For the first time in her entire life, Mopsy seems to be calming down.  She is pinching far, far less, and only really having tantrums at the end of the day when she’s tired out or if she’s very hungry.  Her attention span has always been pretty good, but it’s pretty incredible now.  She’ll sit through huge number of stories - long, Flopsy-age stories too.  We have a puzzle meant for toddlers age 2+ which consists of 20 separate jigsaw puzzles, all of only 2 pieces.  They’re all animals.  Mopsy will carefully and patiently sit and match up all the pieces and use her brilliant fine motor skills to put each puzzle together.  She’ll happily do this twice before deciding to do something else, even if Flopsy is playing something she’d usually be interested in at the same time.  She’s really good at putting puzzle pieces together and really enjoys doing bigger puzzles, but obviously can’t yet work out how to get the picture together (although I shouldn’t think it will take her very long now), but she’ll wait patiently for me to find each piece and show her where it goes, without getting stroppy and snatchy if I’m not fast enough.  Anyone who knows Mopsy will know that this is not like her usual self.  She loves cleaning and tidying away and automatically puts things away when she’s finished with them saying ‘way! way!’ over and over again; then she says ‘clean! clean!’ when she’s done.  When I do the sweeping, she rushes over to get the dustpan and brush and is amazingly thorough at brushing up my piles of dust etc. I make.  She even manages to get it all in the bin sometimes too!  So why has she suddenly changed?  The things that have changed in her life that I think may have made a difference are:

1. I’m no longer throwing up and feeling too tired and rubbish to do anything.  I’m not playing with her any more than I was, as I’m now spending much more time doing housework, but I wonder if my stressed out feelings were transferring onto her a lot of the time.  To tell you the truth, I’m feeling more calm, content and fulfilled right now than I have since she was born and I’m certain that this has a lot to do with it.

2. Mopsy has always been a nightmare to get to sleep, and a few months ago decided she could no longer go to sleep at the breast.  She would fight, and fight sleep, yelling and crying however we did it and we’d frequently be up until 11.30pm+ with her.  The only way she’d go to sleep in the end was in the sling while DH washed up in the evenings, but she used to scream the place down for the first five minutes.  It was heartbreaking and upsetting for us all and I wished that she’d just breastfeed to sleep - something that was calming to her and me.  Eventually we decided just before we moved house to try to stop her napping in the daytime.  It was getting more and more difficult to get her to nap at a reasonable time and if she didn’t get her nap until after 1pm, she simply would not go to sleep at night time.  She’s much, much younger than Flopsy was when she dropped her daytime nap, but we thought we’d give it a go.  She’s adapted to it beautifully.  She only really gets her tired ’symptoms’ in the last hour of the day and falls asleep very quickly when DH puts her in the sling.  But she was still yelling in distress for a few minutes every time he put her in it, and the huge back-arches she was doing were becoming dangerous - she would nearly throw herself out of our arms as we tried to put her in the sling.  It was upsetting for everyone and clearly not the way we wanted to be parenting her!  Then, about five nights ago, DH was reading to her and Flopsy upstairs and Mopsy just fell asleep in his arms.  No crying, no whinging, nothing unpleasant at all.  And she’s done the same every night since then.  This peaceful sleep-time seems to lead to a peaceful full night’s sleep and it’s really since she started falling asleep like this that I’ve really noticed the reduction in her stress levels.

3. We’ve moved house - the house we’re in now is lovely.  It’s perfect for all our needs, and we all love it.  I’m sure she’s gaining something from the increased feelings of well-being we’re all experiencing right now.

4. I also think that this is a lovely positive cycle:  She’s going to sleep easier - she sleeps better at night - she wakes feeling calmer and more refreshed - her attention span and patience levels increase - she spends the day more peacefully and happily - she’s calmer at bedtime - she goes to sleep easier. 

Long may it continue!  We’ve always felt that she needs a lot of peaceful time, but it’s really been a huge difficulty trying to work out what it is she needs - lots of trial and error.  And of course every error is not only frustrating for her, but also for us and she picks up on that.  Luckily it also means she picks up on our calmness when we’re both feeling calm and content and we seem to have worked out the formula she needs - at long, long last!

