Writing with tears

A fat brown envelope stares at me from across the kitchen table. By rights it should be at least 3 feet high, the papers it contains so saturated with tears in their making that, like a surreal paper towel advert they have expanded and grown into a distorted weave so engorged with water that a single touch will result in a mini waterfall.

I am staring at my own personal nemesis of the past 12 months; my son’s finally completed Disability Living Allowance re-application.

What an eternity of agonising I have spent just trying to sum up the courage to answer these invasive questions. Countless times I have seated myself at this self-same table and managed only to open the first page before being convulsed by shudders. I have nothing to hide and everything to gain by completing the form and ensuring that both J and I receive the support we are both entitled to and so desperately need. And yet, so contrary to appearances, like soft cotton clouds that look so firm from above and so hopelessly vapourish when you pass through them, I have lost much in the very process of asking for help.

This form is the metal scourer of forms. A tough, unsympathetic detergent seemingly designed to bleach away any pretense of coping, annihilate positive experiences and drown any hints of progress in an endless recital of needs and disabilities. It is a litany of all that J can’t do, of all that he does that requires additional help; a hellish underlining in bright red ink of all the differences between him and his peers.

It is a necessary nightmare. My reason tells me that this is right – that to assess need one must determine what is wanting – but my heart recoils and my head feels like it will implode with the reality of his complex needs.

Innocent and innocuous, you would barely look at this form twice in passing. But like a silent assassin, it has fired bullet after bullet into the foundations of my coping strategy. I can’t pretend it is prudent, I can’t tell you it is healthy but J is my son, and I love him, and I cope with his disability by effectively trying to pretend it isn’t there, or at least dispel it from my quotidian psyche. Every morning I get up and start again, each day a mille feuille of good moments and challenging that, once consumed, leaves no lasting after taste except perhaps fatigue and occasionally a gem of a memory such as an impromptu disco with his baby brother or a particularly clear sentence or phrase that is unusually age-appropriate.

To be in denial about your child’s disability cannot be healthy but with two other little ones to care for, time and circumstance do not always allow for a closer examination. It’s a catch 22 situation – by riding over his disability J fits in better with the family and we work with him, around him and sometimes in spite of him. But he is at one with us. Yet is it fair to him to reduce his needs in the name of normalisation? At what cost does inclusion come? The truth is that J does need far more practical help than his peers and where a tender word or gesture might suffice for his brothers, J needs constant repetitions, reassurances and most challenging of all – time. He needs about ten times the amount of time than 5-year-old C in order to address personal needs such as toileting, feeding, bathing etc. and more time even than his baby brother T in order to manage tantrums and moods and ensure his safety.

This form has brought to attention what is perhaps better left to collect dust in a quiet corner of my mind. But denial of J’s special needs has weighed me down for years and quite literally kept us and him from a relative abundance of cash that he is perfectly entitled to. I don’t want to know all that I have to do for J because knowing won’t change his disability but making me feel a martyr might well end up disabling me. But I accept, finally, that I do need help and so does he. As a parent I have to love J as a whole, Down Syndrome and all. But this form is top-heavy on the Downs and I can’t wait for these re-opened wounds to heal over so that I can go back to viewing J as my son and not as Disabled.

For the moment I’m an expert in listing J’s needs.  I can tell you how many times a day I have to do this or that for J and for how long.  And how many times during the night. I can regale you with his inabilities, bludgeon you with his troubles and, like a child’s peg and hammer board leave you all beaten down and deflated. Deflated, that is, until a red-headed little fellow marches up to you in the street, dazzles you with a great beaming smile and asks you how you are and, if he even suspects that you are feeling low, takes your hand and chatters you into cheerfulness before you’ve had a chance to blink. Now where’s the box for that on the form?

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Change

A year ago I fulfilled a long-cherished dream by setting up this blog. As Time has crept on, change has slipped into our lives under her mantle. Mercifully mundane, this change is merely my husband (M)’s change of job (for the better I might add) but the new job has stolen away a good 2 1/2 hours of his time with us each day, time consumed by a hefty commute to and from his office. And suddenly I am reminded of how infinitely precious time is in a most prosaic way;  my daily workload has seemingly doubled.

