As I was scrolling posts on Facebook a few weeks ago, my heart broke. A friend shared the new method she’d been using to get her child to sleep on her own. It was a pretty standard sleep-training method: leave the child alone for gradually longer periods of time, periodic reassuring, tolerate the whining or crying a bit….

But it generated an extremely polarized conversation. In the one camp, “kids need to be trained to be independent,” and the other, “kids need to sleep with their parents as long as they exhibit the need; they will learn to be independent by having their needs met.”
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This was the year it unraveled for my older boy.

St Nick left treats in our boots, just like he does every year. Dad got his usual bottle of beer (gluten-free), mom got an avocado, the younger found a grapefruit and the older a bag of chili lime cashews. Yum. St Nick knows us all very well.

Which the boys notice. “Hey, do you think he just takes these things out of our fruit bowl and cabinet and puts them in our boots?” We’ve heard this question before. When you eat differently from most, the special items the fairies and mythical saints drop off on their way around the world look suspiciously familiar.

“Maybe he lives here,” the almost 11 year old says.
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I write this on Labor Day evening, a cap on a quite perfect summer. The pace was well thought out, a balance of activity and rest, work and play.

It’s difficult to strike that balance in this culture of ours. We are inundated with opportunities, work situations that pressure us, and ideas of accomplishments. To resist this is indeed like swimming up stream.

This pell mell pace of life we’ve become accustomed to living has led to chronic adrenal fatigue in our culture. Our nervous systems are not designed to be “on” at all hours of the day and night.

I lived in India some years ago, before family life. I was single and focusing on my spirit, and I went over to sit a meditation retreat in Bodhgaya, the town where the Buddha was enlightened.
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