Category Archives: interweb thingy

canada

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an old friend has just rung to tell us that the magnificent Gord Downie has announced that he has terminal cancer.  This link will take you to an article about that handsome young Prime Minister telling you more.

Justin Trudeau.  His name is Justin Trudeau.

And Gord Downie is the super cool singer (and perhaps songwriter?)  for the Tragically Hip.  I think he’s also the songwriter.   I’ll ask my husband, who is a huge fan of the Hip. Or I’ll ask the internet, which knows all sorts of things.

My husband and i had a Canadian soundtrack running in the background when we met and fell in love.  Blue Rodeo.  Sarah McGlachlan.  And yes, The Tragically Hip.

It all feels a bit poignant and personal, praps a bit cosmic, because this news come as I am packing my bags to go to Banff for the symposium of excitement.

Things to do:

  • load up with excellent music – increase quota of Canadian tunes, check podcasts.
  • Rapidly develop a comprehensive understanding of telecommunications and use this to practical effect (!)
  • Siphon toiletries into tiny plastic bottles.
  • play matching pairs with Little Girl
  • tidy up the raised veggie bed with Big Girl
  • print off paperwork for flights, etc.

ZOINKS x x

ps three links I just gotta share today …

First, an EXCELLENT article from the Atlantic about how kids learn resilience, a piece from the Harvard Business Review about the importance of emotional intelligence in leadership, and THIS is amazing “The Invisible Burden that Leaves Moms Drained” … This really resonated and I’m totally inspired to read more from the researchers cited in here.  You?

Eight Favourite Links

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Kia Ora friends

One of the best things about Baby Geek-ery is having wise, kind people as colleagues.   Even better-er is when those wise, kind colleagues become friends.  Stoked to say that this is the case with my dear mate, Nathan Mikaere-Wallis.

So last night we had a decent korero on ye olde telephone, and decided it would be a nice time for a fresh, simple update on a reliable list of quality links for tired parents.  I mean, there are approximately four hundred thousand links buried in this website amongst YEARS of blog posts, so you can’t lose if you have a roam, but sometimes a busy parent just wants a straightforward wee list. So here you go!

The Encyclopedia on Early Childhood Development

Pennie Brownlee’s Blog

The Brainwave Trust

Zero to Three

Attachment Parenting International

The Center on the Developing Child

What Works for Children

The Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood

and one for the locals: Musical Parenting Canterbury

 

 

did I meet you last week? Are you looking for a handout?

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I think you might just have to message me in the comments of this (or the previous) post.  Then I’ll have a record of your email address.  Just tell me you’re after a handout, whether you attended the morning or the afternoon, and I’ll attach ’em email by email.

Sorry, dear friends, but I haven’t the time at the mo to fluff about with rejigging files, so I’ll just do it this way.  Aroha mai.

Arohanui!

talking, writing, and handouts

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Kia Ora te whānau  … what an unseasonably warm day it is in North Canterbury.  The trees say “autumn” but the temperature says “summer”.

Tomorrow kids (in NZ) will return to school and kindergarten and their families will return to a term-time state o’ mind.  I’m always on the fence about it … could use some more time with the kids, not stoked about packing lunches, but pretty thrilled to reinitiate the ebb and flow of a consistent routine.

And a few days back I had the great pleasure of working with some lovely kindergarten teachers and early childhood folk are my TRIBE so it was super yummy.  I will now have a crack at attaching a link so that you can download the handouts, as promised.  Wish me luck.  My computer is a bit antique and my blog software due an update!  Here we go:

OK.  That’s going to be more complex than I thought.  The files are too big.  I will need to figure out how to make them smaller and do that again.

Bear with.

Meantime, here are some links to edify and entertain:

Here is an article from Scientific American about creativity (*it’s more than just rehearsing!) and I’m loving this link from Mothering about healthy eating on a tight budget.  For tips about child health of a different kind, I’m sending you anew to the Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood, specifically their resource ‘Healthy Kids in a Digital World’.

This link will take you to a website from Australia, called Kids Matter, telling us three ways to help children become more confident, and check out this explanation of normal sleep expectations … a gift for tired parents, also from Mothering.com.

Here’s an interesting notion about brain hacks to increase motivation, from NPR, and TIME magazine have an article here warning of the practice of time-outs in child discipline.  Discipline = to teach.  And what are we really teaching, hmmm?  x x x

benefits of bailing

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mar 2016 ohbabeKia Ora geeks!  Here is the latest issue from our friends at OHbaby!  I am proud of the piece I wrote in there, about quitting, and I enjoyed many other gems, tooski.

