How on earth do those people who batter their children in the name of Christianity think that they will win people over with this horrific practice?  I thought that Christians were meant to try to bring other people to trust the Word of God.  Who, in their right minds, would want to have anything to do with a religion that not only endorses but encourages baby beating?  I have to say that none of the Christians I know regularly beat their children, so I am aware that this is a minority group.  But surely a practice such as this is only going to give more gentle and respectful Christians a bad name?  Madness on so many counts!  Home-educating bloggers can hardly be unaware of the issue explained in this website: Stop The Rod UK, as it has been written about in many, many blogs lately - even to the extent of blogs hosted with Homeschool Blogger being boycotted.  I cried reading the extracts from the books that explain how one should go about hitting your baby or child, and why it’s so important to do it.

She hasn’t had any gak for about three or so weeks now, and only asks every couple of days when she’s really bored or I’m paying her no attention at all.  This morning DH bathed with Flopsy while I did some work and Mopsy slept in bed.  When I heard Mopsy wake up, I went upstairs and she looked so lovely and cosy and warm and snuggly that I decided we hadn’t had enough skin-to-skin time lately, just me and her, so I took my nightie off (yes, I am lazy enough to write essays still in my night-clothes!), and took her pyjamas off and snuggled up for a lovely long wake up feed.  Then Flopsy descended on us, wrapped up in a towel.  She ran in calling ‘here comes my naked body!’ - don’t know where she’s got that from, but she’s said it a few times now and it still sends DH and me into fits of laughter!  She saw that I was feeding Mopsy (who looked up and grinned at Flopsy, as she usually does), and said ‘can I have some gak?’.  I suggested that she’d probably forgotten how to do it, which she disagreed with.  Although I’ve been very aware that saying ‘yes’ would be messing her around and be very unfair on her, I also thought it was a bit harsh sitting there with no top on and not letting her have any (rather like eating Green & Blacks in front of a dieter!).  So I said to her that she could try, but just for a second.  She kind of latched on, and came straight off looking a bit folorn saying ‘there is some no gak anymore!’.  I could have cried!  I knew that there was plenty of milk there, as Mopsy was getting plenty - Flopsy really has forgotten how to breastfeed!  In just a few short weeks.  She tried another couple of times with the same result.  It didn’t really bother her though…particularly when we got on with playing a hiding-under-the-covers-from-scary-Daddy-and-shrieking-like-mad-when-he-catches-us game.

I can’t really believe it though.  I mean, she’s my baby, but she’s not anymore, really.  She’s left every last bit of babyhood behind now.  She’s shed her babyness bit by bit, sometimes with encouragement from me, and sometimes totally off her own back.  And now she’s dropped the most meaningful part of babyhood - breastfeeding.  It seems like only yesterday I was ringing my parents in the middle of ‘Holby City’ to tell them I’d felt her kick inside me; like only yesterday I was leaning over the basin in our old bathroom asking my Grandma over the telephone to please hold on a moment while I had another contraction; like only yesterday my darling baby was lying in my arms in the birthing pool gazing up at me and DH with her hands clasped together; like only yesterday I was ringing DH at work to tell him she’d rolled over for the first time; that she’d just crawled across the room; that she’d just pulled herself to standing; that she was playing peekaboo with the top of her dungarees while I changed her nappy; that she’d said ‘mama’; that she’d joined in the actions to ‘wind the bobbin up’; only yesterday that she was leaning on the bottom of the bannisters copying me having contractions while I was in labour with Mopsy; only yesterday morning I watched her hold Mopsy’s hand for the first time while they both shared their first breastfeed together; only yesterday we bought her her first tiny little knickers and we put her great big toddler nappies away.  Where did it all go?  She’s three years old in only two months time.  My darling little girl, who’s so grown up and silly and sensible and short-tempered and kind and contrary and generous and determined and loving and gentle and simply amazing, is no longer a baby, but a wonderful independent individual.  I’ve got to go now…must just dash upstairs and kiss her cheek while she sleeps (oh, and I might kiss Mopsy’s cheek while I’m at it!).

