Hope For the Under-Resourced Parent, Interview with Pam Leo

Ginny: Alright. Welcome to the One Thousand Hours outside podcast. My name is Ginny Yurich and, my special guest today, who I've met in person is Pam Leo. Pam, thank you so much for being on with us today.

Pam: I am thrilled to be here with you.

Ginny: This is awesome - so Pam and I met at a conference in the fall called the Wild and Free Conference, so let me just te ll you a little bit about Pam. She was a speaker there and everyone was just absolutely enthralled. You know, it's like you could hear a pin drop in the room, Pam. It was so awesome. But Pam is an independent scholar in human development, a parent educator, a certified childbirth educator, a Dula, a parent and a grandparent and author of a book that I just absolutely have loved reading its Connection Parenting, Parenting Through Connection Instead of Coercion, Through Love Instead of Fear, which is a book based off of a course she used to teach correct.

Pam: Right, yes. The course was called meeting the needs of children and then when I wrote the book, I changed it to Connection Parenting, And the name for it and you know, it was all about connection. So that's how it came to be.

Ginny: It's a beautiful book. Can you just tell us a little bit about yourself and your family and your path to the connection parenting workshops and the. Well, the meeting meeting the needs of children workshops and the book? And then also you've got some really cool thing you do like the book very project and this Christmas pajamas venture. So tell us about yourself.

Pam: Okay, well, I have two grown daughters, and they were seven years apart. And with my first daughter, I read my first ever parenting book, which was how to talk so kids will listen and listen so kids will talk. And to this day, I give it out to parents. I love that book, and it just really opened my eyes to the fact that there was so much more that you could know about parenting.

And so it kind of sent me down the path of one book would lead to the next book. I always tell people. I graduated from the University of Bibliography because one would always be to another one that I wanted to read, and I stole the term independent scholar from something I read in a John Holt newsletter or something. Someone identified themselves as that, and I thought, that's me because I determine my own course of study by what I'm interested in. And so the more I was the family child care provider so I could be at home with my children. And the more I read and learned and tried to apply with my own children and children I cared for the more I started sharing it with my daycare parents, my childcare parents. And it just kind of went forward to sharing it with other childcare providers. And I started speaking at small conferences and I started writing for our local parenting paper called Parent and Family. And my column was called the Empowered Parents Column, and then I got the opportunity.

I was asked to teach just one of the six week course I created, which was based on your child's self-esteem, and they had gotten a grant and are present here in Maine to do some parenting education. And they were going to do a six weeks and they want me to do that one week. And so when we talked about it, I said, you know, I think having continuity in the same instructor might be of greater benefit to the parents. I said, I have this seven week course and we can make it a six week course. Do you want to try it one time through and see if it is what you're looking for? And it was and I was there for eighteen years - so I learned so yeah, it it's crazy. And I learned as much as I taught for sure about what it's like to parent under less than ideal conditions, which so many parents are. And, you know, people just kept saying, When are you going to write a book about this when you read this? And I kept thinking, but I don't have all the pieces. I know there's more to know.

And then I just finally accepted that I would never have all the pieces and that I should at least share what I knew so far. And so with with my articles that I had written and the course outline as kind of my framework that became the book Connection Parenting. So I always make sure I tell people that I wrote that book when my children were grown. And one of the quotes that is most quoted out there from me is Let's raise children who won't have to recover from their childhood. Yeah. And I just want my children to have to recover from their childhood because I didn't know all these things. So the feedback I most often get from parents is I wish I had known this from the beginning. And I just tell them so do I, you know, but it's never too late to just start right now, wherever we are in our parenting and go forward in making that decision every day, the parents who connection instead of coercion. And it is a decision we have to keep making over and over every day because everything challenges however we were parented. And for many of us, that wasn't through connection. That wasn't the model we had or the experience we had. So it's those challenges every day to make that decision.

Ginny: So I love that about your book. You know that you think you and about you as a person that you know, it's not this guilt thing. It's inspiring, which is, you know, learn something new and and implement it and, you know, do better than you did yesterday. And I noticed...

Pam: be one of my yeah, one of my favorite quotes is from Scott Noel. And he said we will always be parenting in the gap between the parenting we aspire to and the parenting we can actually do in this moment, like we'll always be in that gap. And I just love that. So, you know, I included that in the book. And I mean, the book was so inspired by so many other writers and thinkers. So I what I did at the end of each chapter is I put I call them the puzzle pieces. You know, this is what this is, what influenced my thinking and how I arrived at what I said in this chapter, you know, combined with my experience of trying to implement those ideas.

Ginny: Yeah, yeah. And I love that.

Ginny: Yes. One one of my favorite books is actually in one of the ends. I really like Carla Hannaford's smart moves. Which is why learning is not all in your head, and actually she's going to be on our podcast. I'm talking with her tomorrow, which is exciting. I read her book a long time ago, but no one talks about that one. So I was I was delighted to see that one in your book and I am the same as you. You know, you read a book and then, you know, it just snowballs into another book or a couple other books, and then those snowball into more. Your your story is simple of just taking steps forward and kind of showing up for the next thing.

Pam: So it really is - that is it. You know, I just like and I think part of it is that I didn't know at the time that I was homeschooling myself as an adult, but that's really what it amounted to. You know that in any spare moment I had, I was reading because it was the subject I was passionately interested in.

Ginny: And yeah, it opened so many doors for you.

Ginny: I noticed I noticed at that conference that we were at that you and your daughter clearly had the daughter that was with you, clearly had a bond. It was. It was noticeable from the first moment and it stuck out. And so it's kind of an interesting thing that maybe you don't see very often that you know that you two are very connected and and it's fun. You guys danced on the stage at the end. Just fun. I love that.

Pam: She blew me away when she did that. I have still never gotten over it because I had not said that piece before. And so she had never heard me say it before that, you know, if you have reconnected and she's standing back there on the stage going, I've never heard my mom say this before. I need to go dance with her. And so we came up and I was just like, I just melted.

Ginny: I didn't know that part of the story!

