Category: Parenting

While You Were Away…

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parenting-word cloudAs some people may have gathered from my last post, something’s stirring over here at Spirited Mama!

I am indeed, still alive and still as spirited as ever. I decided that it was time to dust off this blog and breathe some life back into it. My life moved away from blogging for a while, I didn’t feel I had much to say and was focused on writing my fiction. But my mama bear is stirring and has things to say again.

It’s funny how life is this constantly shifting current, taking us from one place to another, often seemingly without us controlling it at all. There is definitely an ebb and flow to energy and that changes the course of our lives.

beach1So what happened while I was away? The Munchkin is now 6 years old and the Bean is 3. How did that happen? I’m also now a single mum. Both kids spent some time at a Montessori nursery, but are now both at home full time, so you can expect to see lots of posts about home education and parenting in general. I’m still nursing the Bean, and am a vocal advocate of full term breastfeeding, so that might come up from time to time too. I don’t have as much to do with supporting women and families with their births, but still admin a VBAC support group online and keep half an eye on the state of birth in the UK, so if something catches my eye I’ll probably mention it here. I want this blog to continue to be a resource for those with birth choices to make, even if that isn’t my primary focus these days.

Aside from parenting, what else has happened in the last few years? I’ve published two novels and a short story in the Echoes of the Past series, with novel number three due out this summer. I’m currently running a crowdfunder to raise funds for my publishing costs, so if anyone would like to contribute and help out this single mama trying to earn a living from her passion, then do please hop over to my Pubslush page and chip in what you can. But this blog isn’t about my books really, so I won’t be bombarding you with promos and the like, don’t worry. You might see a few book reviews of kids’ books though!

I’ve also really embraced Twitter, hence the title for this post. It’s become my favourite social media platform in many ways. It’s not great for holding conversations, but I love it for connecting with other people and keeping up with their news. Sometimes it is like shouting into a crowded room though, so I try to engage with people to make it meaningful to be there. Follow me via the link below!

I think that’s all from me for now. Check out my social media links below and hit the “follow” button to keep up to date with new posts here. I’m really looking forward to jumping back in to this crazy world of #pblogging with you all!

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Working With NOT Doing To

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This is a topic I have been meaning to blog about for a few weeks now, but a discussion on Facebook this morning has nudged me to grab the little window I have while the Bean sleeps. As parents, we all strive to do the best we can for our children, there are a few different theories about exactly what is “best” and parents from differing schools of thought can have quite passionate disagreements on it. What the hubby and I feel is best is unconditional and attachment parenting. Let me preface this with the confession that we are not perfect, we often do not live up to our parenting ideals. We lose tempers and shout, we say things to the Munchkin that we regret and we spend many evenings despairing about things that have happened. But we chalk it up to experience and promise to try harder.

According to Alfie Kohn, there is ample research to show that children develop best into independent, free-thinking, compassionate and hard working adults if they have parents who give them unconditional love, who steer clear of punishments and rewards and practice “working with” rather than “doing to” parenting.

“Working with” parenting includes giving your child control over their own life, with appropriate limits, of course; so for example, allowing your child to choose their own clothes each day and dress themselves, to the best of their ability! Parents aiming to work with their children might also be sure to give explanations for boundaries, rather than expecting them to be adhered to without question. You won’t hear a working with parent saying “Because I said so!” Negotiation and compromise feature heavily in the working with household. Instead of rewards and praise, a working with parent encourages their child with descriptive responses, such as “I see you doing forward rolls, you really controlled your body and landed just where you meant to.” This gives the child the opportunity to evaluate their performance for themselves and decide how they feel about it. The child might respond with “Yeah, but I was a bit wobbly as I stood up, let me have another go,” or perhaps “Actually, it made me dizzy, I think I’ll stop now.” They learn to motivate themselves and take pleasure and pride in their achievements and to recognise their own limits.

Discipline“Doing to” parenting consists of using punishments and rewards, forcing children to behave in desirable ways. The foundation of this type of parenting is the belief that behaviour is more important than understanding. So for example, a doing to parent might force their child to apologise for accidentally hurting another child, with no regard for whether their child actually is sorry or not. When a child does not immediately follow the parental rules, a doing to parent might confiscate a favourite toy, force the child to isolate themselves for a period of time (time out) or possibly even use physical force, such as smacking. On the flip side, a doing to parent may use rewards and praise as well as, or instead of punishment. Rewards might be very material, such as food or toys, or they might be in the form of a sticker chart. Praise is the verbal reward system and is also quite damaging. Dishing out “good job”s or “well done”s is Pavlovian, pure and simple, it is behavioural conditioning. It teaches children to do something solely for the treat, like a good little puppy. This means that when the reward is no longer offered the child is not motivated to do the task. Alfie Kohn references many studies that have found this result in his book Unconditional Parenting.

