Big Jar of Jelly Beans
Sandra Dodd
Anonymous question—good one, not a hard one.
______________
I attended the HSC conference this summer, thank you for all the time you spent with us. I would like to ask an anonymous question, to either the Facebook radical unschooling info group or Always Learning, I'll leave that up to you, if you don't mind.
In the spirit of making our home more full of things my kids love, I mentioned to my husband I was planning to order a big jar of jelly beans from Amazon, because I noticed all three kids always eat them at the neighbors house.
My husband became very distraught. He grew up in a home with lots of food restrictions, the "only health food" model I've been letting go of myself, and has struggled with his weight his entire adult life. He said he felt unsupported in his own home as I have been bringing in and offering more foods to my kids, including candy. He said he is unable to regulate, and the way he has always handled that was to not have those things in his home. It was probably not helpful in the moment, but I did point out that that strategy had not been particularly successful in terms of weight loss in the 11 years that I have known him.
I asked him if I could present this quandary to this community, how to be supportive of my husband while still providing abundance and variety for my kids. He's game for some good unschooling wisdom, as am I.
Thanks for all you do.
__________________
Sandra note:
I'm going to put this question out and leave it to others to answer. It's been #2 of two very long days. Tomorrow will be #3.
Please help!
Thanks.
______________
I attended the HSC conference this summer, thank you for all the time you spent with us. I would like to ask an anonymous question, to either the Facebook radical unschooling info group or Always Learning, I'll leave that up to you, if you don't mind.
In the spirit of making our home more full of things my kids love, I mentioned to my husband I was planning to order a big jar of jelly beans from Amazon, because I noticed all three kids always eat them at the neighbors house.
My husband became very distraught. He grew up in a home with lots of food restrictions, the "only health food" model I've been letting go of myself, and has struggled with his weight his entire adult life. He said he felt unsupported in his own home as I have been bringing in and offering more foods to my kids, including candy. He said he is unable to regulate, and the way he has always handled that was to not have those things in his home. It was probably not helpful in the moment, but I did point out that that strategy had not been particularly successful in terms of weight loss in the 11 years that I have known him.
I asked him if I could present this quandary to this community, how to be supportive of my husband while still providing abundance and variety for my kids. He's game for some good unschooling wisdom, as am I.
Thanks for all you do.
__________________
Sandra note:
I'm going to put this question out and leave it to others to answer. It's been #2 of two very long days. Tomorrow will be #3.
Please help!
Thanks.
Joyce Fetteroll
On Sep 18, 2014, at 11:05 PM, Sandra Dodd Sandra@... [AlwaysLearning] <[email protected]> wrote:
He said he is unable to regulate, and the way he has always handled that was to not have those things in his home.I do understand that. It's the way I handled foods I couldn't resist. I once ate 3 bags of candy the week before Halloween. So I was convinced I was unable to control myself around candy.But turns out what I knew was how I reacted when candy was limited. So I bought 3 big bags of Almond M&Ms that I hadn't been able to stop scarfing down and promised myself I would buy more if I finished those. And I grew tired of them. We can now keep a bowl of Dove miniatures sitting out and they go very very slowly.Someone in the "Unpicking weight loss" thread posted an article by Martha Beck that corroborates my speculation that stress causes weight gain. As animals we're programmed to store calories when under stress. It's a survival mechanism.The statement in the article refers to stress caused by someone deciding to restrict their own food, but it applies to any kind of stress.
"It [restricting food] switches on the fight-or-flight nervous system, flooding your body with stress hormones, which, among other things, make you more likely to crave calories and store them as fat."Bodies don't discriminate between stresses. It doesn't matter if it's stress from a lion chasing you, voluntarily restricting food, other people restricting your diet to their version of "healthy", taking a test, feeling bad about your weight, fighting a ticket in traffic court. To the body it's all stress and it all means "store calories to prepare for the coming disaster".All this obsession over weight and food is stressing people and making them heavier.Her book "The Four Day Win" has lots of reassuring words and practical plans to destress about food. There are used ones for a penny. She's also funny :-)Joyce
Lisa J Celedon
If a big jar of jellybeans makes someone in the house unhappy, don't get one. Especially if that person is your husband! There are SO many other options. I would tell your husband you respect how he's feeling about it right now and find some other ways to create abundance and joy and deliciousness for everyone.
