherwise. When a child grows up just with his or her parents, some children find it hard to believe that other adults can give them love. With grandparents around, this broadens that horizon. It also gives them more love than a singular mother and father could, because there are more people around.

Life Lessons

One of the most important functions of grandparents is to give their grandchildren certain life lessons. This can be from stories of the past, or just general experience and knowledge that grandparents have accumulated in their long life. Since grandparents are in the same house, the children have easy access to this connection with their grandparents.

Chain of Love

Children don’t think about it too often, and no one really wants to admit it is a possibility, but there is always a chance that something can happen to the parents that will dramatically affect the children. They can get a divorce, they can die in an accident or they can contract a fatal and terminal disease.

When this happens, children often go live with their grandparents. If children don’t know their grandparents, or rarely see them, it can be a very stressful time for children. They do not know what to expect, and there may be negative consequences for the child and the family.

If children are currently living with their grandparents, then they already know what to expect. After understanding that something is preventing their parents from attending to them and loving them, they can easily depend on grandparents for the same love and affection.

Energy and Happiness

Until now, all of the benefits have been about the parents and children, but they aren’t the only ones benefitting from this move. Grandparents often benefit as well from moving in with the rest of the family, because they have a sense of purpose again. Not only that, but keeping up with the children gives them a new sense of energy, and it gives them exercise as well. They also get more mental stimulation because they have to be imaginative around the children, or they have to help with homework.

Conclusion

Most people fear having a multigenerational household, but the truth is that everyone benefits from it. Even if there are disputes between the parents and grandparents, they can often be dropped to care for the children and to maintain a healthy household. Don’t fear having the grandparents move in; it should be embraced, because it helps everyone.

Author Bio:

Tom writes for Assisted Living Today, a leading source of information on a range of topics related to elderly care and connecticut assisted living .

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I have odd parents, and that is what I love about them.

My father was a Texan geologist turned yacht salesman, and also a professional classical musician. He was the type of man who told the same jokes over and over again, and no one seemed to get them. My mother I’ve given the nickname ‘posh Brit’ because that is exactly what she is: an English woman with a love of the designer clothing and jewelry, as well as great food. However eccentric they were when I was growing up, they still had facets of being very conservative. They were Catholic and my mom has a thing with being super, super clean. She can cook almost anything, and all of us delight in the feasts she spends hours preparing.

I, on the other hand, have never been conservative. I sleep in late, can’t clean to save my life, and never pictured myself being a parent. I had taken on my father’s love of the arts but didn’t want to have the rigidity that the school system pushed. I wanted freedom and choice. And for some reason, I believed that family was a ‘cop out’ and not something that interested me. Indeed, boarding school had made me believe that an academic career was the most important thing I could achieve.

Now that I am a mother, I look back on that image I had and feel saddened. I went off to school in the 8^th grade and basically grew up 24/7 with other kids, in a very strict academic world. We all felt suffocated and on top of each other, with no privacy. Kids were scared to emote for fear of being ridiculed. It had its perks, but the downside was very apparent.

I loved reading, and still do, but eventually that environment lead me to where I am today: an unschooling mother and family activist.

When I was just twenty and had moved to the States, I met my husband and was engaged by twenty one. This was something I had never envisioned, that I could have such intimacy and trust with someone so soon. I pictured myself as a rogue archaeologist, living in a tent somewhere. Instead, I had moved to LA and gotten married soon afterwards. It was the best surprise I could have asked for! We’re inspired by travel and living outside the box and yet we value the traditional family model, in the sense that family is first.

We don’t schedule it in, we schedule everything else around it.

Nowadays, to have such a view is indeed rogue. To not send one’s kids off to day care and then school and pursue a career is almost frowned upon.  Kids have become used to spending little time with mom and dad, and as one homeschooling  mum put it ‘ home is like a hotel, where kids check in and out’.

But things are changing.

Old school family values are becoming trendier (really!!) with mom blogs popping up all over the place, sharing their day to day routine with the world. One blog in particular infuses the radical notion of actually enjoying motherhood above all other pleasures, and it attracts readers who are not only single, but also hard core feminists who for one reason or another find themselves attracted to the image of a happy, smiling, and religious family.

