Category Archives: Parenting

March 9, 2012 · 8:25 am

Secondary school places – the fallout

HUNDREDS of you will have received your child’s secondary school place allocation letter by now, and will either be delighted or disappointed.

My view on parents being given any ‘choice’ about their preferred schools is well documented in these weekly rants, so I won’t bore you now, albeit to say we unsuccessfully went through the stressful appeals process three years ago.

Unless you really have a really good reason, and I mean like twins being spilt up, I really would think hard about whether to put you and your child through it. You can read up on all the procedures via http://www.northamptonshire.gov.uk.

I would, however, recommend putting them on the school’s waiting list if your child wants you to. Two years later, our son was offered a place when someone left.

In the meantime, the best thing you can do is listen to, reassure and support your child whichever school they attend. Secondary school is scary enough without any more stress.

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March 1, 2012 · 8:49 am

Not keen on playing happy Sylvanian Families

I’VE managed to keep all but one Barbie doll banned from the house. Make-up is still the preserve of grown-up ladies and not little girls. But my goodness, why didn’t anyone warn me about Sylvanian Families?

Daughter, just turned four, was given a dolls’ house for her birthday, and some money to buy some people to live in it.

So we headed to Earl’s Barton’s famous Jeyes Pharmacy. Like the Tardis, this is no ordinary chemists but has an extraordinary warren upstairs of dolls’ house merchandise..

After trying to stop Bonnie touching tiny, delicate, miniature furniture and fittings in the Dolly Lodge, an amazing emporium for older collectors, we wrestled her out of the door and fell into a room filled almost entirely with Sylvanian Families toys. If you aren’t familiar, these are tiny toy animals dressed in clothes. And there are LOADS of them, costing about £15-20 a set.

I tried to get her to look at some peg-doll style wooden dolls’ house people, but she only had eyes for the rabbit family, the dog family, the monkey family, et al. While I tried to steer her towards the rabbit family (seven members, better value), she wanted to spend her cash on the four-strong hamster family and an extra pink hamster baby.

I have to admit, I find the whole SF look a little disconcerting in the 21st century, as they are a little wholesome and Stepfordian. Where’s the Emo teen hamster? The working mother hedgehog dressed in a suit rather than a pinny?

Still, they do fit perfectly in her dolls’ house.

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February 24, 2012 · 8:25 am

The Girl is Four

A few days old . . .

First Birthday

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Second birthday

 

Third birthday

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fourth birthday

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE Girl is Four. It seemed a straightforward enough caption for a picture posted on my rarely visited Facebook page, but I didn’t expect quite as much incredulity.

What? She’s four already?

Yes, four years ago I wrote in these pages about the new arrival to the family, The Girl: Bonnie, a surprise to us all after three beloved and boisterous boys.

Looking back at the photos scattered around various hard-drives, memory sticks and cloud sharing sites (it would have been far easier if I’d printed some), you see that four years is quite a long time.

For a start, she was born with black wavy hair like her dad. Now she has pin-straight, wayward dark blonde hair like her mum.

For the first year she was a laid-back, compliant baby (well, as much as a baby can be), and now, well, she pretty much refuses to do anything she’s asked unless it’s on her terms.

I did congratulate myself on her fourth birthday because I wasn’t pregnant, nor had I been delivered of another baby in the previous four years.

When Jed had his fourth birthday, his little brother Dougie had already arrived. When Dougie turned four, I was pregnant with Billy. When Billy celebrated his fourth, I was pregnant with Bonnie. This time there’s no fifth baby on the way!

We’re well past the milestones that all you new parents will be facing: the endless nappies, night-feeds, weaning, walking, talking, potty-training and (most of the time) tantrums.

Birthdays have been developmental stages too.

The first birthday is for the relatives and the one-year-old is fairly baffled by the whole palaver. The second birthday might see more relatives and friends in attendance, and Bonnie’s third was the first time she had friends over. Two of her pals came to our house for games, dressing-up and cake.

The fourth birthday was the first ‘outside catering do’ as we took Bonnie and ten friends to the Wacky Warehouse and let them all go bonkers in the ball pit for a couple of hours. They had a brilliant time.

At four, she’s now fairly independent – wanting to dress herself, take herself to the loo, write her name, count to 20, walk without holding your hand and tell you in no uncertain terms that “I can DO it!”

Yes, she’s utterly unself-conscious about singing loudly and without any discernible tune, and will dance in a shopping aisle if the opportunity arises. But she’ll also hide behind you and be shy with strangers, and jump on your lap if something is ‘scary’ (which at the moment seems to be everything from polystyrene dinosaur bones to bedtime).

When I carry her to the loo half-asleep at midnight each night, it always startles me how much she’s grown, from the tiny baby who could nestle into the crook of one arm to the girl who rests her head on my shoulder while her feet dangle at my knees.

She’s ready to start school in September which will be another milestone for both of us, especially for me as I know there isn’t another baby coming up behind to distract me.

Inevitably, she’ll always be my baby, but not because she’s the youngest. I look at all four of them and think exactly the same thing.  But don’t tell them I said that . . .

