The natural learning processes of babies and children is of endless fascination to me.  Observing it makes me more and more keen on autonomous education and I feel very certain that we will continue our parenting philosophy of being led by our off-spring forever

Cotton-tail is currently learning how to eat solid foods.  As regular readers of this blog will know, we unintentionally did ‘baby-led weaning’ with Flopsy (she refused anything off a spoon except yoghurt) and, having learnt more about it, did it on purpose with Mopsy.  Cotton-tail is now 6.5 months and has been joining us at the table in her tripp trapp high-chair (no tray) for a few weeks (of course she’s been with us at mealtimes since she was born, but usually sleeping in someone’s arms or wriggling on someone’s lap).  She is learning to eat in this way:

1. Learning how to pick up food, and, more specifically, learning how to pick up different types of food.  She loves it that cucumber slides around and feels cold but that potato mashes up in her hand

2. Then she has learnt how to get it into her mouth.  Her hand control has developed enough for her to make sure she picks the food up in such a way that there is enough food ‘visible’ to get some into her mouth.  She is also starting to learn how to put food from one hand into another to make it more accessible.

3. Next she is learning how to bite pieces off what she’s got in her hand - a very pleasing experience, particuarly when every food does different things: Brocolli kind of breaks up into tiny little pieces which feel very interesting in her mouth; pasta feels slippery

4. Her current plan is to master the art of moving food around in her mouth with her tongue.  Lots of gagging involved in this phase; and spitting food out onto the table, but she’s getting there.

5. The next thing she has to learn is how to mash the food up so it’s easy to swallow.  We’re beginning to see less food on the floor after mealtimes so I’m guessing she’s doing this a little already.  Her poos have yet to change, though, so she’s obviously not doing it very much!

The theory suggests that all this falls into place at about the same time her gut is ready to digest it all effectively and safely, when it’s less permeable to allergens and bacteria.  I don’t need to worry about her lacking in nutrients due to the lack of solid food intake because she’s still breastfed on demand.  If she’s anything like her sisters, by the time she gets to 8 or 9 months she’ll be eating food like her Daddy (albeit a bit messier!).

 Mopsy is currently learning how to settle herself in the night.  Flopsy is the only one of our babies to experience any sleep-training and that only consisted of a grand total of two minutes controlled crying and a week’s worth of patting/rocking to sleep at 5 months old in the misguided belief that it was bad for her to learn to fall asleep at the breast.  When we stopped all that nonsense, life got much easier and, miraculously, Flopsy has been falling asleep without breastfeeding for at least 18 months and sleeping right through the night most nights; only needing a loo visit and a cuddle to settle if she does wake. 

Mopsy is doing exactly what Flopsy did.  Breastfeeding no longer gets her to sleep. It does switch her mind off and start the process, but the action of suckling now keeps her from falling fast asleep most of the time.  So we feed, and then she rolls over and falls asleep herself while I cuddle her (when evenings work out well, that’s what happens - I won’t go into that whole thing now, though!).  Most of the time when she wakes in the night (two or three times), she now rolls over mumbling a half-hearted request for a breastfeed (yak yak, she calls it) but falls asleep before I get to feed her. 

The next step will be settling before she even asks for milk.  However we’ve upset the process a bit now by decorating their room for them and pushing the two single beds together.  They now both want to sleep in there, which is lovely for them.  And it’s very pleasing to me to note that when Mopsy does wake, she doesn’t cry for me - she’s not scared of not sleeping next to me - she just calls ‘Mummy’ and me or DH go and get her and bring her back into our bed where she settles very quickly.  It does mean that she’s woken up more than she would if she were stirring next to me so she does need feeding to get back to sleep. 

When Flopsy did this, it was the start of the weaning process…maybe I’ll start thinking about weaning Mopsy but I don’t really feel like I want to like I did when Flopsy was this age.  Mopsy is much happier than Flopsy was to have feeds that last a few seconds (more a cursory checking in with me, than an actual need to feed); and she doesn’t ask as much as Flopsy did.  We’ll just see how it goes for now.

Flopsy is currently having a ‘learning to read’ phase.  She’s had lots of these during her life so far.  The early ones were things like a desire to learn her letters; or wanting to sit with me with a book and tell me her own version of the story; or asking me to point out the words in whatever book I’m reading and tell her what they say.  At the moment she’s bringing books to us and asking us to read the words with her.  Her favourite book ever is one she discovered a couple of years ago at the back of a bookcase.  It’s called Daily Light and is a collection of Bible readings - one for every day of the year.  Now no one could describe us as devoted Christians, but I’ve been brought up a Christian and my Grandparents would love it if we went to church regularly and read the Bible.  They gave me this book when I was 15.  It’s small - about 8cm wide; 13cm tall and 2cm thick and Flopsy has fallen in love with it.  It has proper thin pages like a Bible has, which I think appeals to her.  We’ve never read to her from it, so she has no idea what it says (I think!), but she loves it - ‘reads’ it when we’re reading our books in the evening etc.  At the moment she often brings it to me asking me what the words say - she doesn’t want me to read it to her, but wants me to point to the words and if she knows them she reads them and if she doesn’t, I do. 

