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Quote of the Week
"Permaculture gives us a toolkit for moving from a culture of fear and scarcity to one of love and abundance."--Toby Hemenway
Permaculture Parenting
The concept of "social permaculture" involves really seeing the nature of the people that are with us and creating conditions for nurturing them. To paraphrase Audrey Lin, "You don't know what color the flower will be--all you can do is water the ground."
This got me thinking about taking a permaculture approach to parenting. Permaculture uses a holistic approach in working with nature. Permaculture principles come from the observation of natural systems and this can help us cultivate our personal interactions in ways that promote well-being for all. In many ways, families have the same characteristics as any natural system, thus we can benefit from looking at them through this lens. If we blend an understanding of permaculture principles with our role as parents we gain the ability to design family lives with the same health and abundance that we find in a permaculture garden. Read more in this week's featured article on incorporating the principles of permaculture into your family life in order to gain "an emotional bounty of joy and laughter, not an exhaustive series of disciplinary inputs that never set the system to right."
Reading Corner
 Title: The Curious Garden
By: Peter Brown
Ages: 3-8
"The Curious Garden is a quiet but stirring fable of urban renewal, sure to capture imaginations. In exploring his bleak city neighborhood, thoughtful Liam notices that some flowering plants have appeared on an old elevated railway track. He teaches himself to care for them (“The flowers nearly drowned and he had a few pruning problems, but the plants patiently waited while Liam found better ways of gardening”), and the garden responds by “growing restless. It wanted to explore.” In one of several wordless spreads, Liam stands against a bright blue sky, surrounded by a thick patch of daisies. Spring brings a burst of new energy: “the tough little weeds and mosses set out first. They popped up farther and farther from the railway.... but the most surprising things that popped up were the new gardeners.” In Brown’s utopian vision, the urban and the pastoral mingle to joyfully harmonious effect."
--Publisher's Weekly
Recommended by Kindful Kids Editors
Be The Change
Choose 3 permaculture principles to be aware of cultivating in your family this week. Write down what you would like to try and then reflect on how it went. What went well? What could use more practice?
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