Family

3 Ways We are Trying to Raise Timeless Kids

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Childhood is timeless, but not the way we do it.

In a society that defines childhood in some ultra-modern ways, parents (at least I do) live in constant fear of accidentally stealing the magic of childhood from our kids. Certainly other parents will tell you that’s what you’re doing. But ancient parents didn’t stick with the same childrearing principles for thousands of years just because they had no other ideas. Those principles stuck around with good reason and we shouldn’t toss them out willy nilly.

So, once again, timelessness is the center of our parenting discussions. Here’s what we have come up with so far:

  1. Toy Minimalism… sort of

Think about stories of people from other times — How many toys did kids have before the beginning of modern life? One? Two? Always at least an amount you can count on your hands.

And I’m sure those kids loved those toys and played so creatively with those toys (and often played with things that weren’t toys!) since necessity is the mother of invention. 

That’s the feeling we want for our kids’ childhood — not a long list of toys in their head, but the ability to play deeply with a few toys and pretend or reconfigure the ones they have when they need something new.

So, do we practice toy minalism? Not really. Does our toddler have more toys than we think she should? Really, yes. But, we try to be careful of the value of what toys come in and she is much more limited in number of toys than pretty much all of her friends. On top of that (because grandparents are going to do their thing), we rotate her toys in and out. 

  1. Time outside is precious

We love the work of Charlotte Mason, who says kids should be outside for at least 6 hours a day! We work hard and manage at least 20 minutes. While that doesn’t seem like a lot, it does say a lot to our value of outside time that we set it aside so rigorously. 

Kids should be outside doing things that kids have been doing since the beginning of time — running, jumping, wrestling, looking around at nature, and building things with the resources they find. 

Our outside time for our kids is very precious and guarded when possible. 

  1. Work, work, work

Kids used to work a lot more than they often do now. Thinking of ancient examples, tiny kids have had to do everything from taking care of animals to putting away their own clothes to helping to cook. And those kids had energy and focus, creativity and attentiveness in ways modern childhood has to go entirely without. 

So we are trying to bring some of those principles into our kids’ lives. The toddler comes around and helps me with picking up, she helps Daddy build things, she cleans her own room…

(We hope) she is learning that hard work is good and that she has the ability to do more than she thinks. 

  1. Centering everything around God

Since the beginning of time, people have been pointing each other to the God who created us and rules over everything. We want to be people who walk around quoting large portions of Scripture in every day conversations, who talk about God, who do work for His glory, and who see the beauty in the world as a reflection of Him. We want everything we do in our day to be to point us and our children to His goodness and wisdom.

(And that’s so timeless, angels were doing it before time even began!)

 

How well do we do on these? Depends on the day. But the more days we have full of hard work, energetic outdoor romps, too much creativity to need toys, and reverential and beautiful worship for God, the better parents I think we’ll be. 

Health

How to Build Your Timeless Food Philosophy

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Eat meat. Or maybe not.

Skip carbs. I mean dairy. No, wait, nuts.

Soda? Sugar? Is there such a thing as too much fruit??

You can find a study about food that will tell you just about anything you want to hear. And if all you want is to know for sure what the best diet really is, researching and experimenting can just about have you ready to pull your hair out.

Ask me how I know.

Because of unexplained digestive issues, chronic fatigue, fertility issues, and unexplained joint pain between us two newlyweds, we got really serious about diet a few years ago.

The problem was, the research pointed us in so many different directions, we tended to bounce aimlessly from one strategy to another.

Sadly, this isn’t a testimonial of the diet that fixed all of those issues for us. This is an area we are still fighting to take baby steps in. (It is amazing how ingrained eating habits are! — Make sure you check out the questions below)

But, this is where our hunt for lindy living really blossomed.

After all, when all of the research points in all the directions, what makes more sense than looking at the food that has been eaten across generations and around the world? If several healthy cultures are all eating the same thing, doesn’t that make sense that we should at least look at it?

After all, while society and habits change rapidly, our human bodies are basically the same as the human bodies walking around on this Earth 3,000 years ago.

That line of thinking brought us to the Weston A. Price Foundation — an organization founded on the observations of, of all things, a dentist, who traveled the world and compiled information on the health and corresponding diets of traditional cultures (AKA, cultures that were living very similar lives to those their ancestors had).