Pam: Oh, that was fun. They would so far. Yeah, it was. Well, I had said in the song that I wanted to end my talk with because I had read that it's the keynote speakers to set the tone for the, you know, her job, to set the tone for the day. And I thought I had just recently heard that song and I sent it, and I said, Can we do this song at the end of my talk? And so then I was thinking about, you know, dancing and I thought, You know what? That's how you can tell, because there was a missing piece for me. It's like, you know, I, you know, if you have, you know, created a disconnect with your child, you will know because they will not look at you, they will not talk to you and they will not let you touch them. And you know that we need to go back, rewind, do a do over and, you know, mend that connection. But it was the dance piece that I thought, Wait a minute. If you ask your child to dance, if you haven't been successful in that reconnection, then say, no, that's a good litmus test. Have we reached reconnection?

And so literally thinking about it on the plane down to Tennessee, I had added it to my notes that I had discussed it with my daughter. I hadn't said, Oh, and guess what other piece I added, because there was so much going on. And so when she heard me say that on stage, she was like, Oh my, I need to go dance with my mom. So I I loved it. I just that melted my heart that she thought of doing that and just came up to me and really said afterwards. I said, Did I really get a standing ovation or were they getting up to dance with me? She's like, Mom, you got a dancing ovation.

Ginny: The first ever dancing ovation that is so fun!

Pam: Thank you for noticing that.

Ginny: And I think a lot of it's neat to see because I think a lot of people want to see that they want to see a close, a close knit relationship, you know, once we hit the grandparents age with our kids. And so that was very inspiring. So there's so many amazing topics in your book. The book really stuck out to me because it gave words to my own experience. One of the things that you talk about is just how things used to be, and I'll read every one of the quotes in here that caught my eye. You say parenting has always been work, but it hasn't always been a struggle. Our grandparents and great grandparents didn't read books on parenting or take parenting classes. Did they know about bonding? No. Our great grandparents didn't know about bonding, either. It was not what they knew that made parenting different for them. It was how they lived. And so you talk a lot in the book, and I've thought about this in the past too, because we really struggled, especially at the beginning when our kids were little. And I have often thought and our kids are really clingy, so, you know, the grandparents are willing to help. Some of them lived a little far, but they were clingy, but they were. There's just like a few cousins. They had two older cousins, but when they were with their cousins, they were fine. And I used to think, Oh, like only if these cousins lived next door, you know, that type of thing. And so and so, you know, how did parenting used to be different in? And what changed in, you know, how did that old way? How did that help parents not struggle so much?

Pam: Well, there was so much more parenting support, I mean, the extended family was family. You know, it wasn't just two parents raising children, there were the grandparents and aunts and uncles. And so, I mean, not it went both ways. Not only did parents not have to do all of the loving and caring and all that, just the two of them or one of them. But there were all these other people to interact with and love their children. And from the children's side of it, there wasn't the scarcity of attention that there is with the nuclear family. You know, it was like, Wow, mom's busy you know, Mary can help me with this or do something with me. I mean, there were lots of resources and you know, people did live in close proximity to their extended family, and that's all different now. So for many children at best, they have two parents to meet all their physical and emotional needs and in many, many families, one parent to do everything. Yeah, and it's just it's, you know, it was never meant to be a one or two person job. It just was not. And that's what it's become. So it's so much more of a struggle.

Ginny: Yeah, that that made me realize why it was such a struggle, especially when ours were small. And that's and that's what I used to say. I used to feel like I can't do it, and I was actually in a really dark place when our kids are really young because I would wake up, you know, after really not sleeping and think there's insurmountable needs. You know, we had three little ones in a row and I didn't realize, you know, the amount of needs that they were going to have. And, you know, so my husband worked 10 hours, you know, or be gone 10 hours to commute and he traveled. And you know, getting outside is what really ended up helping me because I think Mother Nature bridges that gap a little bit. You know, it's like having another mother for each of your children, someone to keep them occupied, someone to help them emotionally. I kind of fell into that. But this really put words to my experience.

Pam: But if we could do that on purpose.

Ginny: Yes, absolutely. Because if you don't have that extended family and like you said, most people do not, you know, right nearby, then then you're doing more than sort of what seems human humanly keep, you know, the human capacity has. Again. Yeah. So then you you talked about how, you know, things changed and the adults don't really realize that things changed. Right, because we don't know how things used to be, but the kids notice, because the kids are missing, they're missing some things. So, you know, are there are there practical life changes? You know, what can make our life look a little bit more like previous generations, you know? Is it getting to know the neighbors? Is it sort of trying to build a village, you know, maybe with friends or. I mean, are there community ways or slowing down?

Pam: I would say all of the above. It really is all those things, because if we we have to create family of choice. That's what I call it family of choice and adopt our neighbors. And, you know, our coworker that doesn't have any children in their life who would love to come and spend time with us. I mean, to really in in Chapter seven in the book when I talk about the needs of parents, that was the chapter I added because it did start out as a six week class. And then I add that one more piece because I have looked at, Okay, this is the job description that I've laid out here of what children need. And that can only happen if parents needs are met and they have the resources to meet these needs. Yeah. So it is. It's all of those things is creating that resource. But a post that I just put up yesterday and I did it because I want to remember to say it today is our local television station wanted to interview me last spring about, you know, they just wanted to do some parenting support, like, what can we do during this pandemic and all the way things are to make it better for ourselves and our children?

And one of the things I talked about is proximity does not equal connection because I think a lot of parents were thinking, Wow, my children at home with me or together all that time, they must be getting all the connection they need when in reality, I think what was happening because there was so much physical togetherness, people were escaping off into their devices to just get a little space. But their connection needs weren't really getting that because the second half of that quote was so proximity does not equal Connection; connection is intentional and by intentional, I mean, every single day, whether it's two minutes or five minutes or 10 minutes having one on one with each child. And you know, if you have five children, which you do say, you're saying 10 minutes today, that's 50 minutes a day to carve out of your day to give each child ten minutes a day of one-on-one attention, which is what fills that need for connection. So you modify it and you make it five minutes and you do it with the older child while the younger one is napping or you do it with the younger one, while the older child is, you know, doing another activity but being conscious and intentional about it, like the same way we plan three meals a day. If we do, you know, planning that connection time every day like that, it's as essential as it is. And my favorite of all my quotes is the level of cooperation parents get from children is usually equal to the level of connection children feel with their parents.

