Kate

When my first born was a baby, I used to anxiously wait until she was asleep, then I would whisk through the house and clean up. When she woke up, I would be all eyes on her, sitting and playing and taking care of her until at last she would fall asleep again. Repeat.

We were driving through the beautiful countryside yesterday and my husband said, “Hey Kate, stop looking at your phone and look at the scenery.” I was in the worst mood ever (we were joking about it) and I said, “Oh would you shut up and let me look at my phone!” I’d seen the pretty scenery a million times before and it was the first time I’d had a chance to check my phone all day.

I like dogs, I really do. My kids like dogs too, but only when the dog is on a lead, is close to their owner and isn’t acting like a lunatic.

Understandably, nobody wants their child to grow up into a spoiled, ego-centric adult. But, is purposely teaching kids that they are NOT the center of the universe, the right way to do it?

It’s a stab to the heart… When your gently raised child starts biting, hitting, pushing and smacking. You always hear that children learn by watching their parents… but YOU do not bite, hit, push or smack, so why is your child? It’s baffling and it can become quite frustrating to deal with. Deep down in your heart, you know that you’re doing the right thing by not using authoritative punishment for your child, but you’re seriously questioning yourself and don’t know what to do.

The little boy at the playground could not have been more than 20 months old. Although I had seen him with his parents before, when he came wondering slowly over to the water play area, his parents were nowhere to be seen. My girls had asked for permission to get wet in one of the fountains. I told them it was ok because we had a change of clothes in the car.

“There’s Nothing to be Scared About” is Something I Never Say to My Kids. Her whole body was trembling. She was terrified. Margo’s swim lesson last week, was the last lesson of the day. She had been going to swim lessons at a different pool for a few years, but we hadn’t gone in about six months and now we were at a new pool. A new instructor. It was cold and windy outside and getting late. Even though we were indoors, she was shivering. A friend of hers, who was supposed to be in the same class, had cancelled because he was sick. All of the other kids had called out sick too! She was all alone, with a new teacher, in a new place and I knew she was petrified. She held out for about ten minutes. Then, finally, she stopped, looked at me and cried out, “I’M SCARED!!!” Of course you…

Children see no difference between playing and learning, as long as the learning is fun! ’Fun‘ does not mean things have to be flashy, shiny, loud, expensive or exotic (although they certainly can be). I swear, give a kid a cup and some water and they might play with it for half an hour. This learning while playing thing is not an easy concept for most adults to comprehend because we are so used to making meaning out of an activity. We are used to setting up purpose made activities to encourage a particular outcome.

My kids were bouncing around on the bed tonight, singing ‘Ring Around the Rosie‘. I told Margo (the older one) to stop (for the eighteen millionth time) because the little one is still a toddler and clumsy on her feet. Margo didn’t really listen and I didn’t really have the energy to pull them apart soooo… a minute later, they were crumpled up in a heap on the bed, crying and clutching at their freshly sustained injuries. The little one had a bloody mouth and the big kid had been bashed on the head by some sharp flying body part, like an elbow or chin. Both were hurt and both were crying really hard.

The past week at the beach, Margo (nearly 4 years old), has been on a serious mission to make new friends. She’ll spot some kid (usually a girl dressed in pink), who is relatively her age, but often a quite a few years older and says, “Mom, do you see that girl waaaay over there? Is it ok if I go and play with her?” Of course, I say yes, if it looks reasonable, and then she bolts. Leaving myself and her baby sister in the dust.

Energy reserves start to plummet into oblivion and the room starts to spin. The demands from my kids get louder and more persistent…

“Oh, Hi little one“, said this excited lady, flapping her arms, at the shopping center, “It won’t be long until Christmas… Santa is going to come and bring you lots of presents… Are you excited?!”  I did the ‘ol smile and nod as she walked past.  She was speaking to my 15 month old daughter, Goldie, who couldn’t exactly verbalize any response.  It was October 30 and the Christmas decorations had just gone up…  exactly EIGHT WEEKS BEFORE CHRISTMAS!!!  EIGHT WEEKS!  The Christmas music… already blaring on the mall’s sound system… Eight. More. Weeks.  Why, why why?!?! It’s not that I ‘don’t do Christmas‘.  And, it’s not that I ‘do Christmas‘ either.  How can I explain it… Well, for starters, my husband and I are both technically Jewish, although we’re really only 1/2 each.  So, while Christmas celebrations were happening all around us at kids, we were never really in…

