Community parenting might just hold the key to not only sanity and survival of modern parents, but also to the healthy development of their kids. Create a parenting village of your own with these six easy tips.
When you think you just cannot do it alone – look around you. In the absence of traditional villages, modern parents create their own tribes – with potluck dinners, baby-sitting co-ops, and plenty of friendly shoulders to lean on.
Being a parent is hard. The amount of pressure often feels insurmountable. To be even remotely adequate, each day you have to spend hours not only raising your children (think: nurturing their emotional needs), but going through mundane kid-related tasks: food shopping and meal-prepping, drop offs and pick ups, numerous applications waiting to be filled out and appointments to be booked. Most of the times we think we are failing – constantly late, always sleep-deprived, dressing the kids in odd socks and stained hoodies, and often handing them a cookie as a way to win another half an hour to finish with work emails.
As modern parents, we seem to have fallen into the trap of being soloists, cushioned from the outside world by the safety of our private, gated lives. Why? Sometimes we feel ashamed to invite other people into our mess. Other times, we are just too busy with work and home duties to cultivate relationships. The old, African-style village – with kids from the neighbourhood playing happily in the mud and watched on by the distant family members and friends – is long and truly gone. But in its absence, we are all suffering. As American psychiatrist, M. Scott Peck said: “There can be no vulnerability without risk; no community without vulnerability. There can be no peace, and ultimately no life, without community.”
So let’s embrace community parenting. Let’s not do this alone.
How to create a parenting village of your own:
- Practice vulnerability. Start from expressing your true feelings more often. Allow I don’t know or I cannot handle this alone to become your new daily mantras, replacing the ever-present I got this. Reject self-sufficiency and invite in help.
- Nurture a village. Offer your time and resources for others in need. So instead of buying another stuffed toy, cook lasagne for the neighbour who just had a baby. Organise a community toy-swap for families from your child’s daycare. Or a weekly potluck drop-in dinner for friends. Create group rituals and customs around important holidays: pre-Christmas cookie baking, Easter’s egg hunt in the park, or birthday picnic for your children’s school friends. Sharing fun aspects of parenting with other adults is essential.
- Be inventive. Most young families complain about the high costs of nanny service. So why not create a baby-sitting co-op by gathering a pool of friends with kids and taking turns in watching them? It works beautifully, makes for great memories and creates a feeling of reciprocal gratitude in the community.
- Embrace your elders. If you don’t have any relatives close at hand, help your kids foster multigenerational relationships with neighbours or older friends. And even if your family lives far away, a regular online video chat with Granny and Granddad will help everyone to stay connected across the miles.
- Safely explore online platforms. Who said that you couldn’t create strong ties with parents met on the internet? Join your local mothers’ groups and forums on social media – they are a depository of sound knowledge and solicited advice (which you can but don’t have to take!). Oftentimes some of the chats turn into play dates and coffees, so you may have a chance to move from online to offline.
- And most of all: learn self-love and self-compassion. Nobody wants to live in a village of broken souls, so try to heal – maybe together with other mums and dads, during childless retreats, yoga lessons or bush walks?