Ginny: Yeah, absolutely. You know, I think, yeah, and I think I think just hearing, hearing you talk and reading your book, it's just you feel like this little bit of weight off of, you know, I'm I'm struggling because of circumstances or I'm struggling because of lack of resources, you know, not necessarily because I'm a bad parent or not, necessarily because I haven't figured out all of the pieces yet. It's just like you said, it's it's more especially even just their emotional piece. Like you said, we we've done a couple vacations with other families and we always talk about how much easier it is. You know, if there's three families going rent a big house, let's say, and there's three families and there's 15 kids running around and everyone's sharing meal responsibilities and everyone's helping with the dishes. And the kids have other kids to connect with of a wide swath of ages. And and the parents always say all this is just so much easier and you get a little glimpse as to what it might be like to live in a village or, you know, to live in a neighborhood with, you know, with other families that you know, you can mutually support each other.

Pam: You say it makes all the difference, doesn't it?

Ginny: It does. It's a completely different experience. And you know, then you go home to this reality of doing everything and and you feel like you're feeling, you know, and you are feeling to a degree. But this this is

Pam: But not because you're inadequate because you're unsupported.

Ginny: Yeah. This answered the why you say children's behavior is different today because childhood is different today. Parents' lives are busier and more stressful than our grandparents lives. We do more, go more places and expect children to keep the same pace. Children need connection time with their parents, time for unstructured play and time to just be. That's a really important reminder.

Pam: Hmm. And how many children are getting that? You know, they're running, running, running from one thing to the next to the next. And it doesn't work for them and it shows up in their behavior. You know, their behavior is always telling us what's true for them. Yeah. And when we can just stop, you know, when their behavior triggers us, if we can just find it in ourselves, we can't always, which is why we have everyone prepare replay to say, OK, you know, this behavior is telling me something. And what is it? You know, I kind.

Ginny: Yeah, I agree with that. You know, if ah, so my my background is that I used to teach high school math. And so I was really keen on not getting my feathers ruffled. You know, I didn't I didn't want to be the teacher that lost control of the classroom. And because I think that snowballs. And so I read some really good books prior to teaching Mike parenting with love in logic or teaching with love in logic. There's a couple of those. And then there's this first day of school book, you know, just talks about setting the tone in the class and and the love and logic stuff that was like the path of don't lose your temper, you know, because then, you know, instead of dealing with their own consequences, their behavior, then kids get mad at you. It shifts the focus. And so anyways, I had this long story short is I had, you know, five or six years to really practice keeping my cool, you know, because Nobody wants to do math and you've got a class of 30 kids, you know, and you're trying to every single day, you're trying to corral them through these assignments that they don't want to do, and they're coming in with their own baggage and and really huge hurts. And so I had, you know, this six years, it was it was really I feel like a huge parenting advantage for me of, oh, for sure of learning work, parenting

Pam: Teachers are parenting our children.

Ginny: Yeah, interesting. I never thought of it that way, but I always have felt like I had this bit of advantage because I think I have a longer. Like a bit of patience and my husband bless him, he did not get that advantage. And so his fuse is a little bit shorter and so what I notice is that things always pass with kids, you know, and and a lot of times like, you know, mine will fall asleep or they were tired, or if you if you wait long enough, it passes. And then a lot of times you understand what was going on. And for my kids a lot of times, it was just that maybe they were tired, but sometimes you just don't wait long enough. We weren't there crying to stop now, or we want the tantrum to stop now or or whatever the thing. But sometimes it should take a little bit longer, like if you just a little bit longer than so. I mean, I have found that there's always I can always point back to, well, you know, they were up until this time last night or, you know, this was a really big day and they were really excited. And now they're kind of melting. So. So let's talk about crying. Because my kids still cry, which I didn't realize would be a thing. You know, they still cry. You say it's not our job to stop children from crying. What a statement. I learned a lot about crying from your book.

Ginny: I didn't I actually didn't know

Pam: the purpose that it served.

Ginny: That it serves a purpose.

Pam: A huge purpose, and actually, I listen to a podcast on a podcast, but anyway, a talk about my daughter that you met and her partner did at birth roots, which is their parents support organization, and they were talking about the crying as well. And even though we both share this information, she talked about it in a way I hadn't heard her talk about it before. Just like the dancing thing with me, I was like, I didn't hear you say that before. And it was. Her description was, Oh, this is sort of the paraphrasing her description. But if you I'm describing it as I'm taking her analogy and describing, if you could think of your heart as a sponge, you know, and you get this little hurt, but you don't cry about it because you're not in a safe place to cry about it and you get that little hurt and you don't cry about it. So the tears, you don't cry out, you cry in and they stay there just sitting there thinking of a sponge, you know, keep getting dropped, dropped up then tear, tear, tear.... Eventually, it reaches a saturation point. It can't hold anymore and has to empty out. Yeah. And so the way I always described it, if he could think of a Hertz Cup, you know that this whole drop goes in, that little drop goes and finally, it's at the top and one more little thing happens. It's like, you know, they come home and you say, Oh, you know, we're going to have apple juice and grab crackers for a snack, and they just burst into tears. I wanted Oreos. You know, it's never, ever about the cookie. You know, that's just the trigger. And we think they're melting down over snack. Well, they're not. But they've been, you know, especially when children are in school, they've been away from us all day. We don't know all the little hearts they may have endured, where they just held it together, held it together, held it together and then they get home where it's completely safe. And one more little hurt happens that there's just no room for. And you think of squeezing the sponge and it is running out, and then you can get back to like, Okay, I can face the world again. You know, my sponge is empty. I can cope. And so if we prevent that from happening, we're not serving children's emotional needs. They need us to just be there, keep it safe, let them empty it out. It isn't an indictment of our parenting that they're crying. And I mean, it's true for us as adults.