He started out observing teeth, but he couldn’t help noticing other features like strength and baby health and longevity, and he found lots of patterns among the groups that were the healthiest. 

Things like eating certain fats, soaking grains, and fermented foods were present in numerous ancient practices and seemingly contributed to their health.

(And there is now science and studies that back up his observations, if you aren’t totally burned out on those.)

As a defining example of lindy living, we bought into this philosophy wholeheartedly. 

Not the specific diet per se (we are still struggling to implement it), but the philosophy.

The food philosophy of using what nature has to offer — of using everything from the good bacteria to the natural vitamins that God put into the world in accordance with the bodies he created —— the philosophy that says those people who were most closely observing nature were probably the wisest, and the foods that have lasted from 1,000 B.C. to today are probably worth eating.

So, before you go crazy with soaking and sprouting and buying exotic grains, slow down a minute and think. Think about your food philosophy. What do you know to be true about your health and that of the people around you? What do you want to know more of?

Here are some questions to help you think about what you are doing and where you want to be:

Family

Storytelling: Entertainment is Timeless

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“Will you play with meeeeeeeeeeeeee?!”

Stuck here in the winter with a new baby and a toddler, I was pretty desperate to find something that would keep the toddler entertained while taking care of the baby — not to mention ways to keep myself fairly sane in the midst of the sleeplessness of babyhood and the confines of winter.

Sure, there’s TV shows and a good dance party. But those are so modern — the TV is barely 100 years old. What were mothers doing with their toddlers 102 years ago? I wondered. What about 1,000 years ago? What are the timeless tools of parenthood for the millions of toddlers through history who have been cooped up in bad weather or dark or whatever else?

Well, there is one answer that’s pretty obvious — storytelling.

Probably every culture throughout all of time has involved stories in some way, and more often than not you see in those cultures mothers telling stories to their children or fathers to their families.

So, I started telling stories to mine. It’s not nearly as hard to make up stories as one would think (and it is probably really good for my brain!). I just ask my two year old who the story should be about and what happens to them (So last time I got: Bears, they fall down) and I can just run with it from there. It’s actually a lot of fun!

I have also told her a few Bible stories and rather than just telling her, “You know, once there was a guy named Jonah who didn’t obey God,” I have started telling the whole story in a storytelling way (this isn’t to take away from reading of the Bible which, as God’s Word, is infinitely more important than just the stories themselves). She loves it and remembers the examples I am giving so much more!

Waiting around a doctor’s office, sitting in a boring car, and waiting for baby brother to finally be finished eating have all been made way better with storytelling. Three bears have found some honey and jam, her stuffed animals made some cookies, and we have seen what feeling hungry feels like through the eyes of a baby.

I can’t wait to bring this into a family day and experience sitting around a fire (or, you know, our very modern living room) and having each of us tell stories after dinner. We’ll have to let you know how it goes!

Family, Rhythms

Rhythms, Not Clocks

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Time is confusing. And always moving. And seemingly impossible to get under control.

Work, cleaning, kids, planning, school, cooking, projects… How do we fit it all in? And what does that tell us about our lives? 

In my Type A personality, I problem solve by writing exact schedules with specific times. But life never works on a schedule, and everyone gets stressed.

My husband tends to go with the flow — let’s just deal with what is happening now. But that leads to forgotten responsibilities and stress when necessities start to collide.

So let’s look at the timeless approach. What has always existed and always will exist as far as structuring our days? 

Well, the sun and the moon, for one. God put those in the sky “to rule the day” and “to rule the night” (Genesis 1). Even when clocks didn’t exist, people could look at the sun and estimate how far into the day it was and how much time was left. That remains true today and always will.

I would say rhythms, too, are pretty timeless. People everywhere have at least some feel for their day — what they do when they wake up, when they eat which meals, what they do to relax at the end of the day. 

Then structure as far as seasons, special days, etc. give structure to time even further, again across times and cultures.

Well, our family looked at our modern versions — our schedules with their feelings of overwhelm, inability to be present in moments, and the stress — even for our preschooler. That’s not really life as it would be recognized by people in most of the world even today, let alone throughout history.

Erin Loechner said:

“Life is immeasurable, with a path that winds in the most unfathomable, incredible way. Rather than setting a goal to encourage the arrival, consider setting a compass to encourage the journey. A compass guides graciously, rather than mandates mercilessly. It offers a gentle whisper that yes, you’re headed in the right direction.”