Buy your kids jelly beans when you're out, when they ask. Or something else if they ask for something else. Buy small things they can eat on the way home or while you're out. Take trips to ice cream shops (especially if you have a shop that lets you pile on all the yummy variety of toppings you want- we have tons of those sorts of frozen yogurts shops around, not sure where you live and if that's true for you).
Let him ease into these new ideas. Give him time to get more comfortable. He should be allowed to feel comfortable about whatever is coming into his home.
Fill his life with generosity and softness. It might help him relax about foods he finds threatening coming into the house.
It was around Halloween last year when I finally stopped restricting my own diet out of fear. I ate a LOT of Halloween candy. The stores are full of it again now and I've browsed the aisle a few times and there just really isn't anything I want a whole bag of. I could eat a reeses or maybe a handful of peanut butter m&m's but more than that sounds unappealing. I've had my fill.
I eat ice cream most days. Still love that. And I love feeling good about letting myself have it.
My husband still has a lot of negative attitudes about food, though it doesn't prevent him from consuming foods he feels badly about eating. When he makes comments about being fat I respond with something loving. Either a hug and kiss or sometimes something flirty, or telling him I love him and his whole body. It may sound corny but it's the truth.
I have stopped making negative or judgemental remarks about my own body or weight, or anyone's ever.
I can't undo a lifetime of negative input about food and body image for my husband. But I can hold my own space of positivity and acceptance around it, and that has influence on him. And it doesn't give more fuel to his negative fires.
It offers the option to not have to be negative about it. My husband doesn't really get that from any other source.
Lisa C
Sent via the Samsung GALAXY S®4, an AT&T 4G LTE smartphone
Sandra Dodd
-=- I can hold my own space of positivity and acceptance around it, and that has influence on him. And it doesn't give more fuel to his negative fires.
It offers the option to not have to be negative about it. My husband doesn't really get that from any other source.
-=-
I don't know where the terminology of "holding space" comes from but why is it better than "I can be positive and accepting of it"?
-=-If a big jar of jellybeans makes someone in the house unhappy, don't get one. Especially if that person is your husband! There are SO many other options.-=-
I liked Joyce's suggestions better. I've been really busy and not at home and was surprised that more people didn't contribute ideas and experiences.
If a person's upbringing crippled him to the point that a jar of jellybeans (large or small) can make him unhappy, how many years should a wife "accept" that before pointing out that his woundedness IS EVIDENCE that the family should NOT impose the same damage upon their own children?
This man can learn to choose a jellybean, or to leave a jellybean, or to eat ten one day and discover that he doesn't want them as much as he thought he would.
http://sandradodd.com/t/economics
This article might could be read aloud between the spouses slowly, thoughtfully. Studied. Read aloud and left to hang in the air.
Catering to the damage of control and deprivation, when it involves depriving the children a family has chosen to unschool, is not a step toward better unschooling.
Compassion, yes. Creating illusions and falsehoods, no.
And seriously: I hear this kind of phrasing and the hair stands up on my arms It's not English. Whose sculpting of wordly utterance and imagining of thought is it?
"I can hold my own space of positivity and acceptance around it."
Lisa, your writing is some of my favorite these days, so I'm wondering why you lapsed in to woo-age jargon.
Sandra
It offers the option to not have to be negative about it. My husband doesn't really get that from any other source.
-=-
I don't know where the terminology of "holding space" comes from but why is it better than "I can be positive and accepting of it"?
-=-If a big jar of jellybeans makes someone in the house unhappy, don't get one. Especially if that person is your husband! There are SO many other options.-=-
I liked Joyce's suggestions better. I've been really busy and not at home and was surprised that more people didn't contribute ideas and experiences.
If a person's upbringing crippled him to the point that a jar of jellybeans (large or small) can make him unhappy, how many years should a wife "accept" that before pointing out that his woundedness IS EVIDENCE that the family should NOT impose the same damage upon their own children?
This man can learn to choose a jellybean, or to leave a jellybean, or to eat ten one day and discover that he doesn't want them as much as he thought he would.
http://sandradodd.com/t/economics
This article might could be read aloud between the spouses slowly, thoughtfully. Studied. Read aloud and left to hang in the air.
Catering to the damage of control and deprivation, when it involves depriving the children a family has chosen to unschool, is not a step toward better unschooling.
