Journey to a New Life

When I first arrived on the Desteni Farm, I was pretty much a ball of anxiety.

I always dreaded group settings and preferred to be on my own. Now I was stuck in a place with lots of people where there was virtually no moment alone (this was mostly due to space constriction and lots of visitors sharing a single room; since then many more rooms have been built). I was very far away from home and my comfort zone. While I wanted to be on the farm and push through my barriers of resistance, my actual state of mind did not reflect this intention as I was still dealing with a lot of emotional issues that I had been carrying around most of my life.

I remember being very nervous meeting everyone and worrying what people will think of me. One of the first things that happened as we got to the farm was being introduced to the dogs. Lucy and Grace were a lot younger back then and had a lot more ‘puppy-crazy’ in them than they do now; so when they first saw me they both jumped on me, where I fell on the floor and they went berserk on my face with licking. I couldn’t help but laugh and giggle!

Their timing couldn’t have been better because in that moment I had been so tensed up and rigid, worrying about all kinds of things – them jumping and love-pouring on my face snapped me right out of my mind and into my body.

During my first two-month visit, the dogs kept representing that point of support for me – to just be here, play, have fun and relax. No matter what I was going through or how bad things seemed in my mind, there was always a dog nearby looking for someone to play and entertain them. They didn’t care that I thought all doom was upon me, or that I believed I was never going to get through a particular point – they’d just look at you with their big brown eyes and wiggle their tail and you’d have no choice but to level with them and play. And they were right in not caring or paying attention to what I was going through, because from a physical perspective it didn’t matter. From a physical perspective I was on a farm, where everything was pretty relaxed, people just going about their days, animals going about their day – physically, nothing threatening was going on. Everything I was experiencing and going through, was in my head only. And that moment they look at you with that invite to play; you realise the physical aspect of what’s here – how the birds are just chirping along, how you’re in a big wide space in nature, how all there is, is just this moment. And so you join in to that physical moment, pick up a ball and make use of the physical environment that’s here and have some fun.

In my next blog I will share how this point of playfulness has assisted me in my relationship and walking with Cesar.

Continuing from my previous blog: Day 79: From Farm Life to City Life | Don’t Touch the Walls

Within my previous blog we already established that the inside of the house was not a very pleasant environment to be; not so much because of the physical features but the mental limitations that were imposed within and unto the space.

So – whenever we could; we would go outside to one of the parks so Cesar could walk and play on the playground.

The one would we would go to the most was the bigger one which was furthest away. It had a nice playground which was also covered in sand that kids could play in.

Cesar loved sitting in the sand and picking up sand and placing bits of sand on random places and spots on all the various playground stations. He liked stirring sand with sticks, digging holes, finding little pebbles or rocks or just sitting and watching, observing other children play.

For us, this was natural. On the farm, we sit on the ground outside, we play in the sandpit, he plays with dirt, he plays with dogs – being outside, interacting with ‘the elements’ = you get dirty.

Being at the playground almost everyday, we noticed that the way we were playing and behaving at the playground wasn’t the norm.

The first thing we noticed, was that even though the playground was covered with sand – it was not something children were playing with. The second thing we noticed, was that adults/parents stayed away from the actual playground stations and left the children to play on their own. This isn’t that noteworthy for older children, but did get our attention for toddlers.

In terms of the sand, what became clear was that there was a general agreement that sand is very undesirable and should be avoided at all cost. Do not play with the sand, try not to touch it and dare not to sit in it. Other parents’ eyes actually became big as they saw us and Cesar sit with our bums in the sand, as if we were committing some type of sacrilege (didn’t we know we were gonna get sand all over our bums and maybe even in-between our clothes!!!!) as well as the realisation of fear that our (bad) example may tempt their children into disobedience.

The one time as we went into a shop and some sand from our playground trip had found itself on the shop’s floor; the owner had a fit of rage at the sight of a little bit of sand as this was simply ‘unacceptable’ and was convinced we were deliberate evil-doers.

Sand was no longer a medium of expression, something to be explored and played with – but a dreaded ‘dirt’ that would have to be dealt with. Did we not bring sand into the house and get it a little bit dirty? Sure – but it took only a few minutes to clean up as if it was never really there. It wasn’t so much the sand that was dreaded as the inconvenience of taking the time to clean it up. Parents would much rather forgo a child’s funtime and opportunity to play with the sand than having to sacrifice a few moments of their time to clean up after them.

