procrastination for fun and profit!

Kia Ora and hello!

Before we go any further, the date tells us we are a week from Christmas.  My pal at OHbaby! shared a link to this fab piece, about simplifying the season.  Make like Elsa and Let It GO!  Enjoy.

I am in my office with a brief, hard-fought window of time to be working.  I’m supposed to be banging out a draft for a 1500-worder due soon after the festive craziness.  Ask me how that’s going?  Yeah.  Um.  Not great.

But then ask me how it was at Toddlerific and I will tell you… it was a treat!  An utter treat. We talked – a lot – about stuff like the serve and return nature of child development (HERE is an elegant explanation from the Center for the Developing Child at Harvard) and about temperament research, and goodness of fit.   And many other luscious things!  Such fun.

Here is a link to the most recent newsletter from Brainwave Trust Aotearoa.  Yeah, I wrote the book review in there, but the main reason for sharing is Keryn O’Neill’s excellent analysis of the Perry Preschool Project. You gotta see it.

Meanwhile, did I already post a link to this article about The Last Generation of kids to play outside?   It’s a goodie.  And speaking of play, look how dreamy this crowd are … the Exuberant Animal (good name for a funk band …).

May I end with a shout out to the super smart, warm, wise and uber supportive Pennie Brownlee.  Arohanui xxx

play. work. play. sleep. play. practice. play.

Photo on 2014-12-09 at 06.07Right ho.  So my newest thang is in this magazine with yet another astronomically lovely bub on the front.  I hope that if you read it you will like it.

Here is another link to an article about play – this is written with someone with WAY more gravitas than I.  This is fantastic.

With December slip-slidin’ away you might enjoy this list of non-toy gift ideas for children … and if you move fast you can still vote for worst toy of the year at CCFC’s annual TOADY awards.

Thursday I will teach a workshop for the first time since I was preggers with Little Girl.  At the Toddlerific conference near Christchurch.  Have planned a preso, but have not even thought through all the logistics inherent in driving vast distances, filling travel forms, sorting real life toddler’s needs ETC because today is my Big Girl’s birthday!  Eleven years I’ve been a mama.

One thing at a time for this geek.

assorted variousness

Let’s link.

First: a post from Psychology Today about using your brain more effectively (ie being more productive!).  Once again, the moral of the story is Slow Down.  Unplug.  Concentrate.

Similar, and yet so different, is this deluxe post from On Being written by Omid Safi … it might be your new favourite thing.

This is an excellent piece by Scientific American about 10 big additions to our thinking about neuroscience in the past decade.   Enjoy.

OH!  Lovely initiative here … using yoga to change the lives of young women in trouble.  MOre!

Now, take four minutes to check out this promo to a fantastic looking new documentary film called Now Playing.  I long to let rip a rant about the value of play in the lives of children and adults, but my toddler is keeping it all very real by tugging on my arm and beggin me to stop working.

I’m overdue a rant about play, having just written an article for OHbaby! about Play and a foreword for an exciting new book on the subject by my fab colleague Sarah Best

Gotta boogie.  I’ll end with a public service announcement: adopt fist bumps as a replacement for high fives or handshakes and you will reduce the transfer of infection.

November? Salt water!

Blessed be the Geeks, for they shall inherit the earth.

Quick linky round up on a Monday

From Zero to Three, a wonderful round up about screen time for young children.  Check it out and commence downloadery HERE.

THIS is a link to a magazine I didn’t know about until very recently!  It’s called Brain Works and I reckon you might enjoy a wee gander.

A couple of links from Scientific American … THIS is about the ‘orchid child’ explanation for sensitive children … groovester.  And HERE is an article about happiness, or about the fact that not everyone is seeking it.

HERE is an excellent piece from a most outstanding website … it’s about Aligning and Investing in Infant and Toddler Programs and it’s from the Center for American Progress.  Read!

The Society for Research in Child Development have released a Policy Brief, and you can read about it HERE … its called How Abuse and Neglect Affect Children’s Minds and Bodies.

Finally, with thanks to Rox and Bee and my ladies … the most inspiring anything for ages:

The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears or the sea. Isak Dinesen

constant role changes

smallest child is RIGHT into dramatic play just now.  We are assigned and reassigned roles all day long as she switches from one character to another, necessitating that we do also.

It leaves me mentally exhausted at day’s end.  As I am NOW.

I’ve got a deadline and a familiar mild creeping anxiety cos I have a writing deadline and no clue when I will knock it off.  It’s one of those topics that is so juicy and vital and I long to do it justice.  Yikes.

So some quick links before sleep …

Here’s a little something about babies and their dissociation … it can look like bubbas who are left to cry are settled but they AIN’T.  They’re just silently hurting.

The lovely Lammily doll is in production and my girls will be getting one for Christmas shshshshhhhhhhhh.

And listen … i am slowly reading this lifechanging book and I long to chat about it with other folks so someone else read it too, please … it just might change the way you think about humanity.  Not even joking.

 

big emotions

Photo on 2014-09-15 at 15.09Kia ora geeks.  Hope your week is going swimmingly.  Mine began with a new issue of OHbaby! magazine, featuring an article I contributed.  It’s called “weathering the storm”, and it’s about supporting children with their big emotions.  The issue also features an utterly beautiful baby on the cover.  LOOK!

Here are a random assortment of links for your surfing pleasure … This is from the good folk at the Center for the Developing Child at Harvard … it is about using science to inform child welfare policy.  Similarly, but differently, here’s a fact sheet about the negative impact of instability on our little children.  We are about to have an election in NZ and I wonder if our leaders have read this.  (have ya?  hmmmm?)

Here is a cool resource for teachers about “sowing the seeds of neuroscience“,  and this is a link to some research into the evidence base for early childhood education.  Of course. all that only works if we are talking about care of high quality.  And that is a whole separate conversation if we’re talking ’bout babies.

Actually, that last link comes from the excellent website of the For Our Babies campaign, which deserves your time.  I have just finished the book of the same name by Ron Lally and it is such an outstanding summary of the complex layers that have led us to today … I wholeheartedly recommend it.  The relevance oozes beyond the USA.

Now a feelgood link; a new find called Green Child magazine.  Recipes, ideas, inspiration.  Yum.

Finally, a couple more links encouraging you to slow down and create mental downtime.  Specifically, if you’ve got writing to do, head outside.

How appropriate. Guilt.

I tend to begin these posts with the same opening I almost always use on my correspondence:  “I’m sorry it has been so long since I wrote …”

But let’s focus on the positive.  I’m posting!  Now!

I begin by humbly sharing a link to a piece I wrote for Tots to Teens.  It’s about Mama Guilt.  

Other links now.  Research from Australia mightn’t surprise anyone … child care workers are underpaid and undervalued.  The tragic bit is that even the parents of the children being cared for are guilty of the undervaluing.  Let’s just contrast that with a new report from the Abecedarian project, pointing to still more life long benefits of high quality early childhood education.  Oh, but here’s a wee reminder of how not all ECE is high quality …  Irony!  She is not dead!

Here is a report called the Global Youth Wellbeing Index, and here is a link to reinforce the power of education for helping parents be cool about their wacky li’l babes.  This about infant sleep and reasonable expectations.

We’ve linked here before, but let’s do it again … a family friendly music podcast to dig on.  Kia Ora.

Finally, let’s just be honest about how often we check our smart phones, shall we?

culture, family, mothering

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

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

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)