Tag Archives: parenting

December 19, 2011 · 8:14 am

Down the Rabbit Hole at Alice in Wonderland, Royal & Derngate, Northampton

MY daughter and I don’t get as much time together since she started nursery, but we took an afternoon out last week to take in a show.

Your daughters might be of an age where you can go for a nice meal or a coffee beforehand, do a bit of shopping perhaps, then spend a civilised evening at the theatre.

For me and Bonnie, it was a packet of jelly tots and a Fruit Shoot in the car park at lunchtime, before being dragged down a make-believe burrow by a rabbit impersonating Frank Spencer and a grown woman dressed as a little girl.

This was Down the Rabbit Hole (DTRH, to save my word-count), the latest interactive show for the under-fives at Royal & Derngate’s Underground, a ‘companion piece’ to the Alice in Wonderland show running in the Royal.

I’ve been to several of these pre-school shows before, including the excellent Where’s the Bear, Knit-wits, Wish-wash, Flathampton and What Makes us Tick?

But if you haven’t, be warned: you need flexible joints and knee pads. There’s a lot of crouching and sitting on the floor.

What makes these productions unique is that you have a small bunch of toddlers following actors dressed in funny clothes around a ‘set’ of rooms, being given little tasks and having their own conversations with the characters.

It’s a recipe for disaster really, but somehow they keep the whole thing just about together. It’s proper storytelling.

In DTRH, the ‘audience’ of kids and parents/grandparents meet the White Rabbit in the foyer, where he’s looking for ‘Mary-Ann’ and switching in and out of a Frank Spencer impersonation (one for the olds).

Then we meet Alice, the aforementioned grown-up lady dressed as a little girl, in a style to make Grayson Perry jealous (one for the arty types).

We (the audience) end up following Alice, who is following the Rabbit, down a series of small doors and tunnels, strangely decorated with oversized rabbit bottoms. Like moose-heads on the walls of a baronial dining room.

We arrive in a small room where a picnic table hangs from the ceiling adorned with upside-down cups and teapots. We’re met this time (*whispers*, same actor), by The Mad Hatter, who sits us on cushions, sings us a silly song, treats us to tea and disappears, to be replaced by the Duchess, Mr Punch and the Pig Baby.

The latter gets passed around to be rocked by the sitting toddlers, sometimes cuddled to make it snort or pushed away in bewilderment and/or fear. (*whispers* it’s a rubber pig-shaped dog chew)

Then we make jam tarts for the Queen’s party from play-dough and meet an odd caterpillar which looks like a fluffy scarf accidentally put through the tumble dryer.

There’s a clever distraction as the children see the tiny door from the famous Drink-Me/Eat-Me scene, when Alice gets them to collectively drink from a bowl using oversized straws. “It’s just blackcurrant squash Mum!” piped up one relieved boy.

When the drink’s finished, the door has been replaced by one that’s big enough for an under-five to crawl through, into another ‘land’ where they play croquet through playing cards using flamingo umbrellas and fluffy (toy) hedgehogs.

Eventually we get to meet the weirdly-Geordie Queen, who is dispatched by the cheering toddlers to a chorus of “off to your bed!” (nicer than ‘off with your head’)

The two actors manage to keep the whole thing together in a very enclosed space, and eventually the audience is ejected back into the relative sanity of the theatre bar where they can play with various props and hidden rooms.

Bonnie was completely transfixed, embracing all the ‘pretend’ tea-drinking and conversations. At three-and-three-quarters she’s probably about the ideal age for this. Younger children were either clinging to parents, or ignoring pleas to sit and rolling under curtains.

Bonnie was slightly confused about why this white rabbit, hatter, duchess and queen didn’t appear to look anything like the ones she’d seen on the big stage at the very same theatre just a couple of days earlier. But she loved it nonetheless and has talked non-stop about it to anyone who will listen.

I was slightly disappointed (alright, very stiff from kneeling) because unlike previous ‘underground’ performances, the show didn’t really move beyond one very cramped room.