Conditional, or doing to parenting hinges on the belief that children are inherently wayward and bad. How many times have you heard phrases such as “Give them an inch and they’ll take a mile”, “You’re making a rod for your own back” and so on? These comments come from a very dark view of human nature, one that asserts that children must be trained to behave in acceptable ways through systematic use of punishments and rewards. Bad behaviour must be discouraged through punitive measures and good behaviour must be encouraged with rewards; because no normal child could possibly be capable of doing the right thing for its own sake and all will be utterly selfish without punishments to keep them in check.

I don’t subscribe to this view at all. I have seen for myself how kind, well mannered and thoughtful the Munchkin can be and we have never forced him to say sorry, please or thank you. We have never put him on a “naughty step” or told him to do as he is told with no explanation. Today he pushed over the Bean in a scramble to get trains out of the toy box, I swooped in and picked up the Bean as he was very upset. The Munchkin was told, sternly, that he isn’t to push his brother over because he could get hurt just like this. The Munchkin took himself off for a minute and came back to us looking very solemn and said “I want to say sorry to him.” And he did, and gave his baby brother a cuddle.

time-outI’m not going to sugar coat things. Does the Munchkin sometimes (often?!) refuse to eat his nutritious home-cooked dinner because he would rather eat chicken nuggets? Yes! Does he get in a strop over the slightest thing and refuse to help tidy his toys away at the end of the day? Yes! Sometimes it does not matter what we do or say, he will not be cooperative and we find ourselves tearing our hair out in frustration. It is so tempting to yell, to punish him in some way. In truth, that would be the easy option. It is easy and on some level satisfying to yell “Go to your room!” in those situations. Would this be the lazy option? Sometimes, yes. Though I think most parents don’t realise that there is an alternative way, all they know is what they experienced as children and what well meaning friends, family and strangers are telling them to do, as well as what they see on TV or read in baby training manuals. Working with parenting is certainly not the easy option. It is so hard to push aside your own anger and pull your stubborn child into a loving hug instead of yelling. It is utterly exhausting to repeat the explanations for the dozenth time in 48 hours.

But he is three.

This is what I tell myself when I have to remove myself from the room in order to avoid shouting. I take a moment to breathe deeply and compose myself and I say to myself “He is only three”. When I am calm I can go back, give him a big hug and explain to him gently why I would like him to do, or not do something. Even if I just had to explain the same thing five minutes previously. Because he is three and he is still learning. It would be unreasonable of me to expect him to be able to control every impulse, to totally understand and have mastered his anger, jealousy and fatigue.

What about as children get older? Do punishments and rewards become necessary then? How about in schools? Do teachers need to use these tools in order to control their classrooms and get through the curriculum?

Well, I believe that as children get older unconditional love becomes more and more important because they become much more able to comprehend consequences and subtle behaviours. For a fantastic and thorough exploration of communicating with children of all ages, I highly recommend the book How To Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish. I hope that my teenage sons will be able to come to me or their dad if they are being bullied, or have feelings for someone that they need help understanding, or any other problem they may have. Knowing that they are truly accepted by us, no matter what they do or feel will be the foundation for open and honest communication. If they feel that they will only be valued or respected if they behave a certain way they will be less likely to come to us with the difficult problems life can throw at us.

As for schools, well that would be a whole other blog post, I fear. I strongly believe that schools can employ working with principles and some alternative models of education do so very effectively, such as Steiner and Montessori. However, very few, if any, state schools even try to do this. The “better” schools may steer clear of punishments as best they can, but they seem to feel the need to compensate for this with praise and rewards. Alfie Kohn has written books and run seminars for educational professionals, but I haven’t read any of this work. I assume it is of the same high standard as his Unconditional Parenting book and gives teachers and school administrators the knowledge and inspiration to change to a working with model. However, this is difficult within the current state system here in the UK as schools have little autonomy and are inspected by a governing body (OFSTED) that is unsympathetic to alternative models of child care and education.

school-disciplineI feel that sending a child to a “doing to” school can undo a lot, if not all of the good work that “working with” parents are doing at home. I would hope that children would still feel secure in their parents’ unconditional love and that this would be a good enough springboard for them to go into adulthood with all of the things parents wish for their children. However, I fear that detentions and A grades would be the undoing of most children from unconditional homes. My parents raised me in a pretty unconditional manner, but I can’t honestly say that I don’t see in myself the same weaknesses that Alfie Kohn talks about and I attribute this to the schools I attended. I think it is important for schools and parents to work together with children, to have the same foundations and approaches, in order for children to truly thrive. The alternative, and the one we are intending to pursue is to home educate. Though we have applied for a place at a couple of local schools and are crossing our fingers that our local Montessori or Steiner schools get free school status, just to keep our options open. If the Munchkin did end up at the local state school, well, we’ll be buying the principal a few books to read over the summer 😉

Full On Full Time Mum

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The Bean is 6 months old today! So I thought I had better find the time from somewhere to pop back here and actually write something. I’ve been quiet for some time, thanks to a little thing called LIFE! I honestly did not realise just how little time I would have with two children. No one prepares you for this at all, I heard it was hard work, but I had no idea that I would literally have about two minutes in the day during which I was not feeding, fetching, doing or playing with one of my kids. I’d heard those jokes about parents locking themselves in the bathroom for two minutes to themselves, but it really is true! I have found myself doing that!

