How to Live Slow with Kids - 14 Years Later

on 14 years of raising kids, slowly

Welcome to Slow Folk - a community for gentle hearts and rebellious creatives, thirsty for a slower life in a world obsessed with speed.

Welcome to the Unbusy Revolution.

Morning folks. Well, we’re inching closer to selling this old farm. For sale sign is up and showings have begun. This season of closing chapters has had me reflecting on the time we’ve spent here - nearly 13 years - raising babes, building a community and trying to figure out how to live slow(er) in a world obsessed with speed.

Way back in 2018, when I was still deep in the throws of early motherhood, I wrote this piece about approaching parenting from a Slow Living perspective:

Fast-forward to 2025 and my baby boy is 14 years old, shaving and soaring over me.

Ya know, they tell you it will go by fast, but man. As we move into this new season and the teenage years with both our kids, I’ve looked back at those early days and been kinda amazed that our unorthodox approach might’ve actually worked for us.

When you’re in the thick of it, you never know if your choices will really have the results you hope for. I figured, we do the best we can, follow our intuition and trust that things will unfold as they should. (And hope you don’t screw your kids up too much in the process.)

For me, my intuition was screaming that the way we were encouraged to raise our kids - by society, by social media, our friends and family and yes, experts - was decidedly not in the best interest of our kids.

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(Now, I should probably preface this whole thing with an important caveat - I’m not here to tell you how to parent. I’m not posing as some expert on how to raise your kids, or tell you that you’re doing it wrong. I’m just another Mama, doing her imperfect best to raise kind, humble, capable humans in a world gone mad. Take what speaks to you and leave the rest for the rest.)

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Raising kids with slow living values hasn’t been easy, or - to be perfectly honest - very instagramable.

I know Slow Living is seen as primarily an aesthetic or maybe something tradwife-adjacent. That hasn’t been my experience. Personally, I’m less interested in #cottagecore and more curious about the space where slow values meet real life - not the narrowly defined, polished and unflinchingly curated version of life we share online.

For me, Slowness has just been a set of tools, a frame through which to view the world, a touchstone in a childhood buried in too much, too fast, too soon. It has been messy and rife with self-doubt and subject to more than a little criticism from the collective peanut-galleries of my life. There have been plenty of times, especially when consuming mainstream ‘slow living’ content, that I’ve asked myself - Am *I* doing this wrong??? Maybe it IS just about linen and sourdough and wildflowers and a perfect (crazy expensive) cotton dress??

But then I come back to myself and remember that while slow living certainly can contain those things, it is not defined by those things.

For me, slow living with kids has been about simply being present in the moment.

Messy, imperfect, not-fit-for-instagram wobbly bits of the soul - present.

It has been found in the cool shade of August afternoons, our hands and faces sticky with the dark juice of wild blackberries, lying on our backs in the grass, watching swallows swoop high over-head, playing with feathers from our hens. It has been in the satisfaction of a day of hard work in the garden, dirt under our nails, the house a mess but the seeds of a full fall pantry tucked into the soil. It has been found in the quiet awe of witnessing a birth before the school bus comes, in the tenderness of my teenage son with his calves.

It has also been holding my three year old through the worst of her tantrums, both of us sobbing, together. In navigating the boredom and monotony that can be such a huge, often unspoken, part of life at home with children. The never-ending laundry, the cold coffee, the wiping of tiny bums, the dishes on repeat.

It’s meant facing our children’s disappointment as we set mindful boundaries around them, navigating the ensuing differences and feelings of being left out by our decision to choose another way. It was helping them learn how to be the only kid without a phone or a fast-food hot lunch.

It was beautiful, and it was hard.

Slowing down with our kids was a lot about the things we didn’t do.

I know all the slow living posts usually have ‘to-do’ lists, but for me slowness was more about asking more beautiful questions about what I would choose NOT to do.

No phones before high school. No social media. No stuffed schedules. No pressure to perform. No hyper-consumerism.

But we weren’t militant about it, either. Slowing down with kids doesn’t have to be about taking a hard line on everything, or committing your kids to a life of an outsider. There is a huge spectrum of slowness out there, so many ways to introduce the spirit of slowness into our lives. There is no right way to do it. You can’t do it wrong.

As with anything in parenting, my husband and I had different thoughts about some of our choices. There was plenty of compromise. When he and I met, I had no TV whatsoever. He promptly brought me a spare. So while I would have preferred a home with zero screen time, our kids watched Paw Patrol as much as anyone else. I beat myself up about it, but they were fine. Are fine.

We balanced that with lots of time outside. Lots and lots of time outside - working and playing and often doing absolutely nothing.

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While the kids were small, we said thanks, but no thanks to the obligatory mountain of activities, the rushing to and fro, the gobs of money thrown at the desire to give them a ‘leg up’ (whatever that means for a four year old).

