Journey to a New Life

In this picture I took today, Cesar and I are playing on Maya's bed with mini flashcards. We've recently started playing with learning how to read and made our own flash cards. Maya made her own little set that Cesar can play with when we come visit her, much to Cesar's delight.

Since Cesar was born, he has gone through many phases in his life. With these phases, I don't mean developmental phases (although in a way, they are), but points in his reality that he gets really interested and obsessed with. These are usually of a kind that is kind of, well 'unpleasant' for the rest of the people living in his environment.

One example would be throwing around the dogs' steel bowls. It makes such a big noise (like someone constantly banging on drum cymbals), but he was absolutely fascinated by it. My first instict was to 'make him stop' because I knew this could be bothersome and distracting to other people. Because I was coming from a point of fear of 'what others might think'; I wasn't considering Cesar within this equation. Making him stop or preventing it was very difficult and he would end up doing it anyway, but with even more vigour as he now knew that 'he might soon not be able to'.

This method was obviously not working for him or for me so I took a moment to stop and really look at what was happening. I looked at Cesar and I looked at myself when I was young and absolutely fascinated by something. I saw that what he was going through was simply a natural curiosity of cause and effect and exploring all the objects in his world. Once he had fully explored an object, he'd be done with it because through his exploration he now got a good understanding of what the object is all about and there is no longer a drive to 'see what happens'; he has tested it all, he know simply knows.

So instead of fighting whatever phase he finds himself in at any particular time; I embrace it - as I understand it's just part of his learning process. Instead of stopping him and getting frustrated I look at how else his particular point of focus can be explored. We can push a bowl sideways so it rolls like a wheel. We can spin it like a spinning top. We can bang it against different objects to see what different sounds it makes. He's learning new things about physical reality, and gets to know what he wants to know much quicker then if he would have gone through a continuous stop-start process where his curiosity never gets satisfied - leaving both him and myself disgruntled. So whenever you find yourself in a situation where you want to make your child stop, I ask yourself: "Am I empowering him or am I simply limiting him out of convenience?"
These simple shifts in perspective can make such a huge change in making your daily life a more flowing and smooth experience!

In my previous blog, Day 83: Playfulness | Gifts from Animals - Dogs, I shared how the dogs’ expression of playfulness assisted me getting through tough times.

If there’s something Cesar knows all about, it’s exactly that = tough times. Being a baby and growing into a toddler is a lot of work for the physical body. The rate at which the body grows and changes is exceptional, and so is the pain and discomfort that comes with it.

On one of the days that he was going through a particularly rough patch, I looked at him and could see myself in his distraught eyes. It reminded me of when I would go through physical discomfort and would then emphasise the physical discomfort by adding an emotional experience to it, basically ‘feeling bad about feeling bad’. I also realised that, even though I was feeling bad – I could make the decision to acknowledge it, but not allow it to ‘take over’ to the point where it disabled me to do something with myself and my day. So looking into Cesar’s eyes, I realised that if I wanted him to get out of this experience, it was going to be up to me to create a new moment. I got up and moved myself to come up with something random for us to do, something he is not used to in terms of his routine that would get him to be engaged and curious about what we are doing, rather than being focused on what he is experiencing. In this particular instance, I playfully pointed out the chillies which were growing on our pepper plants in front of the parrot aviary, how they can be plucked and then given to the parrots who happily eat them.

He was very attentive and could see on his face that he moved out of the experience into what we were physically engaged with. This made him ‘snap out’ of his mood where even after our little activity was over, he was more present and not so overwhelmed with what his body was going through.

So, through simply in a moment moving yourself to embody a particular expression such as playfulness, you can stand as support for another to move themselves into the same expression. This isn’t always easy, because within being a mother, I go through my own share of physical discomfort and can get emotional about this – where I have to stand as the support for myself first to push through and move myself out of my own emotional experience, to only then be able to stand as an example for Cesar to show that you can determine your own experience in a moment and change it, even if the circumstances aren’t in your favour.

I am grateful to the dogs for having been my bridge of support, to show me that I can change when I wasn’t yet able to move myself to change in a moment – and for me to now transfer the same gift to Cesar.

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.

In my previous blog, Day 80: Mysophobia & The Inconvenience of Life – Part 1 | From Farm Life to City Life; I shared some of my experiences and observations which happened around ‘sand’ whilst staying in Belgium.
I ended off with ‘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.’

Another incident which illustrated this point nicely, was when we were at the playground and a child came running very happy and excitedly to have arrived at the playground – where he for a moment was so caught up in his excitement that he fell but was able to stop the fall by putting his hands to the ground. I thought it was rather quick thinking on the child’s part – but the mother who was walking a bit behind let out a big, massive sigh and then loudly scolded the child, complaining that they would now ‘have to go and wash his hands AGAIN’.

From all the variables which took place in that single moment, the one that had caught her attention was that ‘now his hands are dirty again’.

This just blew my mind, to see and realise how far removed we can get ourselves from reality. How we place such specific filters in our mind which define everything we see and experience in our world. In terms of filters active towards children, the biggest ones were money and relationships (/status). I mean, in any given situation, there’s a myriad of ways we can decide to respond to a given situation. But when we have filters in place, such as the things we value and give importance to, this limits our scope of how we see we can responds to a situation; to the point that we believe that there is only ‘one way’ which is the way we end up responding.

This is something I have seen so many times over within myself when working through memories within the DIP Pro course – and it was quite interesting and entertaining (in a scientific kind of way lol) to see it play out in front of my eyes.

There are so many ways to explore and experience childhood, yet within stubbornly holding on to values which set the parameters of how we see things and so respond to our environment, we force children to only live and experience life within very limited dimensions.

I am going to be opening up a new series, on – as you may have guessed from the title – how animals taught me to be a better parent. I will still be writing about my Euro-trip experience so the two topics will be posted on and off.

I was actually first looking at the various gifts as insights into my life that I have received over the years with the various animals I’ve walked with on the farm.

Each relationship with the animals carries a story, a story of my personal process. When I was looking more into each specific ‘gift’ I had learnt and received from the animals; I noticed how each on of those gifts had come into play when working and walking with Cesar. Some I applied naturally and didn’t even notice where it came from, others I specifically implemented to see if they would assist with my relationship with Cesar as well as with my relationship with myself. So when this point opened up within myself of looking at what I have learnt from the animals, it really hit me to what extent my participation with them influenced me and assisted me to become who I am today, and still assist me in my personal development.

We often take animals and our relationship to animals for granted, so with these blogs I would like to highlight the ‘special’ part they can play in one’s life and how one can utilise animals in one’s environment to assist yourself in overcoming your own limitations and get more out of life.

So stay tuned to read all about the experiences and lessons I have learnt from walking with dogs, birds, parrots and horses – and how I have been able to apply these lessons walking with my toddler.