The fact that children thoroughly enjoy sand and are able to do so much with it – completely bypasses parents’ minds. The only part which gets registered is how much ‘they suffer’ at the hand of sand-play and how they’re just not bothered to go there.

To be continued

Another dimension which I would like to open up in relation to my previous blog Day 69: Introducing Toys & Expansive Play, is that of hidden values we may hold towards toys – which our children don’t – and which may affect one’s relationship with one’s child playing with toys; and consequently the child’s relationship with playing with toys.

In my previous blog I mentioned how Cesar would play with toys in a way that ‘they were not intended to’, and the dimension of fear involved in terms of ‘developmental delay’ where I feared that Cesar not playing with the toy as how it was designed/intended to be played with was indicative to him being ‘behind’. Now, another dimension of fear I noticed at one point, was the fear of him breaking toy – which also falls within this category of ‘not using a toy the way it was intended to be used’.

Here, we were playing with a toy which we had just gotten him which had been quite pricey. Then as he started to play with the toy more intensely, almost as if he was deliberately putting its structural integrity and durability to the test – I experienced myself constricting inside myself and intervening in how he was playing with the toy. Cesar obviously didn’t like this very much, as he was exploring the toy within this particular way and was set out to continue exploring it within this manner as far as he could take it. When I noticed movement inside myself and wanting to move to intervene I stopped and asked myself why I was so intent on limiting him within how he was playing with the toy. “It’s his toy” I told myself. And then an image if how expensive the toy had been came up.

‘Ah’.

So here, I saw and realised how I had placed a particular value on the toy within the knowledge and information of how much the toy had cost, and where within the decision of buying the expensive toy, having made the decision/hope that it would ‘go a long way’.

Then you have Cesar who receives the toy and is like ‘Oh yay, cool’ – and almost immediately goes into checking how he can take it apart. This didn’t match my expectation which had been part of the decision of buying the toy, and how I projected he would play with the toy – which than caused inner conflict and friction. Where initially, I perceived Cesar to be the problem within ‘how he plays with the toy’; instead of seeing and realising that the problem was within my projection and expectations which were like ‘hidden terms and conditions’ which I was carrying around within myself in relation to the toy.

So, I took a step back within myself, breathed in, breathed out – and within the out breath completely let go of any expectations and limitations I had placed on the toy – placing the toy unconditionally within Cesar’s control (or rather, within his innocence).

I also realised that it would be futile to forevermore try and keep him from breaking things, as it would always leave an unsatisfied curiosity which would be bound to come out in one way or another.

The one day for instance, we were playing in the garden when some flowers that Maite had recently planted caught his eye. I went ‘uh oh’, and soon enough Cesar was pulling the flowers from the plants. But then he did an interesting thing, where he would pick up the flowers and place them back on the stem from which he pulled them; which obviously didn’t work and the flower would just float/fall down to the ground. And he would try that a few more times with the other flowers he had pulled off and then looked at me with this ‘Oh!’ face. So there I could tell he went through a learning-moment where he realised that if he pulls the flower off, then it’s off and you can’t get it back to how it used to be. So he will pull flowers off and he will break things – it’s inevitable. But the other side of the coin is that he will inevitably learn about the actions he performs, their cause and effect and consequence – and so how our physical reality operates.

When we initially started introducing toys to Cesar, I approach the situation from my own experience and background. Within my experience, I always felt and believed myself to have had ‘little toys’ and that I was missing out in some way or another, especially if I looked at how many toys my friends had.

I didn’t want Cesar to have this experience but I also didn’t want to go overboard by bombarding him with toys.

I felt that it was important for him to have ‘choice’ and to be able to decide what he plays with out of a range of things. So I would always present him with several toys at once and see which one he wanted to play with. What I started noticing is that even though I thought that ‘choice’ was what he wanted or something he would see as ‘important’, he was actually experiencing a lot of frustration and conflict.

Because, within each time having to in a single moment decide between a bunch of toys, he could not make up his mind because he has no reference of ‘what he likes’ – everything is new and he wants to explore EVERYTHING. So he doesn’t really want to choose. What would happen is that he starts off with one toy, and after briefly having ‘met’ the toy he would already be eyeing the next one and then drop the first to go on to the next – again exploring it only briefly.

While he picked himself a toy, I would pick a different toy for myself to play with. This was not also a source of conflict because now Cesar wanted to explore what I was exploring! So then I would say ‘Okay, sure – you take this one and I will take yours’. But then as soon as the toys swapped hands he wanted his previous toy back again.