We said NO to full-schedules, to a life of adult-mediated time. We kept the toys to a minimum. There were no video games. Instead, we let them outside to just BE. They spent their winter days smashing frozen puddles for hours on end, built forts in summer, snuggled kittens in the barn. Played games of their own design, used their imagination, did chores, were bored. How many kids are allowed the precious gift of boredom anymore? (It really IS a gift.)

Instead of scheduling our kids into oblivion, we folded them into our daily life.

They participated as part of the family. Worked alongside us on the farm and in the home and in our offices, greeted customers in our farm store. We were guided by the notion that our job was to raise kind, capable, humble, independent human beings. Our guiding light became -

Prepare the child for the path, not the path for the child.

Afterall, our kids are growing up in a world that won’t look like our own. The world is hurting and needs us to raise compassionate, courageous humans who will have both the skills and the strength of character to help it heal.

So out they went. They got hurt and pushed boundaries and took risks. They learned how to test their limits, be scared and overcome that fear. The learned how to do dangerous things, safely. The learned skills - real skills - like how to grow food or chop firewood or fix a tractor or mend a broken lamb’s leg or build a shed. They had chores and way, way more responsibility than their peers (and plenty of adults) and they learned what it was to matter in the family, to be valued and valuable. To find pride in competence and contribution. They built grit and creativity and empathy and resilience.

Much of this was not set out intentionally by us as parents. We simply allowed their childhoods to unfold, slowly, each at their own unique pace. We supported them when asked or required, laid a framework of healthy expectations and then followed their lead.

As they got older, we added in activities, directed by their individual interests, temperament and desires.

My daughter is extroverted and competitive and choose to play sports seriously. We have supported her in this, and also check in on her regularly, so that she knows that she is driving the bus when it comes to the intensity of her schedule. Even though she was playing Div 1A soccer, when spring soccer and her beloved box lacrosse became too much in the same season, we didn’t hesitate in allowing her to take spring off from soccer. She knew her limits and also what brought her joy. We listened.

Our son, on the other hand, is introverted and prefers time on the farm. Although he’s incredibly athletic from all that farm work, he’s not overly interested in sports. His interest lies in farming and entrepreneurship, and so we have supported him in pursuing that.

We’ve done our best to push them to try new things (I signed him up for Jazz band, which he initially protested, but has absolutely loved). But if our kids express the need to slow down or pull back, we respect that, too.

I sometimes worried that my kids would lack motivation by teaching them the reflex of rest, but the opposite has been true.

They have a solid work ethic - whether its on the soccer field or in the pastures - AND they know how to rest. Providing a slower structure has allowed us to focus on ideas like responsibility (the animals need to be fed every day, no matter the weather or how you feel about it), natural consequences of our choices (if you don’t feed or water the animals, they’ll die) to cultivate a strong internal locus of motivation.

Life on the farm has been a beautiful metaphor for this type of rhythmic life, of seasons of head-down and work and seasons of joyful bounty and seasons when the whole place sleeps under a blanket of snow. As they say, nothing in nature blooms all year. The kids understand intuitively that rest and slowness are part of the natural order of things, not something to be earned but something that is a sacred part of life’s elegant design.

Seeing their efforts unfold over time, no instant gratification in sight - by way of a healthy cow or thriving business or bountiful harvest . . . this has provided them with a sense of pride and personal agency that will serve them their entire lives.

To slow things down, we strove to ask more beautiful questions about what we wanted our kids’ childhoods to be.

I wrote a bit about this in my post -

So much of what we face as parents we take as inevitable progress.

But I am always tempted to ask - Is it inevitable? Or is it a choice? Simply being aware of the possibility that we DO have a choice has been one of the most empowering mindset shifts in my life as a Mama.

One of my more beautiful questions has been -

What kind of childhood do I want for my kids?

Rather than passively accept the default, simply because ‘that’s how it’s done’, we took a moment to pause, to get curious, to ask. Sometimes the answer has been, Sure, this is fine.

Other times, when we took a minute to do a gut-check, the answer was a visceral, resounding HELL, NO. But we would never know the difference if we didn’t take a moment from time to time to pause, check in with our bodies, ask.

That pause - and the courage to question the status quo - has been one of the greatest tools slowness has gifted me as a parent.

It has also been one of the greatest gifts I’ve been able to pass onto my kids. See, slowness is a reflex. Muscle memory earned through practice and intention and persistence. So now, in their early teens, my kids are starting to ask themselves more beautiful questions, reflexively, intuitively, courageously.

Given our rural location, this year when my son started high school, we knew he would finally need a phone. Instead of begging for all-the-things, he researched (on his own) a smart-phone that looked like the regular ones, but was free of internet access and social media. He can call and text his friends, take photos, but he can’t send photos or receive photos or loose himself in the sewer of social media.