So we watched this programme last night, fearful that it would be a real ‘look at these wierdos’ programme, and was pleasantly surprised.  Although the narrator did seem at times to be taking the mickey out of the parents, at other times she sounded genuinely interested and sympathetic.  However, I don’t think they chose the best families to look at.

Firstly, the British family.  I liked them.  They were lovely, honest, happy people, and the Dad was hilarious!  But…and this is going to sound awful…if you’re going to present an unusual form of parenting to the masses, surely the way to do it that is most likely to make it appear a valid, acceptable form to those who don’t yet subscribe to it, is to follow a family that looks completely ‘normal’.  By ‘normal’, I mean look like a family who could easily follow mainstream parenting practices.  I’m playing devils advocate here - I don’t think that there was anything wrong with the British family, but the American families looked a bit more mainstream, and I think that that is the route to choose.  I think that mainstream followers are far more likely to listen to someone who looks like they do, simply because the narrow-mindedness of so many people ensures that they go on looks far more than on anything else.  The over-riding thought in many people’s minds, I believe, would have been “well, what do you expect?”.  Although it’s downright wrong to make an issue of physical appearance, I think the impact of using a family that looks mainstream is much stronger, leading to the “oh!  So it’s not just for ‘weirdos” reaction.  I hope I’m making sense here!  I’ve had this conversation with a few of my friends on several occassions.  One of my friends has dreadlocks and wears gorgeous hippy clothes - we think that very mainstream people take one look and write her off as a hippy, which is fine by her, but does seem to make people switch off and stop listening, as if they already know that what she’s going to say is ‘weird’.  Apart from the fact I don’t wear make-up, I look like most mums - dark hair tied back, jeans and t-shirts - we all think that I have more impact when talking about non-mainstream ideas because people don’t expect to hear me talk about them.

Secondly, the one-child American family.  I was thinking all the way through that the mother was the one in control of the attachment, not the child.  A common criticism of attachment parenting.  Then, lo and behold, at the end the husband said exactly the same thing!  In my opinion, for attachment parenting to work, the child *has* to be in control.  The child *has* to have the opportunities to detach from his/her mother/family and it is important that there is no underlying emotional blackmail going on ie. mum goes on and on about how much she loves being attached to her child leading to the child thinking that is what she needs to do in order to maintain her mother’s love.  Attachment parenting is about being there for your child when and for as long as she needs it - not encouraging attachment, but not discouraging it either.  It’s also about letting your child have the opportunity to be attached to a number of adults, and children, not just to mum.  In an ideal world, children are brought up by a community, not just two parents, and this is when attachment parenting is really healthy.  Babies are carried by their grandmothers; sisters; cousins; aunts - they’re even suckled by them if mum’s not available and baby is in need of comfort!  Babies need to form the strongest attachment to their mum, but to also form strong attachments to other people too, when *they* are ready - not when mum is ready!  Showing this family, I believe, will just reinforce people’s misconceptions that attachment parenting is about parents who don’t want to let go of their babies.

Thirdly - the two-child American family.  I loved this family - I think that this woman talked the most sense.  She didn’t look too unusual and she was extremely articulate when explaining her choices.  I liked it that she talked about asking herself what ‘jungle-mama’ would do in certain situations - it’s something I do all the time!  The British family seemed to work solely on their instincts; the one-child American family worked mostly on mum’s needs; this family worked on a combination of instinct and the experience of thousands of years of evolution.  In the natural world, we wouldn’t bring our children up just on our instincts - they’d certainly be very respected, much more so than they are in our culture, but we’d also listen to our parents; sisters; aunts; grandparents who would have listened to our ancestors - generations and generations of accumulated knowledge of child-rearing would be accessible to us.  Surely this is the best way to do it?  When our girls do something that doesn’t fit with what we expect of modern children, before I worry, I ask myself what a cave-toddler would be doing.  Is this normal behaviour for natural children?  Is what the books say only normal for children brought up the conventional way?  I also ask myself what cave-mother would be doing all the time.  Would she sit down and play with her children all day long?  Certainly not!  She’d have been busy working, with her children running round her feet, occasionally asking questions, helping out, going off to play fantasy games with their friends, sometimes asking to breastfeed; baby in a sling, feeding on and off, not going out of the family’s sight.  If baby cries, mum does something about it asap because to not do so would be to risk the baby’s life.  I’m rambling now!