When there were lots of toys on the floor, he would get ‘disorganized’ within himself as he is faced with all these options and not knowing how to make a decision of what to play with and what not to play with. This led him to being more frustrated and agitated throughout the day as he was lacking direction within himself and his environment.

I then stopped my ‘choice’ approach, as I saw that this was not actually serving his well-being but just feeding into frustration. We started a new approach of ‘one thing at a time’. So now, we would take one toy – any toy – remember, at this stage everything is new and everything is interesting, so it didn’t matter what we picked. And we would take just the one toy or object and just sit and explore it. We would talk about how it looks, how it feels, the colours, what we can do with it and really get to know the object/toy. This, Cesar enjoyed a lot more. You could actually trace a look of concentration on his face and could see how he just lost himself in the toy for a moment, exploring it totally and completely. There were no other toys to worry about or any other things waiting to happen or to do. There was just this one moment, with this one toy and Cesar’s eagerness to explore. His behaviour changed immediately as he was a lot more calmer and stable within himself.

Once he had explored a toy for a few days, we would then also have a look at things we could do with the object/toy that it wasn’t necessarily meant to do in terms of how it was designed to be played with – but what we could do with it none the less. This I enjoyed a lot as it also forced me to move beyond the state of mind that ‘this is how this toy is supposed to be used’, where if the toy is used in a different way it means that ‘Cesar is not getting it’ [see also Maite’s blog on this topic].
So we would take for instance shapes and see where else they fit in the room with other objects around, or we would stack toys that weren’t meant for stacking, or make up new games with parts of a toy-set.

This I found a very cool way to work with toys, as you firstly set the scene for focus and attentiveness within working with just the one toy and then set the scene for creativity as you see how far you can push a single toy. Still today Cesar surprises me with how he comes up different combinations of using a single object.

One of the objects he really likes playing for instance and has been playing with since the moment he could ‘play’ is an empty plastic bottle. It’s one of those objects that is so ordinary and so simplistic in its design that you’d think that a child would get bored with it in no time. But Cesar has learnt how to roll the bottle and crawl behind it, to make it spin, to put it upright, to bang it against different object and observe the different frequency sounds the bottle makes, now he also plays with matching the frequency with his own voice, he practices screwing the lid on and off, putting small objects into the bottle and getting them out again, looking through different parts of the bottle and how it skews what he sees,…

If you give an adult an empty bottle, they’ll quickly be tired of it because they think they already know what they can and can’t do with it, that they ‘know its purpose’ and so won’t bother moving themselves to find out what else they can do with it.

So this ‘out of the box’ playing with toys has been very interesting for Cesar and myself and has shown to be a lot more satisfactory than him being overwhelmed by choice.

Now, there are many times where he gets to roam around the room and play with whatever he wants – but now he has learnt how to play with toys and he understands that he doesn’t have to get lost in the face of choice, but can move with one toy at a time and explore it completely. So from that perspective, having choice around is cool for him because he can actually exercise it – while he previously simply did not know how to deal with it and was simply a source of frustration.
So choice does come to a have a part in how he plays with toys, but we first had to establish a foundation of how to play with toys and take something to the max – so that he can now do this for himself and within this also appreciate every toy for a long time rather than only being happy and excited by the novelty of things.

Whenever he gets a new toy or someone brings several new toys – we still introduce only one toy at a time so he has the time and space to get to know the toy before we introduce the next.

Continuing from previous blog, Day 67: Parenting as Duty vs Parenting as Self-Expression - Part 1 | Parenting & Fairness :

‘So when you parent from a starting point of duty – you do the same. You do what needs to be done but once the need has been removed you stop, you retreat. Parenting is then a formality, you do it because ‘it is written somewhere’ that you have to do it. You don’t do it from a point of understanding, you don’t put anything from yourself into it, you don’t allow yourself to explore what is possible when there is ‘no more need’, you don’t do it just for the sake of it – the very notion of spending more time/moments with your child, giving more of yourself is seen as ‘a waste’ (just as you would paying more than what your debt told you to pay). And every time you ‘pay your dues’ as ‘tending to your child’ – you take note of it, you keep a record – just like you would with a bank account where money movement is involved. And then later, when you child is older – you can remind him/her of these records and what the child now ‘owes you’ in return. Look at all these things I did for you – now what will you do for me?
This is parenting on automatic mode – there’s no life in your actions, in your attention. You are simply reacting to impulses. The impulses stop and you stop. You did not do those things ‘for the child’ – you did them out of duty, you fulfilled your duty – but you did not fulfil your child.’