However, Down the Rabbit Hole is worth the £5 ticket price to see your pre-schoolers engage with the story of Wonderland up-close and interactive – without any help from technology.  It runs until January 8.

ON the subject of Alice In Wonderland, our family went to see the ‘bigger’ show at the Royal. For the only the second time in far too many years of reviewing the Royal’s usually excellent Christmas offering, I was disappointed (the other one was the Ugly Duckling one).

It had an enthusiastic cast, including a Queen of Hearts channeling her best Queenie from Blackadder while dressed like Vivienne Westwood and Lady Gaga’s laundry had been mixed up in the launderette. Hatter was engaging, and the lizard bloke works his socks off. But presented with one of the most magical and familiar stories ever, the plot was ludicrous. Unengaging in most parts, using slapstick more akin to the imported panto next door. That’s not what the Royal’s Christmas show is about. A woman behind me actually fell asleep. A return to the magic and other-worldliness next year please?

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December 6, 2011 · 8:52 am

She’s shy around Santa so sent him a letter

THE Girl met Father Christmas this week. And despite being rather chatty and shouty in Real Life, she chose to do her ‘I’m Shy’ act.

The Big Man, and Mrs Christmas, were at Billy’s school fete and had popped in to give out selection boxes or colouring books to a huge queue of excited under 10s.

She watched quietly as other children came out of the grotto beaming, trying to break into the chocolate before the accompanying adult whipped it out of their hands for ‘later.’

Billy, aged 8, went in first, on his own, and we could hear him earnestly reeling off a list of Star Wars related gift ideas.

Our daughter Bonnie, aged 3, is still a little baffled by the whole Christmas thing. She’s aware that when the nights start getting dark, this Father Christmas bloke starts appearing on TV ads and everyone around her starts putting in orders for things they’d like but aren’t usually allowed to have.

Her three brothers use this time of year to start making outrageous statements about things they ‘hope’ Father Christmas will bring, seeing as how they’ve been REALLY good all year. Like laptops and £100 trainers. (Never going to happen boys).

Bonnie has joined in this game, by bringing home things she’s cut out of magazines on the ‘safety scissors’ table at nursery. Including the most ridiculous Princess-themed four-poster bed, complete with pink covers, cushions, teddies, pyjamas and glittery slippers.

She points at the TV ads: “I want that, and that, and that,” she chirps, before joining in the tedious household mantra “I want, never gets. . .”

“Pleeeease?” she adds, hopefully.

But when faced with Santa himself, she went mute. “Talk to Father Christmas darling, he’s asking what you’d like him to bring for Christmas, if you’re a good girl,” I cajoled. She smiled, held her hands to her face, and refused to speak. She took the proffered chocs from Mother Christmas and made a dash for the door. And then wouldn’t stop talking about it.

Once home, she remembered another Christmas-themed clipping she’d brought home, this time with Santa on. It was an advert for the NSPCC’s letter from Father Christmas appeal.

While she got busy drawing up a letter to Father Christmas explaining her real wish list that she’d been ‘too shy’ to reveal, (fairies and flowers and butterflies, on this request), I ordered her a letter from Lapland HQ, which costs just a £5 donation to the NSPCC and Childline. You get a personalised letter (which can be sent to a child anywhere in the world), with added pictures depending on their age, which even mentions their best friend.

I know there are many of these ‘letters’ around but seems a nicer idea to be giving money to a charity which helps less fortunate children than just giving it to a corporation for profit. Because as we know, a lot of people have exploited poor old Father Christmas’s image and generosity to their own ends.

To find out more, visit the NSPCC website at www.nspcc.org.uk and click on the Santa link, text santa to 65599 or call 0854 839 9304.

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November 29, 2011 · 3:30 pm

Don’t wish it away. . .well, not all of it anyway

A LADY stopped me in a shop this week, to tell me she regularly read my local newspaper column, and asked after the kids by name. (I blushed, garbled an embarrassed thank you, felt enormous relief that someone actually reads it).