Speaking of OHbaby!, I wrote an article for the Winter 2014 issue, about maternal anger.  Just last week, one of the mamas I interviewed at the time sent me this article from the Guardian, about expressing emotions around children.  She reckons we were ahead of the curve.  How exciting, for a reclusive hermit anti-fashionista!

Now let me share these great many links with y’all.  From the Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood, this is a fab resource promising real-life strategies for reducing screen time.  Next, because who doesn’t love a good infographic, this is a resource from Zero to Three summarising the impact of poverty on early child development.

And from the Child Trauma Academy (I promise not to use the word ‘resource’ again …) is this excellent slide series/video about … well, child trauma.   Similarly awesome is this report from the Berry Street whānau in Australia.  They do amazing work for children and families and they call on the CTA wisdom to do so.

Also from Australia: this news report about a Mother’s milk bank, and this from Scientific American will tell you what wee babies can see that we no longer can.  Also from Scientific American: this article describes how the wiring of your brain reveals the real you.

Some research and a grunty report now … Here is some open access research about how Mindful Parenting lowers stress in children (frankly I should flippin well hope so!!), while this research identifies types of humour exhibited by children, and links them to resilience.   This report from the USA examines what investments are needed to get kids ready for school.

Finally, this from the Independent newspaper tells us what parenting techniques have been used by parents of successful children (*would love to see a definition of what ‘successful’ means) and BOY OH BOY would I love to do some shopping at Kanikani Kids.  Tino ataahua enei!

Work, play. Link.

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Eleanor at kindyHere my Little Girl is at kindergarten.  I know, I’m dorky about protecting her image.  Praps she’ll thank me later.  I love this picture for the pure demonstration of how her play is her work.  If you’re lucky, you’ll also find yourself mixing together a nice wee melange of work and play.

My life is nicely like that.  Work, play.  Work = play.  Play = work.  Work = work.  Play = play.  Repeat.

Now it’s time for some links.  Some interesting, juicy links.  First up, a fantastic blog that my mama mate shared with me.  Welcome to the Queens of Constance.  I am awed by this … so brave, honest, important.  My eyes get a bit bruised by loose spelling and unorthodox grammar (I’m kinda an apostrophe nerd) but I forgive.  It’s a glorious site.  Enjoy.

Next, if you have a little time up your sleeve, check out this sensational series about the brain, from PBS in the USA.  What a world we live in … you can just look stuff up!  Any time!  I remember the 1980’s, when to re-view a clip from telly you had to write in to the special Sunday night clip show, and if you were really lucky they’d play it one more time.

Nice summary of babies’ learning here, from the Mental Floss website (*albeit a dorkily named article)  and check out this meta analysis from the Robert Wood Johnson foundation about what children’s social competence means throughout their lifespan.  

Here is an article about making childrearing less expensive, and this a li’l something about the happiest/least happy places for children.  Apparently incomplete data, though.

Here is a piece from Mothering, showing how one legislator from Mississippi wishes to use the law to protect the rights of breastfeeders (and breastfeedees)

Take care out there.  Arohanui xx

american football v. cricket

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Mine is a household populated by NZ born and US born people.  Usually it’s harmonious, but today we have the Superbowl being broadcast at the same time as the Black Caps vs. Australia.  There is a small degree of discontent!

The ways we express our culture are many, are they not?

Anyway, I’d consider watching nothing at all, in the hope that I’d get a wee bit bored.  Because boredom is splendid – here is a l’il something from Scientific American to that effect.  Ah, and if you get truly, magnificently bored, you may get to have a wee sleep.  And there isn’t much more awesome than sleep.

I’d also love to share this link to a yummy write up about life in a responsive classroom.  Gotta love it!  And please forgive the facebook-y nature of this link, but it’s dreamy.  About healthy body image talk and motherhood.

Speaking of healthy body images and motherhood – have you seen this?  The magnificence of breastfeeding on Sesame Street?  Dig!  You know what else I dig?  Yoga practice.  

Right.  My three year old is in danger of becoming v unpopular with the TV watching men. There is nothing developmentally unreasonable about HER behaviour …!

 

the confident mother

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sherry bevan book wrinkly eyekia ora geeky friends.  Here I am hiding behind the new book The Confident Mother from Sherry Bevan in the UK.  There’s a chapter in there which was created after our interview together.  I’m awed by the vision and drive of this gal.

I’ve made fresh playdough in three colours today … do I get points for drive, tooski?

Quick flurry of links now, then I’ll continue with my list.  First day back to school for my big girl today, so little girl and I are kinda making the most, which does NOT include keeping my nose in a screen.  So swiftly now;

A piece from the New Zealand news about the “farming” nature of some child care centres.  And I don’t mean they visit farms.  I mean they are the farms.  This is a call from one mama blogger to abandon the whole ‘goody bag’ thing at kids’ parties.