Paradoxically I love how much I miss my husband. I have really struggled to cope without his help and support both practical and emotional and my neglect of this blog is a direct result of this change of routine. But, on reflection, how sorry I should be if his absence should go unfelt. My heart aches a little every morning when M’s little devotee asks me (no matter how many times I try to explain) ‘where is Papà?’. But almost instantaneously I realise how lucky we are to be so close. To be sure the school run is barely bearable and bath time is beyond burdensome but when the weekend comes, and we are re-united, we are spoilt for affection and somehow, somehow we appreciate each other a whole lot more.

So that elusive friend Time has slipped even further out of my reach. Again.

They say you have to make time to have time. Well, if I’m ever going to make enough time to blog again I’m going to have to switch from a hand whisk to an electric mixer, put it on Speed 3 and squeeze out some spare minutes through sheer determination combined with a good dollop of imagination. And a very tight timetable…

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Topsy turvy

A few days ago I slipped out of my twenties and entered the unchartered waters of a new decade. My thirties. Even as I type I find myself sighing with relief. I shall not miss the murky, muddy albeit rich waters of the past decade. Girlhood fading into womanhood against the backdrop of marriage and motherhood and the final severing of my parents’ apron strings; it has not been a smooth sailing. 

I can’t help thinking that I have got my decades a little mixed up for contemporary tastes. Instead of carving a career, buying a flat in Clapham and enjoying city breaks on my hard-earned weekends, I have married a foreigner (at just 22), moved house no less than 9 times since graduating, and given birth to three beautiful boys. I may not have a clue how to make a margarita but I have honed my laundry skills to Olympic-gold standards.

Not that I am complaining. Much of what I have done (I might say accomplished – it is hard not to when I gaze on my children’s beautiful faces) is incredible whatever the age you do it. But, when I finished my degree and pursued a career in motherhood, I had no idea just how hard I would find both the silent work of the home and the sense of obscurity that seems to come with it. I have watched countless friends forge dazzling careers in the City, finally qualify as doctors after years of arduous training or travel to unseen corners of the globe. And they’ve had a fabulous time doing it.

But I’ve attended less than half the weddings I would have liked to. And not just because there haven’t been any weddings yet. Being the first to get married seems to knock you off your old friends’ wedding lists, perhaps in fear of you bringing the kids with you – or perhaps in chagrin at your absence from their countless house parties, dinner parties and social get-togethers over the years. Living away in Manchester for 7 years certainly culled many home-grown relationships. But, thanks to the sometimes-dubious benefits of Facebook, and quite simply, better time management (it seems the more children I have, paradoxically the more organised I become) I am rekindling old friendships. 

As we emerge from the agonising self-seeking of the twenties I have had many pleasant surprises. We seem much calmer, more serene, and more whole. Self-image has finally been knocked down the list of priorities and we swop stories of life experiences and encounters. And, mercifully, inevitable discussions on politics seem less wantonly idealistic than they did ten years ago. While I have waded through nappies, hospitals and healthcare clinics with my disabled child, I have had the joy of seeing many friends rediscover themselves on the other side of a quarter-life crisis and enter the very same caring professions that serve my little J so well.

Looking back at the growing pains of my twenties, I can see why so many wait to get married now. Physical maturity might take place in your teens, but we save much of the emotional turmoil for the twenties. Getting your teething problems sorted out first, so you can really get your molars stuck into a serious relationship later makes jolly good, if a little clinical, sense. My husband and I have had to juggle our teething together. Calling us naive when we started out just doesn’t do us justice. We were like children (not that I think we are sage know-it-alls now).  And yet, God-willing, I’ll be celebrating my tenth wedding anniversary as many of my peers walk up the aisle for the first time. Their sleepless nights will be from crying babies. Mine will be from teenage worry.