I mean, we don't ever outgrow the need to release the parts that have built up inside of us. And one of the reasons the parents are so desperate to stop children from crying, which we are, is because they're crying, triggers all of our unhealed hearts, all of our unreleased tears, and we just want to shut it down. We just want it to stop until we can stop them from crying. It will stop our own pain from surfacing. So, I mean, it requires two things in order for us to be that parent who can allow our child to just release their hearts and cry is to do our own work, you know, to go back and release a lot of the stuff that we stuffed and then we don't get so triggered. So it's a lot of work to be able to become the kind of parent who can be okay with being there with their child. And sometimes you will say, All right, I'm going to do this, I'm going to see this tantrum right through to the end. And you only have 10 minutes worth of attention to do that, but they have 15 minutes worth of trying to do the right. And sometimes I think

Ginny: that's a lot of time where the disconnect is, that time piece, right? Which is I really do believe that, you know, three or four more minutes down the road, it's probably going to resolve. But we just don't get there.

Pam: But you can't make it happen. You can't make it. So I mean, there is, you know, we're human, we can only do what we can do. So at that point, a distraction is not going to be so damaging because that's what we try to do. We try to distract the children from, you know, experiencing what they're experiencing or releasing what they're feeling. But if you've given it your all for 10 minutes and you just don't have any more to give. You know, it might be if you could just say, you know, I can hear that you still have some more crying to do, but I need to pay attention to me for a few minutes. So do you think maybe you can get a drink of water, get a book to look at and maybe we can come back to this? And usually by then they probably can, because they've gotten enough off the top that they can begin to Ballard to do it. But if you do it right at the beginning, if you try to distract them away from it, then they're stuck with it and it's going to continue to affect their behavior. The next little upset, it's going to trigger another meltdown. I

n fact, my youngest daughter had some pretty amazing tantrums. It was just, you know, who she was, and I literally learned if we were going to go someplace, you know, say, a family gathering or something like that where I was not going to want to deal with the tantrum. I would want to make sure that her son, church club, however you want to describe it, was empty. So I would literally just say an arbitrary no. That I knew would trigger whatever was sitting in there, you know? And I didn't quite know. Yeah. And we could do it at home before we left and then have a wonderful time together because we were entering that event with an already full Hearts cup, which I think especially going into the holidays. This happened because parents are distracted trying to do ten times more than they're already doing. And so Children Love Cup is going to get emptier and emptier. And so then we drag them to these family events where they don't have the connection they need and their fruit cup is too full and it's just a formula for disaster. Yeah. So we can really be proactive about that. So we know we're going to go some. Place that's going to really tax their ability to do what's expected of them. We can do two things make sure their Hearts Cup is empty and their love cup is full.

Ginny: Now that's really, really practical advice. I didn't realize I read in your book about, I mean, maybe I should know this. I don't know if most people know this, but that crying that our tears contain our stress hormones.

Ginny: So we're actually cring out our pain and stress.

Pam: Absolutely, so a lot of the ideas in my book are based on reevaluation, counseling or counseling. It's also known as and the principles of nonviolent communication were very big for me. And, you know, the idea of power with instead of power over. But the the part about releasing tears and tears containing stress hormones. I mean, that's where I learned all of those things. I did not know those things before that. And it was just so powerful for me when I saw it in action when I would see. And we've all had that experience. It's like the calm after the storm, after a child has a major meltdown. They're just delightful. Their present, they're happy because they don't have all that hurt waiting them down. And so once we see that it gives us the incentive to be like, Okay, a tantrum is not a bad thing. It's just release. It's just spill over. That's all it is.

Ginny: Do you know what it really reminded me of? PM is a fever. You know, I read something I learned about into my parenting from my midwife, actually. But you know that a fever is a good thing, right? A fevers job is to kill off the germs. And you know, and my midwife had said something like, you know, 102 fever is stronger than any antibiotic, you know, known to man. You know, in terms of of leading toward healing. And so, you know, but then a lot of times you try and stop the fever, right? We try and bring down the fever. We're trying to, you know, to meddle with that. And sometimes obviously you need to, but you know, you don't always have to. And so that's kind of what this reminded me of that you talk about it, you said interrupting the crying interferes with the natural healing process. So, you know, we now we view a fever as a good thing, right? I'm always happy when my kids get a high fever because I'm like, Well, this is going to be better tomorrow as soon as this fever burns out and they're going to be, well, it's so similar, right then. You know, they're

Pam: That is such a great analogy, because it's exactly that.

Ginny: Yeah, yeah. And then they're then they're fine. You know, as soon as that fever burns off, then like they're back to, you know, their normal feeling self and

Pam: their body doing what it needs to do to heal and trying as our body, doing what it needs to do to heal. It's just like laughter. You know how we always laugh. So a word and reevaluation counseling that describes all the ways we release feelings and discharge like that. We discharge those feelings. We release them. And one of the forms of discharge is laughter, which is why when we do a rollicking play time with children where we're just laughing hysterically, that has a similar effect because we're laughing away like fears and nervousness. So one of the things that happens for children when they get in trouble, they will often laugh because they're nervous about what's going to happen. And the adult takes that as they're not taking this seriously. And it's like, Oh, do you think that's funny? Well, I'll show you, that's funny. And so then they get in more trouble because they laugh when really what was going on for them is they were really nervous, and I laugh when I get nervous or embarrassed. Or so it's just our body's natural way of releasing and discharging those emotions.

So we don't think necessarily of laughter as being a form of healing. But yet, on the other hand, I guess we do, because it's the saying laughter is the best medicine. So if we really take that literally and pay attention to that will realize the value of roughhousing and just general silliness. You know how valuable that is to create and increase connection. I've never seen anything increase connection like silliness, and that's really great.

Ginny: Yeah. And just being together and having those experiences, we've got our youngest one. So all of our kids, are they warm and needy spectrum? You know, like they wouldn't go to grandparents until they're of, you know, I don't know, they just wanted to be with mom and. And so that's taxing. But our youngest one was like a little extra that way. So you talked about needing this in your book, which I thought was really struck a chord with me that. You know, you can't you can't change that basically, you know, you just have to, you know, you have to kind of deal with how they come our our youngest one nurse until she was pretty old. And I remember taking her, you know, to the grandparents house just for a little bit, you know, she was like, finally, and she's old enough, you know, like, she's like old enough, you know, she's like, still, but she's still nursing and, you know, just, I don't know. So anyway, she was completely old enough, you know, and so it was just going to be for a little bit. And she, you know, was having a hard time and.