Nursing Aversion: The toe-curling, blood-boiling, rip-your-hair-out, bite-the-back-of-your-hand and want-to-go-running-down-the-street-screaming feeling that you may get when your toddler asks for the boobies

To me, just saying ‘sorry‘ is just lip service. Actually, in some cultures, the term ‘sorry‘ is rarely used because it is considered awkward and insincere. Of course, I’m not bashing anyone for ‘actually‘ teaching their kids to say sorry.

Just about every kid’s most frequently used word is ‘NO‘. It sometimes comes out even when they mean to say ‘yes‘! Really, it’s bizarre behaviour and can often be quite maddening for parents.

Raising Children Without TV Sometime today, the house got quiet… like real quiet. The motormouth had stopped motoring for a few moments and I went looking to see what sort of trouble my three year old was getting into. When I found her, she was sitting on the couch, glued to my iPhone playing some numbers and letters learning app. She was 100% sucked into the screen. Check for signs of life, if you know what I mean. She doesn’t play with my phone too often. Sometimes she plays with it more than others and she goes through phases of wanting to use it. If Art’s downloaded a cool new app for her, she’s likely to ask to play with it a little more often than usual. But, when the ‘new-ness’ of an app has worn off, she sometimes won’t ask to use the phone for up to a couple…

This morning, it was raining, I didn’t have the car, I was recovering from a 3 day long headache, and Margo was driving me absolutely bananas!

There’s all this silly controversy in the baby world of debaters and ‘experts’. The attachment parents (AP) say, ‘nurse your baby to sleep‘. The anti-AP (Is there a term for these people?)

Night-Waking, Night-Weaning; It’s Not All Night-Mares The attachment parents (AP) always cop it hard on this one: night waking. We don’t let our kids ‘cry it out’, we wear them, we co-sleep, we breastfeed on demand, and some of us even take our babies to the toilet (called elimination communication), and yet it happens to almost all of us… the constant night waking.  The little newborns start off great, they sleep for 3,4, 5, maybe even 6 hour stretches at night.  You start getting really giddy around 2 months, thinking that your baby is going to start sleeping through the night and then sometime around five months old BAM: constant night waking. Constant night waking can leave you feeling quit exasperating, especially when everyone is already giving you flack for practicing all the usual attachment parenting philosophies, like feeding on demand and letting your baby sleep in your room or…

Since Margo is about to turn three, I’ve recently been thinking a lot about her birth. Margo was born in a hospital setting and her birth was considered a ‘natural childbirth’.

Human Breast Milk Donations A few years ago, I read in the news about an ice cream shop in the UK that was selling ice cream made from human breastmilk for something like $25 a pop.  At the time, Margo had just been born and I had already been breastfeeding already for several months.  So, the idea of a human consuming another human’s breastmilk didn’t seem too much of a crazy notion to me… although, I could understand some people that would think otherwise! Well, I haven’t had a breastfeeding break since then and the old girls have been working double time lately.  A few weeks ago, a cry went out on a parenting facebook page that I belong to, ‘Local mum in hospital, needs donated milk‘.  Donating breastmilk had been something on my mind for a while.  I had read an amazing story, from a local mum, about the…

Co-Sleeping Conundrums It’s all fun and games until someone gets head-butted in the eye…  Don’t get me wrong, I love love love co-sleeping with my babies… actually, it’s not that I love it, it’s just that I can’t imagine it any other way.  Okay, but occasionally, sleeping with a baby and a toddler in the same room/bed does have its funny challenges and dilemmas.  What would the cave people have done… well, they wouldn’t have thought twice about it, they all sleep together and on the same safe sleeping surface… but we all live in houses and have things like mattresses and blankets, etc.  So, we do need to consider a few things in order to make co-sleeping work. We have been co-sleeping with Margo since day #1.  We don’t have a cot (crib) and she has never slept in another room away from us.  At first, Margo was in our…

I’m a firm believer in only starting a baby on solids only when they reach certain developmental milestones: sitting, able to put things (food) in their mouth, etc.