My education
I spent the vast majority of my teenage summers camping in France with my family. I learned a lot those summers and it had a huge impact on certain aspects of my attitude to life. Aside from netting me an honour in French, I picked up a lot of my attitude to food from eating and drinking there with French families.
As they say, everything in moderation, even moderation. I had my first drink there, wine bien sûr, enjoyed at the table with my parents and our friends, as I hope one day to do with my almost teenage son (only 7 months to go argh!)
I also like to cook from scratch every day and try to avoid the frozen food option at the end of a long day by just not keeping it in the house. I also try to prepare the main meal before lunch when I am not so tired and sometimes get a few minutes during nap times.
Another thing I try not to stock is shop bought sweets and biscuits, as much for my own sake as anyone else’s, I used to be 6 stone heavier than I am now and I know its a slippery slope. I do make treats and I don’t mind giving the children chocolate – so long as its an ingredient in something I have prepared myself and of good quality, 70 or 80% cocoa. We had our four year old’s birthday party at the weekend and I’m sure some of the mums attending thought I must live on the stuff!
Sound like I know it all? Well don’t worry, I don’t. I have fussy kids and rejected vegetables and a mother looking over my shoulder telling me to give in and give them the chicken nuggets. Am I right to stick it out or am I just stubborn? I don’t know, I know they don’t starve and sometimes I get my way and the casserole gets eaten, even if it is the second time its been put on the table, I think its worth the wait.
Kiddie Cocaine
I try to take a moderate approach in my parenting and childminding practice, but this is often difficult. For instance, like all other mums, I try to ensure the children have a pretty healthy diet. But rather than ban any food type, or force feed them brocolli (as was done to me by a childminder when I was a child) I just don’t buy certain foods, I leave the fruit in easy reach and cook vegetables into their meals. I guess you could say I’m just more sneaky about it !
The one that’s really foxing me at the moment though is that old chestnut, television. About 6 months ago I thought I had it sorted, but as we all know the golden rule with children is that once you think you have it sussed, things change.
Since I am still on maternity leave after having no.3,(just coming out of that now) the only little lady at home during the day is my own 3 year old. So it was quite a simple task to wean her off the little tv she was used to seeing through distraction, setting up other activities, walks etc and the tv was never turned on at all for months.
Now, just as we finally succeeded in having it switched off (they really don’t want you to go) my little lady is demanding her fix again. What changed? Well, I think that its down to an accumulation of moments when my resolve and that of other family members was weakened and we gave in.
For instance, it has happened twice in the last three weeks that we (hubby and I) have been doing a big clean up of the house say on a Saturday morning and have fallen into the trap of getting out of our swing pushing, doll carrying duties by turning the tv on. I can see from her reactions that when it comes to kiddie cocaine, moderation is not possible. You just can’t get away with turning on one program, maybe thirty minutes of it, as soon as she gets a taste, she wants more.
Part of this is of course down to how the children’s channels are set up. Most of the ones for pre-school children have no ad breaks. I’m sure if we asked them they would have us believe that this is so that our little ones are not exposed to advertising, but a nice little added bonus to this from their view point is that there is no break, no natural point at which the child will get bored and want to turn it off.
If you watch these channels for awhile, you will notice that everything about them is designed so that the children want to keep watching. there is no boring end part with a roll call of the people involved and the theme. Now, even the end of the program is interactive so they stay watching and no sooner do they get to this part of the program than some other ‘fun’ character pops up and tells them whas coming next!
More than once in the last few weeks I have found myself reminiscing about my childhood and the way that children’s programs only came on for an hour or two each evening and on Saturday morning. There was something in the fact that you knew that it was finite that broke the spell it holds now, it wasn’t possible turn on another channel and get 24 hours of your favourite program, you had to wait till next week and our lives had much more freedom for that.
So I think that these children’s channels may be their own worst enemies to some extent. The solution we have reached in this house is to turn off the satellite channel and so rid ourselves of these ‘always on’ children’s channels. On terestrial tv, children’s programming is still limited to a few hours in the afternoon.
