Junk food

I have found that in our world junk food and soft drinks are part of life, everybody uses them to some extend. This has resulted in me having had some thought on it. I found that it is important to educate my girls on the ins and outs, rather than bluntly forbidding it. In tribal cultures they use things like alcohol and (soft) drugs as well. Therefore it has become crucial to me to not withold them any, and in that way make it much more interesting for them to get junk food and soft drinks, but rather explain to them what it is doing to their bodies and let them have a go at it here and there.
I have come to the conclusion that the same goes for alcohol, smoking and soft drugs, they are relatively easy to obtain, so education goes further than forbidding as far as I am concerned.

Tribe - Bruce Parry - DVD

Recently we bought the BBC DVD Tribe - Bruce Parry (http://www.bbcshop.com/invt/bbcdvd2418). This DVD is very very interesting. It shows a lot about how various tribes live. Some more "civilized" than others. I have found it very interesting to see how children are participating in everything. There is no difference between adult life and child life. Children are simply part of life.

Recently I watched a BBC tv program which was about obese teenagers who went to life with a tribe in Borneo in the long houses.
At some point during this tv program one of the females of the teenagers stated that she didn't like it that the men went hunting and the women stayed behind doing stuff around the long house, cooking, gathering etc.
She also wanted to hunt and felt this was violating her equal rights.
The tribe spokesmen simply said that things were that way.
I fully understood. And I will tell you why:
When women would go hunting, how will they do this with a baby or a child at the breast? Men have a more muscular body, they were made to go hunting and run for long periods of time.
Women have, from old times, taken care of other parts of life and as they have the boobs they also have more to do with the children. Simple as that.
I am not able to understand why women have to life a men's life to feel good about themselves. Women are better skilled for gathering and caring, men for hunting and protecting. For me no sweat in that.
I actually noticed that with driving I tend to take the known ways, sometimes that can be a bit of a detour. My partner, however, tends to take a more direct way, whether new or not.
This fits with the gatherer and hunter mentality.
Hunters have to go where ever to get the meat. Gatherers tend to pass the same area's to see if there is any more food to find. Gatherers do not fully empty it in general, as there needs to be growth which will provide more.
It was a very interesting talk that we had about this.

Some thoughts

As this is my first post on this blog I think I may have to explain a bit about The Continuum Concept.
For our family it basically comes down to parenting the natural way. We think about what must have been natural in the Stone Age, the things required for survival back then are still valid. Men are still the hunters and protectors, women are still the gatherers and carers. So when a boy is more active and physical, this is for a reason.
We also always try to look at the emotions behind the behaviour.

The Continuum Concept was written by Jean Liedloff, who spend a tremendous amount of time with the Yequana tribe in South America. Those people still lived like in the Stone Age when she was there. They were satisfied in their ways. They are also a non-violent tribe. Therefore visiting this tribe was a brain teaser to her, which led her to write her book.

I love what she wrote and her writing has been a huge brain teaser for me.