She told me how her own children were now grown up, and that she didn’t get to see her grandchildren often, as they lived elsewhere.

“One thing you shouldn’t do though,” she said. I braced myself. Which of my numerous parental faux-pas had she remembered?

“Don’t wish any of it away, not a second. Not even the tantrums, the teenage years, the mountains of washing. Before you know it, they’ll all have gone, and you’ll miss it more painfully than you could ever imagine.”

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November 28, 2011 · 10:18 am

Should we stock up on earplugs now our Billy’s learning violin?

IT was a mixture of pride and dread I felt last week, when eight-year-old Billy arrived home clutching a violin case.

He is the first in our family to bring home an instrument bigger or more impressive than a recorder, (and to be frank, I was glad when that phase passed).

There were also the odd few years when both Jed and Dougie ‘played’ the ocarina, thanks to a particularly musical primary school teacher. But she left, and the ocarinas and recorders are gathering dust in one of our many drawers-of-things-gathering-dust.

Jed, now 14, plays his much-loved bass guitar but can’t read music. He’s mostly self-taught but did have lessons once a week for half an hour at school, something no longer available to him. I don’t mind the bass. There’s no screechyness about it, but you do have to put up with Fleetwood Mac’s The Chain (the Formula 1 theme) played on a repetitive loop.

And while Bloke and I have a varied collection of instruments, including two acoustic guitars, a mandolin, harmonica, three ukuleles, bongo drums, a Turkish Doumbek drum and an Irish bodhran, neither of us can actually play a note.

We didn’t have paid music lessons as children and our own offspring, until now, always seemed to throw themselves more enthusiastically at sport.

So when Billy started to come home from school talking about how he’d been playing the violin, I was surprised. Previously, violin and other ‘posh’ stringed instruments had only been offered as a paid-for-up-front series of extra-curricular lessons, which we hadn’t been a position to afford and the elder two hadn’t seemed terribly bothered about.

But Bill brought home a letter which, rather than offering paid-for-lessons, was offering the loan of a violin. It seems his teacher, who I assume is part of the excellent Northants Music and Performing Arts Service (NMPAS), is running a small class of enthusiastic amateurs within school.

And by gum, he’s enthusiastic. Once the violin arrived home last week, the practising began in earnest.

An added surprise has been the reaction of the family. Have you seen how beautiful a violin is? All shiny wood and that amazing, horsehair-strung bow? Well they can look all they like, but they are NOT allowed to touch.

The letter that I signed to say I’d make sure Billy took good care of his loaned violin stated that most ‘accidents’ that happen to instruments are the fault of a relative, rather than the actual borrower.

So Billy has been told he must keep it out of Bonnie’s reach, and the rest of the tribe are under strict orders not to “just have a quick go.” Even Bloke, who is itching to try, has been banned.

And the real shock is, it’s not unbearable to listen to. Honestly.

Admittedly, all he’s doing is drawing the bow up and down without putting his fingers on any notes, and plucking a few strings. Sounds fine. I was expecting so much worse.

Ah, I can hear you all laughing. It’s going to get worse, isn’t it?

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November 28, 2011 · 10:10 am

Come on Baggers, stop making working mothers look bad

ANOTHER week, another story about Corby’s shy and retiring Tory MP Louise Mensch, or Baggers, as she’s still known around here.

This time it’s about how she announced to the select committee questioning James Murdoch that she’d be leaving 45 minutes before the end of the meeting to pick up her kids from school.

Much praise and sympathy for Ms Mensch mostly via her Twitter followers, for showing the difficulties for working mothers in putting their children first.

Er, was I the only one to think that it was a bit a joke, and that a man in the same position would never have got away with it?

I’m all for feminism, and flexible working hours for families, but hey, it was LUNCHTIME. She is an MP. She was in an important meeting that she knew was only actually due to run for another 45 minutes after she left. And the trains to Corby run on the hour and take 70 minutes.

It wasn’t an emergency and oh yes, she had her nanny in place in case she missed her train.

