little mama

She does practically everything wearing her baby. Swinging with the Ergo on, patting that baby's back, swaying her hips, shushshushing in her ear, rocking, cooing, in the sling, wrapped in her arms. Everything.

She studies the mamas around her. Watching intently every move they make. Then she incorporates any new tilt of the head, rhythm of the rocking, pattern of the patting.

She is already a baby-wearing, attachment mama.  Of course, no one taught her any of this. She absorbs everything from what she is around. They all do. We all do. 

I see it again with Elliott as he struts about, wields an axe, or mutters shit under his breath in a perfectly appropriate moment. Hmmm. Where does he get all that from?

Sometimes I feel more than a little freaked out by the responsibility of this powerful childhood learning by osmosis. There is NO time off from who I am with them. And I can't ever erase anything with words after-the-fact. The words are weak and dilute in comparison to the impact of the modeling they witness.

Who I am is what they absorb. Every minute of every day. Good grief, that's a lot to think about. Yet, it is exactly what I need to be thinking about because the exact same principle applies to how my whole life unfolds.

There is no time off from creating. Everything. It's more than Law of Attraction, but that is certainly a beginning point. And there seems to be so much letting go involved, too. Letting go of Everything we currently have has come about because of an idea we created long ago, probably without even knowing it. If it's something that we don't like, then we have probably outgrown that idea, but the belief is so much a part of how we think that we can't even separate ourselves enough to see it as a belief. We think it's "just the way things are". 

Even the past can be totally changed in a second. Imagine someone telling you that you were adopted and you didn't know it. So nothing is fixed.

I'm not sure where I'm going with all this. No tidy ending to this post, just rambling thoughts on the subject of consciousness-as-cause. Care to chip in to the discussion? What does all this mean for day-to-day parenting?

Comments

[Jennie]

Oh, i have thought about this so many times! i actually blogged about it recently, and i wanted to share this quote with you, from Momma Zen:
“For certain, we all thought we wanted to be mothers and no doubt spend considerable time pondering the complexities of motherhood now, but can we just be the mom? Ceaseless thinking obscures us from ourselves the way clouds hide a mountain. We wish we could be some other kind of person, some better kind of mom, and yet we spend so little time in our own undistracted company that we don’t really know who we are to begin with”
The whole post is here if you want to read it!
http://bighornmtnmama.wordpress.com/2010/04/06/kitchen-sink-meditation/
Be gentle with yourself, just as you are with your babies :)

[Teri]

It is amazing how they watch and learn and copy from us. I guess I just take it one day at a time knowing that I'm doing the best I can to be the best person that I can. When we treat our children and others around us with love and kindness, that is what they grow up understanding as the way to be around others. What an amazing gift to give them!

[MaeH]

My husband and I are currently taking a Positive Discipline class and they reiterate again and again how what we do is so much more powerful than what we say. Yes, being a mom really has helped & inspired me to be the best person I can be. I no longer just owe it to myself, now I owe it to my kids too.