All in all, I liked this programme - it wasn’t totally ‘look at these wierdos’ but I think it could have been done better. 

Oh yes, and mass breastfeeding sessions (which one of the mums in the tv programme attended with her two nurslings!) - I’ve ranted about these before.  Gah!  I hate them!  People say they are necessary to make breastfeeding more normal.  I don’t think they make breastfeeding normal - I think they make it wierd!  They just serve to increase the perception that breastfeeders are ‘militant’.  I dislike Breastfeeding Awareness Week too.  The only thing that can make breastfeeding normal is by doing it, and by doing it normally!

Flopsy likes workbooks - she’s got the bug from her children’s magazines she enjoys so much - so my mum bought her some for writing, numbers and reading. I don’t think she needs them, but she enjoys them so we go for it. Today she demonstrated twice to us why it is so much better that she’s learning at home, rather than in school.

1. One page was full of little circles and letters down each side of the page. The instructions were to draw a line from one letter, across the page, to the same letter on the other side, making sure that you didn’t touch any circles ie. ending up with a wiggly, but controlled line. We explained the exercise to Flopsy - she replied “but why, Grandma?”. Hmmm, why indeed? Our reply was “that’s what the book wants you to do, but you can do it however you like - I think it’s so you can practice getting your pencil to do what you want it to do” - she settled for following the instructions to the letter and did a grand job of it.

2. Another workbook, about numbers, gave her a page of numbers jumbled up. She was supposed to draw a circle around all the number 3s. She counted them, told us there were only three of them, and drew a circle around the first one. Then she noticed a number 8: “I want to draw a puddle (I think she must recognise her circles are more puddle-like than circle-like!) around the 8 too”. Of course, we said, ok, go on then. She did the rest of the 3s like the book wanted her to.

My question is: Would they have given her the option of doing it how she wanted in a school? I doubt it, somehow, and if she had decided to do what she wanted, she’d probably have been ‘marked down’ as there would be no proof that she was able to do the exercise. We, however, living and being with her all the time, know perfectly well that she has the pen control to do the line-through-the-circles exercise, and wouldn’t really mind one way or the other anyway! We also know that she can recognise all of her numbers up to 10 and most of her numbers up to 20. Again, however, we’re not that fussed if she can or she can’t - as long as she’s happy. Unlike a lot of teachers, we appreciate her need to follow her own free will. We don’t ask her to do exercises so we can see that our ‘teaching’ is effective, or to reinforce our ‘teaching’. We don’t ask her to do exercises at all! She asks us if she can do them. She is motivated to learn to read, write and to learn more about numbers and how they work and that’s lovely - it’s lovely that we’re not sending her to school so that we’re not under pressure to stop her learning these things in case she learns them the ‘wrong’ way. She’s allowed to learn when and how she wants and it truly is a joy to be around to see. I think I’d find it heartbreaking if I knew she wasn’t being allowed to do it her way if she were in school. It’s not about how effective it is (although I do think she’ll learn all these things better if she does it her way), it’s about how fulfilling she finds it all and about how much she feels respected and accepted however she wants to do things.

What a lovely, refreshing article to read.  I have nothing to say, really, about it except that I hope it gets a positive response.

HT: Carlotta

This blog seems to have morphed from a journal of the girls’ lives to a journal of my thoughts and feelings!  Still, I try to remember from time to time to keep a record of what they’re up to, for us to look back on in the future.  So here goes:

Flopsy is learning to read like Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird - she looks over my shoulder when I’m reading a book, perfectly happy while I periodically say ‘come on!  Can’t I read my book for just a few minutes???’.  She gets chuffed to bits when she recognises words she knows - ‘the’, ‘and’ & ‘you’ mostly (as ‘cat’, ‘dog’ and other usual children’s first words don’t tend to be scattered throughout the text of the books I choose to read!).  Then she decides she’d rather point to each word of a sentence while I tell her what it says - she also likes to hear what the page number is as well.  So I guess that in the process of me lazily sitting down to try to read a book for myself for ten or twenty minutes, Flopsy is getting some intense literacy and numeracy time as well - autonomous learning in action!  She also tells us we’ve forgotten to say ‘the’ or ‘and’ when we’re reading her her books, even though we haven’t - she just likes to make sure we’ve remembered all the words on the page I suppose.  It’s nice though, as it shows she’s starting to follow the text as well as looking at the pictures. 

