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.

 

always learning

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picture sept 20crikey dick.  It’s all a bit full on at the moment.  But then I remember that something magnificent is always about to happen.

Like …I saw a tui in my garden just yesterday.  A Tui! As far south as me!  Very exciting.  Whakarongo ake au!

Some links on a beautifully rainy afternoon:

Ever wondered about what your (otherwise screen free?) infant thinks about Skype?  This piece from the Atlantic describes research exploring this.

Next: here is a mildly gross and infinitely cool piece that was in the New York Times about how baby backwash just might make breastfeeding a two way exchange of fluid and information.  Amazing!

This week I have LOVED this ol’ Radiolab interview with the late Oliver Sacks about his relationship with the periodic table.  STUNNING.  Then I read this piece he wrote about aging.  The Joy of Aging.  What a writer!  Oh, that mind!  RIP.

Keep on experiencing this world through your head and through your heart.  Why should you have to choose whether to be a head person or a heart person?  Can’t we be both?

 

 

in my letterbox today

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Photo on 2015-09-11 at 14.15 #3hooray!  With thanks to the Dora DVD my daughter (boss?) is watching, I am not only able to post this, but I even got to read the latest issue of OHbaby! magazine.  I wrote a piece in there.  It’s about temperament and I hope you find it helpful.

First up today, friends, is a great link for motivating a bit of advocacy for children, here in NZ.  This is the website for Best Start, whose primary mission is about improving the quality of early childhood education.  Lord, we’ve been banging on about this for decades and we seem to be doing a backward slide … read this piece about the rise of corporate childcare and see if you agree that a ruckus needs to be raised.

Next, a couple of resources from Zero to Three, about school readiness.  First a blog post that will explain why a group whose concern is babies & toddlers should have such insights into what being ready for school really means, and this is a dandy summary of research.

Here is a little something from the Washington Post imploring us to allow more play for our kids (another thing we’ve been banging on about since forever) and just for a little light reading for the weekend,(and cos Dora’s about to sing the song that tells me the episode is over … they did it …) here is a report from Australia about the mental health of their children and adolescents.  Arohanui xxx

obsessions of the week

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just in time for the weekend!!

Hope all the mamas and the papas and the kidlets out there in geekland have been happy and healthy.  Our house played host to a gnarly and aggressive bug (virus?  couldn’t tell ya) but we’re all good now.  Nothing makes me appreciate my awesome immune system like giving it a sick day.

This is a review of the fantastic book I am reading.  After Birth by Elisa Albert.  It is utterly amazing and that is all I have to say on the matter at this time.

Here’s a little something from Scientific American about the changes to a new daddy’s brain, and if you can make it through this video about motherhood without shedding a tear, you are a stauncher mama than I.   It’s just about 3 mins long and very nice indeed.  Thank you Auntie Bee.

This is a link (courtesy of Keryn) to some info about a research study just published in the journal of Pediatrics and Child Health … it’s about the wellbeing of children in Christchurch and I know for a fact I am not the only baby/family person in our district who is scratching our heads a bit about it.  Sounds like the researchers might be, too.

Finally: fifteen minutes of lo-fi inspiration and delight, this is super magnificent Courtney Barnett’s most excellent Tiny Desk Concert.

Imperfection. Everywhere.

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Photo on 2015-08-18 at 17.28Yesterday I helped to welcome Mary Gordon to our fair city.  She was talking about her magnificent Roots of Empathy project, which we’d dearly love to see back in Christchurch (funders?  philanthropists?  Kei hea a koutou?)

Seems to me that the Roots of Empathy NZ tour is well timed: check out this news item from late last week.

There is a new newsletter (new news?) from the Brainwave Trust, featuring an article I wrote, called “Embracing Imperfection”.  You can read it here.

My pals at OhBaby shared this article with me, about surfing the tide of motherhood exhaustion (cos ya might as well embrace …), and I know it’s 5 years old now, but I still reckon Sally Peters’ report for the Ministry of Education is one of the best places to gather info about successful Transition to School.