Anyway, she had a great time, you know, I went to pick her up, it was not that long and she just had an absolute blast and didn't want to leave. And my kids have such great grandparents. It's a huge blessing. But but she gets in the car and she says, Mommy. She goes, I didn't ask to nurse one time, and so she's so old, right? I mean, to be able to see that right, she's so old. I was like, Oh my goodness, and I'm sharing this on this podcast. But but what it reminded me of was that she held that in all day, you know, we're forever, however long she was there. You know that day about a kid being away at school and a kid, kids going to these different things that they're holding in, you know, much more than we probably realize. And so when you said that safety is the explanation for why children act worst with their parents, that made a lot of sense to me. You know, you always wonder, why do kids melt down? Like, why are they crying with me? You know, like they were just fine. Happy, go lucky with grandma, you know? But then you know, and you say parents are usually their children safe place. So actually, this is a good thing. This is a positive thing.

Pam: It's a compliment. It's a compliment. Yes. And it's not just about children. It's true for us. I mean, there could be something that could be a death. There could be something, you know, really emotionally charged that happened for us. And we'll be holding it together just fine until our best friend walks through the door and we just we just start crying. So it's not just children, it's all of us safety. Whenever the safety is sufficient, discharge will be spontaneous, you know, and we say it again.

Ginny: Like, whenever I love that whenever or when

Pam: or whenever the safety is sufficient, I mean, a different word would probably be more general knowledge than discharge, but release of feelings will be spontaneous. Wow. And I found that true, especially true after my mom died, which was recent for me that I could hold it together until I would see certain people and I would just lose it. Y

Ginny: What a compliment it is. Such a compliment to be someone's saf place, whether it's your children or, you know, a spouse, your partner or friend.

Pam: Absolutely. If we could back up a little, I need to tell you why I was laughing when you told the story about your daughter. My youngest daughter also nursed until she was more than three and a half. And at that time, we lived up the road, down the road from her aunt, and they also homeschooled and she would often just go up there three and a half, you know, she could walk up the road to there. And if she didn't like the way things were building up, then she'd say, I go home and nurse you. Yeah, oh goodness.

Pam: I know, you know, so many people would say to me, if they have to take out their nurse, don't you think it's time they stop? And I said she'll decide when she's ready. And they

Ginny: know, you know, I think that that goes along with, you know, you can't fix neediness, you know, you just kind of have to meet it,

Ginny: accept it where it is exactly, you know, even

Pam: pricking one child's level. Yeah, one child's level of neediness is going to be different than another child, you know, based on who they are. You know, if you have a really highly sensitive child, they're going to get hurt More often there hurts cup is going to fill up faster and they're going to need to have more tantrums because that's who that child is. If a child is more easygoing and just kind of meets life where it's at, you know, it's not to say they're not going to get hurt, not ever have the need to cry, but it's going to be a different level of frequency and intensity. And so I had kind of both ends of the spectrum, you know, and so it's a rude awakening when your first child is easygoing one and the one that you know and of course, you're so much attention because they're the only child, you know, and then your second one comes along, who is the completely the opposite and who is way sensitive and, you know, much higher level of need. It's just, you're like, Oh yeah, I used to joke and say my first one. If my second one had been my first one, there wouldn't have been a second one. Wow.

Ginny: This is why we don't have a sixth one. You know, you have the one that you're like, OK, like, this is all I can. This is kind of all I can tell you.

Pam: Yeah, I mean, fortunately, they weren't mine. We're seven years apart, so my older one was more self-sufficient. You know, when I had this high level of need to meet. But we have to just. You know, consider that every child is different and who they are, and that that you know that what makes me think about fair, you know how so often children say, Well, that's not fair. She's this or he's that. And what we really need to say to children, what is fair is that everybody gets what they need, and sometimes somebody needs something more than you do or sooner than you do. But what's fair is for everyone to get what they need. So when I hear you say that's not fair, that's telling me that urinating something you're not getting.

Ginny: Yeah, yeah. But these are sad. These are so practical. These are so many practical things here and I in, you know, like for me to have from moving forward a completely different perspective on crying, you know, which I always felt like, you know, they're they're going to get past it. But I've never looked at it as, Oh, this is beneficial for their health and for their healing and for their little emotional state, you know, and and just to have a reminder to embrace each child how they come. These are really practical, helpful things in perpetuity. You know? So I really appreciated learning about

Pam: it through the day.

Ginny: Yeah, and even you said you talked about that a child who falls on the playground looks around to see if anyone saw them fall and then they fall apart, you know, because they know that someone else will be there to sort of absorb their hurt and to, you know, for them to release that. And I thought that was interesting. It's all these. I guess it's I guess is your book for me was kind of like a lot of things that I had experienced, right, which is a struggle. And, you know, kids falling apart when you know you pick them up from this thing or. But I never knew why. And so all these explanations for me have been just so eye-opening and. You know, just that, you know, reminder, like you said, it just be more intentional about connecting and trying it and trying to deal with lack of resources, you say. You talk about this concept of the, you know, the village and and this parenting alone sort of thing. And you say lack of resources is the most common reason for competing to get our needs met. If we had more resources, we would not have to bring the child to the bank or to the store because there would be someone else to stay with the child. As long as there is a lack of resources, there will be competition between parents and children to get their needs met. You know, it's just kind of a statement like it is what it is. But but then again, the

Pam: only thing we can do is try to increase our resources because children can be pretty busy if their needs. Yeah, they can't °r need to. We need to increase our resources, whatever that means in our individual situation. Yeah. And you know, and that's one thing to aspire to these parenting ideals. But if the reality is we're worried about putting food on the table that day. You know, that has to come first. And we're not going to do our best parenting when that's the reality of our parenting. Yeah. And so it is going to be at the forefront all the time this.