On the numeracy front, she’s got a big book about numbers that has an introduction to basic sums towards the back, which she’s very interested in.  We get lego bricks out and do the sums with those and she’s now started to freqently use the words ‘plus’, ‘add’ and ‘equals’ in her vocabulary - testing them out to see if she’s got the right understanding of them, I think.  Again, it’s amazing to watch all this learning going on without me sitting down and saying ‘right, it’s time to learn how to add’ - she just does it!  She’ll be counting books for us to read before bed (we usually set a limit e.g. ‘we’ve got time for 8 tonight’), and will go and check how many she’s chosen so she knows how many more she needs to choose to make up the number.  She’ll be sharing out pencils or toys with Mopsy and taking a certain number from her own pile so Mopsy’s got the same amount.  There’s nothing contrived at all about the maths going on in our house, and it’s a real pleasure to watch and be invovled with, when we’re allowed to be involved, of course!

Flopsy’s writing is also coming on in leaps and bounds - she is still nuts about tracing over dotted letters and is more confident to try the seemingly harder ones now.  She can confidently write T, O, i, E, l, A and is happy to have a go at V, U and Y but won’t attempt anything else at the moment.  One of her uncles is called Tom and she spends a lot of time writing To Tom (coming up to ask us to write the M for her) on any piece of paper she can find.

Mopsy has become a puzzle fiend and is becoming really adept at putting jigsaw puzzle pieces together.  We’ve got a really nice puzzle that consists of twenty little puzzles of two pieces each, and she’ll sit and concentrate on doing it twice over sometimes!  This is a real example of how she’s learnt from Flopsy, as Flopsy wasn’t putting puzzle pieces together until she was about 22m old, but then she didn’t have the chance to see anyone else doing it over and over again like Mopsy has. 

Mopsy is also really good at colouring in - she can colour in specific places, rather than randomly over the page.  Interestingly, she holds the pencil in her fist, with the lead sticking out by her thumb, with her forefinger outstretched to guide the pencil.  It’s a very accurate and neat method she’s found and I wonder if she’ll have the motivation to ever change it!  I suppose she might once she starts writing, but what’s interesting is that Flopsy has held the pencil the way we’re taught to from the very start - maybe it’s something to do with the fact that Mopsy had access to pencils and crayons from a much younger age than Flopsy had and by the time Flopsy got a chance to draw, her fine motor skills had got to the stage where she could easily hold and control a pencil that way.

Mopsy’s speech is also coming along very quickly - she’s got to that point where she’s learning several words a day and I really enjoy deciphering what she’s saying and the feeling of delight on both our parts when we work it out.  She’s a really happy, helpful child who is totally obsessed with cleaning and putting things away or ‘way’ as she puts it.  If I’m ever stuck for some way to amuse her, all I have to do is give her a damp cloth and she’ll be happy for ages! 

Ok, DH has just left for work now, so I’ll have to stop this post and go and play for a bit!  I’m glad I got some of it down, though, as it was long overdue!

Sorry I keep changing my theme - the lovely Andrea & Ron keep adding new ones and I haven’t found the perfect one yet…having said that, I love this one loads!  Purple is my favourite colour and I love the layout, so hopefully I’ll be sticking with this one from now on.

Hathor’s reaction to the boredom article in cartoon format, although she’s got much more to say on the matter on her blog, here and here.

And a wonderful explanation of how we ought not to be answering the socialization question with ‘they go to five different groups a week, we go to friends houses…’ etc.  I’m really pleased I came across this - I just hope that I can manage to answer such questions in this way without sounding facetious!

…twice, in fact.  Once by Erika, a book meme that I tried doing but got really stuck on (sorry Erika!), and now by Carlotta which I think I might be able to do.  So here goes:

Meme of three: 

1.Things that scare me:
(none of these things really ’scare’ me, I just don’t like them at all and try to avoid them at all costs!)

Fast theme park rides

Slugs

Animals (except for dogs and cats!)

