Recently I’ve been lucky enough to start writing for The Spinoff Parents, a thoughtful, inclusive, non-click-baity conversation chaired by the marvellous Emily Writes. A few months ago I wrote these two pieces: Think Big for Kids: 5 ideas to protect kids and support families There’s a God in our Christmas: One mother on the role […]
A little visitor came to our house for the first time recently. This was the conversation between the visitor and my four-year-old son, SBJ: Visitor: Whose bike is that? SBJ: Mine! V: It can’t be yours. It’s pink. Pink is a girl colour. SBJ: No, colours are for everyone. Pink is one of my favourite colours. […]
With friends and family scattered all over the globe, I’d love to have a huge map of the world in our house. When we move to Thailand later this year, it’ll be a priority purchase. The only reason we don’t have one already is my West Wing addiction. What a marvellous show. I rewatched all […]
Gentle parenting? I have a love/hate relationship with labels and jargon, in any field. I don’t like being put in a labelled box – who does? – but in a vast, Googleable world, knowing what keyword fits your life situation can be really handy for finding like-minded people or tailored advice. ‘Gentle parenting‘ is a natural […]
We’re in a tricky patch, just now, at our house. The kind most parents of little kids will recognise: this is a solidarity post with all of y’all. Our three-year-old delight, SBJ, is in the middle of a pretty intense, fragile time of life, and he’s (therefore) not the only one. For the first time, I feel like […]
On Saturday night (or afternoon, Thai time), the New Zealand general election results rolled in, faster than ever before, and they led to the first outright majority government in the twenty years we’ve had MMP, our proportional representational voting system. And it’s the centre-right National government who has been voted in for a third term with […]
Oh, the shame! I love the days when my 2.5 year old son gets mistaken for a girl (Yus! No arbitrary gendered fashion advice for us, thanks!), when he plays with a tea-set, or when he says his favourite colour is pink (just the once, and I’ve seen no actual evidence of this, but it’s […]
Remember Susan Cain? You may have seen her fabulous TED talk that I posted a while ago, based on her book, Quiet: the Power of Introverts. The guru on introverts in an extraverted world, she gives ten tips for parenting introverts on her website, and now she’s got some ideas for how teachers can nurture introverts in […]
This is a reworking of an earlier post that was part of the Generous Lent series, just to make it more widely applicable. Feel free to share it around if you think it’s helpful. A good listener is never short of friends. Some people are naturals at this popular skill, and you might be lucky […]
I loathe and detest it when people call a brave or audacious action ‘ballsy’. Courage doesn’t come from testicles. The human race would be in trouble if it did. A professional colleague said in a meeting recently ‘don’t they say your vision is only as big as your balls?’ Lucky for all the congregations and […]