She’s also very keen on reading one of the bedtime stories they choose every night and that’s really enjoyable.  We have a collection of Puddle Lane books - mostly bought from car boot sales to satisify my nostalgia! - and she is also really enjoying reading those with me.  I read the adult’s side of the page; then she reads the child’s side; then she gets bored and wants me to read it all. 

These reading bouts take place randomly during the day and very frequently happen at 10pm when we’re reading in bed before going to sleep.  Another reason to be glad she won’t be going to school - she can learn to read in her own time and whenever and whatever she likes

PS.  All three girls are also learning heaps of other things all the time, of course, but these things seem to be what they’re focussing on at the moment. 

Not sure how this post will turn out…I’m just going to go with my thoughts… 

When I was first pregnant with Flopsy, I dutifully went to see my GP (as I was told to do by magazines and books) who said “congratulations - make an appointment to see the midwife”.  When I got pregnant with Mopsy I did the same - good little girl that I am!  Both times I came away wondering what the point had been.  The GP hadn’t done a test, he’d just taken my word for it.  Even if he had done a test, the home test kits are just as accurate as the ones they have at the surgery so it would have been a bit of a waste of money.  So when I got pregnant with Cotton-tail I rang the surgery and asked for an appointment with the midwife.  “Have you seen the Dr yet?” the nosy receptionist asked (not sure why I needed to write ‘nosy’ there - aren’t all drs receptionists nosy?).  “No” I replied “Why?”.  “Well you need to see the Dr to confirm that you are pregnant.”  I refused and said “This is my third pregnancy - I can assure I am certainly pregnant.  Isn’t it a bit of a waste of valuable surgery time for me to come in and be told something I know already?  There’s no necessity for me to see the Dr at all - please make me an appointment with the midwife”.  She saw sense, thank goodness, and made me one.  But my story is not unusual.  From the minute we conceive we are told by convention that we are not capable.  We cannot even be trusted to know that we are pregnant without an all-seeing, all-knowing  a fully trained Dr telling us that we are!  This then leads onto us being told, implicitly, that we can’t be trusted to carry a baby to term.  We need to have millions of tests to check we’re doing it well enough and if we’re not, well that’s ok - the state will step in and sort it all out for us.  Before I go on, let me just make it clear that I am not bemoaning the provision of good antenatal care here.  This post is about the fact that we are as close to being forced to conform as is humanly possible in a ‘democracy’ such as we live in.  If we refuse tests we are frowned at and told that we’re irresponsible.  We are punished repeatedly for this act of revolt by having it stamped across our notes for every health care professional (HCP) we come across to see and tell us off about.  Having said that, I’ve been lucky enough to have mostly midwives and drs who believe in informed choice and in respecting informed choice even if it’s not what they’d choose.  But I have been lucky - a lot of women are being ‘cared for’ by HCPs who are paternalistic - ‘they’ve done the training so they know best and anyone who thinks they know better are irresponsible’.  So this all subconciously tells us we can’t manage without help - we are disempowered!  How many women go to every single antenatal appointment they are given, have every single scan and every single blood test when they’re expecting their first baby?

Then the birth happens.  We’re told it’s dangerous to birth our babies at home for various reasons.  We are told that we won’t possibly be able to do it without help from midwives and drs. and all the wonderful equipment available in hospital.  Never mind the fact that we have been able to birth our babies without it all since time began!  That’s a huge subject to dissect, but the point is, we are still being disempowered - women truly don’t believe they have the power to birth a baby safely without help.

Then after our babies are born, our mothering skills are tested and checked up on by health visitors.  Our ability to feed them is checked up on - not by asking us how we feel our babies are doing, but by weighing them!  There is even a chart that health visitors refer to that tells them how well we’re doing as mothers.  It has so much attention paid to it, that chart, despite the fact that there is so much research saying how badly it’s utilised and how there is far too much focus put on it.  But still, it’s a good way for them to keep tabs on us incompetent mothers.  I’ve heard mothers say ‘I kind of know he’s doing well - he’s happy, developing, filling out his clothes - but I like to go and get him weighed so I know for certain that he’s ok’.  We don’t trust the evidence before our eyes and can’t believe we’re doing an ok job as a mother unless a HCP tells us so.