The Munchkin rarely goes to sleep before 8.15 and the Bean won’t settle to sleep until about 10pm unless I am in bed with him. He won’t even settle in the living room with us, he cluster feeds and when he isn’t feeding or dozing in my lap he wants to play. The Munchkin doesn’t nap at home any more, only if we happen to be out in the car at the right time and the Bean naps on the go for the most part. At home it is rare for him to sleep more than 20 minutes at a time, so I have no time to myself in the day either.

I’m finding it challenging, to say the least and I have bleak moments where I feel tearful and frustrated. But I know that this time is fleeting and they both really do provide a lot of joy. So I guess it’s all worth it.

The Munchkin is utterly in love with his baby brother and now that the Bean is sitting up and laughing all the time the two of them can and do play together a bit, with the Bean grabbing the Munchkin’s trains and trying to suck them and the Munchkin tickling the Bean and laughing at his expressions and noises.

The Bean is massive. He was big at birth and has resolutely stayed that way. We don’t weigh him, but he has been consistently in a size or two bigger than his age, he is currently transitioning into 9-12 month clothes and we are constantly getting remarks about his size. Thank goodness we declined all involvement from the health visitors, I don’t doubt they would have been trying to persuade me to wean him early with such silly remarks as “He’s big so he must be hungry and you’ll never be able to feed him yourself”, I have heard this exact comment from a supposed health professional. Sigh. Well, to the naysayers, our little man has had nothing past his lips but breastmilk. Or at least, not until this week… at lunch one day I had just finished feeding him and sat him up in my lap. In the two seconds it took me to re-hook my bra he had snatched some lettuce off my plate and shovelled it into his mouth!

So we’re taking that as a sign of readiness for solids and so begins another adventure in Baby Led Weaning. We used this method with the Munchkin with great success and pleasure and are really looking forward to doing it again. The Bean has had a play with some pasta, carrot and turkey, but so far has just managed to break the food up with his two little teeth and then spit it straight back out. So he’s definitely just in the exploration stage and so we’re not presenting him with food on a regular basis, just every now and then.

He has also decided to forgo rolling and move straight on to standing. He wants to be up on his feet nearly all of the time and is almost cruising the furniture already. He is currently stood in hubby’s lap, grabbing hubby’s face in both hands and slobbering all over it. Ahh, happy times 🙂

G’Night all.

Three Little Words…

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…and they are too small. Sometimes when I look at the Bean or the Munchkin I get so overwhelmed with emotion that I just burst into tears. “I love you” is too easy, the words are too small. There should be these huge, complicated words that truly convey the gravity of the emotions. I could look to other languages I suppose, “Watashi wa anata o aishite” sounds as complex as the feelings. Good old Japanese, a great language for making ours look abrupt. Or maybe the Romance languages do have it right, “Te amo” in Spanish and “Je t’aime” in French, short and to the point. In a way the emotion is simple. It’s raw, it’s fundamental and we can’t live a fulfilled life without it.

The love we feel for our children is so different from any feelings we might have for anyone else. It is completely unconditional and without question. Even when they drive us crazy love is still there. It’s there in the middle of the night when they just won’t sleep. It’s there in the park in the bright sunshine or trapped indoors when it’s pouring with rain (or snow!). It’s there when they’re sleeping in your lap and when they’re stamping their feet refusing to get dressed or eat or go to bed. It’s particularly strong when they are hurt or upset or unwell. And every time they tell you they love you? Pure magic.

Bedtime Battleground

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So the Munchkin turned three today! I can’t quite believe it. I look at him every once and a while and I am just astonished by how tall he is, how well he communicates, how confident he is physically (he just recently started going up and down stairs/steps without holding onto anything) and just how grown up he can be. But bedtime comes around and I get a sharp reminder that he is a typical three year old and not the little adult he sometimes seems to be.

He is a real challenge a lot of the time; he is stubborn and fickle (yes, he can be both at the same time!), has a tendency to just completely blank us when he doesn’t want to do what we say, has complete meltdowns at the tiniest upset and is a bottomless pit to feed. But he is also bright, cheerful, gentle, loving and hilarious!

