Magical Parenting

Let’s face it, par­ent­ing can be over­whelm­ing at times. So much to do and so much of it not that fun for most of us. There is the rare woman who actu­ally enjoys laun­dry, most of us enjoy cook­ing or bak­ing at least some of the time, but it is a rare one of us that loves it three times a day, every sin­gle day of the year. Then there’s the vac­u­um­ing, dust­ing, clean­ing out the fridge, wip­ing fin­ger prints, did I men­tion laun­dry yet? Stick­ing it in the wash machine is not that hard, but the fold­ing and putting away can really feel mon­u­men­tal to me on cer­tain days, because…didn’t I just do this yes­ter­day? and the day before and I’m pretty sure 5 years ago I was also putting this same laun­dry away, and I’m pretty sure 5 years from now I will also be putting this same laun­dry away… ya, you get it. And let’s not even men­tion the bath­rooms. Who read­ing this loves wip­ing the back of the toi­let and the screw caps?

We deal with so much monot­ony and his­tor­i­cally this has lit­er­ally dri­ven many woman mad. And the rest of us have expe­ri­enced momen­tary mad­ness but then luck­ily have regained our san­ity again, at least for this moment– or we’ve turned to help in the form of pills or other con­ven­tional meth­ods that come in beau­ti­ful bot­tles with roman­tic names from the south of France.

So what to do? That’s where mag­i­cal par­ent­ing comes in. I lit­er­ally think this has saved my san­ity over the years. When I focus on cre­at­ing magic in the house the energy shifts 100% from hor­ri­ble monot­ony to life-giving thrill bumps. When infus­ing the house with magic, life becomes fun.

I adore this quote from Ein­stein and I think it really reflects the essence of why I love infus­ing magic into the lives of my children.

The most beau­ti­ful and most pro­found expe­ri­ence is the sen­sa­tion of the mys­ti­cal. It is the sower of all true sci­ence. He to whom this emo­tion is a stranger, who can no longer won­der and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impen­e­tra­ble to us really exists, man­i­fest­ing itself as the high­est wis­dom and the most radi­ant beauty which our dull fac­ul­ties can com­pre­hend only in their prim­i­tive forms — this knowl­edge, this feel­ing is at the cen­ter of true reli­gious­ness.
( Albert Ein­stein — The Merg­ing of Spirit and Science)

When chil­dren are young, they are not yet in their heads and think about things log­i­cally so send­ing them off to Sun­day school to learn Bible verses and intel­lec­tual con­cepts of reli­gious ideas has very lit­tle to do with expe­ri­enc­ing the Divine. For when we are con­nected spir­i­tu­ally, it is a vis­ceral expe­ri­ence, not a thought or an idea. It is a feel­ing that lives inside us. And this feel­ing is exactly what is acti­vated when we add the ele­ment of the mys­ti­cal to our daily rounds.

So, here are some of my favorites:
–Leav­ing out cake or cookie crumbs at night for the brown­ies (a kind of house fairy).
–Tidy­ing the girls dresser draw­ers while they’re sleep­ing and leav­ing daisy chain hang­ing on the knobs and maybe a lit­tle fairy dust on top. Traces of fairy dust are always ‘proof’ to my girls that it was the fairies and not me. I have an extreme top secret hid­ing place for my lit­tle bot­tle!
–Buy­ing new clothes and putting them into the drawer or closet with­out say­ing a word– and again a lit­tle trace of fairy dust on the item.
–cel­e­brat­ing hol­i­days like st. pat­ties day with lep­rechaun magic– we find things like shoes in the dish washer, tis­sues in the fridge, pic­tures turned on their sides or upside down, under­wear hang­ing on door knobs, milk turned green (with green pow­der from health food store, not food col­or­ing), chairs on tables, etc.
–adding flower babies to the gar­den

–putting things in the house and gar­den that cast ‘fairy shad­ows’- like crys­tals and mir­rors.

–send­ing the girls fairy mail request­ing their pres­ence for a spe­cial tea.

–Mak­ing fairy houses and leav­ing lit­tle treats for the fairies and then sneak­ing in lit­tle treats in return for my girls– like lit­tle crys­tals and gems or geo­des.

–A friend sent my girls a magic wand in a gor­geous box that came anony­mously in the mail– so much fun since I wasn’t expect­ing it either! but then received an email.
–Send­ing a note in the mail writ­ten in milk with instruc­tions to put a match under the note for it to appear.

There are so many ways to get out of the rut of daily life. What are some of your favorites? Get­ting out of our ‘have to’ mind­set and into a world of cre­ativ­ity and magic is truly the cure for the mun­dane mommy blues. Share some of your favorites with us so we can all add to our mag­i­cal files! And also book titles of fan­tas­tic mag­i­cal titles are always appreciated!

Some books I loved read­ing with the girls when they were lit­tle were The Tip­toes Lightly series and all books by Reg Downs and the Lit­tle House Martha series. I believe Martha was Laura Ingall’s grand­mother or maybe great grand­mother. They took place in Scot­t­land and were chock full of fairy magic! It was really amaz­ing to see the shift within a few gen­er­a­tions from liv­ing with the land and believ­ing in fairies to the extreme pious­ness of Laura’s par­ents, who were pad­dled if they smiled on Sun­day! wow.

When they got a bit older of course Harry Pot­ter and Fabel­haven were favorites that they’ve read or lis­tened to many times over at this point.

Category: Parenting