At some point in history, children started going to school.  As more and more children did it, more and more people started to believe that all children should go to school.  Then people started believing that children wouldn’t learn if they didn’t go to school.  When I was a little girl, children went when they were five and were taught by teachers who could do pretty much what they wanted.  Then they brought in the national curriculum and teachers were being implicitly told that they weren’t capable of teaching without interference from the powers that be.  Well if that’s the case, then certainly parents can’t possibly be capable of ensuring their children are educated!  Then they brought in ‘reception year’ for 4 year olds.  Not compulsory at all, but of course more and more children started to go and now it is nearly unheard-of for children to wait to attend school until they’re 5.  Because of course parents can’t possibly be trusted to educate their children once they get to 4 years old, can they?  Actually, they can’t really be trusted to do that even once their children reach 3 years old, hence the free nursery places for three year old children, and the national curriculum for babies and toddlers.  Parents themselves now don’t believe they’re capable of caring for their children once they hit 3 years old.  The disempowerment is creeping into every facet of our parenting lives and it’s been getting worse and worse.  I once read a post on a parenting forum from a mum of a 2-year-old who had been working but now was facing the prospect of being a stay-at-home-mum unable to afford nursery fees - she was very concerned that she wouldn’t be able to teach him what he needed to know and was asking for ideas as to how to teach him his numbers etc.  This was not an unusual post!  Parents really don’t trust themselves any more and that’s because the government doesn’t trust them. 

This is quite a rambling post - sorry about that!  Anyway, what I’m about to ramble onto now is my feelings about breastfeeding and empowerment.  I believe that women’s belief in their ability to mother their babies can be damaged even further if they don’t succeed at breastfeeding.  The reason I believe this is because of how I have noticed that when women who have not managed to birth their babies without help have found successful breastfeeding incredibly healing and they talk about their immense pride that they’re babies have grown and thrived because of their milk.  This is not to say that mothers who don’t breastfeed don’t have the same ability to mother!  What I wonder is if they have a less robust subconcious belief in their ability to mother.  Whether they are more disempowered…?  I would love to see a study into this, although how it would be done I have no idea!  I am not as interested as you might imagine in getting babies breastfed.  I am trained to be mother-centred and to focus on empowering mothers because how e nurture our babies is the main focus of the beginning of our parenting careers and if we feel empowered at the beginning, perhaps we continue to feel empowered and capable and more trusting of our instincts and innate ability to mother.  So another reason for supporting breastfeeding supporters (not breastfeeding promoters - breastfeeding promotion is disempowering). 

Of course, I don’t think breastfeeding isn’t the be-all-and-end-all, but it is often the starting point.  The endless testing and direction and taking-over of parenting by the state, in my opinion, filters down to our children.  By sending them to school, we (and their teachers) imply that they are not capable of learning without someone teaching them.  By making them eat what and when we say so (or rather when the books/health visitors/whatever say so), we imply that they are not capable of regulating their own food intake.  By forcing them to sleep at set times of the day (because that is what we are told we ought to do), we imply that they are not capable of going to sleep when they’re tired.  I could go on.  The fact is that everyone in the world has different experiences that everyone else.  Everyone has different knowledge.  We ought to be sharing that knowledge and experience but not telling other people what to do based on it or we rob them of the chance of gaining their own knowledge and experience - we disempower them and they go on to disempower others.

Again, apologies for the rambling nature of this post - these thoughts have been roaming my head for weeks now, waiting for an opportunity to be blogged about.  And of course my children won’t do as their told and sit quietly while I concentrate   There’s loads more to say/write about this subject

Over on Sometimes It’s Peaceful, there has been much discussion on the subject of housework in a non-coercive household.  The topic of ‘unfooding’ came up once or twice…a made up phrase which I’m guessing describes more or less what we do. 