Bedtimes have become a battleground, much to my dismay. Bedtime now largely consists of the Munchkin refusing to stop playing in order to have his bath or go to his room for stories, refusing to take his clothes off, insisting things get done in a certain order and then changing his mind half way through, complete meltdowns followed by laughter-inducing games of chase around the house. I try to go with the flow, we are child-led in so many areas so it makes sense to me to be at least a little bit child-led at bedtime too, rather than mummy and daddy turning into these dictatorial monsters. I don’t want to fight with him. If he’s not ready to stop playing yet, then why not let him have another half an hour? If he wants 15 stories, then so be it. IF, and it’s a big if, at the end of it he will go to sleep a little more easily.

The problem is that’s not how it works. He gets overtired and even more prone to upset the later we leave bedtime. We have also learned from experience that that old adage “Give them an inch and they’ll take a mile” is actually true. For example, one cup of juice every once in a while had turned into complete refusal of water and tantrums if he didn’t get juice ALL of the time. We are working our way back from that particular situation and today he had lots of water without complaint. It helps if we don’t ask him if he wants a drink and just get him some water and put it where he can get to it himself when he’s thirsty.

I think there must be some middle ground somewhere with bedtime. The balance I try to go for, though I don’t always succeed as I’m often tired and trying to see to the Bean at the same time, is to compromise. “You can have one more go around the track with your train and then we’ll take your clothes off.” I also try to make things fun and not get cross with him for running around and making it a game. I’d rather he be laughing than crying.

The problem with this is that hubby is NOT on the same page at all. He wants the Munchkin in bed, asleep, by 7.30pm, as opposed to the 8.30pm that the Munchkin finally fell asleep tonight, so that he can have some time to chill out. I get that, I want that too, we’re both the kind of people that need some child-free time in order to recharge our batteries. But I am also realistic. We did have a really good routine a few months ago and what with the support of my parents, we had quite a lot of child-free time. But we have a two month old baby now. My availability for the Munchkin is dramatically reduced because I’m the only one with the boobs to feed the baby. Then there’s the massive emotional upheaval that the arrival of the Bean must be for the Munchkin.

Don’t get me wrong, on the surface, the Munchkin appears to be absolutely fine with the Bean, he is very gentle and loving with him and he comes home from Montessori or a day with my parents really excited to see his little brother. But it is noticeable that the Munchkin’s behaviour has become more challenging since the Bean’s birth, he also wakes in the night again now, when he had been sleeping through for months. When he does wake he is really upset, more than once he has told me he can’t sleep as he’s too sad. He can’t articulate what is upsetting him, but it doesn’t take a genius to work out that he misses being the only child and the centre of our world.

We made a big fuss over his birthday. He had a big party at the weekend, with all of his friends at a local farm park and today we went out with my family for a nice afternoon in the glorious sunshine. We’re trying hard to stick to our post-Christmas promise to minimise the presents and make the occasion about being together and enjoying new experiences, though it is very hard to convey the importance of this to others.

The clocks also went forward last weekend, so the evenings are suddenly much lighter and I am certain this has something to do with the Munchkin insisting that “It’s not bedtime yet!” He is also getting older and as children get older their body clock does naturally shift. I think he’s probably a little young for a 9pm bedtime just yet, but I accept that all of these factors are going to be having an impact right now. Hubby doesn’t. He gets so stressed and angry with the Munchkin that I find myself hoping that the Bean won’t need feeding during the Munchkin’s bedtime so that I can put him to bed instead of hubby doing it. But the reality is that by the end of the day I can be just as stressed out and short tempered as he is. Last night I had to walk away from the Munchkin as I got so upset with his refusal to cooperate.

I’m far from perfect, but I understand the Munchkin’s behaviour and I want to be flexible on this, I don’t want our household to be an angry one, not even for one hour a day, not when it’s every day like it is at the moment. So I am about to embark on a reading spree! I have a booklist, some of which I already own, others are on my Amazon Wish list (family – take note!)

  • Unconditional Parenting by Alfie Kohn
  • Screamfree Parenting by Hal Edward Runkel
  • Raising Boys by Steve Biddulph
  • Raising Our Children, Raising Ourselves by Naomi Aldort

It’s not that I believe in blindly following the advice in parenting books, far from it. I’m all for instinctive parenting; tuning in to our own gut feelings about the needs of our children. But sometimes you hit a blank wall and a few ideas to help you move forward are a good idea. And sometimes you are at loggerheads with your partner and need some proof that what you’re saying makes sense and has occurred to other people too.

Breastfed Babies are “More challenging”?

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Unless you live under a rock, it would have been hard to miss the news today…. breastfed babies cry more than bottle fed babies… they have “more challenging temperaments”. Really? Where are these headlines coming from?

