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

Posted on April 27, 2015 by Miriam McCaleb

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

Posted on March 30, 2015 by Miriam McCaleb

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.

some goodies here

Posted on March 29, 2015 by Miriam McCaleb

Good morning friends & geeks,

First link to share this morning is a pro-breastfeeding piece, with a science writer from UK’s Telegraph suggesting our offspring will all be RICH if only we whip our boobies out. It’s gotta be worth a go!

Next: here is a link to an abstract from the Annals of Family Medicine. Is exposing children to second hand smoke child abuse? Have a wee click on the aforeposted link and see! And this is another abstract … about disorganized attachment. Such fun.

Now … this is a link that will whisk you to the Child and Family Blog and an article about how post-smacking-your-child-affection is utterly ineffective. We’ve gotta resist the smacking at all, brothers and sisters.

Whaddya reckon about this … it’s suggesting that occasional video gaming is actually beneficial to children and their school success. Surely, like everything, there is a whole lot of “it depends” at play here.

Finally, even though I do get mildly concerned when folks advocate a return to 1970’s parenting, there is definitely some good to be gleaned from this blog post shared with me by the Goddess of the North. Just yesterday I was on the phone with a school mama longing for the days when kids just optimistically turned up for playtime without the crazy logistics involved in organising play dates, these days.

Kia Ora.

some good, some not

Posted on March 19, 2015 by Miriam McCaleb

Life is full of goodness and not-so-goodness, eh.

Like … a beautiful stack of firewood is most definitely good. The fact that smacking one’s kids continues to be a default setting for many parents (including the allegedly progessive millennials!) is NOT good.

This amazing website from the UK is a dreamy resource for parents of new babies (and those who work with them) and this newsletter from the World Association for Infant Mental Health is another example of goodness.

Finally, self knowledge has gotta be good. And warm drinks on cold days. And friendship. Relationships. Even hugging strangers. All good.

parenting … it’s not all beer and skittles

Posted on March 7, 2015 by Miriam McCaleb

Kia Ora y’all

Biiiiiiig week for this geek, had three days of lectures @ university, lucky to have a willing and able parent to step into grandparenting. My dad. My kids. My heart is full.

In all honesty, all that was helped along by my having packed nutritious lunchboxes the night before, and by loading the crock pot with healthy goodness the morning of. It’s that invisible stuff that goes unnoticed all too often, and this is why I am giving my trumpet a minor toot.

The invisible stuff of parenting is what I yearn to make visible – this is a big reason for my public adoration of Naomi Stadlen and her ‘mothers talking’ work. If you’ve never read What Mothers Do or How Mothers Love I just reckon you oughta.

But then there is an aspect of parenting made visible that clearly rankles … the insistence from mothers of grown children that any acknowledgement of the struggles of daily life with young children is something resembling failure. Last year I linked y’all to this great blog post on Momastery, and just this past week my pal shared this similar sentiment from the Boganette blog.

For onlookers to rush to the “your babies are blessings now just be grateful” angle is MOST unhelpful. It denies the validity of mama’s emotions in the here and now. It denies the reality of life in the here and now (parenting can be bloody hard! AND it flies in the face of what we understand from the worlds of neurobiology, psychotherapy and decent humanity … accept what someone is feeling. Just let them have that feeling. Toddler, friend, adolescent, man, woman, whoever. Feeling something. So there. OH! How timely … This is one of the gifts from my university experience last week – brief Youtube clip about empathy that I reckon you’ll love.

Quick link dump then I gotta go cos offspring are plotting rebellion (in party hats). This is from the Washington Post about the culture of caesarian in the USA, here is a paper about infant circumcision and human rights (which I’m not sure I agree with), and I wrote this a while back but had cause to find it again last week and I reckon it’s still relevant.

If the weather cooperates, we’ll be off to see Te Matatini kapa haka festival tomorrow. See you there. Smooch!

quick, before lunch

Posted on February 28, 2015 by Miriam McCaleb

Lunchtime is my favourite time. Hey, it’s Lunchtime! (a prize for whomever can name that artist …)

Quick: some links. No snazzy segways or classy intros or even categories. Just random links … GO:

This is from Scientific American and it’s about how to get more parents to vaccinate their kids. I have. This is a link to the American Mindfulness Research Association, and here is some explanation as to why smiling makes us happier and more successful. Even a faux smile!

This is a YouTube clip about the lovely Tree Change Dolls I shared a while back and this is a blog post about the relentless branding of children’s toys. Ugh.

Here’s an interview urging rebellion against ‘the gospel of money’ and this article from v. good North & South magazine features the most excellent Rick Hanson who I heard speak a month ago. Still reeling. In a good way. You could also do this wee yoga practice and be happy. Especially if you smile whilst doing so.

Finally, boycott your biology. Supress the sociology. Dance and sing in public!

tell the children the truth

Posted on February 26, 2015 by Miriam McCaleb

Hey friends and geeks

I came to a life of Baby Geek-ery via the wonderful world of early childhood education. And I’m pretty sure that I trained as an early childhood teacher during a Golden Age – the early nineties, when funding wasn’t that bad and when Te Whariki -the glorious curriculum of New Zealand ECE – was just being published.

We were taught about cool, mildly radical ideas like the Anti Bias Curriculum, which is a way of thinking, being, and organising life in an early childhood centre with a view to actively promoting social justice. Instead of ignoring the racist graffiti, teachers with an Anti Bias focus arm their children with paint and brushes and explain the need to obliterate the ugly sentiments.

I’ve been wondering where this gentle activism is, in light of the influx of princess play and the pinkification of girlhood. (re: pinkification … Enjoy this awesome blog by an at-home dad, Man Vs. Pink, which I learnt of here thanks to a geeky observer).

Meanwhile, I am as ever conscious of the way that children are marketed to and how marketers prey upon our young. And while the adults who care are signing petitions and lobbying corporates, I wonder who’s in the trenches, actively teaching mellow radicalism to young children. Children need to be taught the truth about the adults who will try to exploit them for money. Those selling things to our kids don’t make decisions about what or how to sell based around love and concern for our beautiful children, they make decisions that serve their shareholders.

Just this past fortnight, my very own Little Girl’s third birthday included more Disney product than I am comfortable with.

So I am wondering what has happened to the Anti-Bias idea, whether it stops at issues of race and ability or whether we need to be stirring up a bit of awareness around commercialisation, sexism, and sexualisation of childhood.

Tell the children the truth!

some links

Posted on February 19, 2015 by Miriam McCaleb

Kia Ora friendly geeks.

Here come some links. First, from the journal Pediatrics. Beware the screens! And next, a li’l something about language development and how mamas talk to their babes.

This is gonna have to do for now: it’s before school and I am being a lousy mum on a computer. But I just HAVE to share this from Time magazine (thanks sister). Baby teaches modern dance class. I was raised by a dancer so I share this not to minimise the skill and value of dance, but to honour the skill and value of babies.

Open Letter

Posted on January 25, 2015 by Miriam McCaleb

This past week a tragedy struck. A baby died, in the North Island. And I can’t stop thinking about this loss. This monumental sadness.

I have written a letter to Mace’s mama, and here it is: loss. For my own benefit as much as anything. Because I can’t stop thinking about them. This mother. This baby. Their family.

I can’t help thinking that this poor baby, this poor woman, have worn the burden that we all feel in the most ghastly way. So many of us are too busy. Too much going on. Heads full. Reliant upon routine and vulnerable in the face of change.

This family are the devastated canaries in our weird modern coal mine.

We need to slow the hell down.

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