What Naturalists Bring To Parenting

Being a naturalist has influenced how I’ve parented my children. In order to be a good naturalist you must develop the ability to pay close attention to your environment, have a deep curiosity about the world, and be a good communicator. Bringing the skills that we have honed as naturalists into our parenting enables us to have a more nuanced approach to our children’s development and to bring into the effort both balance and compassion for ourselves and other parents.

In my experience, naturalists spend a lot of time looking and thinking. You focus on something you see in nature, either a clump of plants or a bird singing, and try to see all of the details, to objectively observe what is actually there. Then you might make a note (although I probably wouldn’t because I am a terrible note taker). Afterwards you continue to think about what you saw and probably look some stuff up. Then, the next time you observe that natural phenomenon, your increased knowledge helps you see even more.

There are, obviously, many differences between observing natural phenomenon, such as birds or plant distribution, and children. Human children are complex and throughout their development are constantly changing their behaviors. Our own psychology and subjectivity creates many challenges as well: it’s very difficult to be objective about your own children. Starting from the premise that you do not know or necessarily even understand them, however, makes room for you to be curious and open to their experience and expression of their lives.

One of the benefits of doing this, of allowing a little objective space come into your relationship with your children, is that you will be better able to not take their behavior and self expression personally. That little space makes possible to really learn who your children are and to begin to understand the uniqueness and complexity of their existence as it stands by itself, not in relationship to you. And creating that space allows them to be separate from you and to develop their own independent definition of their selves.

Another part of being a naturalist that directly supports parenting is the love that we have for the subjects of our observations. Naturalists love nature. But we also know deep down that it is so much bigger than us and that a lot of it is completely out of our control. In this way, we can understand how it is possible to love something, or someone, deeply, while allowing it the freedom to be itself.

Wearing a naturalist’s hat and maintaining just the slightest space between me and them allows us to honor both the universality of our children's existence as well as its uniqueness. It also makes it possible for us to connect and relate to them in a more authentic way. After all, as fellow humans, we each have our own special gifts and characteristics to contribute to the world.