Parenting With the Seasons — Winter
As we officially welcome in the winter season, the invitation is to rest. This may feel counterintuitive since we live in a society and culture that has its New Year’s celebration smack in the middle of winter and demands that we constantly do and produce and go, go, go, go.
Seasonally, the rhythm of winter is slow, soft, and gentle, with more sleep, and space to envision and dream the seeds you want to plant come spring.
It is not the season to set goals, to make big changes. To jump back into the grind of working. Of course, the vast majority of us don’t have the luxury or privilege to be in tune with the season and allow our body, mind, and psyche to sync up with its rhythms. This is purposeful. The more the system keeps us on the hamster wheel of production and output the more we’re trapped in a state of depletion and exhaustion and the less energy we have to commit to making fundamental changes in our lives. This is especially true of BI&POC folx, and even more so of mothers and parents, both BI&POC and white.
So what does it mean to mother/parent within the seasonal rhythms and allow this to guide your actions, choices, and ways you parent?
A TIME TO REST
We know our children learn from what we model. If we model a lifestyle of doing, exhaustion, obligation, and being unable to say no or set boundaries, then that is what our children will learn and recreate for their own lives.
When we model listening to our bodies and psyches, we are teaching our children the power of true embodiment. There is this misconception that we constantly need to be entertaining our children, that we can’t let them get bored, when the reality is our LOs, especially babies through age five, really thrive on pure connection and not on the doing. One of my favorite activities that I do with my toddler is simply to sit on the couch together. Sometimes we talk, sometimes we sit in silence. Either way, it’s a way we connect without actually doing anything aside from being.
The Medicine of Winter
Winter medicine teaches us the beauty of just being, of allowing our minds to wander, of inviting our imagination and dreams to expand. We do this in dreamtime during sleep, but we also do it when awake at times that we aren’t directly engaged in an activity. If your LO has not been exposed to this, they may feel boredom and/or frustration. But the more space you cultivate to slow down, to be soft and gentle, to encourage quiet time, the more your LO will grow into their comfort in being in this space, especially when they are sharing it with you.
Winter teaches us to tend to the fallow earth of our psyche. Plants and animals go still in the wild, conserving their energies for the initiatory fire of spring. By embracing a practice of rest and softness, we model for our LOs the importance of listening to our bodies and intuition—we embody a vision of life that is not defined by the demands of patriarchy and capitalism, of productivity and achievement.
ways to mark the winter seasonal transition
Instead of modeling making New Year’s resolutions, model what it would be like to create a space of visioning and dreaming.
Instead of shaming yourself for the richness of holiday feasting, model for your LOs that winter is a time when our bodies and metabolisms slow down and we need more nourishing, warm, fatty foods. This is another way you can resist the white, patriarchal, capitalistic system we live in, by modeling self-love and compassion for your body.
Create a nature table or altar
You don’t need to buy anything.
You can collect natural objects on a nature walk through your neighborhood. Even urban areas have natural objects (albeit harder to find).
Include winter fruits such as apples and pomegranates.
Light a candle.
Include herbs or spices that remind you of your ancestors. This helps connect the energy of your household to the energy of your lineage and models for your LOs that community and family also exist in the unseen realms.
Listen to the natural rhythms of your body
Are you needing more rest, more sleep?
Are you feeling less motivated to be social?
Is your body craving nourishing, warm foods?
Is your body craving types of movement different from those during warmer months/seasons?
Find places in your life where you can say No. This is especially helpful coming down from the holiday season, when there is a lot of family time and obligation. It’s okay not to have a playdate, to just hunker down with your immediate family and not be social.
Can you practice giving your LOs space so they too can experience being with and listening to the natural rhythms of their body?
Above all, remember that it’s not about perfection, it’s about intention. It’s about modeling living life in a way that’s different from societal norms dictated by a white, patriarchal, capitalistic culture. We have the power to raise a generation of humans that relate to the world in a vastly different way. The challenge is to do it while still living in the very systems that continue to damage us. But every choice we make has an impact, and one of the biggest impacts we can have is teaching and modeling for our LOs how to be connected to the seasonal rhythms that feed and influence all of us.
Let’s talk.
We would love to connect with you