When you parent from a starting point of self-expression, you move beyond reaction to responsiveness. There is nothing else moving you but yourself. You child needs you and you tend to your child – and then some. You are not keeping track of ‘what you are giving’. When you react, your action is dictated by what you are reacting to, you do the bare minimum, you do it grudgingly, you always do it the same way because you do not know of another way.

When you respond from responsiveness, from response-ability – you move yourself to respond simply because you can. You do not yet know how you will respond, this is unpredictable – only the moment will tell. You respond to the same need in many different ways, because you response is not dictated, it is not determined by the need – it is an expression of yourself. And how you express yourself changes from moment to moment. You stop meeting needs and you start meeting moments.

Say, your baby needs a diaper change. When you change a diaper from a starting point of duty, you change the diaper the way you always change the diaper. You are meeting/fulfilling the diaper change. When you change a diaper from a starting point of expression, you look at yourself, you look at your child and you change your child’s diaper in a way that takes you and your child into account. Your child is in different expressions in different moments, and so every diaper change becomes unique as you meet your child and his/her need for a diaper change in that specific moment. The focus is on meeting the moment which is all-encompassing, the focus is not on the need.

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The above piece I wrote as I finished my previous blog, to give myself a starting point for the next one to come (this one).

Now, as I have been going through my days since I wrote my previous blog and the piece above – I have been mulling over the point of ‘Parenting as Self-Expression’ and how to best explain it and describe it. Each time I think I found a good way to put it – and look at it again; I drop it, because in the very act of trying to describe it and define it – I am already limiting it in one way or another.

The reason why Parenting as Duty is easy to describe and explain, is because it is so very limited, repetitive and systematic. It is you behaving and conducting yourself according to particular rules that you follow. With Parenting as Self-Expression, I can give examples and stories – but those are only reflections of a ‘moment’ and they were only valid and true in that moment and they were only valid and true for me in that moment. What is a point of Expression for me, is not going to be a point of Expression for another.

Whenever I am looking into adapting a new skill or insight into my life, I often (if not always) have the tendency to look for guidelines, descriptions, some ‘how to’ to tell me what to do and how to act. I want to ‘read up’ on it and have as much information and knowledge available to myself that I can reference before I actually start walking/living/applying the new skill or insight into my life.

And even though I am doing all these things because ‘I want to be prepared’ and ‘really wanting to get this integrated in my life’ – it’s this search for descriptions, guidelines and info that in the end limits me and how I walk and live the point, because I am constantly reaching back to the information I hold within myself and trying to ‘make sense’ of the moment and what I am doing and trying to do it along the lines of the information. In those moments, I lose myself because I am holding knowledge and information as my starting-point instead of drawing from myself and simply walking/doing it and then I get disappointed with myself and the new point I wanted to integrate in my life, simply because I was not trusting myself to walk unconditionally in the moment.

The best way to find out for yourself what Parenting and Self Expression is – is to simply do it and live it. For me, this was realising all the moment where I was acting and behaving in a way which was dictated by beliefs, ideas, thoughts, emotions, feelings – were not supportive for myself nor for my child, and so to instead push and move myself to be here in every moment, to be clear and directive. I didn’t know what I was going to be doing, or ‘how’ I was going to be – but I knew that holding on to what I was doing was not going to work.

So looking at it now, you need to change the conditions that facilitate the ‘growth’ of Parenting as Self Expression – just as you would prepare the soil/environment for a new plant/seed to grow. Where for the Seed of Self-Expression to germinate and flower – breath, presence and directiveness representing the ‘optimal conditions’ within which Parenting as Self-Expression can emerge. Whereas holding on to thoughts, beliefs, morality, emotions and feelings – is like pounding a bag of salt into the soil and never ever providing water to your seed, pretty much killing any opportunity for your seed to unfold – you will remain stuck in status quo.

So it’s not about what and how you will do things, but directing who you are in every moment. If ‘who you are’ is in place, the rest simply follows naturally.

In this blog I want to share a little ‘method’ I’ve been applying with Cesar which has been working out nicely.

I have to move around a lot during the day, going from room to room, going to different place – and everywhere I go: Cesar comes with me. Whenever we are in a space, Cesar will find something that he wants to explore or play with. When I am done with whatever I had to do in a particular space and have to move on to the next point – Cesar is usually ‘not done’ in that he is still busy exploring or playing with something.