That might have to do for now.  It’s dinner time. x

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.

school holidays in NZ

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Which means action, carnage, joy and chaos.  Delight.  And mess.  So much mess.

Which is all good.  Because there are seasons.  Which leads me straight to the latest yummy Wise Brain newsletter.  It contains a poem by Tara Sophia Mohr which has blown my mind (*please insert your own explosion noise here.  Preferably with puffed out cheeks, in public.)

Here is a download from the great state of Alabama about the Rewards of Early Childhood Investment.  Written by their Chamber of Commerce so bound to overemphasise short term fiscal measures and underestimate longer term wellbeing measures.  Rah de rah.

Soon Mary Gordon, founder of the Roots of Empathy project, will be in New Zealand to talk.  And listen.  I am looking forward to the ensuing think-and-feel-tank and I plan to make soup.

Finally, with thanks to the folks at Exchange Every Day, a link to an article about resilience. I love this.  Hummingbird parenting (way more pretty and organic than helicopters, anyway.)

I have only just met the Wait But Why website. Gordon Bennett!  It’s a portal to joy, discovery, and lost hours.  Have fun, beware.

linkin’ like a maniac

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Kia Ora geeks, friends, and onlookers,

Snow all over the ground at my place.  Winter wonderland, etc.

Let’s get cracking with a variety of juicy links, shall we?

First: our chums from the CBC in Canada have a story here about the fun and beauty of a crocheted playground.  Enjoy!

My three-year-old is currently obsessed with birthing (*specifically, umbilical cords.  She keeps asking for hers back …) and she loves nothing more than to watch this amazing video from TED.  I know I’ve linked to it before, but here it is again.  It’s sensational.  Also from TED – this summary of the ACE study, giving more reason for deliberate care of our youngest.

This is a write up from the Daily Mail in the UK about the summary of Happiness research completed by the Mayo Clinic.  LOVE this.  The 5-3-2 thing is revolutionarily simple and deluxe.  To contrast, here is a summary from Health.com of some of the worst habits for your mental health.

A couple of treasures from Early Childhood Australia now – this one about bringing the benefits of mindfulness to the classroom, and this stunner is from the most excellent Anne Stonehouse about the challenges of documenting learning in ECE.

More from our Australian cousins: a link here to some research confirming that mandatory naps for older children (ie in childcare settings) leads to less nighttime sleep.  Which is just what parents need … (how I long for a sarcastic font!)

This link will lead you to a piece that considers the ways that bullying from peers can be more damaging than abuse from parents, and meanwhile, here is some writing from Scientific American describing how harsh parenting will likely contribute to anxiety.  Sigh.

From the good folks at Hand in Hand Parenting comes this little article about Sharing, here’s an article about the super power that comes from being raised in a bilingual home, and a cautionary tale about the potential damage from cellphones being more intense for children.

From Slate now: a piece about how doing good unto others will bring benefits onto ONESELF.  Bonus!

And FINALLY … the Washington Post bring us the data around how the top few hedge fund managers (*which I’m pretty sure has nothing to do with topiary) earn more than all the kindergarten teachers in the US combined.  We live in crazy, beautiful, messed up times.

My kid is 3. Yes, I’m on maternity leave. Still. Any questions?

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I have had a baffling few weeks as a baby geek and a toddler person and an educator and a mama and a professional and a slave(!).

Long and short of it: we (people who are kaiako/educators for the Brainwave Trust) had been invited to update our profiles on the website.  I got a snazzy new photo and was keen to rejig the text, which boldly stated that I was on maternity leave, caring for the child born in 2012.

And it’s true.  I am.

And I’m glad to.  Happy to.  Privileged to.  Proud to!

So why was my motivation in updating said profile the removal of those words?  Just what it is it about being a FULL TIME STAY AT HOME MOTHER that made me want to massage that truth and call it something else?

