Community Matters, with Sharona Drake-Henderson

(can cracking) (upbeat music) Headspace Studios. Hi everyone, it's Sharona Drake-Henderson here. Welcome to "Radio Headspace" and to Friday. Thanks so much for having me as your guest host this week. It's been great to share all the ways that restorative parenting can enhance our lives and the lives of our children. If you've been listening all week, you may have noticed that community is a running theme and that's for good reason. It helps our kids be more social and caring and it can be a lifeline for you when you are feeling like you're drowning. So today, I'm gonna share what community looks like, while we shouldn't have to do it alone and some ways to build community for yourself and your kids. (soft music) I have learned over my time that the beauty of community is diversity. In that diversity, what you find is as you honor the strengths of those in your community, you can actually staff for the areas where you are weaker and having people around you that might have the same hearts and similar goals but that lift those things out completely differently. For me, my son's usually average with his motor skills and ahead socially, emotionally, and academically. And so I might find a parent whose kid is off the wall like jumping off of everything, but when they're around my child, they make my child take risks, with his motor skills and then he develops. And then also because my child is careful in this way your child is like, oh, that could be dangerous, we're not doing that, that's dangerous. And it's that balance. And so even in community, I've been able to talk to some parents who are like "Why isn't my child speaking so well? Your child's been speaking since, before he was one." And I could say, "Yeah, but your child was walking like four months before mine." Your child helps my child to walk. My child helps your child to talk. (soft music) If you want to build community, be friendly. I learned from toddlers, they do not complicate, this whole thing of making friends and relationships. They say, will you be my friend? Yes, and they go play. And I have really taken that on. And so a lot of my friends, a lot of my community are people I've met out in public. I will invite a waitress or a waiter be like, you want to hang out with us? You are great. Like, what do you do for fun? And I have friends that's like, how'd y'all meet? Oh man, we met at the so-and-so restaurant and they were serving me. They seemed really cool. We laughed a couple of times and I got their Instagram and sent them a message and we invited them over for dinner. Yeah, now they've been here for years. My esthetician, one of my closest friends, the lady who does my hair, one of my close friends,...