We went to the Mother Magazine Holistic Parenting Expo back in October, and DH went to a workshop about raw food which he loved.  He talked to me about trying to go more ‘raw’ on the way home in the car and I told him I didn’t feel ready yet - I enjoy my cooked meals too much!  Now I’m reading Primal Mothering in a Modern World by Hygeia Halfmoon, who is pretty dogmatic and self-righteous, but who is also a fruitarian.  It reminded me of DH’s thoughts about eating more raw food, and also about how much fruit and veg Flopsy and Mopsy choose to eat.  There must be a reason why, when allowed to choose what they eat, they favour raw fruit and veg (apart from frubes, which they are obsessed with!).  I’ve read in a few places how close to breastmilk in composition fruit is, and, when you think about it, it’s a much more natural thing for humans to consume, considering how we were living throughout most of our evolution, so it can’t be unhealthy for us.  However, I do love meat and cooked meals but I hate preparing our own evening meals (so much so that DH does most of them, but he’s also pretty fed up of it!).  The girls and I usually snack throughout the day rather than have a set breakfast and lunch-time and then we have an evening meal, so for the day time it would be much easier to grab fresh fruit all day long, with the odd handful of seeds/nuts.  So we think we’ve decided on a compromise: We don’t think we’ll ever be able to go 100% raw, and I’m sorry to say it does really annoy me when people on ‘extreme’ diets refuse to eat more mainstream food when they are guests, despite the fact I respect their reasons.  For these reasons we’re going to eat mostly raw when we’re at home, without being totally strict about it - in other words, just add more and more raw fruit and veg into our diets.  When we’re out with other people, we’ll eat whatever they’re eating (so long as we like it!), or when we’re guests in other people’s houses.  And, in line with our autonomous method of parenting, we’ll continue to let Flopsy and Mopsy self-regulate thier food intake, although as I’ve already said, they favour raw fruit and veg anyway!  Off to find some nice organic fruit this afternoon, and to dig out and work out how to use our blender!

I’ve not blogged for a few days, mainly because I’ve been busy making a lapbook for Flopsy with my cousing who’s been staying with us.  Anonymity is going out the window for this post as I’m too stupid to be able to work out how to blur out her real name from the cover of the book!  Flickr also doesn’t want to rotate any of the photos, so some of them are on their sides, I’m afraid - don’t get a sore neck trying to look at them!

 This is the front cover.

 Both side-flaps opened out.

 Inside the left side-flap are number flash cards that I will never use properly, but I imagine Flopsy will make up some complicated game to play with them!

 The middle section is a big flap, on the front of which are twenty little flaps which open out to show sequins (which took flipping ages to glue on!).

 The right side-flap is also an extra flap, on the front of which is a colourful caterpillar (made by my lovely cousin).

 This is the view you see when you open out the right side-flap flap (ha ha ha)

  Under the right side-flap flap (ha ha ha), there are some more flash cards with space for Flopsy to practice writing her numbers (if she wants to, of course!)  There is also a fab game with little cards with numbers on them.  Flopsy can put these by the right picture according to the ‘One, Two, Buckle My Shoe’ rhyme.  The little cards have felt on the back, and the coloured squares you see are felt so the cards kind of ’stick’ onto them.

 This is what you see when you open out the big middle flap.

 There is an underwater counting scene that we had loads of fun making as it’s a proper collage.

 Then there’s a ‘ten fat sausages’ game.  The squares saying ‘pop’ and ‘bang’ are actually pockets for the felt sausages to go in after they’ve been sizzling in the felt pan.

 Below that is a ‘five little (not very) speckled frogs’ game.  You can kind of see the pocket on the pond where the felt-backed frogs land after jumping off the (not very speckled) felt log.

We’re chuffed to bits with it (and so is Flopsy, luckily!), but it took us blimmin’ ages so I can’t see us making another one for a little while yet!  It’s been a useful diversion from my course, but I am very aware that I really must get on with my presentation for my tutorial in two weeks time…

Thanks to The Wellyboots Tribe, who’s brilliant lapbooks inspired me.

