…perfectly illustrated by Allie.  I’ve talked on and off about this subject throughout my blogging time, but to read an adult’s account of what they genuinely felt as a child trying to live up to expectations is so powerful - much more so than speculation about what our children feel when we praise them or label them.

Sorry!  It’s for no reason other than that I’ve been focussing on birth preparation and NCT things.  I had also been considering changing our blog rather dramatically, or maybe even closing it completely, but have decided against it.  I’ve discovered the Baby Milk Action blog which is very useful and going straight onto my blogroll.  Look at yesterday’s post on there for some information about the Body Shop/L’Oreal situation and Anita Roddick’s ‘interesting’ take on the situation - apparently, despite encouraging boycotts as a way of adding consumer pressure throughout her working life, she now says “…boycotts rarely work and the people you hurt are primarily the weak and the frail. And when all you do is boycott then there is no chance of getting a lever on the way the world is.”  Isn’t it sad how nearly everyone seems to be prone to corruption when large amounts of money are involved, even when they’ve spent their working lives trying to prevent such corruption?

Mopsy is now sitting on my knee saying ’stop working, Mummy, stop working’ so I’ll stop writing now with a promise to try and blog more regularly again! 

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!

We’ve had a lovely holiday and I feel very refreshed.  I’ll try to post some photos soon, but we’re moving house next week so blogging may continue to be a bit sporadic for a couple more weeks.

Gina Ford:  Threats of her lawyers have caused a huge UK parenting website/forum to ban discussions about her and her methods because they’re sometimes a bit rude (or ‘defamatory’ in legalese)!  This issue is actually very worrying, as well as quite amusing.  If she were so confident in her stupid, cruel methods (yeah, Gina, come and sue me too!), she wouldn’t care less about people sounding off about her.  I wonder if she secretly is a bit concerned about quite how ‘contented’ her books make babies…?  But quite apart from all this, what about the issue of free speech (or whatever the proper term for it is)?  How on earth are lawyers allowed to do something like this?  It’s not just that parents are unkind about her, any unpleasant remarks about her methods are actually backed up by many experts in psychology and childcare.  The Australian Association of Infant Mental Health have a wonderfully informative (and very alarming) position paper on the subject.  But even if one or two posters were actually writing things that were unkind about her character, I don’t believe for one minute that it was such a regular occurrance that it is necessary to take legal action about it!  Please can someone with more time and knowledge write a more coherent blog post about this issue? 

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.

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. 

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!