About
Kid Advocate Network is a collection of resources designed to support and enhance family culture in today’s world. Our resources are based on core values related to handling conflict, navigating transitions, and the importance of listening to both yourself and others. While our primary focus is on children from single or divorced families, we hope that all parents will find our tools valuable.
My name is Aaron Stewart, and I am the curator of this network. I will be your primary point of contact if you decide to utilize any of the resources available here.
Me and my five sons
MEDIATION
Conflict or disturbance, as the word I prefer to use, appears to be one of the processes nature has chosen to aid us in the evolution of our species. From the cracked seed in the soil to the broken amniotic sack of a newborn, life makes its way into the world through a disruptive process. After thirty plus years of experience with community, corporate life, and the home, I find conflict to be an essential part of any healthy relationship and the gateway to growth. How we resolve conflict becomes the key to sustaining the life being birthed.
In the single and co-parenting domain there is a lot of chaos, conflict, and loss. Because of this I have learned it is next to impossible to gain control without support from those who understand. My goal is to be a resource of one who understands and helps steer people away from the court system that only disempowers parents and boxes kids into a standardized life. With mediation, parents are empowered to create solutions that serve the uniqueness of their kids instead of financially backing a war of egos through a lawyer based court system. I developed Kid Advocate Mediation as an impartial third-party service to offer tools and objectivity. It’s designed to assist you in making decisions with your co-parent and to help you and your children experience less chaos through the transitions of life.
TRANSITIONS
Kid Advocate Transitions are rituals or ceremonies to help ground youth from a disjointed western culture. My invitation to us as parents is to explore the language of transition and to discover a potential component for how to create stable individuals, stable families, and stable communities.
To be alive means to change from day to day, from one state of being to the next. Every day brings a new day on how to be and eventually as the days stack, nature does this amazing thing within biology to declare a shift. These shifts may come through subconscious behavior like trying a sport, changing clothing styles, rebelling against authority, or taking off on an adventure; or these shifts come through natural causes caused by hormones, diseases, spontaneous moments of awe, or moments of disillusionment. Whatever the cause may be, a transition is occurring from one level of being into a new unknown awareness of being. These shifts bring us into the developing process of what it means to be connected to a bigger reality than ourselves. To parent this process is a responsibility worthy of attention and is not worth leaving to chance or to any state system or to any trending social platform.
Initiation, puberty rites, rites of passage, or whatever we choose to call them, are a healthy way of honoring the inevitability of change. It transforms these experiences into a natural rite. My observation from living in western modernity, is we have a fragmented way of acknowledging these rites of transition into adulthood. Youth act out artificial attempts through smoking, drinking, doing drugs, getting into fights, stealing, and sexual promiscuity. There is no communal support but instead risky, destabilizing experiences that put the gift of transition into the control of marketers and pop culture. I am not here to say these attempts are wrong or judge them but rather to see if we can improve on such an important fact of life. I am suggesting we bring transitions into the home and into the communal support of your child’s community. Designing initiations and rituals is a way to honor our children’s overwhelming transition into adulthood.
PODCAST
One thing I find essential in parenting is perspective. Kid Advocate Podcast is a resource to bring perspective to what the parenting experience is all about and how amazingly diverse it can be. There is not just one way to parent! Podcasts provide our culture a chance to engage in conversations at our leisure and around specific subjects we find valuable. What a gift. With Kid Advocate Podcast I hope to bring subjects and interviews that inspire, challenge, and broaden our parental lens. Since parenting is a learning as we go endeavor, it is so incredibly helpful to gain perspectives from others on how to show up for our children. I hope with this podcast I will provide content that keeps us motivated to keep showing up.