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February 23, 2012 · 1:22 pm

Baby Cafe isn’t just a latte party

MUCH has been written in recent weeks about the fate of Northampton’s Baby Cafe. Some of the reaction to the protest at cuts to the group’s funding has been bewilderingly unpleasant and misinformed.

I never used the baby cafe myself, despite breastfeeding all my children. By the time the group formed I think I’d already had at least two children. Thankfully I had a brilliant no-nonsense midwife and managed to master the technique and also get through the draining, often miserable and lonely first year as a mother.

Despite what some observers seem to think, the Baby Cafe isn’t some middle-class meeting place for wealthy stay-at-home mums to knock back premium lattes courtesy of the NHS.

It’s a support group, a haven, a place for often bewildered and embarrassed new mums to go and get good, honest advice from fellow mums, who have been there, seen it, done it and know just how demoralised and isolated you can get in the early months of parenthood.

It’s not even open as frequently as it should be, due to funding. And the protesters certainly aren’t sitting on their post-natal backsides waiting for taxpayer handouts – they already have several fundraising efforts on the go to try to keep it going.

While there seem to be some who think that all women who breastfeed think nothing of flopping out a boob for all and sundry to see while they’re eating their lunch, the truth is that most of us don’t. Discretion comes with practice and honest advice.

This isn’t about politics. Babies need feeding, and no one should judge anyone for the method they choose to do it, be it breast or bottle. The cafe probably does more to ward off post-natal depression and loneliness than anyone realises. That’s the real value of this service to the NHS, the babies, and all those taxpayers who think, wrongly, they are somehow being ripped off.

 

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February 19, 2012 · 9:04 am

Another of our weekly chats: Watch “His and Hers: Love and pipes” vlog on YouTube

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February 18, 2012 · 9:30 am

Our son communicates in drawings

SOMETIMES being a parent can be baffling. Our four are constantly throwing us curved balls.

The older two talk in riddles, and when they do deign to speak to us they seem to miss off the beginning and end of every sentence.

Three-year-old Bonnie has decided that every mealtime is mucking-about time. She knows perfectly well how to sit at a table and use a knife and fork. But lately she’s given up all table manners, eats with her fingers, keeps her mouth open when chewing and gets up and down from the table several times. And she shouts “tomato sauce” at everyone regardless of what’s on her plate.

Little Bill has taken to drawing everything and writing notes. Not unusual for an eight year old, you might think, but as well as lovely messages like ‘I love you Mum’ left on my side table, or portraits of everyone stuck to bedroom doors, if he’s told off or is in a grumpy mood, he writes lists of ‘things he should be happy about’ or draws pictures of himself looking sad. Or captions describing himself ‘mean’.

It’s heartbreaking, and when we ask him about it, he brushes it off as just something he likes to do.

We’ve worried that he’s feeling he’s not getting enough time with us, what with the constant demands of four offspring with differing demands, especially his little sister. As he usually seems pretty content and good at getting himself up and dressed and ready for anything, maybe we’ve not given him as much attention. Something we’re now trying to remedy.

Still, he’s better than the rest of us at art already.

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February 17, 2012 · 5:34 pm

Stubbornly getting into hot water

THERE are varying levels of cleanliness in our house, and without wishing to gender-stereotype, the boys can get rather smelly at times.

However, there’s nothing like sudden unavailability of hot water to make people realise just how whiffy they’ve become – and how reliant we’ve become on the shower.

When our hot water pipes froze over the weekend I wondered whether we’d ever be accepted into polite society again.

One of our sons has worked out that short daily showers before school keep the spots under some control, while another will only shower after sport, and there hasn’t been much of that recently due to the weather. Son three would happily go a week without a wash if he were allowed to.

Daughter will take ages over any type of washing, but is also happy to accept a wet-wipe over the face and hands if time is of the essence. Thankfully, this is one of the few areas of life she’s not too fussy about.

We didn’t realise the hot water had gone until quite late in the day on Saturday because, well, it was the first Saturday in ages we hadn’t had to be anywhere or do anything.

So were all slobbing about in our pajamas until lunchtime, and our basement kitchen taps had been working perfectly.

Our hot water pipes froze during last winter’s snow, but had thawed out after I’d scrambled about on my hands and knees for a few hours under sinks, armed with hot water bottles and a hairdryer.

Not this time. Not so much as a drip.

Now any normal person might have just called it quits and accepted that the pipes were going to stay frozen for at least 24 hours. A normal person may have just boiled a couple of kettles for a wash. A normal person might have continued to slob out for the day watching the Saints and England rugby matches on TV.

But no, I had to try to beat the pipes. We needed to have showers.

I drove to Argos and spent £40 and probably a lot more electricity on two fan heaters, and by the time the kids had gone to bed – filthy – the house was like a sauna and the pipes were still frozen.

Bloke knows there’s often little point trying to deter me from a determined quest. But he gave me a look. It said: “The kids are in bed. No one is going to have a shower tonight. The pipes will freeze again overnight. Is it time to give up?”

We turned off the heaters, made some hot water bottles and went to bed. I lay awake trying to think up a Plan B. We’d get up early, go to the Mounts swimming baths and have a shower. Like people did when their loos were still outside and baths were copper and placed in front of open fires.