2. People who make me laugh:
DH

Flopsy

Mopsy

3. Things I hate the most:
Slugs

People/companies/government that undermine, or even flat-out deny informed choice (particularly when it comes to breastfeeding)

Child abuse

4. Things I don’t understand:

How anyone can think controlled crying is good/necessary for babies

Why people think children can’t manage to grow up without nursery school/baby music classes/baby gym classes/baby swimming classes/television/bottles/dummies/cots/intensive school testing/being bullied etc. etc. - how do they think children grew up before all these things were invented or became the cultural norm?

Why our government persists in pretending it aspires to democracy
5. Things I’m doing right now:
Listening to fun pre-bedtime games going on in the next room

Wondering at what point I ought to go and take an antacid

Fiddling with a loose part of my computer chair with my foot
6. Things I want to do before I die:
See my daughters have their own babies

Celebrate a big, important wedding anniversary

Some more nursing - maybe elderly care…real nursing

7. Things I can do:
Give birth

Breastfeed

Touch-type

8. Ways to describe my personality:
Impatient

Happy

Open

9. Things I can’t do:
Stop worrying about my children/DH/all my loved ones having horrific accidents or getting seriously ill

Juggle

Stop my heart bursting when I hear Flopsy and Mopsy playing together happily

10. Things I think you should listen to:
Mopsy’s giggle

Flopsy saying ‘oh, my darling little precious baby, I love you, poppet’ for no particular reason to Mopsy

My 3.5yr old niece’s incredible singing voice

11. Things you should never listen to:
Mopsy’s angry scream

Flopsy’s angry scream

My incredibly rubbish singing voice

12. Things I’d like to learn:
How to have a baby at home and *not* end up in hospital at some point in the first week!

Dressmaking (I can sew relatively well, but would like to learn how to make things really neatly and professionally)

Social anthropology

13. Favorite foods:
Roast lamb

Treacle pudding with custard

Green & Black’s chocolate-coated almonds

14. Beverages I drink regularly:
Tea

Apple juice

That’s it!

15. Shows I watched as a kid:
Hartbeat (that children’s art show)

Grange Hill

Neighbours
16. People I’m tagging to do this meme:
Erika at What We Did on our Holy Days

Deb at Notsheep

Maia at Touchingly Naive

Why do they say that nesting is an early suggestion that labour is about to start?  In all three of my pregnancies I have nested like mad for the whole of the second trimester.  We’ve just moved house to a really lovely place that suits all our purposes absolutely perfectly.  Bizarrely (for me), I have been seized by an overwhelming need to keep the place absolutely spotless.  I’ve been clearing up after myself and the girls as soon as we stop doing whatever is making the mess (instead of ending up with several days worth of toys and mess to tidy away when we have someone coming over); sweeping our lovely laminate floor twice a day (instead of vacuuming only when I can’t stand the bits sticking to my feet any longer!); washing up after every single meal (instead of leaving a days washing up for DH to do as he gets Mopsy to sleep in the sling in the evenings); putting away all the washing as soon as it’s dry (instead of once a fortnight gathering the energy to empty the huge Ikea bags of clean clothes we’ve managed to accumulate and which we’ve spent the last two weeks searching through for the clothes we’re going to wear that day as there are none in the drawers/wardrobe); cooking supper or bathing the girls before DH gets home so he has more time to play with them (instead of leaving both jobs for DH to do when he gets in from work!); the list is pretty much endless!  I keep telling myself that, as well as enabling us to live in a very pleasant environment most of the time, it also means less work as I have less to do when I do decide to clear up/wash up/whatever.  However, I am absolutely knackered by the end of each day and feel like I’ve been seriously overdoing it - aching bump, aching back, seriously in need of hot baths and warm beds.  The laziness I’ve been describing is a hang-over from my first trimester when I genuinely was too ill and tired to do anything at all - getting dressed in the mornings pretty much did me for the day and putting the girls in front of the tv. for an horrific amount of the day was the only way I could get through it - but it’s taken moving house to galvanise me to utilise my lovely second-trimester-energy-boost.  What I really need to be doing is making the most of it to get all my last assignments done, and prepare for Christmas early so that when the third-trimester-sluggishness hits me, I have very little I need to do.  Being a housewife extraordinaire sadly leaves little time for things like that though!

ps. Although I still feel a bit yucky digestion-wise (serious heartburn and a real post-meal ‘depression’), I am really enjoying this bit again - baby is kicking loads, and strong enough for DH to feel, although not strong enough for Flopsy to feel, sadly; I love my body when I’m pregnant too - I lose loads of weight so look slim everywhere but my tummy, which is lovely and rounded instead of flabby and minging!  Hurrah for second trimester highs!