Because of the internet, blogging, and social media, people can connect with eachother like never before, and learn from one another’s preferences. Magazines like Bust interview women who ( gasp) love their arranged marriage, despite catering to a feminist, women’s lib loving crowd. We are hungry to learn about other lifestyles, in order to properly discern what is right for our own, instead of shutting the door on anything outside of our comfort zone.

Nie Nie Dialogues is an inspirational read to check out, showing how a maman of 5 balances her desires and her family’s needs, as well as being an airplane crash survivor and burn victim. Her book Heaven Is Here is out of April 4^th and shows her heroic journey of recovery to physical and mental wellbeing, after having been in a coma for 3 months. I feel uplifted reading about her daily life and how she views the role of motherhood, and it certainly drives me to complain less about my own life and responsibilities.

The Wiegands is another motivational blog about a young artistic family of 4 living in Texas. Casey Leigh chronicles her life and the losses and hardships she has encountered on her journey in parenthood. Readers comment on how she makes the ups (her new pregnancy) and downs ( her miscarriage, her son’s asthma) so touching and real. Her writing is accessible and her story shows how we all struggle, but how we deal with it is what matters.

Are you unconventional yet drawn to the traditional? Where do those two ideas collide in your family and how do you make it work? Where do you find your inspiration?

This article was written by Elizabeth Kelsey: Wife to William, Mama to Kaya, currently writing from Phuket, Thailand where her family is living and learning together.

I must admit, being raised as I was, that it never occurred to me that some people suffered nature deprivation.

If anything, my parents could have been accused of being nature gluttons and of force feeding my brother and I on a steady diet of pine needles and buckets full of garter snakes caught in the gully behind our island home.

Of course if I had thought for just a minute I would have seen the plausibility of the thought, of course I knew people who’d lived out their whole lives in cities and couldn’t tell a maple tree from an elm, but until last week I hadn’t.

Nature deprivation as a societal condition had never crossed my mind.

The general premise of the book, and other articles I’ve read since then, is that children today are being raised without nature for a variety of reasons: the prevalence of television and video games, being two, but another significant reason the author cited is fear.

He postulates that parents fear what is outside their front doors, violence, kidnapping, accidents and so they don’t allow their children to freely explore as was common one or two generations ago.

Is this fear well founded?

According to the author and the studies he cites, no. The fear is propagated mainly by media. One or two tragic stories of a child coming to harm are played and replayed until every parent in the nation is terrified that this could happen in their neighborhood. One ten year old child wanders off from his family’s vacation rental in New Hampshire one summer and dies of exposure within two miles of his house and suddenly every parent is terrified that the same fate awaits their child if they are allowed out of sight of the house.

I have a whole soap box on America’s “culture of fear,” but I’ll save that for another article. This one is about nature deprivation.

Nature an antidote to ADHD?

Apparently, a regular exposure to nature has been shown to be calming to children, to diminish the symptoms of ADHD, and reduce stress levels in the subjects studied.

To this I add a hearty, “Duh?!”

Maybe one of the reasons that ADHD didn’t show up in record numbers when we were children, or when our parents were children was that our parents were in the habit of locking us out of the house for several hours a day to “go play,” whatever that meant. No kid who has played stick ball in the alley for three hours and been decked into the bricks fifteen times by well meaning friends can possibly have the energy to drive his Mom nuts when he comes in, and certainly he will sleep well that night.

Is your child nature deprived?

Of all of the things my children may well lack, exposure to the natural world is not one of them. This is not due to some great insight on my part or that stellar parenting class we are so grateful to have taken before our daughter was born. No, to me it was just natural to bundle them up and ship them out of doors, for their sanity and mine. It is gratifying to be reinforced in this accidental success of my parenting journey. However, I’m not sure I buy it entirely.

Supposedly nature deprived persons are more stressed, less attentive, and at some sort of emotional and spiritual disadvantage.

I am the first to tout the therapeutic benefit of nature in treating these symptoms within myself, however, does that mean that a person who has been raised, say, in lower Manhattan is a warped soul for not having kept snakes in a pail or fished tadpoles into a quart jar? That is painting a rather broad stroke, I think.

I know plenty of folks raised on television and subway stations that seems to be perfectly balanced persons and who are not medicated for stress or attention deficit related conditions. So what’s the point?