And I like to think that the wrinkles I am starting to notice are more pronounced due to early motherhood, not age, thus rendering them wrinkles of self-giving, rather than just a poor skincare routine or bad genes. It’s a long shot, and I’m coughing as I type, but it is a rather potent image of maternal self-sacrifice that is definitely more romantic than dry skin or bad soap.

Of course I haven’t helped that issue by going and organising a joint 30th birthday party with a friend who, despite being a fortnight younger than me, barely looks 25 and who, only a few months into pregnancy still has a smoother belly than mine 6 months postpartum. But life isn’t all about looks or I’ll be seriously moaning ten years from now, weeping in twenty and inconsolable in thirty. I intend to dance the night away with more energy than I have had for much of the last 8 child-producing years. I’ve got a lot of missed parties to make up for, so I’m kicking off my heels already.

So perhaps my ship is a little prematurely battered, but it is bolstered by three beautiful little blue sails and my handsome co-pilot at the helm. It hasn’t been always smooth sailing (the same is true of all my friends);  navigating marriage, childbirth, disability and illness has rocked the boat like a quick succession of tsunamis. There have been the doldrums of depression that seemed to steal away two years of my life after C was born. Nevertheless, M and I are more sail-savvy now. Experience is starting to down-categorize hurricanes to tropical storms and we haven’t capsized yet.  We’ve had amazing adventures, exciting encounters, watched glorious sunsets and if we look a little weather-beaten around the eyes, who cares, so long as we keep on smiling as we steer the ship into unknown waters.

The thirties? Bring them on.

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Angelitos

I have two little angels – angelitos – waiting for me up in Heaven.

I would ten thousand times rather that they were sitting here, right now, in my arms but they were never destined to see the light of day, nor I the light of their eyes.

Today is the anniversary of a birthday that never came. Every year, I struggle with myself as December comes and goes. Should I mourn a life that barely flickered into a flame? Am I being uncharitable to my surviving children?

But, with time and the arrival of little T, I have made peace with the reality that I will always mourn the loss of my babies, however tiny. Intricately caught up in my unfailing belief that life begins at conception, I will not deny the reality of their existence, nor God’s decision to call them to His side just a few weeks after they winked into being.

It is so hard to see the rhyme or reason behind God’s decisions sometimes. I say sometimes. I could say oftentimes. Life can seem so very, very fragile. A puff of wind and a memory is all that lingers. Peace; better to have lived a moment, and been loved, than never to have lived at all.

 

How fleeting a life can be

A tiny bud of potentiality

A brief spurt of individuality

Stolen away, washed away

Drained away.

 

A mother’s love

Quarterised in its infancy

Blunted before its time

So ungracious, so very ugly

And so very very cold.

 

Brief weeks of intimacy

Immortality in the waiting

Until then, precious,

Here’s a tear at nightfall,

Here’s a smile at moonrise.

I whisper your name at dawn.

 

Though never shall I know you,

Always shall I love you.

Picture me, remember me.

Wait for me.

 

2nd May 2009

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Battening down the hatches

In the middle of August, my sons and I dig out some old plastic pots and set off blackberrying in earnest. As we do our bramble rounds, the first twinges of dread invade my mind. The horse chestnuts are on the turn and instead of looking forward to the earthy beauty of autumn, I fast forward to the grey cold of winter that might be a lot closer than I think.

In my defense, last winter was the harshest in my memory. Effectively caught unawares, I thought that my move from a tiny village to the urban defenses of a tiny town would protect me somewhat from the misery of icebound roads and the unavoidable cold that comes from the inhibiting costs of heating oil – the only option in very rural areas.

A week of snow before Christmas – unusual but not unheard of. Another week of snow before Christmas – not only unusual but just plain hazardous. Fresh snow on frozen slush. Ice sheets disguised as a smattering of pretty snow crystals. Even that urban giant of London was arrested in its daily grind. And my brand new combination boiler – one of the first on our road of 1960’s housing gems – broke not once, not twice, not even an embarrassing three times. I had to call out the plumber no less than 7 times.