Little Angels are a brilliant and influential network of breastfeeding support groups in Blackburn.  They seem quite keen on ‘nurse-ins’, though…something I don’t really like the idea of!  I remember my mum telling me about a ‘nurse-in’ in Mothercare years and years ago when they said that women couldn’t breastfeed there, believe it or not!  I can see that that was probably a necessary stunt at that time.  A Little Angels ‘nurse-in’ was filmed as part of that tv. programme.  They’re also co-ordinating a nationwide one to take place during Breastfeeding Awareness Week (if you want to take part, please breastfeed your baby at 1pm on Saturday 20th May).  But what about the babies?  I’m desperately resisting replying to the email I received telling me about this and saying “what if my baby doesn’t want to feed at 1pm?  Should I force her?”.  I also think that ‘nurse-ins’ just prove to the breastfeeding-unfriendly world that those who want to support breastfeeding are just what they always suspected: militant!  The Militant Breastfeeding Cult website pokes fun at people who think that.  I like the website a lot, but I don’t find it funny being labelled as ‘militant’ - in fact it drives me mad!  And anything that adds to the view of pro-breastfeeders being militant annoys me too.  Surely there are ways of protecting and supporting breastfeeding that don’t involve rubbing people’s faces in it?  Thoughts…? 

He will be entering the UK Ironman Triathlon this Summer. He has decided to do this for three reasons:

1) He is nuts

2) It was his fiftieth birthday last week and if he doesn’t do it now, he never will

3) More importantly he is doing it to raise money for charity: half of the money he raises will go to the Leukaemia Research Fund. As many of you will know, my cousin who was born a month before Mopsy was, died from leukaemia last month, and this is the charity which his parents have chosen. The other half of the money will go to Rotary-nominated charities (as Rotary have provided his guaranteed place in the Ironman), including the Children’s Hospice Association and Medecins sans Frontieres.

The Ironman Triathlon consists of a 2.4 mile swim, followed by a 112 mile bike ride, finished off with a 26.2 mile run. He is training hard for it, and is determined to raise as much money as he can. Please support him if you are able to give even the smallest amount.

You can donate online by credit or debit card here.  All donations are secure, and if you are a UK taxpayer, Justgiving will add an automatic 28% bonus to your donation at no cost to you.

I haven’t blogged about this issue yet, but would like to point people to this petition.  There are lots of explanatory posts about the issue at Dare to Know.  In a nutshell:  Amazon sell books by The Pearls, who explain in their books how to corporally discipline children.  If you think this is an abhorrent practice which would be considered assault if it were done to an adult, please sign the petition to ask Amazon to stop selling The Pearls’ books. 

Mopsy’s wearing a t-shirt that says ‘I let my parents sleep in the big bed with me’ (from lactivist.co.uk).  Flopsy just said to me: “What does Mopsy’s words say on her t-shirt?”.  I told her.  She said “no, they don’t.  They say ‘I think your milk is called gak’” 