Evidently this idea of nature deprivation, although new to me, is not new to a whole lot of other people who are far more knowledgeable in this field than I am. The fact, alone, that a book of several hundred pages could be written on this topic and become a reasonably popular read among parents as diverse as tree huggers in California and the leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention (who have endorsed the book) says that there is a need and that the book resonates with a wide variety of people across our culture. You can spend the twenty bucks or so and read the book if you like, or you can put the twenty bucks toward a season pass at your local state park.

One of the things that my parents, unquestionably, did well was to let us get dirty.

I remember playing out in a driving rain with rivulets pouring off the ends of my braids, and water filling my boots as we waded in the gully full of rushing water. Taking a page out of my mother’s book, I try not to get too bent out of shape when my own children come to the door carrying their boots (which they had to excavate from the mud) with black socks after losing to the sink holes in the “fire swamp” as they call the mucky region of our forest just below the driveway.

I repeat the mantra of this season of motherhood with almost religious diligence: “Mud is good. Dirt makes them happy. Pine needles pass through the digestive tract.”

Sure. It would be easier to put tidy children in front of a movie all afternoon four or so days a week. There would be a lot less laundry and I’ll bet I could even get away with bathing them only ONCE a day in the summer if I did that. But is there any substitute for a thoroughly filthy girl with bangs stuck straight up with mud instead of hair gel, mud smeared evenly across her cheeks instead of makeup and dress patched with sand stains pine tar, eyes shining telling the story of the fort she’s built under a fallen tree in the hollow? She’s even learned to tie together pine branches to make a sort of thatch.

I’m not going to read the book.

I already agree with him on all of the practical levels, I could tell that from reading the jacket. However, I’m grateful to the author for causing me to consider the “why” of what is already second nature. He has caused me to be a little more intentional and cognizant of my reasons for wrapping these kids up and pitching them out the back door for half of every day. Just think, they’ll be so well balanced when they grow up!

So what do you think? Are kids in general “Nature Deprived?” Are yours? What can we do about it?

They now have four children, Logan, 12, Dustyn, 10, Michaela, 6, and Jessica, 4 years old. They live in Haliburton, Ontario, Canada, in a stunning wilderness area full of lakes and ridges and hills which sits on the doorstep of Algonquin Park and their life revolves around dogs!

We first profiled them in Dec. 2010, just before Hank ran the Yukon Quest race, in Canada in early 2011. Right now, as this interview is republished, Hank is out on the trail running the Iditarod! You can follow the race and his progress at the official race site.

Who Are You & What Are You Doing That Is Fabulous?

We are dogsledders, for a lifestyle, for pleasure and for a profession.  We own and run Winterdance Dogsled Tours which is a kennel of 150 Siberian Huskies and spend our winters teaching people from around the world how to run a dogteam.  While we have a wonderful team of guides in the winter it is a family business.

Our children spend endless hours loving and caring for the dogs & puppies that are family to all of us.

The older 3 all drive dog teams of their own and the youngest one can’t wait to get on her sled with her favourite dog this winter.

My husband and I have dreamed of running our team of dogs in the famed Alaskan dogsled race Iditarod for 13 years and accomplished that goal last winter. Our sons were able to go along with their father and the dogs for a cross North America drive to reach Alaska and the starting gate, a 6 week trip.  This year will see our family in the Yukon and Hudson Bay with our dogs for our next adventures & races.

Tell us about your family vision

The alternative to not following our dreams is looking back wishing we had… which is much scarier!

Hank & I are both hugely committed to the natural world around us and all it’s living creatures and their preservation.

Besides sharing our passion for travelling through the wilderness in magical silence on a dogteam, if we can help install in people a sense of value to the untouched wilderness and the importance of keeping it pristine and undeveloped we have in a small way helped influence people’s perceptions and hopefully actions.

It’s also about the adventure. As Hank says, that is what life is truly about, not what you own, but the adventures you have with your family (canine and human) and friends you have met along the way.

Our future goals include:

• More travel for our family
• Dogsled races in Russia and Europe and back to Alaska
• Sailing adventures
• A trip to the south pole
• South American rain forest adventures
• Kayaking with BC/Alaska whales
• Visiting Greenland’s puffins

These are all high on our list of experiences we want to share with our children before they are grown.