Ginny: This helps to absolve a little bit of guilt. I think, you know, for me, or it just makes a little bit more sense that, you know, like you say, parent parenting never used to be and was never intended by nature to be a one or two person job. Right? You know, so it can it can make us think about what? Go ahead. Well, I was I was going to say it can make us think about it, made me think about, well, what are some ways that I can increase our resources? And that might even be the decreasing output. You know, I think, you know, decreasing the amount of go, go, go is a way to sort of increase our margin or to increase our resources. But even like you said, if we're if we're in a position, you know, when our kids are a little, we really it's interesting because I think when they're little, you're in such a place of struggle like we had way less money, you know, for our family, we just switched to one income. You know, I mean, you know, for me, it was like the stark contrast of I was working, working, working up until a Friday and then Monday when in the hospital and had an induction because everything went wrong with my pregnancy. But, you know, up until that point, you know, on a personal level, I had space, I'm getting accolades, I'm getting pats on the back, you know? You know, we had two incomes. We have a double income. And then all of a sudden this this lack of resources becomes so apparent and it's such a stark change, but just knowing that that part of the reason why we're struggling helps you feel better, even if there's even if there's not maybe much you can change about it in that exact moment.

Pam: I mean, it makes sense if you're not adding guilt to the mix. Yeah, for sure. And you know, I have had the privilege and it really has been a privilege of working with so many parents that were under-resourced. I've worked with teen parents, I've worked with parents in recovery from addiction. I've worked with parents that are incarcerated. And one of the things that I've learned beyond any doubt is that every parent I have ever met has wanted life to be better for their children than it was for them. And I have never met a parent who woke up in the morning and said, Wow, what could I do today to really mess up my children? It's not how it is, parents want to do for their own children. And you know, that is where we parents from is wanting life to be better for our children than it was for us. And any ways that we parents that don't reflect that are the ways that we haven't been able to heal our own hurts, that we don't have the resources to parent in that way. But it's I just cannot, you know, I always say to parents, if what you got was harsh, you can only imagine what your parents got because every generation softens what they got for the next generation.

Ginny: Wow, that's very powerful. And it just gives you perspective for sure. For me. For me, the way that I increased resources was going outside. I mean, that's what saved me, which is which is why, you know, I this is why I talk about it. That's what I'm passionate about. But I was drowning and and had no, there was no solution for me. You know, like, nothing worked. And you know, it was by happenstance that a friend told me about this Charlotte Mason, who's like from the 1800s. But you know, you know, she added that kids need to be outside for these lengthy periods of time. And when we went with friends, it's different if we go by ourself. But if we would meet up with friends, you know, it provided the resources that we all needed, you know, a reprieve for all of us in a health benefits and and just emotional in the sunlight and connection, you know, all of those things. And it was free, and it was at a time when we didn't have money and everyone was in hand-me-down clothes and was like a savior for me. What are what are some ways that you see Parents dealing with lack of resources?

Pam: Oh, I mean, it's definitely the challenge of the day and has only become more so since the pandemic. Yeah, and actually a couple of things that I would like to say about that. I don't want our time to end without missing a little something about your book, about little farmhouse in West Virginia, which I just got and read and love. So you were an illustrator. I did not know that about you. I love it. But when I read it, it triggered so much in me about my own childhood. And I mean, I didn't have, you know, a picture perfect childhood. There was divorce, there was single parenting. I mean, there were a lot of things.

But what I did have was my grandparents going to my grandparents farm where I had unlimited hours outside and I didn't know, and I honestly did not know until I read your book, and it started me thinking about all those memories. But that was probably the saving grace of my childhood, why I was able to grow up and, you know, make a contribution to, you know, to society is because I had that outdoor parenting. I'm calling it for lack of any other thing. It's a great friend. There were 18 grandparents, I mean, 18 grandchildren. And so when we announced that we were all at my grandparents at once, we weren't. But it was frequently some combination of us there. And I mean, my mom relied on her parents a lot because she was a single working mom. So every school vacation, every summer, you know, we spent time there as they were her childcare. But you know, it's like, you know, out the door you go, breakfast is over, out the door you go. And I mean, as long as you made an appearance throughout the day, I can remember, you know, just there was a little stream by their house and then there was a little bridge over. There was a long driveway down into the farm yard. They had a very small dairy farm. And I used to play by that little bridge. I would go, I mean, was like seven or eight. Maybe I would go to one side of the bridge and I would drop in a leaf or a twig or something. And then I would run around to the other side and watch it come through from under the bridge. And I could do that just for hours and growing right next to that little bridge with spearmint. And to this day, the minute I smell spearmint, I am instantly transported back to that little bridge where I spent so many hours just playing and, you know, just happy and content just being outside and what my grandfather would come out to bring the cows in for milking, you know, that was always like an exciting time of day for that to happen. I remember responsibilities that I had, you know, at seven or eight years old, I could muck out the manure from the stalls. And I remember I had this terror because trying when you're that size to push a wheelbarrow that's heavy, filled with manure and there was just a single plank ran out to the manure pile and you had to, you know, push it out there and it would kind of wobble. And I would just have these visions all over and all the manure. And it never did happen. But just thinking back of like today would anyone who would trust the child to do that. But it was just kind of a given that, you know, this needed to be done. You're part of this family. How about here? Do this?

Ginny: And there's so many benefits to that. There's so many benefits because that's heavy. That's heavy work. So it's good for it's good for your what they call the the proprioception. Sounds like any of that heavy work for that pulls on your muscles and joints. But then also, like you're part of the team, you're part of it, you're dependable. You know you, you're brave, right? You do it and and your success. Also, there's too many layers of benefit there. And then also your mom, you know, it's given your mom a break for whatever she needed to get done. And yeah, and that's kind of just the picture of the whole thing.