Whilst my neighbours were tucked up in bed, their noisy old back boilers burning cheerfully away , there I was, at 7 am, in a dressing gown, coat, hat and wellies, doing battle with minus 8 degree temperatures and some obstinately frozen pipes. Two or three kettles of boiling water over the external pipes had around a 50% chance of success.  Otherwise we had to revert to the penguin method. The rather ugly electric fireplace I picked up with my last pennies to cover the gaping hole in the lounge chimney breast and strategically placed electric fires got us through the worst of it. Those and some serious layering.

So, despite a glorious Indian summer and a sweltering 30 degree welcome to October, I’m not taking any chances this year. The cosytoes ‘pipe-muff’ that we created for our fussy friends – the outdoor pipes – are going on next weekend. The garden furniture is already tucked up for the winter. The boots, winter coats and scarves etc. are to hand and my alarm clock is going to be set 15 minutes earlier to allow for the wrapping-up-of-children palava. Re-stocking anti-freeze is a top priority. I have invested in a sleeping bag for the baby’s buggy and I am going to kick modern fashion sense out into the cold in my determined pursuit of thermal vests for the whole family.

And I know which car we’ll be using too. My faithful old Picasso. She might be old, she might be ugly and she might have 140,000 miles on the clock, but she can take on snow far better than my husband’s only slightly younger but infinitely more powerful Nissan. I know that to my cost when last December, pregnant with T, I braved minus 13 degrees to inch my way to Cambridge for my first scan. Desperate to know that all was well, having lost two before, I packed a snow shovel, my wellies and a duvet in case of more snow, determined to hear that heart beat. I made it all the way to my town’s high street when I got stuck trying to do a hill-start on ice. Somehow, with the aid of a snow shovel and the glares of multiple red-nosed drivers I managed to get moving. I won’t be trying that again.

It was worth it, though, for that first glimpse of our little T.

As for the school run – I am seriously contemplating an ice hack. We walk to school, but never has half a mile seemed more arduous than when it is half a mile of pavements covered in already compacted snow.  Frozen over and then re-compacted by the endless pounding feet of the pedestrian school commute, it’s like an ice rink made out of lumpy gravy. Trying to support a child with each hand and pretend that you somehow have preternatural balancing skills is just one more parental challenge. At least this winter I won’t be in the first trimester of pregnancy and worrying about that too. I’ll just have a buggy and two small children to contend with instead. I wonder, do they do snow tyres for buggies?

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To the moon with Grandad

My six year-old son (J) is studying astronomy. He has been handling moon rock and meteorite particles as part of his first encounter with the cosmos.

The fact that he is learning impaired has neither excluded him from the activity nor dampened his enthusiasm for his studies. In fact it has added a charm all of its own.

When asked which 10 things he would most like to take to the moon with him, he included, among others; crisps, biscuits, a lolly and his grandad.

Imagine my dad’s delight.

As my dad is now about to become a grandfather for the fourth time (not me this time) I can’t help marvelling at the change in him. Seeing your dad become a grandfather is probably not half so strange as seeing your little girl become a mummy but it is a unique experience nonetheless. He is so young; he was barely 50 when J was born but I think he’s been pretty tired ever since. Between the romps and the tickles, the endless DIY that cot-building, safety-catches and infant car seats generate and keeping apace of 3 lively grandsons (so far) I am not sure if grandparenthood has delivered the promised rejuvenation or made him feel his age far more than he should.

He spent over an hour the other day taking out every single item in his extensive tool box, displaying and demonstrating (interactively) how each tool worked and explaining, very earnestly, their individual functions. The boys were entranced.

Fade back 25 years and there I am, sitting on my grandpa’s knee listening to Peter and the Wolf for the 7 millionth time, or learning to play chess at the ripe old age of 6. Grandpa and I used to sneak off during the holidays to the station and make the musty journey into suburban Croydon to surprise poor old Granny. Curling into the warm gap between my long-suffering grandpa and my still-snoring granny on a lazy weekday morning was the height of happiness. The hot buttered toast with bacon and marmalade that followed did not go amiss either.