Finding more ways (and social media seems like a great start) to share amazing natural areas of the world that need our attention with our children, but also folks who will possibly never experience them, is a dream/goal that is fast becoming a mission.

How did you get started?

Ahh the question!  Like many people I think, our hobby/passion turned into a lifestyle dream. Within a couple years of getting our first husky from a pet store we had 7 living in our house and a sled in the garage in suburbia!

Then it became a question of moving back to the country to a place like where we had grown up before we started a family. Hank decided he would run the Iditarod and we needed a career that would allow the time, money, dogs and location that could make that happen.

Put it all together and we moved to Haliburton in 1999 and grew our family to 46 huskies and opened Winterdance Dogsled Tours while welcoming our first child Logan while we built our kennel, business and house (in that order).

What have been your biggest challenges or successes?

Watching Hank and 16 of our dogs start the Iditarod last year was definitely the peak.

Successes along the way included:

• When he was able to start racing, 7 years into building our business.
• Watching Winterdance grow to the point it is now where we get to meet and share our passion with over 3000 people from around the globe every winter and hear how something we take for granted has changed lives.
• Watching our children grow up inside of a dream and starting to see how that is affecting their view of life, the world and what is possible.
• Being able to work from home and be with our children 24/7.

Biggest challenges inlcude:

• Being a seasonal business with 3 months of cashflow.
• Finding the balance between work & family when everything is under one roof.

What would you do differently if you could go back and do it over?

Spend less time worrying and being fearful.

Things always work out, and even if they don’t the way you would like, there is usually a good lesson or reason and worrying didn’t help things anyway except to slow you down.

What is one myth you’d like to dispel about your lifestyle?

You have the summers off!  Caring for 150 dogs is a year around full time career and getting away isn’t easy.

What would you tell other families who want to do what you are doing?

You can do anything you want!!!!!

You just have to be passionate enough, believe enough and be willing to take a bit of a risk, but the risk is small compared to living a life you aren’t happy with and hoping happiness will come someday.

There will always be people telling you it won’t work, it isn’t possible. There is also going to be the right person out there to help you make it work and will believe in you, you just have to knock on enough doors to find them!

If you’d like to get to know this fabulous family better, we HIGHLY recommend that you read Hank’s fabulous book, Iditerod Dreamer, about his incredible adventure running the 2010 Iditerdod.

You can follow Winterdance on Facebook or leave a comment for the family here!

They now have four children, Logan, 12, Dustyn, 10, Michaela, 6, and Jessica, 4 years old. They live in Haliburton, Ontario, Canada, in a stunning wilderness area full of lakes and ridges and hills which sits on the doorstep of Algonquin Park and their life revolves around dogs!

We first profiled them in Dec. 2010, just before Hank ran the Yukon Quest race, in Canada in early 2011. Right now, as this interview is republished, Hank is out on the trail running the Iditarod! You can follow the race and his progress at the official race site.

Who Are You & What Are You Doing That Is Fabulous?

We are dogsledders, for a lifestyle, for pleasure and for a profession.  We own and run Winterdance Dogsled Tours which is a kennel of 150 Siberian Huskies and spend our winters teaching people from around the world how to run a dogteam.  While we have a wonderful team of guides in the winter it is a family business.

Our children spend endless hours loving and caring for the dogs & puppies that are family to all of us.

The older 3 all drive dog teams of their own and the youngest one can’t wait to get on her sled with her favourite dog this winter.

My husband and I have dreamed of running our team of dogs in the famed Alaskan dogsled race Iditarod for 13 years and accomplished that goal last winter. Our sons were able to go along with their father and the dogs for a cross North America drive to reach Alaska and the starting gate, a 6 week trip.  This year will see our family in the Yukon and Hudson Bay with our dogs for our next adventures & races.

Tell us about your family vision

The alternative to not following our dreams is looking back wishing we had… which is much scarier!

Hank & I are both hugely committed to the natural world around us and all it’s living creatures and their preservation.

Besides sharing our passion for travelling through the wilderness in magical silence on a dogteam, if we can help install in people a sense of value to the untouched wilderness and the importance of keeping it pristine and undeveloped we have in a small way helped influence people’s perceptions and hopefully actions.