Pam: You know, a lot of parents don't have I have grandparents nearby who can, you know, do that. And so it's like, how do we get that resource? How do we do it? And I mean, the first level, I think, is just being aware that we need it. And we, you know, it's something that it's not a bonus. It's it's an essential. Yeah. You know, having that resource is essential and looking around our lives and going, Okay, who can I invite into my life to be part of our extended family, our family of choice? Because it has to be family of choice? We're just all too scattered for, for the most part. I mean, I feel fortunate that I do live, you know, five minutes from my daughter that you met and I get to my garden is over at her house. And so I'm there all the time and I get to spend that time with my grandchildren. And I just, I mean, I'm as blessed as they are, but they also have me. And so if we if we don't have that, maybe we have a neighbor whose grandchildren live far away and she doesn't get to see them and would be delighted to read a story to our child or, you know, have them come over and help or put in the garden, that sort of thing. So I think recognizing that it's not a bonus that sunsets, it's an essential need. And where can we look in our lives to to invent that, to create that because we're not the only ones they're looking for it too. You know, it's a total Win-Win whenever you do anything to connect

Ginny: There's a woman at our church whose husband passed. And, you know, I think she's a little bit lonely. And then some friends of ours, their oldest son is really interested in the cello. You know, he really, you know, kids have their unique interests, which I love. So this this particular young man who like, really wants to learn how to play the cello. And so there's, you know, she's a widow and she plays a cello really well. So she gets together at this young man once a week at the church and she teaches him cello, and it's free. She does it for free, you know, so when you talk about this mutually beneficial, it's really true. You know, it's helping fill the cups. And what a blessing to be able to find different situations like that. And like you said, just help

Pam: Yeah. My 11 year old great niece gives me ukulele lessons.

Ginny: Oh, how neat,

Pam: how neat it is because that's the level of she started taking lessons and I had tried a couple of adult classes and I couldn't keep up, and I said, would you think about giving me, you know, whatever you learn this week and your lesson, we teach it to me and I'll pay you. And so she gets to earn some money and know that she has skills that are valuable, and I get to have someone who will teach me at the level I'm at and we just have grown closer and closer. You know, it's beautiful. And the cello reminded me of it that, you know, it's a win win for both of both parties involved, you know, so that's it is the best when it can be that way.

Ginny: It's like a beautiful dance. I love it. Let me tell you my favorite, my favorite quote from your book. And there was a lot of them. I really did get so much out of it, Pam. I want to tell you that the things that are in here, like they lodged into my soul and they are going to help me, you know, forever in parenting and grandparenting. So I just want to thank you. My favorite quote was "children need at least one person in their life who thinks the sun rises and sets on them, someone who delights in their existence and loves them unconditionally." Well, that was a challenge to me, you know, to just be the person that lights up when my kids are around, you know, the sun rises and sets on them and delight in them. So, Pam, thank you for your book. Can you tell us a little bit more about where we can find connection parenting? And then we we haven't even talked about these new, newer things that you do? I don't know how new they are, but the book fairy project and the Christmas pajamas.

Pam: So I just I would do. We have a few more minutes.

Ginny: We do. So tell us about those things because, you know, people are going to want to be finding information. I know you have a website or so. So tell us about these things. How can we find them?

Pam: Okay. Well, there are two websites. There's the Connection parenting website, and there's also the book Fairy Pantry Project website. Connection Parenting, my book can you know you can find it online on Amazon, and I'm excited to say there is a 17th anniversary edition coming out. It was going to be a 15th, but, you know, pandemic. Yes, I love that is coming up in Spanish this month or the end of it today, December 1st. So yes, this month it will be coming out in Spanish, which I think that's been a goal of mine for 17 years. For the book, it's only been translated into Turkish. Okay. Yep. But now

Ginny: congratulations!

Pam: Thank you. I'm so excited about it, and I actually may get to meet my translator. She may be coming to Maine this winter to go skiing, and we'll be able to meet each other. Oh, that's a really exciting step, but I'm really my current passion is really tightly married to my connection parenting passion because the Book Fairy Pantry project is about getting our mission is no child with no books. When my great grandson was born, I was writing a letter to my granddaughter telling her how important it was going to be to read to him every day starting now. And I got to be at his birth, which was a total privilege. And somehow that letter to her and morphed into a poem that I wrote called Please Read To Me. And I don't even normally write poetry, and I just read it and I was like, Wow, this is quite good. And so I thought I wondered, who would use this? I so I started Googling literacy project to see who might want it, that I could submit it somewhere. And on every site I landed on, I read the same statistic that two thirds of the fifteen point five million children living in poverty in this country do not own even one book. And I was just dumbfounded. I cannot even imagine children not having books in their home. And yet that being said, I grew up in a home with no books.

You know, we lived in a really rural community. We were poor and we didn't have books. You know, we just didn't. But in this day, and so the first children's books I ever owned were the books I bought for my children. But even with that being said, I'm thinking in this day and age, you know, surely. But no, I kept reading it again and again, and one of my absolute favorite quotes. I have it right here on my wall is there are two primary choices in life to accept conditions as they exist or accept responsibility for changing them. Author Unknown. Oh, actually, no, I did finally find the author. I think it's said Dennis Wheatley.

Pam: And so I thought, you know, this is not acceptable to me. I may not be able to do anything about poverty as an individual person, but I can sure as heck do something about getting books into children's homes. I mean, I shop at goodwill all the time. I know that there is no shortage of gently used children's books. They outgrow them, they pass them on. And so I just was thinking, All right, how do we do that? How do we get the books from the people who have them and don't need them to the people who need them and don't have them? And an ad came on my mom's television about a food pantry, a food drive that was coming up for a local food pantry. And it was like the light bulb went off. Oh, food pantries. We already have a built in distribution system for these books. If we could get schools to do a book, drive and donate all the books to the food pantry. If parents can't afford food, they can't afford books. They could come to the food pantry, get the food and bring home books for their children. And so that's how it started.

Ginny: It's brilliant, that's why it's called the book fairy pantry project.