Although my Grandpa suffered a stroke when I was 7, and the years that followed saw him sink into dementia, those foundations of love are rock-solid to this day. After he fell ill, I used to sit at the kitchen table and read him the same scene from Enid Blyton’s Malory Towers (when Darrel slaps Gwendoline in the swimming pool) again and again. It was the story he remembered reading to my mother when she was a little girl. His short-term memory was so brief that he could re-live that pleasure over and again and would take me in his arms and hug me so tight I would almost burst. ‘Yoy’ he would say, ‘Yoy’ – an expression of great emotion, picked up over the years of marriage to my Hungarian grandmother.

As the years went by, his frame got thinner and thinner until at last, when I was 14, he went before us to wait for his beloved Babi (Granny) in Heaven. My father’s mother, Grandy, also left us that year. I felt overwhelmed. I had never lost anyone before. But at the same time the prospect of death didn’t seem so lonely anymore, knowing I had loved ones to share it with.

A few weeks ago I had the indescribable pleasure of placing my newborn in the gnarled, venerable hands of my surviving grandfather. Dementia has also stolen away much of his short-term memory, and at 92 he is frail and delicate. But the pleasure he showed as he studied those perfect, tiny hands clasping his index finger, brought tears to my eyes. I sat and watched my father, his own strong hands laid on his father’s arms and felt privileged to witness the merging of four generations.

But it is my J who has been the light of my grandad’s twilight years. He bowls into the nursing home and launches himself into Grandad’s arms with all the confidence of the totally adored. It is mutual. Kisses, more kisses and sweet nothings are exchanged between an adoring great-grandfather and his little copper-topped great-grandson. J then proceeds to bestow a kiss on each of the ladies in the room – elderly and staff alike – and sings a few songs to rally everyone’s spirits. And it works like a charm. School holidays are awaited eagerly in anticipation of J’s company and he is without a doubt the most popular lad-about-home.

So here is my wonderful dad, who I must now remember to call Grandad, building his own foundations with my boys. It’s a castle fort, with intricate gangways, dungeons and exciting hidey-holes – there is no limit it seems to his patience and imagination. And the boys will forever revisit that castle through all the years to come and the arrival of yet another generation.

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Half-term hiatus

Thank the Lord for the British system of half-terms. An outrageously busy Michaelmas/ Winter term (14 weeks in the state system) is hardly the best introduction to the next 14 years of your life in education. My poor 4 year-old is worn out. And so is his poor mum.

Parents-evenings, PSA (Parent Staff Association) meetings, cake-bakes, harvest festival, school Mass (a Catholic addition), swimming lessons and a new weekly ‘Forest School’ invention. This is nothing. Not compared with what is still round the corner…

Mostly circumventing Halloween and Bonfire Night (they are, after-all, not very Catholic), we are already in the throes of Christmas preparation. Still to come: the Junior production, the Infant production, the Infant assembly (something separate apparently), Advent Mass, Carol Singing, another PSA meeting, a PSA cake-bake, a Christmas cake-bake, Christmas bazaar and new for this year – a Year 2 Parents Lunch. Apparently we get treated to a culinary feast in the canteen as prepared by our 6 year olds. I’m salivating already.

The week-long holiday that you get in the middle of term is to enable one to re-charge the batteries. It is eagerly anticipated after about the second week of term.

For me, I love the slight relaxation in evening duties. If I had had to make another packed lunch I think I would have had a melt-down. Every term a new something that we can’t put into the lunchbox is added to a list as long as the Eiffel Tower is tall. This, along with competing with the variety that school dinners can offer (which I can’t afford for both of them) and appeasing their already individual preferences has made this my least favourite chore. I long for the day they can make their own.

And let’s not mention the dreaded school run.

So frankly I’m shattered. Having one in school was tiring enough. Having two in school seemed idyllic with a new baby. I’m not so sure now. Pre-school seems remarkably calm by comparison. I never thought I’d think that about a bunch of two and three-year olds, but wonders never cease.

For now, I am revelling in the delights of nostalgia. I have abandoned my husband for the week and brought my boys home to my parents’ house. To the place where time stands still and memories are woven into the very carpet my little ones are running on. To the place where I can share the burden of laundry and cooking in exchange for the delights of grandparenthood.