It’s also about the adventure. As Hank says, that is what life is truly about, not what you own, but the adventures you have with your family (canine and human) and friends you have met along the way.

Our future goals include:

• More travel for our family
• Dogsled races in Russia and Europe and back to Alaska
• Sailing adventures
• A trip to the south pole
• South American rain forest adventures
• Kayaking with BC/Alaska whales
• Visiting Greenland’s puffins

These are all high on our list of experiences we want to share with our children before they are grown.

Finding more ways (and social media seems like a great start) to share amazing natural areas of the world that need our attention with our children, but also folks who will possibly never experience them, is a dream/goal that is fast becoming a mission.

How did you get started?

Ahh the question!  Like many people I think, our hobby/passion turned into a lifestyle dream. Within a couple years of getting our first husky from a pet store we had 7 living in our house and a sled in the garage in suburbia!

Then it became a question of moving back to the country to a place like where we had grown up before we started a family. Hank decided he would run the Iditarod and we needed a career that would allow the time, money, dogs and location that could make that happen.

Put it all together and we moved to Haliburton in 1999 and grew our family to 46 huskies and opened Winterdance Dogsled Tours while welcoming our first child Logan while we built our kennel, business and house (in that order).

What have been your biggest challenges or successes?

Watching Hank and 16 of our dogs start the Iditarod last year was definitely the peak.

Successes along the way included:

• When he was able to start racing, 7 years into building our business.
• Watching Winterdance grow to the point it is now where we get to meet and share our passion with over 3000 people from around the globe every winter and hear how something we take for granted has changed lives.
• Watching our children grow up inside of a dream and starting to see how that is affecting their view of life, the world and what is possible.
• Being able to work from home and be with our children 24/7.

Biggest challenges inlcude:

• Being a seasonal business with 3 months of cashflow.
• Finding the balance between work & family when everything is under one roof.

What would you do differently if you could go back and do it over?

Spend less time worrying and being fearful.

Things always work out, and even if they don’t the way you would like, there is usually a good lesson or reason and worrying didn’t help things anyway except to slow you down.

What is one myth you’d like to dispel about your lifestyle?

You have the summers off!  Caring for 150 dogs is a year around full time career and getting away isn’t easy.

What would you tell other families who want to do what you are doing?

You can do anything you want!!!!!

You just have to be passionate enough, believe enough and be willing to take a bit of a risk, but the risk is small compared to living a life you aren’t happy with and hoping happiness will come someday.

There will always be people telling you it won’t work, it isn’t possible. There is also going to be the right person out there to help you make it work and will believe in you, you just have to knock on enough doors to find them!

If you’d like to get to know this fabulous family better, we HIGHLY recommend that you read Hank’s fabulous book, Iditerod Dreamer, about his incredible adventure running the 2010 Iditerdod.

You can follow Winterdance on Facebook or leave a comment for the family here!

Image credit

If your family is like ours keeping utility costs low is not only a budgetary concern, it’s an environmental one as well. The less we consume, the lighter our footprint on the planet. It’s not enough for kids to learn to reuse, recycle and upcycle, we have to really work on that third R: Reduce. Utilities are both expensive and a fact of life. While you can skip purchasing entertainment and can go without haircuts for long periods of time in order to save money, you can’t really decide not to buy electric or water services. However, there are plenty of things you can do in order to lower your utility costs. Shutting of lights when you’re not using them is obvious, but there are other, very simple ways to significantly reduce your utility bill as well as your impact on the planet.

Turn Off Unused Lights and Appliances

Many families waste electricity by leaving lights on that are not being used. For example, if you go into the kitchen to have a late night snack and don’t turn off the light before heading back to bed, you’re wasting a lot of electricity, as nobody in your home benefits from this light. Get in the habit of turning off lights before leaving a room and teach your children to do the same in order to save electricity costs.

Similarly, you should turn of televisions, radios and other appliances that are not being used. This strategy may endear you to your neighbors as well as help you save on your utility bills, as a blaring television or radio can disturb others.