Pam: I get it. And so it was going to be the book very project, but the name was already taken. But I like this. It makes it seem so I added pantry to it because it was going to be related to the food pantries. Yes, and it's just grown so much bigger than that. That was how it started five years ago, and we still do that. But now we work with the WIC program and we work with early head start and head start. And any any community, any population where there might be children that don't have books and super excited to say that that poem I wanted for five years to turn into a children's board book has just come out. We were able to get a Tabitha King Grant to pay to be able to distribute them free to parents with new babies in Maine this year. So as we speak, those books are going out all over Maine to the Wik offices and being given out to babies. So these babies will start their life with a book called Please Read to Me, and we're going to do a whole campaign around. Please read to me everywhere.

Ginny: Yeah, and

Pam: it's very, very exciting.

Ginny: Reading is such a great connection point when you're talking about, you know, five ten minutes, you know, you got a kid on your lap. I mean, they really connect with that. And so I didn't know the statistics.

Pam: And that's why I say it's a perfect bookend to connection parenting because I know of no quicker way to connect with a child than to read to them.

Ginny: Yeah, yeah. Well, this Book Fairy Pantry project it has its own website. You said that, correct? And if people want

Pam: If you want to get involved, there's instructions right on the website of if you're living in whatever town and you would like your food pantry to do this, it tells you step by step how to do it. And you know it can be as individual as how you make it. As long as the bottom line is, you're getting donated books to children is really that know that's the core of it. And you can do it in whatever way works.

Ginny: OK, I'm definitely looking into that. How? What a cool thing, Pam. And then I saw just actually this morning about pajamas, Christmas pajamas.

Pam: Okay, I this is my this is my most exciting month of the year, all year long, I shop for pajamas in thrift shops, Goodwill Salvation Army and I only get ones with nice feet and no pills. And what I learned from doing this project from being at events, giving out books free to children is that two kinds of children would come by my table. That would be the child who would say, Look, dad, it's Goodnight Moon. And you know, this is a child who's been read to. And then there would be the child who comes by and I would say free books. Would you like to pick out one? No, thanks. And I realized that for children who have not been read to, there is no magic in books for them. And so I got the idea of combining a toy with a book. So if the book was about dinosaurs, I would find either a vinyl dinosaur or a dinosaur stuffing, put it in a Ziploc bag with the book and a toothbrush and call it a bedtime kit. Yeah. And then. Yes, because now it's relevant to their life. The toy is the book that creates the interest in the book. It's like, Whoa, I have a dinosaur. I wonder what dinosaurs are in this book. And so, you know, whatever it is, trucks, you know, a teddy bear, whatever match you can make.

So my thrill in life these days is whenever I can make a great map to be like, Look at these dinosaur pajamas, look at this dinosaur book and now this great dinosaur stuffie. And so my daughter's organization used to do a thing called the baby booty, where people who had taken their classes would donate, you know, in any bag donation, there could be anything from Tonka truck to a nursing bra, and they would have these, you know, a sale. And I used to help organize books for the sale. And one day I was walking by the pile of pajamas. And I can't remember now what was the print on the pajamas, but I had just created a story bag that would go exactly with those pajamas, and I was like, grab the pajamas and took them over and added them to the bag. Well, I just couldn't stop doing it that day, and they were selling as fast as I could make them put them together. So when I was doing this project, I thought, Oh, for wintertime, you know, if children don't have books, chances are they need pajamas. And what happens is the child gets excited about the book and the toys, and the parents are excited for the toothbrush and the pajamas because it sets them up, like, go brush your teeth and put on your pajamas. You can hold your stuffie. While I read you this book, it's we have

Ginny: And its resources for both resources for the parent and resources for the child. That's so beautiful, Pam. You are just doing so many inspiring things.

Pam: Thank you. Last year, I put that out there and we were just given so many beautiful, beautiful ones and we were able to get them out through early head start. And it's just now people I know right now there are families who are talking about, you know what bag they're going to create to donate, to Book Fairy this year. And that just warms my heart so much that the children are involved. They're helping put it all together, and we'll bring it to drop it off, to donate it, to knowing they're going to give something to another child, you know, and it could be their own gently used, outgrown pajamas and a book in the toy that they put all together and that they match. And it's just one of my favorite things said. Thank you for letting me tell about that.

Ginny: So, so many of your things just come full circle. And that's that's one of the things I really, really love about getting to know you better is is all these sort of interconnections, like you said, you grew up and didn't have a book, you know, and so everything just kind of weaves together in this in this beautiful journey. And, you know, you just have taken these steps forward and are impacting so many people on so many different levels. But then also, it's all connected. So so I just know people are going to absolutely love this episode, Pam.

Pam: This has been so much fun.

Ginny: Yeah, we're going to look into the book fairy pantry project with our kids, do you think? Yeah, well, well, Pam, thank you. We usually end with a favorite childhood memory outdoors. I know you talked about dropping the leaves in the water and and smelling the spearmint. Is there any is there any other ones that you'd like to share?

Pam: But there is a little one and it's going to sound crazy, but it's related when the cows were out in the pasture. One of the ways before there were even town dumps, just like there used to be family cemeteries, there were family dump piles. There would be a dump pile. And one of my favorite things was always. Go out and see what treasure I might unearth from the family, don't you know, oh, it's a crazy, happy childhood memory, but it just felt like I had that freedom to go off out into the pasture and, you know, explore and it was like a treasure hunt. And, you know, it might be a little old piece of a broken teacup, but I would think it was beautiful. So I'd say that.

Ginny: And you're still treasure hunting, yes look at that. What a cool life. Pam. Oh, interesting. How it is all going together like that. It's fascinating.

Pam: You know, I I belong to the Alliance for Transforming the Lives of Children, and that's a whole other conversation we could have. But one of the things that we talked about is that very often our wounds are our gifts. And so some of the things that may have been hard about our childhood because we want to make that different for other children, we we take that and we do make it different for other children. And so I think that's where a lot of mine comes from. It's like, I want this to be better for my children and for other children. So, yeah, and when you look back on it, like I said, it didn't occur to me till I read your book that that was really my saving grace was my other mother, which was Mother Nature.

Ginny: Yes. Co-parenting, co-parenting and outdoor parenting. Yeah. With Mother Nature. Well, Pam, I so appreciate your time. Thank you so much for being here.

Pam: My pleasure. Hopefully, talk soon.