Soccer Mom

Pretty quiet over here in Sarablogland for the moment.  However, I did write for the Seattle Neufeld Community blog this week.  Let me know what you think.

Soccer Mom

My 12 year old son Theo can’t get enough soccer this year.  He plays for a select team which practices twice a week, plus at least one game per weekend. Since September he’s also had weekly one-on-one lessons with a coach he admires and likes. Over the cold rainy winter, Theo participated in the local indoor soccer league to keep his foot in the game. 

This spring break season, I find that I have agreed to three weeks of soccer camp in a row – one of the possibilities of being home schoolers is moving our school work to the afternoon to accommodate mornings of scrimmages, hilarious drills, and skill building games.

 For all this time spent on the turf, Theo’s not a top player.  He’s not at the bottom, just somewhere near the middle.  Currently his visions for adult life start out as a professional soccer player. Once he gets “too old” to continue in pro soccer and is forced to retire, he plans to shift careers to work as an engineer and start a family.

Besides driving him all over town, paying for his various soccer pursuits and gear, and adding skills practice to his daily homeschool routine, I’ve watched his passion and wondered how else I can support him to become the player he dreams of. Standing on the sidelines during the final game of the spring season, I listened to some of the team’s best players talk while they waited their turn to go back on the field. I found myself surprised by unexpected insight into what was needed.  Read the rest of the post here.

Mattering Most Means Frustrating Most

Hi all,

Cross posted from Seattle Neufeld Community blog. I hope you like the post.

“We get most frustrated at the people we love the most because of course those are the ones we want to make it work with.” (Common Challenges, Session 5, 34:12)

At the moment, I’m watching Neufeld’s Common Challenges course from the Power to Parent series.  This quote about who frustrates us really caught my heart.

Gordon goes on to give this lovely example of validating and normalizing a child’s frustration with their parent.  “That’s why mommies are the ones everyone gets frustrated with the most.  They’re the ones that are supposed to be the answer to life.  They fix everything.”

read more...

Busy Cindy weekend coming!

Our Seattle Neufeld Community leadership team has been sooooo busy recently.  Honestly, sooooo busy.

One of the exciting outcomes is a list of sure to be incredible events with Cindy Leavitt, faculty member of the Neufeld Institute.  We also now have a beautiful new website and a fancy and deeply useful registration tool.

Cindy is coming Valentine's Day weekend.  Her presentations focus on our children's and our own hearts.  In a world where keeping hearts safe is so underappriciated, I think her talks will be both refreshing and inspiring.  
Wed, February 13, 6:30pm - Heart Matters-Winning, Safeguarding, and Strengthening Your Child’s Heart
Sat, February 16, 8:30am - Growing Together-Relationship as a Vehicle for Transformation

And because my fellow team members are so creative and brilliant, we're having a date night event! Music with both Paul Durham and Miss Rose & Her Rhythm Percolators while sipping drinks with friends and supporting our growing community - how fun is that?!
Sat, February 16, 8pm - Date Night Fundraiser

Join us!  Or if you live far away, humor me and click on the link to admire the glorious work that is blossoming here in Seattle!

Holly vanGulden on YouTube

Much of my study time is spent working with material from Gordon Neufeld.  I truly love how his attachment-based developmental paradigm explains the world to me.

I have a second developmental attachment hero. Holly van Gulden lives in Minnesota and travels the world teaching about attachment and adoption.  Where Gordon's theories make sense of the world in broad strokes, Holly (and her partner, Claude Riedel) specializes in supporting adopted people and their families. 

A friend recently emailed a YouTube search of bits of Holly's talks.  Holly explains permanence, the ability to take for granted that something exists even when it is out of sensory contact (like my son still exists even though I can't see him across the house in the living room), and constancy, the ability to take for granted that something is the same across various states (Mom is still my loving mommy even when she's mad that I wrote in sharpie all over the wall).

Permanence and constancy fascinate me.  Once at a conference Holly gave us homework to come back the next morning with 5 popular songs that show each concept.  The assignment wasn't hard - which tells me that while the object relations academics put really difficult and fancy words to their model, holding onto who we and those we love are is something that we humans struggle with on a daily basis.

Here is a brilliant bit of missing permanence from the trailer for the new movie The Croods, watch at 1:59m.   Alanis Morisette schools us in constancy in her song I'm a Bitch, I'm a Lover.






Take a look at her videos.  I'd love to hear your thoughts.