I have (unsurprisingly to those readers who have been reading for some time or who know me in real life) breastfed all my babies.  Flopsy and I decided that weaning time for her came at about 2.75yrs - Mopsy is still breastfeeding as, of course, is Cotton-tail.  When it came to introducing solids to Flopsy, at the recommended 6 months of age, she refused all runny/mushy food except for yoghurts.  We worried but had heard vague things about baby-led weaning so tried to be a bit less twitchy about it.  When she was 7 months old, I went to a little Christmas party at our Bumps and Babies group.  I handed her a piece of cucumber to play with as she was teething and I thought it would help her gums - she guzzled it down no trouble.  After that we gave her grown-up food all the time, occassionally pre-chewing it for her.  At her 9 month check, the Health Visitor didn’t really actually look at Flopsy, but only at her weight chart and told me she was too small and ‘needed to be getting her calories from solids now, rather than breastmilk’ (which is very stupid as everyone knows that a calorie is still a calorie wherever it comes from!).  I was very worried despite my knowledge of breastfeeding, because I knew that I couldn’t force her to eat anything more than she was.  So I went away and did more reading about baby-led weaning and long-term breastfeeding and decided that I had nothing to worry about so long as she was still breastfed on demand.  By age 1 year, she was eating adult-sized portions at mealtimes and loving her food.  Now, she is a very healthy little girl, very slightly smaller than the average, but then I’m short and DH is thin so she’s probably the size she’s meant to be.  She’s gone through several phases of eating very little - occassionally next to nothing! - and several stages of having a massive appetite.  I trust her body to get her to eat and drink what she needs when she needs it and it seems to be working.  But we feel the only way to trust her completely is to let her eat and drink whenever and not just restrict her eating to mealtimes.  Just as she was perfectly capable of self-regulating her own nutrition when she was exclusively breastfeeding, so she is perfectly capable of doing the same with solid food. 

But what about table-manners?  What about the social convention of mealtimes?  How will she learn them?  (By the way, Mopsy is now doing the same thing).  We trust that both girls will just learn these things as they grow up if they are free from any pressure to do so.  In fact, while we adults sit at the table to eat meals together, both girls nearly always join us, although we never pressure them to…just offer a plate of what we’re eating.  If they’re wathing tv, they even turn it off in order to join us sometimes!  If they don’t want to be with us, then I can’t exactly blame them…we usually talk about adult things which are boring to them…but it rarely happens.  They nearly always choose to eat with us as they enjoy the social occassion of eating meals together.  Sometimes they eat very little at the table, but I don’t mind that if we’ve cooked for the adults and just left a child-sized portion for them - it’s not exactly a waste and I know they eat a balanced diet over a period of time and that’s surely the most important thing.

Oh yes…balanced diets…how do they do it?  Who knows?  I certainly don’t stop them eating chocolate or biscuits if they’re around.  I don’t tend to buy them very often as they’re expensive, but if I do, they also choose to eat fruit and sandwiches even if they also have the choice of ‘treats’ as well.  I think that this is because they don’t feel the need to eat as much chocolate as they can when it’s available becuase it’s not rationed when it is available.  They know they can have it if they want, so they can take it or leave it and often will choose something else.  If I’m cutting up carrots, they’ll have some raw carrot.  One of their favourite snacks is frozen peas.  They love making their own sandwiches but prefer to eat ham just as it comes out of the packet.

So, a possible food day for the girls might be (I wrote ‘typical’ first, but then changed it to ‘possible’ as every day is completely different:

Get up and watch tv.  Come downstairs when hungry and have a few slices of ham and a home-made ice-lolly.  Drink squash from a sports bottle I leave out for them.  Have a play.  Eat a biscuit.  Join us for lunch, making their own random sandwiches - ham and jam is a current favourite!  Help themselves to a bowl of grapes I’ve left out for them.  Ask me to help them get a yoghurt to eat.  Be discovered sitting on the kitchen floor eating bread straight out of the bag together.  Have a bowl of frozen peas.  Be offered a square of chocolate from a friend’s chocolate bar.  Join us for supper - mince and rice, for example.  Mopsy will have a few breastfeeds during the day, and a mammoth one in the evening when she goes to sleep.  Flopsy usually stays up and has some random late night snack like jam on bread or ice-cream. 

I’m looking forward to having a blackberry bush in the garden, and tomato plants, and carrots for them to help themselves to.

So is that ‘unfooding’?  Whatever it is, it works, and it works with very young children so I guess it works with older children too.  It’s also pretty hassle-free and, once you’ve got used to it and seen it working, it’s worry-free as well.  I have to admit that when they go through phases of not really eating very much fruit or veg, I give them vitamin supplements, or put pureed veg in with their mince, but they usually end up having a fruit-and-veg fest at some point to even it out, so it’s probably unneccessary.  It means we have no meal-time rows about getting them to finish their food, or trying to get them to please eat one piece of brocolli.  And they’re becoming very independent very young, which is easier for me

The girls are bickering less!  After discussion with MIL, I realised that I’m breaking up far fewer rows at the moment.  I’m wondering if, by limiting tv, I was actually forcing the girls to play together, as there’s not really any other choice, really, if they don’t fancy solitary play.  Surely anyone would argue if they had to spend that much time doing things together.  TV gives them the chance to do something alongside eachother that doesn’t interfere with the other’s enjoyment of it.  And of course they’re then refreshed and ready for another bout of playing together.