I got two gems from Pop Sugar sent to me this week: this one is BEAUTIFUL pictures of REAL post partum mamas and babies and this is about the new Disney princess … the first Polynesian … hope she can give the other princesses a lesson in self reliance.

From Slate: a cool (albeit cynical) summary of conversations between parents and children, and finally, from the Huffington Post, a round up of sleep research as relates to children.  Night night.

 

overthinkers anonymous

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Dear www.baby.geek.nz

You are a dear wee website.  You have given me a place to file my thoughts and preserve a gigantic number of links (* or portals to wonderlands of learning and discovery, as I like to think of them).

You’re a bit of a secret, though, which is cool, but there is this thing I love to imagine you doing.  Just quietly.  I love to imagine that you, www.baby.geek.nz, have improbably become a useful launchpad, catapaulting conversations between thinking parents and scattering chat among other assorted family-folk.

In a world gone bonkers, only you manage to somehow bring together a pot pourri of links that is JUST SO MY CUP OF TEA.  Which shouldn’t surprise me, because I posted every darned last one of them.  Beginning with THIS, my very first blog post.  Awww, cute.

I do love you, darling website, and I promise I can change.  Please, baby(geek), just give me a little more time.  I dream of a bright future for us,

love,

Me xx

End scene.

Anyway, I’m obsessing more than usual about these notions of communication and internet and purpose because last week I went to a Social Media 101 training day.   Holla, Enterprise North Canterbury!  Tumeke, Simplify & Amplify!

It’s all very fascinating, and I kinda dig learning about the psychology of marketing, and why people do stuff and how to get them to do the stuff you think they oughta, I am horrified by what my dear late mother would’ve called the Coca-colonisation of the world.  The blatant and aggressive enslavement of populations by corporations too slick and sneaky to be outfoxed.  Really, I think we should all buy less.  Use less.  Do more for ourselves.  

And the whole technology of twitter and facebook and all their chums is flippin amazing.   As a tool, it’s the way to find all the peoples who care about the things.  Nana over here has to do some work … cos I’d love to find some thinking mamas and I think that’s where they are and yet I FEAR the lure of the devices.  Both for myself and for all of us!

Pads and Macs and smart phones and regular (dumb?) phones … OH … behold these amazing ads from China about resisting the phone addiction FOR THE CHILDREN …

… here’s the thing …. I’d love it if we could all get the fact that societies of useful adults – that is, adults who are kind, competent, smart, healthy, capable, or at least not incompetent dicks – those sorts of adults are more likely if they were gifted responsive, warm, calm, loving care while they were babies.  There.  It’s that simple.  I said it.

Not just me.  Heaps of people.  Like Harvard’s Center for the Developing Child.  Heaps.

And you cannot tell me, not even for a second, that the brains of human young will be as effectively nurtured by distracted adults whose faces glow from their device du jour than they will be by an adult available to meet their gaze, respond to their vocalisations, and make up lame songs.

Ladies and gentlegeeks, I think we gotta unplug more.  For ourselves, and sure as the dickens for our babies.

I mean, I’m all for the flow of mindfulness teaching, (at school!  Love it.)  I am generally very Mindful of Mindfulness, but I can’t help but think we wouldn’t need quite so much mindfulness training if we just spent a wee bit less time skittering between devices and leaping between operating systems.

It’s like how we eat tons of fatty food and then obsess about weight loss.  I’m talking about us as a culture, not YOU.  Or ME.  Just all of us, you know?  Truly: if we did like Michael Pollan … “eat food, not too much, mostly plants” and then went for walks and did some yoga then VOILA!  Wellness.

Sorry.  I’m a bit didactic and grouchy tonight.  I’m angsting.

Yeah, I angst about encouraging folks deeper into the digital world and further from the juicy messy deliciousness of real life.  And yet I love the handiness of a magical box that sings the commercials of my youth and finds me amazing recipes and connects me to people I love, all over the world.

What the flip.  Modern life … I need me my online yoga before bed.  Love you, Adriene, my electronic friend!

Irony, she lives.

in my office

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Photo on 2015-01-12 at 11.27Woah … I”m all overexcited and hyper caffeinated because I just had a big online time with Sherry Bevan, co-ordinator of the Confident Mother online conference.  Days and days of free, thought provoking content.  Did I mention free?

Anyway, in the course of our conversation I made reference to the awesome interview from Dr Stuart Shanker that featured on CBC radio’s “Ideas” podcast.  I went back to find a link to it for Sherry, and LO! There is a new, updated version available to download and listen to.  You must!  Parents, teachers, everyone … LISTEN.

Here, also, a cornucopia of useful self-regulation resources from Canada.

Gotta go make some snacks xx