That’s the sense of life that is wrapped up in the world as it drums along in it’s days and seasons. The Earth doesn’t mind, for example, that the calendar says that it is spring but it has decided to send us some snow again today. It’s the big picture — the direction — the rhythm. 

Daily Rhythms 

Every day has a beginning, middle, and end — or so says the sun. And that’s about the level we try to plan out our days. We have a first, second, and third, but not a mad dash to finish getting a preschooler and baby dressed by a specified minute.

So, for example, a morning typically looks like this:

  1. Mr. L gets up and does some homework and some exercise
  2. Mrs. L and kids wake up — quiet play for preschooler, Bible for mom, feeding baby
  3. Everyone gets dressed
  4. Breakfast and morning Bible verse
  5. Go outside
  6. Morning chores
  7. Lunch

This is super flexible — sometimes my husband leaves for school or work at 6:30 AM and sometimes he leaves at 10:30, but we can still stick to this basic structure. Sometimes there are extra tantrums or someone is sick or we are just having so much fun playing, so things take longer. There are no set times to make us feel stressed or too far behind.

The only times that we have set specifically are nap is around 1:30 and family worship in the evenings (right before bedtime) starts by 7:30. That’s it!

We find we have time for cleaning, playing, cooking, homework, and jobs, and feel like we are experiencing a life rather than performing a schedule.

Weekly Patterns

This is one we are still working on, but especially with Mr. L out of the house so often, we wanted to make sure we were using time well as a family for each other and for God’s glory. There’s more to life than the daily cleaning that you’ll just have to do tomorrow or making calls for work that will just need done again next week.

So, we have tried to build in patterns for our week.

For instance, we spend Saturday planning the next week and preparing for Sunday. Sunday is just for church and rest. We have a day that we do something fun as a family and a day that we set aside to help someone else.

This is very much a work in progress, but it is amazing how much more relaxed it is than trying to keep up with a running to do list or trying to analyze if you have set aside enough time for something (although we shouldn’t get rid of that completely). And it sets such a security in knowing how we have decided to intentionally spend time and where we are in our week. 

But what about outside the home?

Sure, we can try to build our schedule to be more flexible, more human based, and more rhythmic, but like I commented as we were racing out the door with an unfed baby who had needed 2 diaper changes to try to get to his doctor appointment at the specified time — our society is not at all timeless. 

Church, class, work, and yes, doctors, all require specific times — even plans with friends! 

I guess our thought is that rhythms give you a better sense of what time even means for you — what it will look like to get out the door on time. Rhythms start to take a general pattern that you can count on and understand and tweak to fit your circumstance because you already know, “Oh, breakfast usually takes us about 30 minutes.”

We’ll let you know when ours has gotten down pat.

Any timeless advice for us? Do you find yourself living more rhythmically or more scheduled?

Community

What Coronavirus is Teaching Us About Timelessness

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“We’ve never had to do a complete shutdown like this…”

“…strange and unprecedented times…”

“Historic…”

These are the kinds of phrases we hear every day around coronavirus discussion. I mean, a literal pandemic is sweeping the globe! There is no guidebook for that.

That makes it a little scary and a lot weird. It means we are reminded how little control over our lives we have and how utterly sovereign God is. And it also reveals a lot about the truly lasting elements of humanity — the lindy elements, if you will.

In a time and place in which most people don’t know their neighbors and self-reliance is the name of the game, suddenly, community is cropping up.

We are checking on each other.

We are searching out ways to keep in communication.

We have seen stories of people singing on porches together, taking each other to hospitals, sharing encouragement and prayers.

I know that I have rarely been so open to the people around me about my thoughts and emotions and so motivated to actively search out the needs of those close to me.

Sure there are stories of people hoarding hand sanitizer in the other enduring human trait — selfishness.

But it is amazing that, even with our cities designed to keep people apart, our social media designed to keep people distant, and our habits of keeping to ourselves and our own business, the necessary sense of community never quite dies.

Centuries ago, people saw the need for strong communities daily because they were on the brink of death regularly. But now, we get the kind of illusion that we can do this on our own and we have everything under control.

But then, pandemic happens, and we see that we haven’t “outgrown” community yet, and we never will. 