Control Temperature Through Clothing

Instead of using heat or air conditioning to control your home’s temperature, adjust the clothing you wear. You can save electricity by keeping your home slightly warmer in the summer and slightly cooler in the winter. Keep your thermostat set to 68 degrees during winter time and 78 degrees in the summer. This allows the air conditioning unit to run more effectively. If you are too hot or cold at these temperatures, change your clothes. Wearing sweaters in the winter or tank tops in the summer can help you stay comfortable without using an excessive amount of electricity.

Unplug Chargers and Cords When Not In Use

If you keep your phone charger plugged in when your phone is not being charged, it draws a tiny bit of electricity. Over the course of a month, this can really add up. Instead, unplug your phone charger when you are not charging your phone. Similarly, unplug small appliances like toaster ovens and coffee makers when not in use to save electricity.

Don’t Start Your Shower Prematurely

People sometimes turn on the shower before getting everything they need for a pleasant shower experience. Wait until you are sure you are ready to get in before you turn on your shower so that you don’t waste water. To save additional money on your utilities, consider showering in the dark so that you don’t use electricity while you are showering either. Make sure that your bathroom floor is free of obstacles before trying this electricity-saving tip so that you don’t fall over anything in the dark.

Dry Dishes and Clothes Manually

You can save electricity by not running the dry cycle on your dishwasher and by avoiding using a clothes dryer to dry your clothes. To save money on washing your dishes, don’t run the dishwasher until it is completely full. Then, watch it and turn it off as soon as the rinse cycle is finished. Open the dishwasher and let the dishes air dry.

Similarly, you can hang both towels and clothes on a clothesline outside to dry them on sunny days. Even if you prefer to use your clothes dryer for clothes, you should consider air-drying heavy items such as towels and bath mats to save energy. One family we know reduced their utility bill by $30 a month by switching to line drying their clothing alone!

If you follow these energy-saving tips, you should soon see a dramatic reduction in your utility bills. There are plenty of other things you can do to save energy as well; just get in the habit of saving energy whenever you can and new, creative ways of conserving electricity and water will occur to you. Better yet, make it a family challenge! Give the kids the job of coming up with bigger, better, faster ways of lowering the utility bills and reward them with part of the proceeds!

What does your family do to save money and the planet at the same time?

Author Bio:

Tom writes for Heating Oil Shopper, a leading source of information on a range of topics related to home heating oil pricing .

Every now and then I run across another family that just blows my socks off. I hear their story and I’m left standing in awe, thinking, “WOW! Now THEY are amazing people!!” And I come away inspired. The Palmer Family of Going Anyway is one such family. Chris and Jill and their amazing five kids are on an open-ended world tour in spite of the unusual circumstances and added difficulty of traveling with a child with special needs. When they first contacted us about the logistics of traveling with kids I was inspired by their spunk and I continue to cheer from the sidelines as I watch the amazing ride they’re on as a family.

Jill has agreed to write for Uncommon Childhood on the topic of out-side-the-box parenting with a differently abled child. I’m so excited to have her on board and to learn from her beautiful example. Without further ado, I’d like to present the fabulous family behind Going Anyway:

Tell us a little bit about your family.

We are a big Australian family and we love the beach, music, and lazy Saturdays. Our eight year olds are three of quadruplets, born as tiny premmies, now strong and full of beans. Four years later Snowy arrived, and just recently, Baby Boy joined us. Our daughter Sparky has profound Cerebral Palsy, and uses a wheelchair, a communication book and a tube feeding system. All the children are healthy, happy and becoming good little backpackers.

What are you doing that is fabulous?! 

We are trying to travel together. We are 2 1/2 months into an open ended overseas trip, and currently in Thailand. We travel very slow, and as cheaply as we can, with occasional splurges. We hope to explore much of Asia on this journey. We’ve already seen so many cool animals and beautiful sights and met many wonderful people.  We are also homeschooling, blogging and Chris is working on his new hobby of photography and video production.  We have also committed to maintaining Sparky’s therapy program as we travel.

Tell us about your family vision. 

Our family vision is that we stay together, look after each other, and thrive spiritually and educationally. We all want to be outward looking, generous, Christ-like citizens of this world. We want to ‘do’ disability differently, taking the reigns ourselves, and not being shunted around in the system.

