Mamatoto Radio

Learning to follow instructions. I know what it sounds like, I can hear it too, but stay with me and hear me out. If we do not teach our kids to know how to follow instructions, all the things they do in life will be harder than they need to be.

As parents we are leaders in our family, and whether we are good or bad leaders, we are the people the smaller people in our group follow, and playing that role comes with a lot of responsibility as we all know. Let's talk a little bit about what choices we have and how they might play out today on Mamatoto Radio.

Generosity is a very close relative of empathy, I will explain why. When I think of generosity I think of being open to sharing what you have. Whether that is material things, your time, your attention, your affection, or your empathy. My grandmother always said that when people were over and it was meal time, you share what you have between everyone. I think that sounds like a kind and generous thing to do. I also think it’s an expression of abundance rather than scarcity. When we share there is more. We is greater than me. It’s no coincidence I choose to talk about generosity during a pandemic.

Before the pandemic happened I think most of us thought of dolphins when we said pod. Or EarPods maybe. Now our pods are the people we include in our safe zone, the people we pod with are an extension of our family. It seems that the pandemic has really been a way to reveal who we really are. Do we care about others? Do we listen to science? Do we put our wants before other people’s safety? Can we follow instructions?

You know the saying it takes a village to raise a child? Today I wanted to take a moment and think about that village, that community and how we can intentionally build that community around our kids until they are old enough to build their own.

I imagine we think we are doing our kids a favor shielding them from controversy, but are we really?

Gifts have always had a bot precious and a conflicted place in my mind. There can be different intentions, purposes and outcomes of gift giving and receiving. I thought we would unpack some of it here today. I guess pun intended?

When I say I think creativity is a super power I mean it. It’s the foundation of problem solving, of innovation, of communication and any kind of artistic expression. And what better and safer way to nurture and encourage it than at home, and what better format to experiment in than in building and making stuff. It’s low risk, easy access and huge potential benefits.

During the past year, it’s almost a year now, we have been sheltering at home and our kids have been doing distance learning for their school. One of the most anchoring and grounding parts of our routine, and what has kept us happy and sane during this time is how we incorporate creativity into our home and day to day lives.

Have you every thought about the different cycles of routines you have? The things you do every day, the things you do every week, every month, every year? I thought we could think a little bit about what parts of your routines you love and what you would like to change, how it will benefit and ripple into your family.

Distance, or home learning is a great opportunity to use and foster creativity in our kids. Today I share some of the ways we nurture a creative mindset in our kids, while learning from home.

How can making space and time for creative projects help you get things done and increase your overall creativity? Listen to today's episode to find out :)

Recently I was talking to my daughter about values. She has some kids in her class with very questionable values, and she said, “well, they get it from their parents.” And I think for the most part that might be true. Then she asked me “mom, you have really different values from your parents and siblings, so I guess it’s not always true.” And she is right again. But I had to work really hard to break a lot of the patterns from my own childhood in order to raise my family with the intention that I value. The million dollar question is how, then, isn’t it? It’s not complicated, but it’s not easy. It takes a lot of work and it doesn’t happen in one go.

I want to ask you a question, and I would like for you to answer it to yourself and really think about it. When you became a parent, did you have an idea of what you wanted your kids to be like. What they would like, how they would be, what you would do. I think most of us have some kind of fantasy or dream about who our kids are and who we are as parents and I think the relationship we have with our kids depends a lot on how flexible that idea of a person is.

Do you know who I have learned a lot from this year? Homeschoolers. Honestly, I have learned a lot about education this year, some that in encouraging and good, and some that makes me a bit worried for our kids and makes me rethink my own opinions of and relationship to education the way we do it right now. We have been learning from home since the middle of February, we saw the virus come here in France early and our kids were learning from home before we had the lockdown in the spring. I love how my homeschooling friends rose to the occasion and started being supportive and guide us newbies on our journey. There were a few things that I learned.

Teaching our kids to say and hear no is the foundation for teaching them consent. When no is no longer aggressive and confrontational to us we can use it as part of our structure of integrity, and teach our kids to do the same.

When I was doing my certification for becoming a safeguarding officer I learned a lot about abuse and neglect. Levels of it that you don’t want to imagine. We mostly think of the most extreme cases being physical neglect, not providing enough or good food, not having clean or fitting clothes, not taking care of hygiene or having a warm home with running water and electricity. But there is another kind of neglect that I wanted to talk about today.

If we are bullies it is much more likely that our kids will be bullies. As I was writing the notes to this episode something reminded me of another in person experience that both rattled me and showed exactly how the energy moves from parent to child. A mom in my daughter’s class is a real bully. She has a little group of other mean girl mom friends and they spare no vitriol when interacting with other parents. She is unkind, mean, aggressive and judgmental. And then I remembered a time this past summer when the girls told me that her son was being a jerk in a chat, calling the girls feminist sluts, saying white power, white lives matter and all kinds of hateful and racist, sexist bullshit. And I realized, it all comes from his mom. And maybe his dad. I can see them fitted into the illustration of the mom’s hatred going right through him. It’s like a cycle that feeds itself.

The pandemic has revealed so much of the flaws in our systems that most of us probably didn’t know were there. Like for example, How much of school is babysitting? Join our Creative Kids Club at www.mamatoto.info/kidsclub

This topic might be controversial, it definitely goes against traditional parenting. Do you know things you don't like without trying them? I know I do. I know things don't go with me without trying them. Why is it any different with our kids? How can we teach consent and integrity and then ask them to break it?