New Blog: Liberated Parenting

Welcome to Liberated Parenting everyone! I am Lyndsey Merrill, mother of three free range children, peaceful parenting and child advocate, and author at Liberated Parenting.

My goal and purpose for writing on Liberated Parenting is to help parents be more aware of the decisions they make in regards to parenting.  There are a lot of cultural ideas and traditions of how parents are “supposed” to do things, and even how children are “supposed” to behave.  Most information out there is about how to have power over your children. I want to help shift the focus of having power with your children.

The typical parenting paradigm focuses so much on training children to behave properly rather than connecting with and guiding them. Not only is it damaging to the child, but it is exhausting as a parent! I have been there, I feel your pain, and I want to help alleviate it. If we shift our views on what parenting looks like it can be a much more joyful experience.

At Liberated Parenting I will be focusing on the needs of the children underneath their behavior as well as addressing the needs of the parent. I will also be focusing on peaceful, respectful ways to resolve conflict. Hopefully you will leave here with a new zest and understanding for parenting in partnership with your children!

A Little About Me…

When I got married I began to really analyze and question the world around me.  Why do I do what I do, and how can I make my life better and more enjoyable was always at the forefront of my mind.

After my first child was born, I mostly just intuitively cared for her, not knowing anything about how I wanted to raise her.  I nursed her, held her often, picked her up when she cried, etc.  It was exhausting, but equally rewarding.  With all of my kids, as babies, their needs were basic and relatively easy to meet.

As my kids got older parenting got more complicated.  The only thing I knew was I didn’t want to spank or hit them. This had been done to me and my husband and we felt it was damaging with no redeemable value.  It taught us to fear our parents, and we wanted connection and love with our children.  The problem came when we didn’t know how to go about teaching or disciplining them without the use of force or manipulation.  We began reading, reading, and more reading to figure out how to meet the needs of our kids as well as meeting our own needs.  We quickly became familiar with the term peaceful parenting, and it made absolute sense to us!  We were so excited we now had principles to parent by.

The reason I wanted to start this blog is because I want to help spread the good news and help parents connect better with their children, as well as help children be heard and recognized as important too!  The name Liberated Parenting came about because this way of parenting, even though it isn’t always easy, is always liberating!  When we get in the pattern of trying to control our kids, its exhausting with little fruition; think trying to swim up river against the current. When we try to live in partnership with our kids they respond to us more, the relationships are better, and it is just more enjoyable! You may still be swimming, but at least you are swimming with the current and going with the flow.

I also wanted to show people what this looks like.  When I was reading all of the literature surrounding this lifestyle, it seemed all sunshine and rainbows.  As if living this way has absolutely no conflict because everyone’s needs are being met, or if you treat children peacefully they will turn into perfect little altruistic beings.  The reality for us has been that it isn’t always easy to meet everyone’s needs, and that no one is perfect, let alone our children who are just learning how to navigate their world and their emotions and how to interact with others.  So I want this column to be real.  I want to show you the value of living in partnership with your kids rather than ruling over them, but I also want to show you that it isn’t always sunshine and rainbows.  Just like a relationship with a spouse has conflict, and if dealt with respectfully, conflict is actually good for the relationship, the same idea applies to our relationship with kids!

So come, follow my story and see what liberated parenting looks like for us.  Hopefully I can inspire you as I was inspired by others to live in harmony with your kids and liberate yourself from a parenting role that doesn’t serve you!

And feel free to let me know what kinds of things you might want me to cover.  If you have questions, or situations that you don’t know how to handle, or concerns, please share with me in the comments some of your major issues with parenting, or with your kids.  I certainly am not an expert, but sometimes all you want is just real parents talking to other real parents.

Thanks for visiting!!

Lyndsey Merrill