After 2 days with his Dad, Child of Water and I had a busy morning cleaning the house.  He wanted to help with many of the jobs I was doing- helping to stir the pancake batter then flip the cakes, helping to vacuum the bedroom, etc.

When my son was younger I became very interested in the continuum concept, and connected with other like minded parents.  The notion is that children in indigenous/paleolithic cultures are hardwired to do whatever their parents/tribe are doing- and to not need a lot of special/specific focus/emphasis/entertainment in order to thrive.  It's a hugely interesting book, concept, and parenting movement- well translated for our times and culture by Scott Noelle, who I know personally and think is pretty terrific. 

But then I began moving into the whole life unschooling movement- and now I find myself wondering how these two parenting movements fit together-  because it seems to me they have some big inherent differences. I'd like to write that question down and let it simmer as I move forward on this path, because I honestly don't have any thought through answers or viewpoints, only the question. 

When my son was screening--  he chose videos and video games over everything else--- he could not pull away.  And I often played and watched with him, but it felt as though we were in very separate spheres, relative to his first 4 or so years of life- when we were so very CC, with him as a baby connected to my body all day (co sleeping, breast feeding, baby wearing, etc.), then as a toddler and young preschooler- just being with me whatever I was doing throughout the day- standing in the sink playing with bubbles while I swept the kitchen floors/ for instance.  That changed so much when he became consumed with screening activities.

But today it was like old times again, only at 5 there's so much more he can do.  And we had a relatively peaceful day with me working hard on the house while he intermittently helped, asked for a bath, and read books to himself.  He read a whole book looking at the pictures and talking for the characters on each page based on their facial expressions- a literary skill the library mentioned in his summer reading challenge- and telling really elaborate stories while doing the voices of the various characters/etc.  He used the manual drill he got this spring and taught himself to twist screws into boards using hand tools--- and he was pretty content throughout the day alternating between working/playing along side me, and going off to do his own thing.  What's so much more lessened now are those awkward pauses of, "Mom, what should I do now?"  That I've been hearing since we began unscreening.  He just seems to be finding his flow and transitioning more naturally without voicing concerns about 'what next.'

We went for a boat ride together this afternoon, then he helped me shovel sand into the wheelbarrow then heave it and spread it in our community garden plot, while enjoying the late warm sun getting lower in the sky and breathing in the gorge summer air while we worked together for a couple of hours- totally content.   Next we kicked the ball to each other across the ball fields, on our walk home, a connected and magic memory for me.  He's not asking to be entertained passively anymore-  he's sitting with his thoughts and himself in the present moments more easily, more like himself, and he's choosing a wide variety of activities now over his game on the wii.  He's playing the wii less than 5 minutes per day, on average- though he actually did play for about 15-20 minutes today-  he chose a lot of other activities before it, and didn't get totally sucked into it.  What he did do- so interestingly, is have conversations, as Link, with other characters in the town- talking to them and explaining things to them- a very new and interesting way to play the game, and totally different than he ever has before- but similar to how he was reading the book earlier today. 

I'm convinced his cognition is most nurtured and his development most supported, right now-  largely without screens.  I know the world of technology offers so much to children- and it's a huge question how and when to go back to screened media- but for now-  I just see it before my eyes- so much- that the natural evolution and the primal ways of accessing experiences, of learning and developing-  that's the stuff Child of Water's healthy cognitive development is made of. 

You know when you are doing the right thing as a parent-  you can just see it and feel it and know it.  I'm still so uncertain of what we'll be doing a year from now or any distance out- but right now, the choices I'm making- they feel so right.