A recent piece of research from the Medical Research Council (MRC) Epidemiology Unit has found that breastfed babies are perceived to be more “irritable” or “challenging” than their formula fed peers, by their parents. The researchers have been quick to state that this is actually normal, that babies cry for reasons other than hunger, that formula fed babies are essentially overfed (dare I say, sedated?) and that parents should adjust their expectations of normal infant behaviour, doing so may result in more mums breastfeeding for longer.

The “by their parents” bit highlighted above is the single most important aspect of this research. This was not a robust scientific study, it was a survey of just 316 parents, so for starters it isn’t a large enough study to be statistically relevant. Secondly, parents are not impartial, we all love our babies very much, but our perspective is coloured by that. It is also coloured by our expectations and a whole myriad of feelings.

Most mums in the UK initiate breastfeeding, but by four months only 7% of UK infants are exclusively breastfed. One of the often sited reasons mums give for stopping breastfeeding, or introducing some formula feeds (mixed feeding), is that breast milk alone didn’t satisfy their babies. There are various reasons that parents might believe this, despite evidence to the contrary, one of which may be cultural expectations of infant behaviour. This is what the conclusions of this study are getting at. Formula feeding has become so common in our society, along with detached parenting techniques, that our perceptions of how babies should behave are completely warped. We think they should sleep through the night, feed every four hours, be content to be left alone, or with people other than their mothers for extended periods of time and basically be seen and not heard.

How many well-meaning friends and relatives suggest a bottle in order to settle a restless baby? How little faith in their own bodies do many mothers have?

Formula fed babies may go longer between feeds (because formula is harder to digest and therefore artificially fills babies up for longer), add dummies and controlled crying into the mix and you have very young babies who are essentially trained not to bother crying for their mothers. Obviously there are many parents who formula feed on demand, rather than to a schedule, and who are very attached to their babies, I’m simply intending to highlight other variables that may be contributing factors to the behaviour reported by the parents in this survey.

Also, if as a culture we expect formula fed babies to be more satisfied than breastfed ones, and if we have huge numbers of mothers who ceased exclusive breastfeeding for the very reason that they wanted their babies to be more satisfied, then when we ask them a series of questions how likely is it that they will give the answers they expect to be giving? How many mums who have niggling regrets about introducing formula might defend their decision by stating that their baby is perfectly content, thank you very much?

I don’t mean to say that the respondents to this survey consciously lied, but their answers are very likely to be the product of their experiences and expectations.

The survey was also conducted among parents of three month old babies. I wonder how many of the breastfeeding mums were in the midst of growth spurts and teething, approaching the four month sleep regression and generally feeling the effects of life with a tiny baby who is so reliant on their mother alone to fulfil their dietary needs, with very little support from their family or peers. Their feelings almost certainly coloured their responses too.

The discussions rampaging around the internet today demonstrate clearly the number of breastfeeding mothers who feel that their babies were perfectly content and hardly ever cried because they were able to meet their needs quickly, both nutritional and comfort needs, with the breast. These mums, in the circles I tend to move in, are well supported, determined, knowledgeable and tend to follow attached parenting ideals. They are not “typical” mums in our society, but they demonstrate, again, another set of variables that might suggest that breastfeeding could be a heck of a lot easier than the respondents of this survey have found it.

As with all scientific research, we also have to consider who has conducted it and any other interests they may have. I haven’t been able to substantiate this, but one comment on a Facebook thread that I saw this morning, suggested that this piece of research was funded by a board of over 20 interested parties, some of whom, you can bet, have financial interests in the formula and baby food industry. If this is true then we do need to take a very deep breath before taking the conclusions of the study seriously, despite the insistence of the researchers that this evidence is good news for breastfeeding.

I think we need to take this research with a rather large pinch of salt.

New Year Reflections

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This was the first Christmas that the Munchkin has really understood anything about the holiday or been able to get excited about it. It was also his first healthy one! His first two were plagued by sickness bugs and fluey-colds for all three of us. Finally we have some nice photos of all of us looking healthy and well on Christmas morning. Yay!

In the build up to it he got excited about the decorations, especially the tree and he loved helping open cards as and when they arrived, the first few he memorised which was from who but eventually there were too many for him to keep track of. We noticed that he kept saying, with longing “Wish I had [insert name of train here]” a lot and hubby and I would cast furtive glances at each other, knowing we hadn’t bought him what he was pining after.

The solstice passed quietly, although that’s the meaningful day for hubby and I we prefer to celebrate the season with our families a few days later. So Christmas morning arrived and started well. The Munchkin was up relatively late for him, so we didn’t have the ridiculously early start we had prepared ourselves for. We’d put out the presents under the tree on Christmas Eve and didn’t really trust the Munchkin to play happily on his own in the living room like he usually does with all of those parcels tempting him, so knew we would have to get up at the same time as him.