I don’t want to bash other working women, far from it. But I do believe in equality. Was she treated equally alongside her fellow committee members? Is Tom Watson leaving early this week to take his children for their pre-school injections? “We have children the same age I think,” she giggled at Murdoch. Who cares? Does that make you friends? Argh!

If I know I’ve got an important day of work diaried, then I try and sort extra childcare or make sure Bloke isn’t away with his own job.

It doesn’t always work. Sometimes in an emergency I’ve had to call very wonderful friends to collect my offspring for me, or had to apologise and dash off early. I’ve even had to have one at work with me.

And you can usually guarantee the more essential your presence is to the meeting, the more likely it is your child will fall ill, or have forgotten their swimming kit. But I’m pretty sure I haven’t ever announced on live TV that I’m leaving work, mid-meeting, at lunchtime, simply to pick up the kids from school.

You want people to take you seriously as a working parent? Then at least try and be as professional as everyone else has to be. It’s true that like many jobs, the working day of an MP can very long and inflexible and probably needs reviewing. But this was certainly not the platform on which to do it.

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November 13, 2011 · 6:35 pm

Set your alarm for night-time toilet trips

I’M SURE she’ll be furious when she’s older for telling you, but Bonnie is finally dry at night.

I suspect the lateness of the developmental stage (she’s almost four) is down to me. I forgot when you’re supposed to start taking them out of night-nappies.

Everyone always tells you that girls potty train earlier than boys. But I think all of my lot were day-time toilet trained at around two.

However, the night-dryness comes later, and you have to make a decision to stop putting them in nappies at night and waking them to go to the loo instead.

I kept waiting for Bonnie to be dry by herself, while she simply stayed deeply asleep.

It’s really easy to misjudge, what with today’s high-tech pull-up disposables, which barely feel wet even when you’ve poured half a jug of Robinson’s No Added Sugar into them via the funnel of your child.

But eventually I had to wake up to the fact that she needed us to ‘night-train’ her – even if she stays fast asleep.

She’s a deep sleeper and complains when she’s woken, but after several months and less than a handful of accidents, she’s started getting up automatically when I come in at around 11.30pm, and even puts herself on a potty in her room.

While doctors don’t consider a child to have a medical bed-wetting problem unless they are over six, if you have a three-year old who has been day-time dry for a while, then take the plunge. Fit waterproof sheets, layer with an old towel, be prepared for accidents, and leave the nappy off.

You might find yourself having to sponge down an irritable child and change wet pajamas and bedding a few times at first. But they quickly adjust to the routine , and it’s better to get them in the habit sooner rather than later.

You’ll need to make sure they go before bed, and lift them to the loo or potty every night around the same time.

It’s preferably to make them walk to the loo themselves to imprint a habit, but even when being ‘walked’ Bonnie often seems asleep.

Of course, it’s not plain sailing. Even after weeks of being dry, we have the odd accident.

Eventually, controlling their bladder at night becomes easier, and you’ll find you’re saving a fortune in nappies too.

If accidents are happening every night for more than a fortnight, it’s best to pop them back into pull-ups for a month or two and try again later. Stay positive, laid-back and supportive, because getting cross will only make matters worse.

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November 9, 2011 · 8:23 am

Fun in the dark with fireworks, mud and toffee

“I DON’T like fireworks, we should go home now,” announced our three-year old daughter, ten minutes before the actual pyrotechnics even started.

By that stage we were already standing in a field, in the dark, having persuaded our youngest two off spring to stay close to us with various sweets, candyfloss and toffee-apple bribes.

The elder two and a friend had disappeared into the night, shouting promises to behave and clutching all our remaining cash.

“We can’t go, it hasn’t even started yet,” said Bloke. “Anyway, I thought you were excited?”

Indeed, for the previous five hours, after finding out we were planning a trip out to watch fireworks, Bonnie had punctuated every conversation with “I’m soooo excited!”

