Monthly Archives: June 2014

culture, family, mothering

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This Baby Geek has a foreign born husband.  My kids are wee half’n’half creatures of unique composition.  Aren’t they all.

At this moment I am in the home of my bro- and sis-in-law, thinking anew about how our home cultures shape our early experience which, in turn, shapes our brains.  And these shape us.  Our mommas and our food and our home.  How we communicate, how we express ourselves, what we believe.  It’s all in there.

So I’ve spent considerable time briefing my Big Girl (and subsequently my nieces & nephews) to keep an open mind during travel, to think in terms of Different, not Better or Worse.  One of the most elegant illustrations of this is the beautiful movie  “Babies”, which my children watched on the iPad on the aeroplane.  It’s the only movie on there.

Other stuff rool quick before I rejoin the people … an article from Time about Dolphin Parenting … sounds like the Backbone style of parenting my bro Nathan Mikaere-Wallis teaches… but with an arguably cuter name.

Link here to a write up of some research about child abuse and adverse effects on brain development … complete with disturbing photograph … and finally a great resource from Zero to Three about early emergent literacy.

Better get back to the whanau time.

 

Angry Mamas

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oh baby coverThe new issue of OHbaby! is out and I have an article in there, about Angry Mamas.  It was amazing to write and think about at the time, and the feedback has been fab.  Thank y’all.

Now for some links before bedtime (it is always late when I get to this here blog.  What’s up with that?)

First, the week began in NZ with the release of the People’s Report from the Glenn Inquiry.  And here is the report itself, in all its heartbreaking detail.  I look forward to the plans for improvement … November I think that next bit is being released.

Next: from Wired mag, article about a “radical new teaching method” which is actually a super early childhood education philosophy (let the children choose what they want to learn!  follow their passions!) and it’s been applied to older children.

Sorry.  Being snippy, are we?

Here is a li’l something about the role of synchronized brain waves in supporting speedy learning (thanks MIT) and here is an article from the New York Times about the losses wrapped up in a lack of handwriting.  Ah, kids these days!

small insight, many links

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It’s winter time in the South Pacific.  A time for toddlers to kick off all their bedclothes and then awaken their mothers with cold cries.  As I tiptoed toward Baby Girl last night I felt for her blindly, unsure what part of her I’d touch.  She swivels and wriggles and changes direction.

As I gently patted the air and eventually her, it occurred to me how the darkness of nighttime parenting is a bit like the blessed mystery of pregnancy – the ultrasound technician who proposes “yes, I think that’s an arm.  Oh, and there’s the baby’s spine”.  Last night this seemed just like the necessary assessment that precedes rearranging the blankies.  “Yes, here’s her wee head.  There’s her feet …”  And I snuggle her back up and shuffle back to bed, willing us both to stay asleep.

Anyway, before I return to that lovely slumber, here are some LINKS.

This is from UNICEF, it’d seem they are getting into the neurodevelopment swing o’ things .   Welcome.

A couple of parenting resources: Radical Parenting, providing tips for parents of adolescents and teens from a kid’s perspective, and I love this from Hand in Hand parenting, about the value of a Good Cry.  I’m sold: boo hoo!

Here is a cool cardboard play space from Australia, an urging to introduce babies to veggies early and often, and a write up of some health research examining gender differences in placenta.

And I just don’t even know what to say about the notion that we are all more stressed at home than at work.   A convo for another time.  Bed beckons (as she always does mmmmm)