Hubby distracted the Munchkin while I nipped to the living room and turned the tree lights on and when they came in we were treated to the biggest “wow!” you’ve ever heard. It was lovely. But we didn’t dive right in, we got breakfast and got dressed, took our time, determined not to start out on the road of presents being the all-consuming primary feature of the morning. The Munchkin was fine with this and went along with it amicably. Phew.

When we started opening presents it was all very sweet and peaceful, each gift was opened slowly and thoughtfully and the moment of revealing it was treasured. A few books came first and the Munchkin had a flick through each one, enjoying them and asking what they were about, appreciating who they had come from. It all seemed to be going perfectly.

But the pace began to pick up a bit and when the first of the train-based presents came out we noticed a change. The Munchkin no longer cared who the gift was from, he wanted to play with it right away, but only for a few seconds before clawing desperately at the next gift. Once all the presents were opened we took some time to play with the new toys and at lunch time my parents and grandfather arrived, to much excitement from the Munchkin. They brought with them more presents and so a second opening-session began, this one nothing like the relatively positive first one.

The Munchkin had no patience for opening the gifts, he wanted the paper off NOW and carelessly discarded it, each new train, for he received several, was met with a squeal of delight but very quickly it was cast aside in a feverish and desperate need for the next one. When all of the presents were opened he almost seemed disappointed and we were soon met with requests for more and choruses of “Me want a talking Gordon/Edward/Percy” etc.

My delightful, thankful, gracious little boy had been replaced with a greedy and impatient monster and I had to take myself off to my room for a little cry over it. What did we do wrong? How did this happen?

As the days have gone on his pleasure in his new toys has been very positive and the pining for the things he did not get has been steadily diminishing, but it isn’t entirely gone. There was, in fact, one talking train that we ordered that hasn’t yet arrived and hubby and I have decided not to give it to him right away when it does eventually turn up. We don’t want him to think that we got it for him because he was demanding it. We don’t want to encourage the idea that he will get whatever he asks for, whenever he asks for it. So we will save it and give it to him when the new baby is born instead.

Hubby and I have done a great deal of talking over the last week, to see how we can nip this behaviour in the bud and try to prevent it developing into a Dudley Dursley situation (“36?! But last year I had 37 presents!”). This is what we’ve come up with:

  • Just one present from each family member. No more huge stacks, not even of small, thoughtful gifts. I’m confident that with some thoughtful explanation we can get our parents on board with this and more distant family and friends already only give one gift, which is as it should be.
  • Time tokens for all, for example, promises to cook for one another, or go for a walk together and so on. These can be unlimited. Day trips will become more of a feature too, tokens for days out at theme parks, museums and so on.
  • No more wrapping paper! Yes really. We’re thinking of each family member having a bag with their name on it and all the presents go in there, unwrapped. There is still the mystery and some excitement at discovering what’s in the bag, but the emphasis comes away from those physical gifts when they are not wrapped up individually. It also results in massive financial and environmental savings!
  • More regular giving of new stuff throughout the year. This might sound odd, but we think that by spacing out new acquisitions it will diminish the excitement and emphasis of those things on celebrations. It won’t be such a novelty to get a new toy or a new book. We don’t hesitate to buy the Munchkin new clothes as and when he needs them throughout the year, so why not do likewise with meeting his developmental needs with toys and books too? It also spaces out the spending so that December is less of a financial black hole, though see previous steps for the knock-on effect of reducing the cost of Christmas too!
  • We were already decided on not making a big deal out of Father Christmas and certainly steering clear of the bribery element (“Santa only brings gifts to good boys and girls”) and feel even more strongly about it now, confident that we are right in our stance on that one.

As a side note, we’ve also seen the wisdom in the decision of some of our friends to not send Christmas cards and will be following their example as of next year. The whole point of the Christmas card is, in my mind, to touch base with people, send them warm wishes and so on. But how many cards do we actually write a personal message in? Isn’t it better to reach out and actually speak to those we care about most in order to wish them well and catch up? Pick up the phone if you feel you’ve not kept up with someone as well as you would like. Duck out of the awful politics of who to send a card to and who not to, avoid the environmental and financial waste of cards that few people really value. I always buy charity cards made from recycled paper and recycle them again when I take them down, but the recycling process still uses energy and not all people do likewise.

Now that the festive season is coming to an end and the new year has begun, it’s all about our forthcoming new arrival. We have already begun de-cluttering the house; sorting out piles of paperwork and bills for filing, we’ve gone through our CDs, DVDs and even books (for those reading who know hubby in particular, this may come as a huge shock!) and started listing things on eBay. There’s a big stack of old clothes ready for charity donation. Hubby has tidied our cluttered landing and guest bedroom and we’ve retrieved our birth pool from the loft and checked that it is fit for re-use. The baby clothes have come out of storage, been washed and put in the baby’s wardrobe.

