Tending the Currents

Our summer Parent-Child classes through Forest Lake Nature School have filled!

Our classes are centered in the belief that you as the parent are the exact perfect person to raise your child.

In our group, we talk about the juicy, hard, beautiful, ridiculous, and unimaginable parts of parenthood.

We create spaces for you to observe your little human.

We invite you into a slower-paced world that doesn’t feel boring. Actually, parents often comment that they leave feeling grounded and more energized for their week ahead.

You are not forced into friendships, but you are welcomed into community.

Your child is not expected to be perfect, sit for circle time, pay attention, or be the most well-behaved.

You are not supposed to parent a certain way here. In fact, we like to think of our space as a place for you to try out different ways to engage with your child.

We do not judge your parenting on your child’s behavior. We see them as developing beings, and we see you as someone developing alongside your child(ren).

We absolutely love working with parents and their young children and are looking forward to another season of gathering ❤️

Our dates for the remainder of the year are posted at
https://www.tendingthecurrents.com/parent-child-classes

Did you know the whirls, scribbles, lines, and dots of young children mean something.

Just like there is development of motor skills, language, and cognition, there is also a developmental sequence to children’s drawings.

This means, nearly all young children draw the same things around the same time.

It’s an ancient, archetypal gesture that connects them with the earth, their own development, their humanity, and their ancestors.

You will notice:
- back and forth horizontal and then vertical lines. Eventually they cross to create a T like shape (earliest drawings)

- swirly marks that stay open (under the age of 2.5/3)

- closed circles with a dot (after 2.5/3)

- ladder-like shapes and grids as well as little head people with limbs coming off the head (closer to age 4-6)

All of this demonstrates the process of becoming a little person.

And of course, kids should be welcomed to explore these shapes and drawings on their own time. Older children often scribble or make circles again.

While there is a process, development is anything but linear.

The sun + the sky painting from and is an expansion and contraction gesture.

Expanding and contracting is the cosmic movement embedded in our world, our seasons, our movements, and our breath.

We are welcomed into the world through delivery’s natural expansion and contraction process, our lungs expand and contract to move oxygen throughout our bodies, our seasons expand with the heat and contract with the cold…

In my sessions, we are looking to harmonize the body with natural movements of the world.

Outer gestures create inner images and ways of being.

Through repetition, we support the brain’s myelination process in creating neural networks wired around healthy patterns.

This is the habit body.

When our habit body is healthy, we make healthy choices, we regulate easier, we breathe more freely.

In a screening or individual sessions, I work with form drawings. This one is when I’m working with a child/person 8 or older.

This lovely form looks kind of like a flower with opening petals on top while staying connected to a bulb underneath the soil.

In a screening, I’m watching the child draw, and I’m observing:

- how they hold their pencil
- what hand they use
- what the other hand is doing
- their posture
- their feet position
- additional face or mouth movements
- what direction they draw their lines

This form cues me into:
~ the child’s ability to mirror
~ the child’s ability to conceptualize the form
~ the child’s inner perception of their whole person development

When put together with other screening exercises, patterns arise that show me and the parents how this child experiences their own body.

And what a gift! From there, we can really meet them where they are at.