She’d bounced around the house getting her warm coat and wellies on. She’d chattered uncontrollably in the car on the way, and had oooed and ahhed over the raging bonfire that greeted her across the fields on arrival.  

Bloke and I were discussing how much easier it was to be enthusiastic about Bonfire Night when it wasn’t pouring with rain and freezing cold.

Then Bonnie switched from Being Excited to Being Whingey.

“Pick me up Daddy. I don’t like fireworks Daddy. I don’t like being here Daddy, I want to go home Daddy.” (I stayed out of it. I’d done Bonfire night on my own the previous year, with a pram, in mud, in the freezing rain).

What do you do when your toddler shows expresses fear? Do you cut your losses and head home?

Or do you stick it out, running the risk of giving them a firework phobia for the rest of their days?

Bah, you tell them not to be daft, explain what the fireworks will look and sound like, and stick it out, of course.

Bloke picked her up, and told her he’d cover her ears if the fireworks were too loud. After an initial burying of her face into his shoulder, she was persuaded to turn around and watch the pretty fireworks along with everyone else.

She soon got used to the noise, and by the time the initial few rockets had gone up, she forgot that she didn’t like fireworks. She was whooping and ‘ahh-ing’ away, while simultaneously smearing her face and coat with the reddest, stickiest toffee apple ever purchased.

Meanwhile Bloke’s back was aching from having to hold her at an angle so they could both look skywards, while unwittingly having red toffee rubbed into his jacket.

We rounded up the rest of the kids, who appeared out of the darkness, muddy from head to foot. They patiently explained that as the display was at Casuals Rugby Club, they’d felt obliged to play some rugby. . .

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November 8, 2011 · 8:40 am

We shouldn’t give first-time Mums elective Caesareans – we should give them more midwives and tell them to ‘man-up’

THERE’S new guidance about to be issued to the NHS which will allow all pregnant women to request a caesarean – even if they don’t ‘need’ one.

It appears that a growing number of first-time mothers think that having an elective ‘pre-booked’ caesarean – rather than having to have one on medical grounds – will help avoid the pain of natural childbirth and keep their figure.

I’ve been lucky enough not to need a caesarean having any of my babies (if I knew then what I know now, they’d ALL have been home-births).

Therefore maybe I’m not best placed to try to deter any new mums-to-be from thinking elective c-section is easier and safer. (But you know me, I’ll have a go).

Everyone I’ve known who has had to have a caesarean has said how frightening it was. After all, it’s a major operation.

You have to sign a consent form, and there are several people in the operating theatre, including surgeons, an anaesthetist, theatre staff, midwives and a paediatrician.

You’ll probably need a spinal injection; an epidural, and have your pubic area shaved for the incision. After experiencing the strange sensation of having someone rummaging around in your insides, you get to meet your baby.

More rummaging occurs as the placenta is removed and then your stomach has to be sewn up again, which, because it involves layers of muscle, fat and skin, can take around 40 minutes. The final layer is either stapled or stitched.

Either way, it’s a major, painful wound that will take several weeks to heal. For this reason most mums who have had to have a caesarean are kept in hospital longer than those who don’t. You will find it difficult to bend and lift, and will have to take painkillers for the first few weeks at least. You’ll still get the agonising ‘afterpains’ that come after all births as the uterus contracts and have to wear pads for bleeding. Did I mention that internal surgery also gives really bad wind?

You aren’t allowed to drive for six weeks after the operation, and if you do, your car insurance is likely to be invalid.

The World Health Organisation estimates that only ten per cent of women should be having c-sections yet in some areas of the UK it’s up to 30 per cent, notably in the ‘wealthier’ South East.

There’s a distinct difference between ‘too-posh-to-push’ and mothers who have experienced a very traumatic labour and have had to have an emergency c-section. These mums have some insight into whether a caesarean would be a better option, in consultation with their midwife, for any further births.

So why are so many first-timers so taken with the idea of caesareans? Is it really the image touted by the celebrity media?