New year, new start, new life. Bring on 2012.

Yuletide Greetings

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It’s almost upon us, Yule, or the Winter Solstice. It falls upon the 22nd December this year and is my favourite time of year. For those in the southern hemisphere it is of course, the summer solstice, so I’m speaking about the seasonal festival here in the northern hemisphere.

The winter solstice is the shortest day of the year, there is a good, basic explanation of the science here. Yule is an ancient Scandinavian festival that centres on fertility for the coming spring. The ancient Romans celebrated the solstice and called their 7 day festival Saturnalia, after the god Saturn. Solstice customs across Europe were absorbed into Christianity as it spread across the continent and many of the practices can be recognised in modern Christmas celebrations.

Yule has been adapted by modern pagans, of various paths, and features as one of eight annual sabbats. To me, it is a family festival, a time to slow down and be together, to shelter from the winter and celebrate the shortest day and the return of the sun as the days will only get longer from here on (until June, anyway!). We tend to celebrate on Christmas day with our families, as that’s the whole point of the festival for us, but I always look forward to the solstice itself as a turning point in the year and try to find a few moments to appreciate the wonder of the turning of the earth, the change in seasons and the promise of longer days.

As the Munchkin gets older we will incorporate this, and the other seasonal festivals, into our home education activities, chiefly through craft projects. There are hundreds of ideas online for decorations to make with young children at this time of year and recipes to cook and bake together. This year he is still a bit young and really not interested in crafts yet, he hates getting paint or glue on his hands! I took him to a lovely little café last week where you can buy plain pieces of pottery and sit and paint them while you enjoy a drink and bit of cake. They glaze it and fire it in the kiln for you to collect later. The Munchkin was a bit resistant and I did most of the work, but by the end he was at least happy to sit on my lap and pick what colours I should use and what words I should write. I can’t say exactly what we made at this point, but I will take photos after we exchange presents 😉

However you celebrate this time of year, many very happy returns.

Sleep Training Our Munchkin

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We finally decided that the time is right to sleep train the Munchkin. He is still largely parented all the way to sleep, with a good wind down routine followed by me or hubby sitting by his bed, holding his hand (at his insistence) until he falls asleep. Previous attempts to leave the room with him still awake have resulted in meltdowns, or at the very least a shout of “No!”

With a new baby on the way, we can’t possibly spend 2 hours every evening putting our nearly 3 year old to sleep, so he is going to have to learn to do some of it on his own. Up until lights off point, nothing has changed, but the method of sleep training we have embarked upon is that of Controlled Giggling (sadly not covered in the book, pictured left).

It’s very simple. The light goes off, his night light goes on. He gets cuddles and kisses from us both and we leave the room. When he giggles we ignore him for increasing increments of time, then go in, settle him back down and then leave again. It hasn’t yet got to the five minute mark as he comes running out into the hall grinning and laughing long before then, so one of us escorts him back to bed and does the above.

The first two nights of this, he only emerged from his room, red faced from laughing so hard, twice before going quiet and going to sleep. Last night, however, he regressed somewhat and it took a good 7 or 8 attempts to resettle him before he gave up and went to sleep. I hear that this is normal and that our approach should remain unchanged. If, however, he takes to deliberately laughing so hard he vomits, in order to manipulate us, we should start lining his bed with towels, so that we can clean up as quickly as possible without looking at him. He currently has a 2.5 tog child’s duvet, but we are considering upping this to 14 tog for the winter, as per the very excellent advice available from reputable sleep trainers online.

Now I just need to find an appropriate sleep training method for myself, as I’m currently up and writing this at 3.40am, having tossed and turned for an hour and a half due to terrible back ache. I wonder if the more aggressive sleep training method, Giggle it Out, would be effective in my case? I’ll have to talk to hubby about it as he would have to completely ignore me no matter how hard I laugh or for how long. It’s a lot of pressure on him.

Night all.

Montessori Nursery a Big Hit

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Typical Montessori Learning Space

Our plan is to home educate our children, for a variety of reasons, we feel it is the best option for our family. For some time now I have maintained that the Munchkin would not be going to nursery for this reason. Why prepare him for school when he isn’t going? But we have also always said that we would remain flexible and meet the actual needs of our children, rather than adhering steadfastly to some sort of super-plan.

Well, I’m getting bigger, slower and more tired. The Munchkin is getting bigger, heavier and faster. Oh man, is he hard work these days! An absolute joy, don’t get me wrong, but he is hungry for more interaction and more new people and places and I am struggling to keep up with him or get him out to enough groups to satisfy his thirst for activity.