And to the place where, for a whole blissful week, I don’t have to make a single packed lunch.

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Parallel universe

There are moments in life that prove to be pivotal turning points. Events, words, actions that change forever the course of our lives. Sometimes we are not aware of them. Sometimes we are all too aware.

The moment my husband asked me to marry him, his face at the end of the aisle as I walked up it, the moment I first looked into my newborn’s face, planting a kiss on the coffin in which my grandmother lay;  so many precious and sometimes painful memories weaving the web of a lifetime.

But I will never ever forget that day in a Manchester hospital, in a small room off to one side, when M and I were told for the very first time that our unborn child was potentially disabled.

Of all the moments in my life that generated change, this moment stands out for all that it represents. Our first introduction to a parallel universe. A world, layered perfectly over ‘normality’ wherein those of us living with disease or disability  (though I am loath to equate the two) reside. Life would never be the same again.

And sadly, life began again in battle. The battle to have our moral views respected – we asked them to not even mention termination;  they offered it to us three times, even after the legal cut-off. The battle to have our medical decision respected – they could not accept that we would not risk amniocentesis. And the battle, that great battle, to push aside all their dire warnings of this risk and that risk and focus on the child growing inside.

By the time I went into labour we were already ensconced in that other universe even though at a 95% chance, the prognosis of Downs Syndrome was not certain.  Months of ceaseless prayer and internet searches into DS and all that it might signify left me wondering what to exactly pray for. So many positives to balance the negatives.  Then J was born. Straight into my arms and there he was – a wriggly, healthy baby boy with my red hair and my husband’s  broad face, whose extra chromosome had bought with it a passport to another world.  

And it is a beautiful world. People here value you for who you are, not what you can do. Race, colour, creed, age and class are all incredibly unimportant. People here are not afraid to talk about fear, or pain or loss. Strangers hold your hand. Friendships are deeper. We smile a lot, laugh a lot and get to celebrate so many milestones and achievements that pass others by.

And we learn a lot too. You learn to appreciate the words, gestures and expressions of everyone around you. You learn how to be a therapist, doctor, nurse, lawyer and teacher. You learn how to navigate bureaucracy and fend for yourself. You become an expert in your child’s disability. You grow a new, tougher skin but a softer, gentler tone to deal with those who don’t understand.

Now we know that the positives of DS do not balance the negatives. They completely outweigh them. Joy has taken on a whole new meaning.  And so many are not just willing, but happy to help. We saw the worst of the NHS when we were expecting J. Now we see the best.

Life goes on in both universes. Life can be incredibly beautiful in ‘normality’.  But the two together produce a richer tapestry, a more stunning landscape. For where there is light, there must also be shadow.  Creating a masterpiece. Whose name is John.

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UNICEF – a just attack on British parenting?

2 weeks ago, Unicef published a report into the sorry state of British parenting where we are apparently failing to spend quality time (that oh-so-overused phrase) with our children and instead are substituting toys and technology for cuddles and storytime.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/8760558/Cycle-of-compulsive-consumerism-leaves-British-family-life-in-crisis-Unicef-study-finds.html

 Apart from being a suspiciously overt attack on the British middle class, just how justified is this accusation? And even if it is just, do we really have any choice?

The main problem, it seems, lies deep in our materialist mentality – a very hot topic at the moment given the recent riots – that has pervaded our society at every level and leaves us convinced that happiness lies in the accumulation of wealth and status symbols. We value ourselves less by our virtues (when do we ever even hear people use that noun anymore?) and more by the opinions of others i.e. our image, whether literal or metaphorical. Having children is seen as a right, not a privilege and slowly but surely we are beginning to start to objectify our children and quantify them by their successes and failures in the exam room and by their payslips.