Am I looking at my own childhood through rose tinted specs and trying to create a utopia for my children? Of course I am but it became clear to me that moderation would not work here. Like any recovering addict, she would not be able to have a few minutes of tv and walk away and where distraction worked 6 months ago, its having less impact now that her memory is better (she’s nearly 4).
So we went cold turkey on her and this is how it panned out:
day 1 – wailing, crying, nashing of teeth, refusal it do any other activites
day 2 – large breaks in wailing
day 3 – today – ahh, peace! no noise, blanket over the ‘you know what’ (as its referred to here) and the only request so far today was to un-cover the sand pit.
If you aren’t convinced of the impact of tv on children, read some wise (and funny) words from a wise man who really understood children, Roald Dahl: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/television/
Baby fever, day 3
I didn’t sleep a wink last night. It’s so worrying having a baby with a temperature and it doesn’t get any easier when you’ve had three children, you feel just as frightened, just as confused as to what is the right thing to do. It feels like I’ve gone right back to being a 21 year old new mum.
Thus far, I have not taken him to the GP as I know what they will do, I will be given an antibiotic prescription I don’t want to use. This infection comes literally with every new tooth so why give another antibiotic?
But this morning, as I was lying beside this hot little body, clinging to me as I was trying to keep him cool, stripped down to his vest, I considered it.
And yet now, I have a happy little man, still dressed in just a vest which is covered in Holle organic baby muesil from Siopa beag. I think we’ll hold out for another few hours.
Monday, and another bout of infection..can I go back to bed?
The weekend was wonderful, until about half way through yesterday…
It started so well! On Saturday morning I did a training course run by Clare county childcare committee on manual handling. The course was well run and useful and it was, as these courses always are, a great chance to meet other childminders. The fact that I had to be at a course early Saturday morning and go straight on to the christening and then west clare meant that I had to buy, shop and pack for the whole weekend on Friday, leaving a detailed instruction list out for hubby.
Packing stage one – double buggy and fleeces for chilly coast walks
Packing stage 2 – first of two weekend bags!
Packing stage 3 – laid out kids clothes for Saturday morning, just in case hubby took them to the christening naked!
All of this went to plan anyway and we made it to the christening of our friend’s lovely little girl and the day, from weather right through to food and craic was wonderful. We found it hard to tear ourselves away, the children were all enjoying each others company in the garden while the parents were enjoying the food and the chance to catch up but we had yet another invite for that day!
We travelled across to the west coast to stay with friends who were renting a house in a small village called Liscannor by the Atlantic ocean. The next morning was another glorious one and though we now numbered 4 adults, 2 children and 2 babies, we attempted to load the car up for a day of sightseeing – and managed to get moving before night fall!
We started with a visit to the Cliffs of Moher.We all found it strange to be there when it wasn’t lashing rain and we got some wonderful photographs though it was exhausting pushing the double buggy up and down the sides of the cliffs.
Another slight drawback to the long steep paths became aparent after a laborious trundle up the summit on one side to see the viewing tower. After we got to the tower, the three year old decided she needed to pee and I was informed that we needed to go back down the side of the cliff to the visitors centre at the bottom! I left the baba and buggy with my friends and set off down the cliff with herself in tow building quickly to a wail that almost came bouncing back off the cliffs on the other side! I thought we’d never make it to the bathrooms but make it we did. We then headed back up to the summit to rejoin the others, enjoying a relaxing gaze out at the view but isn’t it worth it? The 12 year old got his pics of the cave which was used for filming an episode of Harry Potter and we decided to pack up and head for the beach.
It was around this stage that it began to become apparent that something was up with the baba. He was off-colour and irritable and I soon realised that he had another ear infection building. We stopped back to the house, had lunch and relaxed there for awhile, after a dose of pain relief he perked up and we decided it was best to get him out in the fresh air so we went on to the nearest town, Lahinch, and spent some time on the beach. We had dinner in a little cafe there and got to take some wonderful photos on the beach against the sunset before hitting for home.
A lovely weekend, but the baba’s temperature stayed slightly elevated today and he was still off colour and thrown down so it was stressful, worrying and hard to get any unpacking or tidying done. He brightened significantly by bedtime so hopefully he will be out of it tomorrow.