Cos yeah, freelance writer.  And yeah, doing postgrad study.  But oh, HELL yeah – I’m a mother.  I’m the keeper of the castle and I care for my kids.  So why, even amidst the most pro-family and child friendly of colleagues, do I find it necessary to deny that title?

Full time parent.  That’s me.

Yes, three years on.  Yes, at least until she starts school.  So there.

But I chickened out.  Not only rejigged text but made the decision to pull my profile down altogether, cos it’s gonna be years until I can offer to help anyone!  But quick, before it gets removed, check out my fancy new photo!

That’s not all.  I had a gig booked, my first for ages.  I was thoroughly looking forward to it, had learned new tricks in Keynote.  Great client, juicy content.  Lovin’ life.  But then, little girl was sick.  Little girl was sick and husband was not in a position to cancel his life.

So guess what?  I canceled.  Gutting for me, but the right thing to do.  Cos when you’re three years old with a raging temperature and strep throat, what you need is your mum.

Yeah!

Quickly now, cos it’s what we do on this website, I will now throw a variety of links into your lap: THIS is Kids in the House, which is a parenting website like no other!  Enjoy.  I’d love to share this excellent bit o’ writing from Mothering about a new mother’s body belonging to HER.  And it’s been a while since I sent y’all to this glorious collection, but this is a variety of Policy Briefs from the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne.  It’s fab.

Now here’s an interesting piece about infant temperament and culture, and here is a website from Arizona all about their initiatives to support family.  Next, a gift for new families about settling babies.  Yum.

Compare structured parenting with Free Range parenting here, and here is a very good thang from the Huffington Post about the power of home visiting programmes for changing outcomes for kids in poverty.

Finally, it may or it might not be the best kindergarten you’ve ever seen, but this is an inspiring TED talk all the same.

Big shout out of thanks and support to Jo, who organised the workshop I had to cancel, to brother Nate for always listening, and also to Pennie, who continues to be so flippin supportive of me, at home with my kids.

Elsa-ish

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fake elsa I have ideas.  Ideas about promoting what has been proven to work in our lives -like healthy relationships, a practice of gratitude, joyfully moving our wonderful bodies.  These things make us happier.

What doesn’t make us happier is buying stuff, succumbing to small-thinking, and accumulating more plastic.

And the Disney channel are having their way with my daughters, again and again.  I have tried dumb strategies to try and disentangle my kids from Elsa’s icy webs.  It may (not) surprise you it makes no difference to grizzle about how tired I am of all things Frozen, or lecture my daughters about feminist worldviews and conspiratorial marketing departments (in black masks and satin capes) .

Instead of watering the weeds and focusing on the things that aren’t wholesome in the scheme of raising my children, I know I gotta try to pull the weeds and water the flowers – to actively emphasise what I value instead of grousing about the stuff that violates my values.  Much nicer to be around.

And what do I value?  Relationships.

So I let my (just) three year old express her connection to the wider world and her love for the intimate world of her home by indulging her love of Elsa. Just a bit.  And Let it Go.  Not really the film – stuff you Hans – and not even really the whole soundtrack.  Just Elsa.  Just that song.  In the sparkly dress, tumbling plait persona.

I ponder lovingly “I wonder who made the decision to put Anna on a nightie?”.  Instead of my current technique of grousing about Frozen I can use the magic of “I wonder” to introduce an awareness of the deliberate scheming of marketers while I introduce a relationship-focused thread to the whole shebang.

Relationships: like using “Oh, do you remember who was with you when you bought the Elsa and Anna lunchbox?”  highlighting the family relationships that are real and concrete and supersede the Disney craziness.

And we discuss the finer details of Elsa’s relationship history, thus highlighting the value of relationship even within the crazy: “Oh, Elsa seems so much happier at the end when she’s ice skating with her sister!  They really seem to love each other a lot!”.  Familial love – I can handle that.

If all that fails and I’m succumbing to my grumpy self around all this, I take solace in the glorious ridiculousness of the dubious toys my husband just purchased on his recent trip to China.  That’s where today’s comical picture comes from.  Take that, Disney.