RE: The sacred wisdom of children: what do they have to teach us?
It's taken me longer to learn some of these lessons too, I've been a parent for a bit longer. I in the last year got rid of the kids beds and moved to floor mats. Casper makes an awesome two inch foam that is comfortable enough for me even, the few times I've curled up to comfort one of them to sleep. I never thought about the meat before though but you're absolutely right. I've recently moved to a higher percentage vegan diet made a little easier by Hungry Root delivery service and it hasn't been too bad, I thought I'd get more resistance but luckily everyone loves nuts and so it turns out they kinda love being able to eat the crunchy snack at any meal if they want. I also stopped forcing eating or stopping eating outside mealtime. My rule is eat what I make or find yourself something later as long as I don't have to cook, I keep enough ready to eat stuff around that they're allowed to help themselves to and I don't care now because even if they skip every meal their snacking on fruit, veggies , nuts or nut butter. It's not a bad diet and I don't have to be the bad guy. I save my one forced eating as eat something dark green if you want dessert. Don't tell them the brownies are made from black beans ;-)
Excellent to learn your many tricks here. Thank you for this. In truth we are not vegans at all but do eat a high percentage of raw fruit & veg. Esteban has eaten raw broccoli for as long as I can remember which is so great. We have a hard time getting him to eat other veg at the moment though and have tried the dessert reward system but for now it doesn't seem to work.
One fruit smoothie every day has been a consistent winner with the kids. And we are mixing small quantities of spirulina and moringa into these now. We just have to be careful we don't over do the superfood supplements otherwise they don't drink it at all.
I like the sound of the two inch foam. Floor sleeping is coming soon... though Sabrina doesn't seem to happy about this and most likely won't be joining me!