Compassion, yes. Creating illusions and falsehoods, no.
And seriously: I hear this kind of phrasing and the hair stands up on my arms It's not English. Whose sculpting of wordly utterance and imagining of thought is it?
"I can hold my own space of positivity and acceptance around it."
Lisa, your writing is some of my favorite these days, so I'm wondering why you lapsed in to woo-age jargon.
Sandra
Kirsty Harriman
I know of the expression "holding the space" from my readings on Waldorf home education. I have always taken it to mean being present, being with and tuned in to the moment with your children so that it doesn't all fall apart. It's the opposite of what I am doing right now as I write this reply instead of "holding the space" as my children play in the living room. But I am not certain that this is what was meant in the context of Lisa post.
Sent from my Samsung GALAXY Note3 on the Telstra 4G network
lisajceledon@...
<<I don't know where the terminology of "holding space" comes from but why
is it better than "I can be positive and accepting of it"?>>
It isn't. I was using words that weren't mine without thinking about it. I wasn't feeling very clear or articulate and instead of waiting until I could think more and gain some clarity, I used the words that came to mind and seemed to sort of fit. It was careless and I apologize for that.
I've heard that phrase many times in multiple places and contexts, I couldn't even figure out exactly where I picked it up. It's a senseless phrase, and visualizing literally 'holding space' brought me the lightness I needed to really look at this.
I hope anyone who read this: "I can hold my own space of positivity and acceptance around it," and thought, yes that's good, will read this: "I can be positive and accepting of it" and see why it is better- and why 'holding my own space' makes no real sense.
<<Catering to the damage of control and deprivation, when it involves depriving the children a family has chosen to unschool, is not a step toward better unschooling.
Compassion, yes. Creating illusions and falsehoods, no.
Again, that was careless. I'm sorry to have been careless when writing to a group I find so helpful and important to me, though this has given me a lot to think about.
<<I'm wondering why you lapsed in to woo-age jargon>>
I'm not perfect, or perfectly thoughtful. I am feeling more confused and muddled than clear and articulate lately. I still have a lot to learn. Especially about relationships.
Writing and discussion help me learn. Being wrong helps me as much as being right, even if it's a lot less comfortable.
I wasn't aware that I was being careless. I'm glad to be able to see now that I was. It will help me be more careful (care-full, not cautious--I'm learning the difference between those two things) in the future.
Lisa
It isn't. I was using words that weren't mine without thinking about it. I wasn't feeling very clear or articulate and instead of waiting until I could think more and gain some clarity, I used the words that came to mind and seemed to sort of fit. It was careless and I apologize for that.
I've heard that phrase many times in multiple places and contexts, I couldn't even figure out exactly where I picked it up. It's a senseless phrase, and visualizing literally 'holding space' brought me the lightness I needed to really look at this.
I hope anyone who read this: "I can hold my own space of positivity and acceptance around it," and thought, yes that's good, will read this: "I can be positive and accepting of it" and see why it is better- and why 'holding my own space' makes no real sense.
<<Catering to the damage of control and deprivation, when it involves depriving the children a family has chosen to unschool, is not a step toward better unschooling.
Compassion, yes. Creating illusions and falsehoods, no.
>>I was responding without having noticed that the end of the post mentioned that the husband was willing to accept some unschooling ideas on the issue. I'm not sure that makes my ideas any better.
Again, that was careless. I'm sorry to have been careless when writing to a group I find so helpful and important to me, though this has given me a lot to think about.
<<I'm wondering why you lapsed in to woo-age jargon>>
I'm not perfect, or perfectly thoughtful. I am feeling more confused and muddled than clear and articulate lately. I still have a lot to learn. Especially about relationships.
Writing and discussion help me learn. Being wrong helps me as much as being right, even if it's a lot less comfortable.
I wasn't aware that I was being careless. I'm glad to be able to see now that I was. It will help me be more careful (care-full, not cautious--I'm learning the difference between those two things) in the future.
Lisa
Sandra Dodd
-=- It will help me be more careful (care-full, not cautious--I'm learning the difference between those two things) in the future. -=-
I like that distinction!
-=-<<I'm wondering why you lapsed in to woo-age jargon>>
-=-I'm not perfect, or perfectly thoughtful. -=-You're a good writer, though, which is perfect for this discussion.
Sandra