It was a bleak time before the internet, when we had to rely on asking friends or family or consulting encyclopedias to answer life’s questions. Now we have google and we can shamelessly resolve any query without embarrassment! Parenting poses a lot of challenging issues and our (often late night) google searches reveal a lot about the experience. Here are a few of our follower’s most relatable searches: The Very Real Struggles of Pregnancy “Can your unborn baby's kicks break your ribs?" Yes ribs can be broken, and just parents generally. "Are hot baths ok in pregnancy?" "How not to poo when in labour." “Is my baby clawing at my cervix?” Relationships “Why is my husband more annoying...
Many of us are spending a lot of time at home or in the garden at the moment so this could be a great opportunity to tackle potty training. In many ways the experience of potty training during lockdown could be much the same as at any other times but with a few extra considerations. First things first, making sure you’re ready. We’re all for grabbing an opportunity when you see one but make sure your little one is actually showing signs that they’re ready to potty train. NHS guidance suggests waiting until they can go at least an hour without wetting their nappy and they know they need to pee or when they are doing it and can...
Mere days or even hours after hearing those initial cries of your firstborn and it inevitably begins. Someone’s baby is “easiest”, sleepiest, biggest, the best feeder. There’s nothing like hearing other new mums around you discuss their 6 week old sleeping through the night to make you feel like a failure. One mother feels she is accused of making a rod for her own back by co-sleeping while eyebrows are raised as another is viewed as heartless for pursuing a strict routine. The competitive parenting can begin from day one and is such a shock for new parents who until this moment have gone about their daily lives without constant judgment and evaluation. Social evaluation in this highly personal but...
Children with a trajectory schema enjoy movement. They like to move themselves and to be moved. They're drawn to watching movement and making movement happen. I recently watched my two grandsons at play. Hamish, 2 years 4 month, was pushing a train around a track. Vincent, 6 months younger, was immediately attracted but appeared to disrupt the activity, repeatedly throwing the trains and pushing them away in random directions out of Hamish's reach, and laughing. Vincent has a trajectory schema. Hamish, who likes an enclosed track made an attempt to join Vincent's play. Throwing a train across the room, at which Vincent laughed his approval, but Hamish then returned to his play - throwing doesn't particularly interest him. This illustrates...
Children with this schema will make elaborate farms with animals in fields, gather objects into boxes and other containers and put outlines and borders round their drawings. The railways track will be constructed as a loop, never just a straight line and the duple bricks will be arranged as a wall around the edge of the board. Children with this dominant schema may enjoy emptying spaces/containers as much as creating and filling them. Play ideas: A good selection of farm animals with plenty of fences and gates. Railway and road tracks that can be made as loop, with vehicles of course. Construction toys like lego/duplo, stickle bricks and wooden blocks for making enclosures. At bath time or in a water...