It was a beautiful example of how that pause, better questions and a willingness to look for another way forward, has allowed him to still be a teenager in a modern world, while mitigating the worst of the harm inflicted on our kids by technology and our obsession with speed. (For those who are curious, the phone is called a Pinwheel - not expensive, but with a monthly fee for the app that allows parents to keep tabs on kids to varying degrees, and control how much access they have to apps etc.)

Our kids have also learned that living a slow life isn’t about going slow all the time.

They have learned that every season has its own, proper pace. That sometimes, it’s fun to go fast!

When it’s lambing or haying season, it is all hands on deck. Everything else falls by the wayside. We use that great slow living tool - Deciding What to Suck At. Lambing seasons means laundry, cooking, sleeping and frankly - pretty much everything BUT lambing - will be done poorly, or not at all. We recognize that that doesn’t mean we’re failing or shitty parents. It means that we’ve accepted the truth that you can’t do all the things, all the time. Some moments demand all of our attention, effort and yes, a good amount of speed. This is as it should be.

The trouble comes when speed becomes our default, as it has across our culture, and especially our kids’ childhoods. It makes us numb to the natural rhythms of our lives and disconnects us from the both the world around us and within us as well as each other. Our kids have learned how to pull long days during haying season. They’ve also learned that an evening at the community centre in the hot tub, chatting with the neighbourhood old men, is equally important when the work is done.

This ebb and flow, the intentional, mindful movement between fast and slow, has taken - still takes - practice, but I see those instincts in my kids coming easier than in myself. They have less unlearning to do, have learned to listen to their bodies, to trust it when it whispers, slow down.

Here on the farm, we have been gifted an impossibly beautiful setting to learn and live slow values, but you don’t need to live in the country to share the same with your kids.

Farm life like ours might be a cliché version of slow living, but really it is just one of many ways we can show up a little slower in this crazy world. Slow living with kids doesn’t have to look like the famous tradwife version - juggling a million children, a gazillion acres and a business, or feel like something torn from an influencer’s feed, or mean taking on values that don’t resonate with your heart.

My kids spent their days in the barn and pasture, but you can welcome slowness into your life wherever you call home.

Free-play can happen just as easily under the kitchen table, or the local park or the public library - as it can on the farm. We built our business around me being home full-time with the kids, but if you have a 9-5, you can still embrace slowness. Whether that means slowing the schedule or prioritizing even one meal a week together as a family, it doesn’t matter what it is.

Your slow life will look different from mine, and that is as it should be.

Remember, Slowness isn’t about the superficial aesthetic movement we’ve all seen online. Really.

Slowness is simply about finding the proper pace - for you.

For me as a Mama, slowness has been about taking time to reflect on our collective assumptions about what childhood ought to be. Even in those early days, as I watched my friends cramming in flashcards between meals in their minivan, rushing back and forth to various ‘life enriching’ (uber expensive) activities, describing their hectic life with their young kids as a ‘grind’ . . . It just didn’t feel - right.

Trust yourself that you, too, know what is right for your family.

There’s no doubt - being a parent is effortful. Trying to keep the lights on, succeed at work, juggle a business and aging parents and a turbulent economy and a world literally on fire . . . It’s a lot. The last thing you need on top of all that is to feel shame for not wanting to rush your kids through their childhoods. You are not a bad parent or letting your kids down because you don’t want to push them to achieve or ‘get ahead’ while they’re still in diapers.

It’s ok if you decide that YOU are enough for your kids. And if you look at the cost / benefit of a ‘faster’ childhood and decide that that IS what’s best for your family - that’s ok, too. Just know that it isn’t the ONLY way. Do it because that’s what is best for you, not because you feel pressure to keep up with the frenetic pace of the Joneses.

If some part of you is quietly craving something different for you and your kids, if something about the fast pace of childhood simply doesn’t feel right, know that you aren’t alone.

We did things differently. The kids are alright. Yours will be too.

With love and support -

P.S. If parenting books are your jam, here are a few I found helpful along the way:

• How to Raise a Wild Child : The Art and Science of Falling in Love with Nature by Scott D. Sampson

• Living Simply with Children: A Voluntary Simplicity Guide for Moms, Dads, and Kids Who Want to Reclaim the Bliss of Childhood and the Joy of Parenting by Marie Sherlock

• The Soul of Discipline: The Simplicity Parenting Approach to Warm, Firm, and Calm Guidance -- From Toddlers to Teens by Kim John Payne

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Stacey Langford is a writer, renegade farmer and slow business mentor living and working in Canada’s Fraser Valley. In 2010 Stacey ditched her cubicle in the city to turn her attention homeward, farm and help others craft a simple life, from scratch.