"Slow Family Living" arrives

AUSTIN (KXAN) - A half-dozen mothers kick back in a South Austin living room. One cradles her newborn baby in a rocking chair.

Some sit on cushion-covered benches, others on the floor, their babies in their arms or sprawled on blankets. Also in the group, are Dr. Carrie Contey and Bernadette Noll , the co-founders of something called, the "Slow Family Living Movement."

They're leading a class, exploring the pitfalls of super-charged lifestyles for families, when everything comes to a standstill. All eyes focus on one of the babies as she struggles to turn over. Succeeding at that, she tucks her tiny arms under her torso, gives a mighty burst of energy and performs the first push-up of her little life.

The women laugh and cheer and the baby's face breaks into a wide and sustained grin. She can't walk or talk; she can't even crawl, but she is totally aware that she is the center of attention and it appears to feel very, very good.

"I think that was a great example," said Contey after the class. "The respect of, 'Wow, you're a person and we're going to pay some attention!"

"If a baby is crying or a kid is having a meltdown," Noll added, "you don't just try to shush them out of it. Rather, you look at them and go, 'Whoa, what do you need?"

The class runs two hours. As it progresses, a child is wrapped in swaddling clothes. A couple of mothers nurse their babies, oblivious to the television camera in the room. Diapers are calmly changed from time to time and the entire two hours pass with barely a peep from the wee ones.

The irony is that by listening to their children in this way, the parents create a space in which the children become quiet, a strange twist on the old chest beating adage: Children are to be seen, not heard.

"If my mom shot me a look across the room, you kind of hopped to," recalled Noll.

In the slow family world, though, everyone is to be heard, even babies. For most of us, however, the pace of modern life leads families to a kind of deafness. A whirlwind of activity gobbles up time and forces family members into a mindless zone where connections shrivel and tempers flare.

"As human beings, with all of our wonderful, beautiful technology and all of the abilties to get us places and make us think differently," said Contey, "ultimately we're human beings and human beings are here to connect and the deeper the connection, the more satisfying the experience."

There is some science behind all this. Contey earned her Ph.D. in pre-natal and peri-natal psychology and has studied child development for two decades.

"The neurology of the care you received as a child is setting up how the brain is going to function," she said. "So we can't skip that. Yes, the brain wants to learn and learn and take in and take in, but it can only take in so much and then it has to rest and integrate and really have space to make the connections. If you're constantly overriding that by doing more and more and more, you're missing the opportunity for that child to have a really healthy neurology. Maybe they're going to be good thinkers, but they're not going to run their emotional system in a healthy way."

Contey and Noll offer classes, workshops and even private parent coaching under the Slow Family Living banner.

"We're not offering a prescription to people for how to live a certain way," said Noll. "What we're really wanting families to do is to kind of check in with themselves and figure out what is important to them about family life. Why do we have families? My own answers are that we create family to kind of have this connection that we'll have now while the children are little, but also that will sustain us for a whole life long. Then we will have connections with our siblings later on and our aunts and uncles and grandparents, so that we can really have family and home can be this kind of comfort zone where you can go to just kind of be your true self. If you're growing up in that way, you're learning so much about who you truly are, if you're parented and living family life in this real intentional, slow way. In family life we learn how to navigate our way through the world. We learn about cooperation and sharing and conflict resolution and all of things that are necessary. We learn about working hard, too. We can learn all of that in family life."

It's hard to learn anything, though, when everyone in the family is blasting through life with a lead foot on the accelerator.

"If both parents are working and the kids are in after school programs, then how do you all come back together with a real mindfulness and a real commitment to being a family, instead of just being separate individuals that happen to live under the same roof?" asked Contey.

Still, whatever circumstances a family finds itself in, it is obvioulsy going to be the adults who set the tone.

"When parents are taking really good care of themselves and knowing what feels right inside of them, that seems to be when it works," said Contey. "They set clear

boundaries with their children. They say, 'Wow, I get you want to do that; I'm hearing you, but that's not going to work for me right now; I have to keep us in balance."

That may mean saying, 'No,' when a child clamors for another activity, another opportunity.

"Children don't need to be masterful at things early on," said Contey. "There's a whole lifetime to become a master at something, but you really want to focus on the emotional well-being and they way a child manages the ups and downs of life in the early years. And that doesn't happen through going to school and taking a class; that happens through family life. Maybe they're doing great at chess club, but when they get home they melt down. Well, maybe chess club isn't what's needed right now. Yes, these things might be great, but is it working; is it working for everybody? Is it working for that child right now and is it working for the family?"

So how does one balance the need to acknowledge a child's needs and wants with the responsibility of running the family?

"This isn't about permissive parenting and letting everything run amok," Contey said. "It has to do with the parents being centered and balanced and meeting the children where they are. There's a difference between the disciplinarian and the regulator. That's the shift we're trying to help people make and understand. Yes, you're the parent because you're the adult that has a healthier and a more mature emotional system to keep everybody in balance. So you have to stay in balance in order to do that."

And at the same time, you have to be open, really, really open. That may cost you some of the "power" you once thought you needed, but Noll predicts you won't miss it.

"Maybe you don't have that same power," she said, "but on the other hand, you do have this communication that is back and forth. It's not so much about, 'I'm in charge and I'm telling you how it's going to be. There's more of a listening. It might ultimately be, 'Yes, I'm in charge and I am going to state how it is,' but in that process there also is listening to how the other person is feeling and allowing everyone in the household to really feel what they're feeling. It's a lot harder this way. It takes a lot more time and a lot more energy and it's harder to let people be mad. It's harder to have the dialogue."

The results, however, can be astonishing.

In the Gillespie household in northwest Austin, teenage daughters Molly and Sadie, spend their after school hours most days in the family kitchen. The family has been working with Contey since the kids were in diapers, so now, as the afternoons creep along, the girls read, study, help their mother out with dinner preparations and get this: They do crossword puzzles with their dad. You heard that right, teenagers hang out with their parents.

"Family time and time to just do your thing," said Sadie Gillespie, 13, "like read, do whatever you want, just relax; you don't have to rush from one thing to another."

Her 15 year-old sister, Molly, agreed.

"I think it's just really relaxing. You know, I have a lot of friends who are really pressured," she said, "like their parents are pressuring them to, you know, play violin or play football or something."

So does all this mean no one should do anything outside the home? Of course not. In fact, the paradox of Slow Family Living is that sometimes, fast can also be slow.

"It's great if it's working," said Contey. "See that's our whole thing: We don't think anything is categorically bad or good. Look at it mindfully. Does it create more connection; does it give you more insight into yourself? Is it fun and is it allowing for that down time and the integration? If it is, then great."

So at the Shore house in north Austin, six year-old Ayden is enjoying Little League baseball. His little sisters, three year-old Honorae and one year-old Poet will take on their own activities as they grow. Still, their mother, Christie Shore, who has studied with Noll and Contey, spends her days home-schooling her children. Instead of carting the kids all over town for this activity or that, she tries to arrange for others to bring those activities to her house. Naps are an essential part of the day, and homemade cookies made with nutrtional ingredients mark the pace of a slow life.

"I want my children to be comfortable in their own skin," said Shore. "My dream is that I have a home where my kids want to return and spend time, so that we don't, at the end of childhood, we don't have to have these disconnections that can so frequently happen."

Contey and Noll assure her that is not at all beyond the realm of possibility.

"The long term benefit of all this is having the connection of having people that like to be together," said Contey. "I have to believe that has to be one of the benefits of being a family. It shouldn't just be that you spend these eighteen, twenty years together and then you try to get as far away as you possibly can and go live your lives. Even