Age Appropriate Skills for Children

Here’s a little article that I wrote for my school’s Alumi Newsletter.

Did you know that your five year old is capable of taking out the garbage or sweeping the floor, your seven year old can help change the sheets on the bed or put dishes in the dishwasher, your twelve year old can cook meals for the family or do his own laundry, and your teenager can purchase her own clothes with a budgeted clothing allowance or do heavier yard work.

Many children are denied the opportunity to contribute to their families and communities in such valuable ways. They aren’t given a chance to learn essential skills for caring for themselves and others. Well-intentioned adults do things for children that they are capable of doing for themselves. As a result, the children learn to under-function, displaying trained helplessness and learned incompetence.

In a parenting group we explored age appropriate skills that kids are capable of doing for themselves. Many parents felt the a-ha that their child was capable of taking on some new responsibilities at home. Addressing this change with their child also gave them an opportunity to apologize to their child and admit that they had made a mistake. Children love to hear when adults make mistakes. In addition, modeling making mistakes is a powerful way to help address a child’s perfectionistic tendencies.

Below is one parent’s account of how she surprised her son with an apology and gave him an opportunity to feel empowered and begin taking control of one aspect of his life.

“I had still been picking out clothes for my 8-year-old son every morning. I had tried over the last few years to get him to pick his own clothes (“just pick something – what’s the big deal – it’s just a shirt and pants – your little sister has been picking her own clothes since she was 3…”) but he always acted like it was an overwhelming task and he had no idea what to pick. It made the morning go more smoothly if I just pulled out the clothes for him. After a few parenting classes, I told him that I had learned how much kids can do at different ages. Then I told him that I owed him an apology. He straightened up, taken aback, looking very happily interested in this unusual conversation. I told him that I knew that he was capable of picking out his own clothes and had been for many years, but that I had not been giving him the chance to do this for himself, and that this wasn’t fair to him. He looked honored. The first day after this little talk, I came by and asked him if he had an idea of what he might pick to wear that day. He told me what he was thinking and I said that it sounded like a good choice. Since then, he’s just shown up at breakfast, dressed, without any fuss.”

A Thread in the Communion Tapestry

“To paint is easy, to write poetry is easy, but to create a communion with the energy of another, a dancing communion, is the greatest and most difficult art to learn.”
~unknown author, Kara shared it with me.

Below are thoughts and reflections all relating to this topic of communion. I’ve woven them together along one pathway though I sense there is a greater whole that they speak to which has yet to reveal itself to me. If anything is sparked in you, please do share, I’d love to hear.

Life is happening all around
in every moment
here and now

Energy of Other
swirling about

Sparks of holiness
Available for connection

Lights of grace
dancing in relation

What is communion?

Meredith writes:

When we move in close, and not shy from intimacy, if we were to approach an elderly woman lying on the ground wailing at the gate in the airport, will we know what to do? We are always uncertain, facing the unknown with another. Sometimes it can feel too vivid, too real and not predictable or within our control or comfort zone. And yet, the sensitive amongst us will feel another’s pain, and weep inside with them. We want to connect, to overcome boundaries that may have us protect ourselves form pain and risk, our own or that of another. In our exchanges we can feel our own aliveness, our energy almost tangibly. This is communion.

Actively feeling our own aliveness… experiencing the aliveness of others… interacting with the aliveness of existence… tangibly relating with visible and invisible energy that inspires expanding spheres of life awake.

What is this powerfully flowing current of life? How does it function?

Teresa shares Tenneson’s words, a thread in this inquiry:

Quantum particles (hearts, people…) once in contact (love, embrace, learning…) retain a connection (energetic link, stream of light…) even when separated, so that the actions of one will always influence the other.

In dancing communion we recognize that we are always in connection. The visible threads of relation may vary, even disappear, but the sparks of holiness continue to thrive within one another, always influencing the other. What might unfold in ourselves, our communities, our world as we (who are we? are you an active part of this we?) continue to deepen our practice of conscious communion? What happens if we surrender to its truth and its mystery?

Christy ponders how this energy plays out in groups:

I wonder if, as the “magic of the middle” lives through groups bonded by love and intention, that the group as a whole somehow maintains a steady incubating attention even as individual members lose focus now and then?