The next morning, early, I woke up to the sound of running water. Hot water. Running. No need for Plan B after all.

By lunchtime everyone was clean and we were all slobbing out watching the rugby. Sometimes I think I worry too much.

 

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February 13, 2012 · 8:18 am

Are party dresses conditioning girls into impractical clothes for women?

BONNIE has just got to the age when birthday parties are the most exciting thing to EVER happen to a kid, what with all those ball-pits, pass-the-parcels, party dresses and cakes.

Up until the age of three, parties can be a little baffling, but when they reach the grand-old-age of four – as Bonnie will in a week – the socialite is born.

She’s been to two parties in the past two weeks for her best friends Izzy and Alice, which have both led to a dilemma I don’t remember witnessing with the boys: what to wear.

The boys just accepted whatever shirt and trouser or jumper and jean combination I wrestled them into; for Bonnie it seems far more important than that.

She’s been coming home from nursery and putting her summery party dress on just to have tea – and objecting most loudly when sent back up to change.

She seems genuinely conflicted about whether a pretty party frock or Princess dress-up is de-rigueur for a party at someone’s house, or at Wacky Warehouse, or Berzerk.

While I’m trying to coax her into a t-shirt and jeans so she can be more comfortable, she’s wriggling into some multi-layered Rapunzel floor-length ballgown.

I just don’t know where her love of dresses has come from (as you can tell, it ‘ain’t from me). So we’re already compromising: I let her wear her fancy dresses over a pair of leggings and a t-shirt, and wellies if the weather is bad.

At Berzerk last weekend, I bumped into a former colleague and Dad-of-Girls on similar party-marshaling duty. I voiced my concerns about letting her run about the climbing frames and slides in an ankle-length dress, and he laughed. “You’re not used to dealing with girls yet, are you?”

Then he pointed out that just about every girl in the place was dressed in flouncy frocks, with sequined cardies and pretty clasps in their hair. And they were all climbing as high as possible, running as fast as they could, and not caring a jot about having to hitch up their hems to do so.

I guess this is the start of a learned tolerance for impractical clothing that every girl takes into womanhood . . .

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February 12, 2012 · 12:24 pm

Still talking – latest Vlog from our Chron columns

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February 12, 2012 · 11:14 am

Getting kids to wear coats is snow joke

AT the time of writing (February 6), there’s still about four inches of snow outside but we’re assuming school will be open this week.

Nevertheless it may be the ice rather than snow that throws the proverbial cat amongst the (frozen) pigeons. It’s meant to be bitterly cold this week and parents should be prepared.

It seems ridiculous to say but you do see children turning up at school without warm clothing. I don’t care if your children ‘don’t like wearing coats.’  You’re not their friend; you’re their adult, so insist they wear one. And if they refuse, make them walk the last couple of streets to school instead of getting a lift from door to door.

My elder two seem to think that coats are an optional extra when the temperature hovering around the zero mark, but they get dragged back to stick a coat on over their school uniform. No son, your blazer just won’t cut it. I don’t care what other kids do; you’ll secretly thank me for that coat. And yes, I do tell them that they “won’t feel the benefit” if they wear coats indoors.

The younger two are still, thankfully, at an age where they like a warm coat, hat, scarf and gloves, even if we do get through several every winter (only to find them cluttering up the house come the summer). I think I’ve bought at least four hats for Bonnie since November and even putting gloves on the old-fashioned string-through-the-coat-sleeves doesn’t seem to preserve them for long.

Bonnie and her snowman as brothers fight behind

But Bonnie recently announced that the navy blue snowsuit she’d been wearing for a couple of winters was a, far too tight and b, FOR BOYS. (Billy’s hand-me-down)

I did look around the shops for several weeks for an age-four snowsuit – not too puffy – but couldn’t find one. You may get lucky on Freecycle for coats, or by checking the charity shops. Kids can grow out of coats in a season and it can be an expensive business.

Then last week I found the perfect all-in-one at Blacks up at Riverside. It was pink, waterproof, not too bulky, and £20.

When the snow came at the weekend, our lot all layered up in warm coats and hats – even the boys, who know from experience the pain of a snowball hitting a cold ear or a being shoved down the neck.

While Bonnie was happy to join in hurling snowballs with her brothers, she soon got bored and devoted herself to making a tiny snowman, or lying on the ground making snow-angels. Meanwhile the boys’ snowball fight descended into all-out warfare, including fortified walls both at the Racecourse and in our tiny back garden, where they trampled my plants and lawn underfoot.

I’d like to tell you that Bloke and I observed maturely from a distance, but it would be a lie. Not only did we race each other inelegantly down hills on toboggans too small for our grown-up bums, but Bloke was at the heart of Sunday’s long-running snowball skirmish. And much to the disgust of our elder boys, we sneaked out to the Racecourse during Saturday’s late-night snowstorm to join other grown-ups building snowmen and running around like kids. OK, so we might not be the après-ski at Val d’Isere types, but at least we can still enjoy a bit of snow closer to home.

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