I’ve just started reading Doing It Their Way and the section on John Taylor Gatto (must read more about what he’s written!) has reminded me of how my reasons for wanting to HE our children have evolved.  Initially it was when I read a thread on an online parenting forum about HEing and it really interested me because, more than anything, it sounded fun.  The concept really ‘fitted’ with me, just as the ideas of homebirthing, breastfeeding, bedsharing etc. have ‘fitted’ well with me.  So I chatted to DH about it and he was over the moon!  “I hated school and was dreading sending our children there - I never realised there was an alternative.” he said.  Great!  So I chatted to my mum.  I remember her saying ages ago that she would seriously reconsider sending any of us four to school if she had her time again - and this from a primary school teacher?  How worrying!  Then I vaguely started looking at HE websites etc. and felt very excited about it all.  I had to try not to ‘wish Flopsy’s life away’ by looking forward to when she would be of school age.  When she was nearly two, I decided to join the then MuddlePuddle email list (now known as Early Years HE) and was delighted to discover that I was not the only over-excited parent of a toddler wanting to find support for when official HEing began.  I started reading about HEing, beginning with One-to-One which I really enjoyed reading.  I then read Free Range Education and was introduced to the concept of autonomous education, which sounded a bit wishy-washy to me at the time, but I was willing to learn more about it.  Thanks to the MuddlePuddle email list, I started reading HE blogs…which led me to start my own nearly a year ago now!  I also got the courage to join the local HE group email list - eek!  I was very excited about meeting some real life HEors but also very nervous.  I ended up going along to an informal, but regular meet up at the Mohair Centre and had the time of my life!  Before going, I had sussed out from the email group that there were other mums of very young children living locally who were looking for somewhere to go regularly with their toddlers where they would be accepted for their less-mainstream ideas of parenting so, along with a few other mums who I met that day, one was set up.  It’s now held every two weeks and is very popular and I’ve learnt so much!  Then I read How Children Learn - a present from my very supportive and encouraging mum (I’m so lucky to have parents and parents-in-law who agree with all the things we do with our children!).  I wrote this about it.  My reasons for HEing grew from ‘it will be fun!’ and ‘I want to spend more time with my children than I’d be able to if they went to school’ and ‘I want to continue watching and enjoying them learning’ and even ‘yay!  Can’t wait to get a blackboard ;-)) to ‘goodness me, school can be damaging - I must HE in order to give them the best chance in life!’ and ‘Pants!  Better get rid of that blackboard fantasy quick smart!’.  I’ve always loved watching them learn things, but I love it even more now that I understand the processes going on.  As they grow up, and I read more and more blogs, I find I’m becoming much more aware of the political climate and of how that relates to and effects us as a family.  I’m very alarmed by the governments attempts to control our lives, and those of our children and this is what has informed my latest reason for wanting to HE.  I can now see that school is ideal for governments - what better way to ensure that the next generation grow up believing that you are the be-all-and-end-all and will trust you unquestioningly?  Schooling (not teachers…I’m not talking about teachers; I’m talking about the system) does its best to remove autonomy and free choice from children and, consequently, from the adults they become.  I don’t know how I turned out to be quite so questioning.  Although my mum is, none of my siblings really are.  I guess having children young has helped…?  I think my training to be a breastfeeding counsellor has done a lot.  Undoubtedly my training; my parenting style based on mutal respect; my learning about HEing and particularly about autonomous learning; have all informed and benefitted eachother.  I’ve talked a lot on here about how the books I’ve read on counselling skills and adult learning (both areas I need to understand in order to be a BFC) have said nearly the same thing as those I’ve read on respectful parenting and on autonomous learning.  So it all makes a lot of sense to me.  Then I read things in the course of my training about the wider world and the politics of breastfeeding; about how breastfeeding is damaged and undermined by the cynical and unethical marketing practices of artificial baby milk manufacturers;  How they employ such tactics as ‘we’ll sponsor your maternity unit…make sure there’s a nursery built into it!’ because of course breastfeeding is more likely to fail if babies are taken away from their mothers and kept in a hosptial nursery so more artificial baby milk will be needed and more money will be made by the manufacturers (just one example).  Knowing this has made me more and more questioning about a whole load of things - I guess I’m a bit of a conspiracy theorist at heart!  Why does the government push us to vaccinate our children?  Why do the HVs start interfering the more you try to stay away from them? Why do they want us to birth our babie in hospital? Why, why, why???  So now one of my reasons for HEing is to keep my children away from this state control as long as I can.  I want them to grow up to be autonomous, self-regulating individuals with strong moral values that have been placed there by themselves, not by someone else.  I don’t want them to grow up like so many of the women I meet who believe that artificial baby milk is as good as breastmilk because ‘otherwise the government wouldn’t allow it to be sold’.  I don’t want them to grow up as adults who say ‘but the government say vaccination is safe so it must be!’.  I don’t even want them to grow up to believe that ‘doctor/midwife/health visitor knows best’.  I’ve come from a questioning background, and even I have felt cowed on occassion by the powers that be telling me off.  Well not my children!  I want my children to choose if they want to trust the government/teachers/health care professionals/whatever, and I want them to have an informed choice.  Mum…thanks for bringing me up this way - I love my right to choose and I hope my children love it too!  Now, how do we do it is the next question!

Back to Faber & Mazlish’s books again.  This evening the girls got into their screaming game they both find absolutely hilarious, and I find amusing for about five seconds, then find very annoying.  Usually I ask them a few times to quieten down, to no effect, then end up yelling myself!  It doesn’t work.  This evening I employed one of Faber & Mazlish’s skills and, as usual when I remind myself to use them, it worked beautifully:   I said calmly but firmly ‘Girls, you have a choice, either you stop screaming or you keep screaming and end up with a very cross Mummy’ - they both (Mopsy included!) stopped!  Then Mopsy watched me while she had a go at very quiet screaming (if there is such a thing) and Flopsy said to her ‘No, Mopsy, we have to scream very, very quietly’ :-)  So I really shouldn’t discount the whole theory just because they mention own beds and bottles just once in three whole books!