Raising Children In The Midst Of Global Crisis

A humane and practical approach by a mother and caregiver

Hello friends.

Jo DelAmor

In this midweek, Earth Month extra edition, I’m presenting an exclusive interview with Jo DelAmor.

Jo is a mother, coach and Work That Reconnects facilitator who has dedicated over twenty years to the care of children and their families. In 2020, Jo introduced Parenting in Tumultuous Times– a course for parents looking to do right by their kids in these times of converging global crises.

She is the author of the new book Raising Children in the Midst of Global Crisis: A Compassionate Guidebook for New Paradigm Parenting.  This book is for parents who feel anxious and overwhelmed by the responsibility of raising emotionally and physically healthy children in this time of social, economic and environmental collapse. It reframes parenting as an exciting and powerful opportunity to contribute to the radical paradigm shift being called forth by these converging crises.

I found it really resonant, engaging and helpful, especially as Jo hasn’t just raised her own kids; she’s worked as a nanny and helped raise kids from many different families, which gives her an interesting perspective. Here’s some excerpts from our conversation.

Share a little bit of the background and experiences that led you to write this book. 

When I first felt the calling to be a mother over 25 years ago, it was a call towards connecting with Life…wild, natural, primal life. I felt an intense pull to raise my children in close relation with the natural rhythms of the Earth, far away from the din of mainstream society. That pull drew me and my husband at the time to a little town in the Rocky Mountains.

As my child and step-child entered their teen years, one of their needs was to have a “real high school experience,” preferably in a school with more than 12 students (which was the number of students in our small town high school). So, in 2017, we moved to Portland, Oregon. To keep up with the urban cost of living I started working full time as a nanny for families with little ones. 

Within the ever increasing intensity of the environmental, socio-political, economic realities of those years I was holding the full spectrum of parenting – between tending to toddlers and helping teens toward adulthood. I was feeling it all. The excruciating cognitive and emotional dissonance of loving our kids so profoundly while bearing witness to the unraveling of the world they’re inheriting. The parents I worked for were feeling it too.

What is New Paradigm Parenting?

Since children are learning about their world and how they fit into it in every moment of their young lives, parents are essentially paradigm makers. New Paradigm Parenting invites us to consciously choose to raise our children with an awareness of the living world and a deep commitment to its care. It encourages us to cultivate the qualities and skills that are necessary for life-sustaining societies within our own lives and households as our children grow. 

It calls us to understand the ways in which we’ve been conditioned by society and the wounds we carry so we can heal from the inside out. It provides solid support for interrupting generations-long patterns of dysfunction and working with our children to show up for each other and the world in healthy ways.

In practice it’s partnering with our kids in the care of the world. It’s listening, learning, unlearning, prioritizing connection, growing with our kids and supporting the development of life-sustaining qualities like empathy, creativity, resilience, cooperation, etc. 

How do you explain the concept of postactivism and how can parenting and caregiving be an example of that? 

Well, first I want to be clear that postactivism is a term coined by Bayo Akomolafe and that it doesn’t lend itself to simple definitions. So, I won’t claim to be able to explain it or provide a definitive answer here. However, Bayo’s expressions of this concept have inspired me and they rang the bell of inner knowing for me as I was developing the language for New Paradigm Parenting. So I reference this term in my book and play with my interpretations of it in the section on Parenting as Activism.  

In a recent video,*

 

Bayo shares that postactivism explores that “the ways we respond to crisis often are the crisis and that there are other sideways intelligences that might show up when frontal modalities fail to address patterns that keep on repeating themselves.” 

I hear this as a call to deepen our reflection and inquiry. An invitation to pause and listen. To bend our ear to the ground and surrender ourselves into the cracks of our uncertainty so we can slip out of the grip of these conditioned patterns that keep on repeating themselves and causing outrageous legacies of harm, generation after generation. 

This Thursday, April 18, 8:30pm ET, I’m presenting online with Liz Hurtado from Moms Clean Air Force/EcoMadres on “How and Why to Talk to Kids About Climate Change: From Anxiety to Action” —free, sign up now!