There is a special kind of heartbreak a parent feels when the meal they have cooked is described as ‘yucky,’ or refused altogether. If you are struggling with the stress, sadness and discouragement of battling with picky eaters (of whatever age!), this post is here to reassure you and help you and your family relax and […]
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 […]
Bill English announced in yesterday’s Budget that ‘work readiness’ obligations would increase for parents who receive welfare benefits and have young children. Currently, most parents are obliged to actively seek 15 hours of paid work – and accept any ‘suitable’ job – when their youngest child turns five years old (despite the legal age of […]
The latest booklovers’ chain-letter going around Facebook seems to be a challenge to list (without too much agonising) your ten most ‘influential’ books. Heavens. To stay in the spirit of the challenge I’ve tried to write this in one sitting, presumably missing a lot of worthy contenders, but hopefully capturing some kind of truth. And […]
Our son, SBJ, is two now, and we are still a co-sleeping family, though he now theoretically has his own bedroom. I’m mulling an update on how that is working, but in the meantime, I thought I’d just collect the occasional posts I’ve written over the last couple of years, now with pretty pictures! Click […]
Page Five is almost the same as Page Three, but only one breast at a time is on show. SBJ and I are in this week’s Cook Strait News, along with a bunch of other fabulous breastfeeders, gathered for the Big Latch On. Around the world, 14,536 people were breastfeeding a baby at a registered […]
If you had a six-year-old child, and institutional schooling had never existed, how would you go about preparing them for adult life? In the next few posts on unschooling, I want to tease out a few different issues and discuss them separately. Today it’s the different social experiences schooled and unschooled (or homeschooled) kids have. […]
This is the fourth in an occasional series on our experience of co-sleeping with our toddler (or baby, as he was when we began). You can see the series list here. Lucky us, we’re staying in a fabulous studio apartment in Bath this week while we catch up with family in the United Kingdom. Among the […]
I came across two good news stories today, and I thought I would share them, to balance out all the bad news that slurries around. Here are two people to be inspired by. I read today about Mighty Girl Tiana, who saved the lives of three babies in a house-fire last night: A 12-year-old bundled […]
This is the third an occasional series on our experience of co-sleeping with our baby (and toddler, as he becomes later on!). You can see the series list here. Co-sleeping becomes a whole new thing when your baby gets mobile. I was so astounded by observing the phenomenon of sleep-crawling (SBJ also sleep-talks and sleep-dances. It’s […]