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...

Mason Monday: Party Dog

Really, we have a VERY nice dog. Give him a blinky ball and he'll boogie with the best of them.

Fetching in the Rain is So Much Fun

Mason, in all his glory

Because mud just makes everything better.

Focus frustration

I've experienced huge amounts of frustration with my own blog writing recently. Posting here is a delightful way to share what I'm thinking and learning about, and it is a great way for me to see and track my own growth over the years.

However, what I learn and think most about is barely showing up in my writing here - developmental attachment and our growth to our full human potential.  In pondering my frustration with myself, I've been watching what drives my writing and posts here.  It turns out, I spend huge amounts of time elsewhere writing about what I know and am learning via the Neufeld paradigm.  I think this means when I come here, I've essentually used up that part of my brain - I'm out of gas. The blog becomes a place to share all the other fun stuff in my day.

Knowing this hasn't given me any answers - I can't really stop writing there to write here, and I can't push myself to do more when I'm used up. It does have me thinking about my frustrations in a different light.  I'm still in the process of seeing how I spend my time and energy, and I'm sure I'll come up with a solution that delights me - at some point.

In the meantime, thanks so much for sharing in my adventures.

I'm Elmo and I Know It

In our early dating, one of the shared interests Bill and I discovered is our tendency to take songs and create our own words for them.  This has become a family past time, and youtube is full of inspiration.

My favorite right now is a take-off on "I'm sexy and I know it."  Check out Elmo!

Absurdist Quinoa

Quinoa field image from whitemountainfarm.com

My college years were spent at the University of Puget Sound earning a degree in French Language and Literature.  During my senior year, I became fixated on the existential theories of Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus.  In particular, my 21 year old brain and life understanding was captured by the idea of "absurism."

Absurdism, as I remember it 20+ years later, focused on the idea that the outcomes of our actions might have very little to do with our intentions. As a sort of morbid example - I might, hoping to make the world a better place one life at a time, hand a snack bar to a homeless person. Unknown to me they are illiterate and deathly allergic to peanuts.  So my act of generosity and goodwill would kill the very person I was trying to help the moment they opened my gift.

Somewhere in my mid 20s, existentialism and absurdism lost its magnetic hold over me.  I do find it popping into my thoughts from time to time as I'm sure the universe is laughing at my impotent human attempts to control the world around me.

Yesterday I came across a clear example of absurdism in everyday life.  It turns out those of us enchanted by the wonderful properties and health benefits of quinoa have inadvertently been destroying the cultures that survived on it for so many years. The Guardian reports about it here.