What inspires us, is really to look long and hard at the alternative and to shudder. Maybe people feel they are living according to a ‘life script’ and chuck it all in and go traveling by way of breaking free.  Unfortunately, the ‘life script’ for many people with disabilities in Australia is harder to escape, and far worse to be stuck in. As parents of a child with profound disabilities we face a 90% divorce rate. The statistics of the things Sparky faces are even worse, if she goes on to live in the ‘disability system’ in Australia, the third worst of all OECD countries.

Our society does not practice inclusion for people with disabilities, often they are ignored, processed, regulated, rejected, underestimated and even abused.

Long term travel as a family is not the only way to alter our ‘life script’ but its a fun way! And we love it!

How did you get started?

When Chris was made redundant in 2008, we bought a caravan and drove it around Australia; clockwise, the long way. It occurred to us that we could travel and live on very little, reduce our stress, and better care for our family, than if we stayed home and did things like go to school and work.

Then we went back home and did things like go to school and work.

In 2011 Chris left a job in which he was far from redundant and we’re taking ‘the path less traveled’ while we can.  Sparky may not always be fit for travel, and we are determined to see the world together while we can.

What have been your biggest challenges or successes?

Somedays I think that life with children is 90% logistics. It certainly is when traveling with Sparky. Our biggest challenges were in finding a wheelchair that could go anywhere and do anything, and finding a way to prepare a liquid food diet while traveling. We have worked out some good solutions to these, and quite simply, they have made the difference between being able to do independent travel, and being stuck at home.

Everyday we’re thrilled and delighted that Sparky thrives on family travel. She needs no services, is in no pain, and uses minimal equipment. Its so rare and we don’t take a moment for granted.

Having worked out most of the logistics, the biggest challenge is loving each other, just the same as at home. Travel doesn’t make us any more loving, if anything, we are sometimes grumpier. But it puts our issues into more of a global and eternal perspective, and we hope this will grow us into more loving and caring people in the long run.

What would you do differently if you could go back and do it over?

We would have started sooner, not spending so many years living a stressful life, accumulating possessions, and listening to ‘experts’ about how to ‘manage’ our daughter. We would rest more, play more, stress less and pray more. We would not have allowed our children to be segregated. We would choose our influences, rather than let them choose us.

What is one myth you’d like to dispel about your lifestyle?

It is a myth that dropping everything and going traveling with solve all your problems. It is also a myth that staying home is a safe option.

Opting for ‘the road less traveled’ isn’t for everyone, it doesn’t happen quickly, it has social and financial risks and requires plenty of motivation and planning. There is no perfect life, there is no easy way, but there is Choice, and there is Hard Work.

What would you tell other families who want to do what you are doing?

1.  Do your research, the internet is great, and other parents are a goldmine of wisdom
2. Sourcing the right equipment is king, as is knowing how to fix it yourselves
3. Be prepared for heaps of hard work and heaps of rewards!

If you’ve been dreaming of a big time adventure with your kids, perhaps spending a year or more in an RV exploring the USA, or Canada, or beyond then you’re going to find Kimberly Travaglino’s book a treasure trove of useful information.

She and her family have been living the dream, touring all across the United States for years and in the process they’ve learned a lot! In this book Kimberly shares her first hand knowledge of how to “Hit the Road” as a family, and this book really does cover it all.

What will you learn?

• How to prepare your family
• The importance of visualizing your journey
• How to get out of debt
• How to choose the right rig for your family
• Budgeting
• Working on the road
• The logistics and legal considerations of road schooling your kids
• How to downsize from your “real life” to your “RV life”
• Pulling together all of the details you haven’t thought of yet, like your mail, jury duty, and license renewals

On a personal note, our family has been traveling for almost four years across three continents and it took us two full years before that to “launch” and downsize from the static house-car-job American lifestyle. It was two years of solid work, weekly checklists and intense focus to transition to our dream lifestyle. I did it all the hard way (just like Kimberly!) If I’d had this book, it would have made the process SO much easier. So many of the issues I struggled with she walks her readers through, step by step. No matter where you’re at in your process, from beginning dream planting to weeks before launch, How To Hit The Road will help.

The Travaglinos are the founders of Full-Time Families, a community dedicated to providing support, resources and discounts for families who live, “full time,” on the road. If you’re considering launching for grand adventure with your kids, this is a great place to start!