At first, I would see that he is obviously enjoying himself or being intrigued by whatever new object he got his hands on – but within having to go, and only considering my schedule and ‘what I need to do next’; I would pick him up and remove him from what he was busy with or place back what he took and then pick him up – where he very often would let out a shriek of discontent; but where I figured that ‘he needs to just get over this’ as we can’t always do ‘what he wants to do’ and so would cringe a bit inside myself but move on to the next thing.

This pattern started happening more and more and I wasn’t satisfied with my own inner-experience as these scenarios would play out. The cringing-experience inside myself, to me indicated that somewhere I am compromising and missing a point – because if I were confident in my actions, then there would be no experience, as what I would be doing would simply be: common sense. But this cringing-experience kept coming up each time I would remove him and we’d move on, so I decided to slow down and zoom-in to what goes on in these play-outs.

So the one day, as I was in the bathroom with him and he found himself an empty shampoo bottle to play with – I was looking at what I was about to do, as picking him up and going back to our room and how it usually plays out. As I played it out for myself within myself, I saw that I was only ever taking my perspective into account, where I was only worried and concerned about ‘getting to everything’. I realised, that I had completely forgotten about Cesar and how he ‘fills up’ his day. I only ever looked at how my timeline was playing out and not looking at his!
There was this idea that, I, the grown up has specific plans, with a specific purpose and specific reasoning about these plans – where I saw Cesar, the baby, as kind of just being random in that there’s no particular direction or structure in his day, and so he can just ‘tag along’ because you know, he’s just kind of like ‘whatever’.

So what I saw then and there is that, even though he doesn’t have an organized way of going about his day or giving himself an overall structured direction – he does give himself direction in every moment, in his own way. Sure, his trip to the bathroom wasn’t planned and only occurred because I had to take a potty break – but him reaching for the empty shampoo bottle: that was a specific decision. Him touching, moving, throwing – interacting with the empty shampoo bottle in various ways: this was him directing himself, this was him being involved with something. And if I am stuck in my world where I am going ‘okay, done with this lets go on to the next thing’ and simply pick him up while he is participating with an object in this manner, then I am in fact interrupting his ‘purposed-plan’ as what he decided to do now and interact with.

So even though I have my world where certain things need to be done, Cesar also has his own world where he is doing things – it’s just not as apparent since it doesn’t conform to ‘adult logic’ but relates his experience and whatever way he in that moment/stage is exploring the world and developing his relationship with his environment and himself.

So in that moment where he is playing with the empty shampoo bottle, he is just as ‘purpose-driven’ as I am in wanting to get to the next room to get on to the next thing – just in a different form. I know I don’t like to suddenly be interrupted and ripped away from something I was giving my attention to and sharing my moment with, so why should I treat Cesar as such?

If I was busy reading a book and someone would just take it away all of a sudden – I’d also be like ‘Oi!! I was busy with that!!!’ So, that’s what Cesar’s doing when he is playing or exploring something. He goes totally into it, and for that moment, the only thing that exists is him and the object he is exploring/playing with.

So when I realised that I was actually being quite rude to interrupt him just like that and expect him to be okay with just ‘tagging along’ and expecting him to be able to ‘immediately let go’ of whatever he was doing – I changed my approach. Sometimes, if time allows it, we will stay a bit longer and I will let him play a bit longer with what he is doing or join in. Then, when it is time to go – I will tell him, and I also announce to him now every time that I am ‘going to pick you up now!’. Then, as I let him know, I will place my hands around his waist – but instead of then immediately picking him up – I will just leave my hands there for a moment and count to three inside myself or out loud. So that, when I announce to him what’s going to happen next, he knows there’s about to be a change, and then the moment I am placing my hands on his waists and leaving them for a moment: he has time to internally let go of what he is doing. Then when I pick him up, he has been able to process the change through space and time, instead of in one second being ‘ripped away’ from what he was doing.

I’ve found making this one adjustment in how I interact with him making a big difference in his demeanour, where before he was more frustrated and on edge and now is more flexible and easy going; which makes sense because he is now being considered, and in me slowing down and taking his experience and how he takes things in into account: our relationship is more balanced since I am treating him the way I’d like to be treated, and within that treating him as an equal instead of me role-playing as “adult” and treating him as a “baby”.

So this one point of in essence, ‘stretching things out’ where instead of just picking the baby up and going, where it is now divided and spread out into announcing, giving a moment, and then moving + making it a habit to not only look at my timeline but to basically in every moment that you’re with your child see things from yours and his perspective = adds up to a much better relationship between parent and child.

An EQAFE interview which gives perspective into this and other points is: Understanding Your Baby Within Sharing - Perfecting the Human Race - Parenting – Part 47