Are we really now a generation refusing to even contemplate any pain, any inconvenience to our schedules, any changes to our body-shape by life experience?

How come women are so willing to undergo the surgeon’s knife and the associated pain and scarring of plastic surgery for their looks, yet not even contemplate at least trying give birth the way nature intended?

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November 7, 2011 · 8:44 am

Why has Halloween become the acceptable face of begging?

YOU’LL probably think me a party pooper, but I can’t stand Halloween.

Really, it’s not a ‘holiday.’ It’s an excuse to bleed for cash out of parents. You don’t even get a Bank Holiday out of it. It’s basically a celebration of expensive but cheap dressing-up outfits and even cheaper sweets.

But of course, the kids love it. They’ve seen the American films and TV shows that show Halloween as a great big sweetie filled night of pure joy, where their parents don’t just let them join in, they join in themselves. Bah. Maybe in America, but not in my universe.

Yes, yes, I know there are all sorts of ‘proper’ UK traditions involving October 31. It should relate to harvest and the changing of the seasons, and in Scotland and Ireland they make you dance a little jig or recite a poem to earn your fist-full of Haribo, but still . . . bah!

Our Boys will testify, I’m a completely stubborn misery guts over Halloween.

Over the years they’ve all tried to persuade me that Trick-or-Treating is normal, and that I should let them wander the streets of Semilong begging for confectionery or threatening householders. It doesn’t work.

The few times we have ever foolishly opened our door, all we’ve been faced with is a couple of pubescent boys with their hoods up and the usual pallid complexion of someone who spent the entire summer in a darkened room on the Xbox.

But what the hell has happened this year?

Not only did we accidentally end up at Alton Towers over half term during ‘Scarefest’ (most of the screaming came from Bloke on a tiny rollercoaster), but Bonnie was given a witch’s costume, Billy became a Vampire, and the kids were invited to three Halloween parties in as many days. Argh!

There’s one concession I do make for Halloween, and that’s growing pumpkins. But as they take five months to grow, you do have to remember to plant the seeds back in sunny May or June to get them to a decent size.

I don’t grow them to eat – there’s a reason the American’s add a tonne of sugar and fat to make pumpkin pie – I grow them so the offspring can watch while I unskilfully butcher a face into them. Then they can light them in the kitchen until the smell of singed vegetables becomes too much to bear. (Putting them in sight of your front door only encourages the door-steppers).

Nope. I’m still not swayed to embrace my inner ghoul and pester the neighbours.

By the time you read this Halloween will be all over for another year. And I can start being a miserable witch about standing in the cold and rain at Bonfire Night celebrations instead. . .

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November 1, 2011 · 8:40 am

New specs channel Billy’s inner Caine

OUR bespectacled third son had his annual opticians check last week, and decided on his new ‘look’ for the next 12 months.

Billy is remarkably stoical about having to wear specs, and is much better at it than I was at his age.

I feel guilty that so far he’s the only one to have inherited my rugby-ball shaped eyeballs – or double astigmatism, to give it the proper terminology.

It doesn’t help that his dad is just as squinty. Bloke appears to be ignoring the fact his eyes are getting worse with age, as he has now perfected the middle-aged man trick of peering under or over his glasses to look at things close up, refusing to just admit defeat and get bifocals.

Meanwhile Billy looks forward to seeing the nice Eye Doctor Lady, because he gets to wear the freaky glasses with the different lenses and compete to read as many letters as possible.

On odd occasions, Billy has expressed a certain sorrow at having to wear glasses, but it’s not because he gets teased, it’s because they annoy him. Sometimes they pinch his nose, and rub, and he has to takes them off for sport.

When it comes to choosing frames though, he’s bold (once he knows trying to get me to agree to Star Wars frames is futile). As much as I tried to steer him towards something light, he wants the heaviest-looking 1960s Michael Caine frames he can find.

So here he is trying on his new NHS specs. And yes, I’ll admit it, I’ve relented, and ordered him some very cool prescription sunglasses with a Star Wars frame too.

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