Challenges

The Challenges and Necessity of Positive Parenting

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

The Challenges and Necessity of Positive Parenting; photo of a man in a red winter coat next to a kid with a blue winter coat and hat standing next to a stream with a small waterfall with bare trees in the background

Positive parenting – or gentle parenting or conscious parenting – is hard.

It’s hard being patient and kind and demonstrating good listening skills. It’s hard relating to these little people who have such different perspectives as us but also remind us of the characteristics that we ourselves struggle with the most. It’s hard having positive healthy relationships with the people you love the most that you’re also responsible for guiding towards adulthood. It’s hard when you have to push back against what so much of society labels as “good kids” or “good parenting.” It’s hard when the world takes so much out of us and leaves so little left for our children.

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What Our Rabbit Reminded Me About Connection

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 2 Comments

Photo of a white rabbit with brown spots sitting on a blue couch arm; text: What our rabbit reminded me about connection

I felt a nipping at my jeans and looked down. “Hey, stop that!” I chided our pet rabbit Hoppity. I frowned. “You have plenty of hay, water…do you want attention?” Softening, I sat down criss-cross on my son’s floor. The bunny hopped over and started licking my jeans. I petted him, running my hand over his soft ears and back. He hopped onto my leg and started licking my other one. I smiled, realizing that this is the first time he had hopped into my lap that didn’t involve food.

What was first a moment of annoyance turned into a moment of connection.

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The Blurred Clarity of Memory

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

Photo of two children and a woman in hiking clothes hiking down a trail covered in leaves; text: The Blurred Clarity of Memory

“First we took the orange trail and then red and we came down the green,” my older son said from the backseat of the car. I stared at the phone in my hand, where I had pulled up a map of hiking trails. No, he couldn’t have remembered it that clearly. We hiked it two years ago. This is a kid who forgets things minutes after I say them. I looked again. He was right – that was exactly what we had done.

“Yeah, I think you’re right,” I said.

Memory makes things strange.

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Not Letting Our Childhood Burdens Become Our Kids’ Burdens

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

Photo of a white woman taking a selfie of herself in a mirror that says "There is no foot too small that it cannot leave an imprint" Text: "Not Letting Our Childhood Burdens Become Our Kids' Burdens"

“Why do all of these people already have friends?” I thought to myself looking around the elementary school cafeteria during parents night for kindergarten. Clumps of parents sat at long tables, chatting away. Even my anti-social husband had wandered off to talk to someone he knew from preschool. I stifled the urge to get out my phone and stare urgently at the screen. Instead, I read the multi-colored handouts with an intense stare. Being there brought back so many experiences that color my perspective on my kids today.

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Collaborating with Our Children’s Wildness

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

Collaborating with My Child's Wildness" Photo of a sunset over the ocean

He runs up to me, his hand loosely grasping mine. I go to squeeze it and he’s gone again, dashing away from the oncoming waves licking at his red and blue sandals.

I stand firm, the water pulling on my feet, flowing back out to the ocean. He darts around me, unpredictable, coming and going, coming and going. The waves can’t be predicted either – sometimes they stop feet from me, sometimes they wash over my knees, pulling me out to the endless water.

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Seeing the Impacts When You Least Expect It

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

Seeing the Impacts When You Least Expect It; Photo: Boy in a snow jacket and hat shoveling snow on a sidewalk

“I want to help!” my older son declared, in that way he does when he feels like life has dealt him a terribly unfair hand.

“Oh! Sure,” I said, handing him the snow shovel. We were clearing the sidewalk of snow, in one of the few times a year Washington D.C. gets it.

Both his tone of voice and demand to help surprised me. He’s a kid for whom chores are like pulling teeth. So volunteering for a hard job that meant I did less work? Excellent. I did want to give him a heads-up though. “The snow is pretty tough to shovel, as there’s a layer of ice underneath. From when we had the freezing rain last night. So try to get under the ice, if you can.”

As he managed the big shovel awkwardly, I tried to both hold my tongue and figure out what inspired this burst of enthusiasm.

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Juggling the Standards and Ambitions of Modern Parenting

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

Juggling the Standards and Ambitions of Modern Parenting (Photo of a kid pulling a rope with another kid holding on to it)

“The house should be so much cleaner!” I think, panicked about my parents arriving any minute. That streak of panic occurs despite the fact that they know perfectly well that they’ve been the only people in our house since last March and that we’re not exactly the tidiest people by a long shot. Expectations are already low.

And yet I think this anyway. The self-judgment weighs hard, even when I push back against it. The hardest part is that I think this way about everything: cleaning, cooking, parenting, activism, writing, even taking care of myself. Perhaps worst of all, I suspect I’m not the only one.

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