And Chris reflects (I recommend reading his whole post, it inspires me greatly) on what he is experiencing and learning right now in Belgium about gathering in circle, often a form through which communion emerges, and how it can serve passion into action:

The gift of the circle is that it somehow invites a much bigger sense of ourselves which, if worked with skillfully, can result in an event later that has a deep and powerful harmonic, a bass note of possibility that is indeed the group’s highest and unspoken aspiration for it’s own work, that transcends what is even known to be possible.

Holy Wholes, Including the Holes!

I feel whole.

Included in that is a void, a hole… missing that which has been lost, that which is changing. Missing not in a longing way, just in a recognizing a groove that is paved and was once vibrantly filled… and now is near empty… the same rushing current no longer fills its chamber. It still pulses with the energy that filled it’s strong and delicate walls. It echoes with fragrant vibes of beauty and memory… and in this moment, it feels kind of like a ghost, a lucid dream.


Stepping back, expanding beyond (and still including) that sacred chamber, I feel the whole that is emerging now. I see with my visioning eye how that electric life force energy is diffusing into new places, spaces, chambers of embraces. The energy does not yet have form. There is not yet a new channel for it to rush along. It’s in the bardo, dangling in between.

My personal heart breathes a little shallow. My soul opens brightly.

Hearing, Seeing and Loving

Anne Stadler recently inquired on an email list:

I am wondering do you feel “heard”, “seen”, and “loved”—even by the people with whom you are conversing? Do you feel you are engaging fully (using all your intelligences!) with each other and the whole in this exploration?

Many inspiring responses have emerged… and here is what I wrote:

I’d like to share some personal stories. My practice keeps turning me again and again inside myself (along a pathway of service beyond myself).

I’m sitting at a coffee shop right now, gazing out the sunny window. A dog turns around and stares in my eyes. In this moment I feel heard, seen and loved by that dog. I recognize myself in him… his alert curiosity, seeming contentment in experiencing life as it is. He stays close to his human companion and sweetly offers loving connections with those who pass by (or sit on the other side of the window!).

Earlier this morning I felt very alive, heard, seen and loved in my fascination with the appearance and movements of snails in the garden. So many unique angles from which to experience them, especially as their bodies morphed with each subtle movement. And each snail was so different from the other.

Lately I’ve been noticing where I don’t feel heard, seen or loved by myself or parts of myself don’t feel heard, seen or loved by other parts. I notice when I don’t feel this towards myself, I seek that feeling externally from others. When I feel a longing to be heard, seen or loved by another, my practice now is to deepen my connections internally, inviting myself to be heard, seen and loved by myself. When I am connecting with myself in this way, I am more easily able to recognize and receive energy and attention from others.

A couple of days later…

This morning I deeply felt a longing for another to see and love me… in a particular way that I wanted to be seen and loved. I felt myself out of balance and needing attention…. so I set out on a walk. My intention– to experience the beauty around me and within me. My goal — to find a centered place within where I felt seen, heard and loved by myself. My hope — this practice would lessen the contraction and sense of woundedness that I was feeling in my longing for another to fill that need for me. It worked! Turning towards and embracing myself opened up so much more space for me to be present with and accepting of what was before me.

Integrating Man’s Control of Order with Nature’s Mastery of Order

If you’re in the Seattle Area, I highly recommend a trip to this year’s Seattle International Children’s Festival to experience contemplative juggler, Thomas Arthur May 17 – 19. For a taste, you can watch some recent television appearances here and here (for the second one, skip ahead to 31:31)

“In a wondrous dance of animate objects and projected image, Luminous Edge tells the story of a Wizard’s apprentice and his struggle to learn new ways of being in a world on the verge of collapse. How do we learn to cooperate with the natural flow instead of trying to control it? The apprentice seeks to integrate the genius and skill of the Wizard with the heart of the Shaman as he explores magical patterns reflected in geometric shapes and natural objects.

Luminous Edge is a playful, hopeful exploration of the environmental and social problems facing our world today, a call to bring the wisdom of science into the heart of soul and community.”

Although this work has been created for the children’s festival, it will definitely appeal to adults as well and I highly recommend purchasing tickets and joining us for the experience.

At this performance you will be swept about by breathtakingly beautiful images of nature, forms of movement, and inquiries of existence.

In the meantime, here is a picture of Angkor Thom, Cambodia brought to us by Day and Night Painter. It’s another sacred place that shows the connection between man’s control and nature’s power… and it also leaves me in awe.