So maybe once this is over, instead of falling prey to that illusion again, let’s look backwards to some timeless elements of community and see how we can strengthen our own even further.

We’re open for suggestions!

Family, Health

3 Easy Ways to Make Your Life More Lindy

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Life change is hard. And going against the grain is even harder.

Maybe that’s why we never seem to really do it..

As a family, we have researched, pondered, and talked late into the night about some of our life philosophies, and it always comes back to the same idea: timelessness.

  • How can we decorate our home in such a way we won’t need to redo its trendiness in 5 years?
  • How do we best nourish our bodies?
  • How should we be spending our free time?
  • How can we worship God as a family?
  • What should community look like? Or our jobs?
  • How do we give our kids the healthiest childhood on all counts?

But conversations are hard to turn into actions. Looking around, it seems like everybody has plans for how they would make a more money or get healthier or finally do x thing. But plans are cheap. Our plans are a dime a dozen.

And we are tired of being stuck there when it comes to our family. We are determined to make some real changes. That’s what we are here for. That’s what this blog is about — finding out how to turn philosophy into action.

If you want to join us, here it goes.

3 easy ways to make your life a little more lindy:

 1. Get outside more

Let your kids run wild. Plant a garden. Go on walks. Just sit and talk.

Life used to be lived outside — for good reason! (Well, besides the fact that that was often the only choice… 😛 But it was beneficial nonetheless!)

We have started with daily outside time for our kids, even if it’s short, and family Sunday walks. Baby steps!

2. Work with your hands

Find a project you can do or skill you can learn.

We have tried fitting in more baking and we are planning on learning some sewing and woodworking.

If that feels overwhelming, there are even smaller steps you can start with — take care of a plant, do some extra yardwork, make some origami!

3. Eat real food

Don’t worry too much about which foods to eat, soaking, etc. just yet. Just start somewhere!

For us, that meant adding in some more fruits and vegetables, cutting out all of our snack food, and looking for some higher quality meat.

That’s about where we are right now. It hasn’t been too hard and it has made huge amounts of difference in the pace of our lives, which has in turn affecting our health and stress, not to mention just enjoyment of what we do.

So, if that’s what you’re looking for, jump in!

Community, Design, Family, Health, Rhythms, Self-Sufficiency

What is “Lindy?”

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I tried looking the word up in the dictionary and got: “a jitterbug dance originating in Harlem”

Ahem. What?

Sorry, no jitterbug here.

And can we talk about the irony that the dictionary definition is a super trendy generational dance move?

That’s basically the opposite of what we are going for. When we think of lindy, it is more in this framing:

“If you hear advice from a grandmother or elders, odds are that it works at ninety percent. On the other hand…if you read anything by psychologists and behavioral scientists, odds are it works at less than ten percent, unless it is also what has been covered by the grandmother and the classics…” (Nassim Teleb).

It’s the “Lindy Effect” — the idea that if something has continued/has been used/is successful for a long time before, it will continue to be for a long time in the future.

So what does that have to do with family life? Friendships? Our part in society?

Well, as we are trying to build our lives well, we hear a lot of studies and opinions shouting at us, “DO IT LIKE THIS!” How do we sort which of this contradictory advice to adhere to and which to toss? I mean, the decisions we make about family structure, health, city design, childrearing, etc., etc. are far reaching and nearly irreversible. Talk about pressure.

But, we have a lot of the answers!** For thousands of years people have been trying to live life well and, according to the Lindy Effect, the strategies of our ancestors have already been sifted to see what will and won’t hold up. The principles that have already proven to be successful across generations, nationalities, and specific situations are the principles that will probably still be successful in the future.

Timelessness.

Are we making this parenting decision/architecture decision/decorating decision/food decision based on the timeless experience that is humanity or based on an unproven trend?

Those are the kinds of questions we are trying to ask around here.

**We can’t go without saying that the ultimate proof of the Lindy Effect are the truths of God’s Word, the Bible. As the Designer of the universe, the truths that God encoded in are unchangeable and the final answers to these questions. Every person and society since the beginning of time has proven that, and at the end of time we will realize just how much. Until then, the Bible is our ultimate answer to the question about living life well. We look to the Lindy Effect just to fill in some of the specific how to’s (like what to eat or how many hours to sleep), but always on the bedrock foundation of God’s design.