The statistics are overwhelming. The number of children left in nursery or with a childcare provider other than a parent, is staggering. And yet are parents really faced with a choice these days? Yes, we could all do without a second car, or even a holiday. But when it comes down to paying the mortgage, or putting food on the table, not all of us are offered an alternative. Many couples can’t afford not to work. We increasingly live further and further away from extended family who might, in previous generations, have helped out and childcare costs in this country (around £40 a day at my local nursery) are phenomenally expensive.

And we live in a society where prices are set with the expectation of dual income. If you have 2 salaries, based on the average UK salary you are looking at a working couple netting £50,000 a year. Suddenly a £1,000 a month mortgage doesn’t seem so unsustainable. Take away one of those salaries and you take away that mortgage. My husband and I were turned down for a mortgage by some high street banks because we only had one income between us. I am, effectively, considered unemployed. Wow, that does boost my morale.

Because even if we could afford to, would we even want to stay at home? As a stay-at-home parent myself I can tell you it is no pie in the sky. You get no salary for your work;  no accolades, bonuses or promotions.  Men and women do not recognise it as a career or profession. I have to bite my tongue every time someone says ‘So, you don’t work, do you?’. Of course I do. I do the work of a cleaner, cook, chauffeur, manager and most importantly, full-time child carer. The other day I calculated that I was worth at least £35,000 a year in nanny duties. But when you are talking about money not spent, rather than money you actually bring home it is hard to recognise its intrinsic value in our money-obssessed society. And let’s face it, much of the work I do is menial, non-intellectual and physically demanding. Not very glamorous either.

For I am not a ‘kept woman’. My husband’s salary is typically modest for an academic. Money is tight and it can be very stressful. And I am sorely tempted to try to get a job to boost the coffers and, more significantly, boost my self-esteem. But deep down, as this study by Unicef shows, I know that I am incredibly fortunate to have this time with my children. People can deride me (and they do – especially women, sadly) but I know that mine is the most important job of all.  If I won’t take responsibility for my children’s education, why am I having them? 

Something I find most perturbing is the number of women who look down on me as if I have somehow failed feminism. Because I’m a housewife. As if by reverting to a role adopted by women for millenia I am somehow taking a step back. How sad. Isn’t one of the goals of feminism to give us the choice? By deriding the housewife, we are undermining ourselves. We have forgotten (admittedly because men have always looked down on this work) just how important this work is. And how good we can be at doing it.

There needs to be a radical change in not only in our social values but also our economics and culture to enable parents to really have the choice both financially and personally to be the stay-at-home parent. And I say parent, not mum deliberately. Men can be very effective ‘home-makers’.

But that change needs to begin with women. Stop resisting this legitimate calling. Start talking about household economics and the value of good parenting and care-giving. Don’t let anyone tell you that you ‘don’t work’. Being that primary care-giver isn’t second-best. It’s vital. We don’t have to look very far to see why.
A materialistic society? Champion the stay-at-home parent, make it a viable option and see what a positive impact it will have on our children, who are our future.

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What’s wrong with baby yoga?!

Yet another attack on stay-at-home parents. You know, we just can’t get it right. I mean, imagine wanting to take your baby out and about and to meet other children whilst trying a new activity like…swimming. Or yoga. What a terrible way to bond…

Parent and toddler groups are now under attack in the latest study from a ‘childcare expert’  who, forgive my bluntness, would do better to put down her pen and go and actually do some parenting rather than spend so much time criticising parents.

Apparently we should be singing lullabies from dawn til dusk (group activities and singing are somehow mutually exclusive).  I must be a freak. I love singing lullabies to T, and I also love getting out and about (although admittedly not simultaneously unless we are in the car with the windows very definitely closed – no one else should have to hear that!). I’ve never done baby yoga (I’m not bendy and don’t covet bendy-ness) but I like the idea of something for both parent and baby. Staying at home all day, as this ‘expert’ recommends is hardly conducive to good physical health and, perhaps more importantly, good mental health.

And an hour a day of playing with other children can hardly be called over-stimulation. Otherwise we’ll have to cull all siblings.

Here’s the article:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/family/8787684/Babies-natural-bonds-with-mothers-eroded-by-pushy-parents.html 

Grrrr.

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