There are lots of home education activities in our area, we have a thriving HE community, with several children three years and under, but “our area” is actually county-wide and not all of the activities are suitable for children as young as him. One of my main motivations for finally learning to drive this summer was to get him out to more groups, as it was proving impossible to do so relying solely on public transport. However, I’m still not getting to any HE groups and only sporadically managing generic under 5’s groups as my energy levels are somewhere in the sub-basement.

So, after some long discussions, hubby and I decided to check out our local Montessori nursery, with a view to the Munchkin having a couple of sessions a week there to give me some relief and him some much needed play time away from home. We have a couple of friends who send their little ones there and are very happy with it, we generally like the Montessori approach to education and are planning to utilise bits of it at home ourselves.

After exchanging a few emails with the principal, hubby and I took the Munchkin along this morning for a “quick half hour” visit before hubby had to be at work. That “quick half hour” turned into three hours of some of the most positive play I have ever seen the Munchkin engage in. Given that hubby had to be at work, we even left the Munchkin there alone for half an hour while I drove hubby to the office in the next small town and then came back again. Not once did he even ask for us while we were gone!

The Munchkin isn’t shy, he will very happily chat to complete strangers in a café , on a train, in the supermarket, etc. But usually when we go somewhere new that is clearly a designated child space; be it someone else’s home, or a group, he sticks close to me for a few minutes and prefers to play on his own for the most part. Even with other children that he knows well, it can take an hour or more to warm up to that child enough to play with them, as opposed to side by side but independently. In groups of more than two children I have never known him interact with others, he seems to prefer his own space and to do his own thing. For this reason, I have been convinced for some time that nursery would be the wrong setting for him and been content to stick to play dates with one or two mum friends and their children at a time.

Today was a whole different story. He was his normal, cautious self when we arrived. It took a bit of coaxing to get him into the main play room from the entrance way, but once he was shown where the train set lives he came completely out of his shell. Within five minutes of arriving he was not only playing happily without either of us, but he was engaging with the other children too. He did ask me to join in with him a few times over the course of the morning, and was keen to show me what he was doing, but I think had I not come back after taking hubby to work, he wouldn’t have missed me at all.

At about 10.30 the children decided to play outside. There is no structure to their day, they follow the children and apparently have at least one but usually two sessions of play outdoors every day, no matter the weather (love that part, hooray for puddles!). The Munchkin was in the middle of the group as they burst out of the door and he had a wonderful time sweeping the leaves and piling them into a little wooden trolley and then working with a little girl to bury a tricycle with them. We have had to abandon arts and crafts as he hates having anything he perceives as mess on his hands. Even meal times have become a challenge, with him asking to be cleaned every time food gets on his hands. But this messy play with the leaves was totally acceptable to him and he only asked for his hands to be cleaned once mid-play, there was even some reluctance when I cleaned them again as we were getting ready to leave.

I was itching to get off, feeling that I had had all of my questions answered and having other things planned for the day, but it took over an hour of gentle persuasion and bribery before we left. Even “Shall we see if nana is home and go to her house?”, which is normally enough to convince him to leave whatever and wherever we are, was met with the reply “No. Busy playing here.”

I was stunned, to say the least. Lunch at a café was passed up, home to his own trains returned “No, we can’t do that yet.” and all afternoon I was being asked if we were going back to “that place” again and his absolutely adorable “pleeeease”.

I managed to convince him to leave after using all of my usual tools, including the tactic of letting him do one more thing that he really wants to do and then doing what I want him to do. That was the winner in the end and we left with, surprisingly, no tears and a cheerful goodbye to everyone. We got my odd jobs done and had lunch in a café , as he was finishing his lunch he grinned and asked “We go to nana’s house now?”, clearly remembering my attempt at bribery from at least two hours previously. So one quick phone call to my mum and we were on the road to my parents’ place, via home to collect more clean nappies, as I hadn’t planned to be out all day!

He couldn’t wait to tell nana and “Ash” (his name for grandad) all about nursery and even when we went back to hubby’s office to collect him at the end of the day, the Munchkin was still asking to go back to play at “that place”.

I remarked to hubby about the level of development in the Munchkin from one short morning at this place; the confidence and independence, the willingness to get mucky and the eagerness to return are all fairly new to us.

It’s a good job hubby and I were as impressed with the place as the Munchkin is really, but I’m not sure what we’ll do if two half days a week aren’t deemed enough by him, as we really can’t afford more! Roll on third birthday and 15 hours of free childcare!

We certainly won’t be making any rash decisions at this stage about long term educational plans, but for now, this arrangement looks like it will be a winner for us all and maybe we can look at the idea of flexi-schooling later if this nursery gets its free school status approved for 2013. I’m still a firm believer in HE, and that is still my preference, but who am I to deny my little boy something that he gets so much out of?