2018-08-30 Page Olson: On parenting and active listening

Page is a fourth generation Seattleite raised in the 1960's and 70's on the same property her mother grew-up on playing in the woods, in the creek. building things, growing vegetables in a garden and cooking outdoors on the campfire terrace much as her mother had done. Fast forward decades, in 1998, while living in her in-laws-home in Bellevue her two young children asked to live where they could chop down trees, dig holes and have horses live with them. This lead to their move into a trailer on a 4 acres piece of property in the Carnation area that, together as a family, they cleaned up, built a house and her children grew up. Today, 19 years later, she still lives there with her young adult daughter, two rescued horses, a rescued dog and a retired barn cat.

In her formative years, Page struggled in the formal classroom but she was intelligent enough to be accepted into Lakeside School spending the last 5 years of her K-12 education years there, graduating in 1978. Outside of the formal classroom Page was involved in activities and the community. While in High School she was a member of a Medical Explorer post that lead to a volunteer opportunity at Harborview Medical Center's Trauma Center that lead to a position as a Medio-Legal Death Investigator in the King County Medical Examiner's Office where she thrived.

While at the Medical Examiner's office Page was finally able to actively pursue her love of horses. It was with the horses she learned how to become an "Observational Listener" Seeing Behavior as a Messanger for what the animal could not convey any other way. In the years when her children were young parents would ask her where she learned how to "parent" her response was always "the horse taught me".

Like most parents, Page and her husband had plans for how they were going to raise their children. But as children do, they shattered those plans. Page's former husband was a police officer, retired now, and they decided to tighten the financial belt and have Page leave her professional career to be a stay-at-home mom. It became a wise decision as they soon realized to not repeat Page's school challenges Homeschooling was the solution.

As her children grew-up they taught her how to raise them, both being profoundly different from each other. As a result of her continued work with horses, leading a Natural Horsemanship class for homeschoolers, mentoring children in Cub Scouting and Sunday school, mentoring homeschoolers in "math their way", and participating for over 15 years in a non-profit Seattle Fire Department historical society Page has worked with many children and adults. As a result, she has become skilled at observing and understanding children, seeing what parents don't yet see. In mentoring children, she uses a combination of intuitive gifts, investigative skills, and astute behavior observations. She also mentors the parents in how to interpret their child's behaviors transforming the parent-child relationship.

Over the last 15 plus years, she has spent time in planning, been the director for and or organized multiple day camps for cub scouts, child horse camps and fire festivals events in Seattle. While involved in cub scouting Page received the District Award of Merit. And in 2016, she was selected to be a collaborative author in an Amazon Best Selling Book SUCCESS MANIFESTO featuring Brain Tracy for which she received a Quilly Award for being a best selling author. Last year, she became one of the original mentors in the new Mentoring program through the Snoqualmie Valley Network, becoming a mentor to two boys at Carnation Elementary.

This morning, Page will be sharing with us why she believes we, both as individuals and as a society, need to make "seeking to understand" more important than happiness.