Parenting and Re-Parenting
my Top 5 Books for Slowing Down, Doing Less, and Listening In
Greetings friends, and welcome back to the Wisdom Workshop Newsletter, with ideas, quotes, and invitations for human flourishing. Enrollment is now open for Writing the Good Life 16, with a focus on improv wisdom. Scholarships available by application. Happy Friday! 🍂
Now onto the essay!
Our daughter just turned two-and-a-half, and she’s helping me grow up quite a bit.
“Are you awake yet, Daddy?” she asks.
Parenting — in addition to music, friendship, and teaching — is a peak-to-peak highway for wisdom.
How do we show up to ourselves, our partners, and our kids? How do we honor ourselves inside of our family systems? Inside of the social, cultural, and environmental systems that frame the decisions we’re making?
I used to think that having a child could ease the dizziness of freedom. Perhaps parenthood could provide an answer to the pressing “what-am-I-going-to-do-with-my-life” question that we’re somehow expected to answer.
But becoming a father has only raised the table stakes. It feels more important to live my best life, to embody the warm-blooded joy of becoming a human being. Feeling awe for each irreplaceable moment. Breaking into song and making jokes. Having more fun.
“Do you want to put on a diaper?” I asked her this morning.
“No thanks, my butt will adjust,” she said, making us both laugh.
This is what I know: parenting is not a project. The child is not a prototype. Culture eats strategy for breakfast. Practice the Zen ideal of a strong back and a soft front. Be authoritative, not authoritarian.
Listen to who she is. Get better at not overdoing it. Be willing to be a beginner over and over again. Set up time to do nothing. Play and make music together.
To put it more poetically, here’s W.S. Merwin:
What we are looking for
in each other
is each other
Five Beautiful Books for a Wisdom in Parenting Workshop
Drawing from evolutionary science, mindfulness, and education, I hope these books and ideas inspire and encourage you — whether you’re parenting a child or re-parenting yourself. If any of these resources prove valuable now or in the future, drop me a line and let me know how it’s going 😊!
(1) Practice Presence
I loved Trees Make the Best Mobiles: Simple Ways to Raise Your Child in a Complex World, by Jessica Teich and Brandel France de Bravo (2001). Like Natalie Goldberg for early parents, this is rich, beautiful, and concise. From the chapter on diaper-changing:
There’s a Zen Buddhist saying, “Haste is a form of violence.” . . . .
Think of every activity as a chance to slow down, to fill the moment with your concentration and care. Even changing a diaper can become — dare we say it?— pleasurable.
(2) Parent On Purpose
In The Future of Children: Providing a Love-Based Education For Every Child (2015), Phillip Moore looks back on forty years of directing Upland Hills School in southeastern Michigan, a school dedicated to a love-based education for every child. His nine guidelines identify what we all need, and map nicely onto Wisdom Workshop design:
Live Love
Sky Time
Somatic Awareness
Safety and Trust
Feed the Right Brain
Exercise the Left Brain
Generate Esteem
Adventure
Community
Moore quotes Krishnamurti, a friend and fellow advocate of self-intelligence:
Thus education, in the true sense, is the understanding of oneself, for it is within each one of us that the whole of existence is gathered.
(3) Commit to your unique child, yourself, and your relationship
Like a Japanese Tea Ceremony, this will not happen again. In The Gardener and the Carpenter: What the New Science of Child Development Tells us About the Relationship Between Parents and Children (2017), Allison Gopnik, a psychologist and philosopher at U.C. Berkeley, encourages us to not fit our children — or ourselves, or our relationships — into too tight of a mold. From her conclusion:
Each new child is entirely unprecedented and unique -- the result of a new complicated combination of genes and experience, culture and luck. And each child, if cared for, will turn into an adult who can create a new, unprecedented, unique human life. That life may be happy or sad, successful or disappointing, full of pride or regret. If it’s like most valuable human lives it will be all of these things. The very specific, unconditional commitment we feel to the child we care for is a way of respecting and supporting that uniqueness.
(4) Respect evolution, and trust your process
In Growing Up Human: The Evolution of Childhood (2022), we get to see the intellectual agility of Brianna Hassett, a biological anthropologist who studies ancient teeth. Hassett is “a founding member of the TrowelBlazers Project, dedicated to increasing the visibility of women in the digging sciences.” This should give you an idea of her humor and her humanity. From her conclusion:
You may, particularly if you own a child yourself, look at the ‘kids’ in their 30s cluttering up their parents’ basements, rec rooms and attics, and see a catastrophe, a gutting indictment of the society and economy that doesn’t let people grow up as fast as they used to. Or, you could squint a little, and see in that long, long childhood a tiny part of the long, long process of evolution . . . Our childhoods have become longer, from our hominid ancestors on up, and this is not a bad thing -- it allows us time to learn how to be a better monkey. But we, in all our various societies, need to have a long hard think about whether we are really giving everyone the same shot at growing up human.
(5) Stop Over-Parenting
In How to Raise an Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Raise Your Kid for Success, Julie Lythcott-Haims, an ex-Stanford Dean of Admissions, shares timely support on how to raise an adult, both sobering and encouraging for an over-doer like me. From her beautiful conclusion, a reminder to cherish our own development, too:
Do you take care of your basic needs, think for yourself, work hard, and make time for relaxation? Are you resilient? Do you chart your own path? Can you look past what others think is popular or best and make choices that feel right for you, all things considered? . . . What can you do to reclaim yourself and be the kind of human and parent you really want to be?
I’m going for a nice, lifelong application of wu wei -- effortless action -- the Taoist ideal where we do nothing, and nothing is left undone.
Any other books/ideas on parenting you’d recommend? Are you a parent who might want to join the next Wisdom Workshop in Writing the Good Life, focused on Improv Wisdom? If so,
✍️ Invitation to Start your Weekend Off, Write
Raise yourself a little bit more this weekend. Let’s sit with Julie Lythcott-Haim’s question:
What can you do to reclaim yourself and be the kind of human and parent you really want to be?
Put your phone down. Set a timer for five minutes. Write.
🗓️ Happenings
Saturday, Oct. 5 at 6-8pm MST. Sean Waters & the Sunrise Genius Duo at Breckenridge Brewing. Fort Collins, CO. Our music on Spotify.
Monday, Oct. 7 at 3-4 pm MST. Facilitating Wisdom Lab. Link below the paywall.
Wednesday, Oct. 9 at 2-3pm MST. Improv Wisdom. Clubhouse.
Wednesday, Oct. 23 at 12 or 7pm MST. Writing the Good Life #16 begins!
🎉 Readers of this newsletter: $200 Early Bird Coupon Code: “EARLY BIRD WW” Expires Sunday, October 6th at Midnight
Thank you for reading!
Wishing us all a playful presence of our essence,
Sean
P.S., Link to this week’s gathering and a bonus writing invitation below.
Thank you Nancy, Zach, Geri, Terry, and John for becoming new supporting subscribers!!!
I appreciate each of you so much!
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