I just wanted to clarify that, in light of a couple of comments in reply to my last post.  Referring to a previous post I wrote, I think that children of mothers like the author of this article are probably better off with a nanny than with their own mother who would spend all day obviously resenting them for taking her away from her life. 

Life is what we make it.  I find a lot of mothering tasks boring, but that is because of the way our culture encourages women to either be ‘child-centred’ or not.  If you are child-centred, you are often labelled an ‘earth mother’ and you stay at home and pretend that mothering is all sweetness and light.  If you are not child-centred, you go back to work asap and get your children/babies in child-care of some description or other.  Of course, going back to work doesn’t necessarily make you much more money than staying at home because you want the best childcare for your baby and therefore pay as much as your salary allows!  But that’s by-the-by.  The fact is that neither option is very good for children.  Childhood is a very false concept invented by the Victorians.  In an ideal world, children grow up living along-side adults as they go about their adult-work.  They don’t have an adult/adults devoting their time to amusing them.  What they do have is an adult/adults who have committed themselves to being responsible for them while they go about their child-work, which involves watching adults, copying them, and then going and making up fantasy games with other children based on what they’ve learnt from what the adults are doing.  This is why I don’t think that mothers who find incessant playing/reading/etc. boring are bad - they’re normal!  Mothers aren’t meant to spend their days playing/reading/etc.  But they are meant to be there for their children, if they possibly can, as much as they possibly can (bearing in mind that some mothers have no choice in the matter - we can only do the best we can with the resources and knowledge we have at the time), because children grow up best in the company of a few select adults that are emotionally important to them, and who they feel secure and happy with.  I agree with commentors that it is not very easy in our culture to provide this ideal sort of growing-up environment for children, but it is by no means impossible, and this is why HE, and more specifically, autonomous education, is so wonderful, particularly in this day and age where there are so many more families choosing this route.

For an HE family, it is possible (if I am to believe my HE friends!) to be among the company of other families pretty much every day of the week.  The children grow up playing with children of all different ages; the adults get to chat about whatever they fancy.  If one family is spending the day at another family’s home, it is possible for the host parent to get on with housework along-side the guest family’s parent/s.  Most of the HE families I know are keen to hang around until ‘close-of-play’ and to have guests to their home do the same.  None of the traditional etiquette of only staying for a couple of hours, forcing mums to trudge home for the end-of-afternoon boring, ratty, irritable time, where food has to be cooked and, if you’re a traditional house-wife, houses have to be tidied and slippers found and warmed ready for Pa when he returns from work!  I’m not saying that my life is perfect - far from it!  I groan when Flopsy drags me onto the floor to play yet another game of something-or-other; I grimace when Mopsy brings me yet another book to read; I count the hours down until DH returns from work; I feel annoyed when I realise that, although I’m not hungry, I really ought to think about getting the girls something to eat.  But I don’t think the answer is handing them over to someone who is not emotionally important to them so that I can go and live the life I’d rather be living.  I think the answer is finding a solution that is not harmful, and hopefully beneficial to everyone involved.  In order to keep my brain ticking over, I’ve been very involved with our local NCT branch and am working towards a diploma in Breastfeeding Counselling - by it’s nature, the NCT is very family-friendly and you are only expected to do what you can do within the restrictions of your family life.  Going along to HE meets and getting to know other HE families with young children provides the ideal environment I’ve described above.  Still, I end up spending quite a few days finding myself bored and lonely, particularly while Mopsy is going through her pinching stage, but I find those days more boring and lonely when I focus on how bored and lonely I am feeling!  If I can make myself enjoy them, I usually do enjoy them.  It’s not easy, but telling myself how much I love reading ‘Brown Bear’ for the millionth time really does start to turn my mind around from ‘Oh no, not again’ to ‘oh look, this is actually fun!’.

Mothering in our culture is boring and lonely, but don’t moan about it - do something about it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!