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There is No Such Thing as a Parenting Expert!

I don't like the term, "parenting expert." To me, there is no such thing.

It seems to me that there are numerous different approaches to parenting, and we're all pretty much flying blind. None of us knows for definite that what we're doing is the 100% right choice, that we're not inadvertently damaging our children, that our children won't grow up and wish we'd done something different.

When I was studying developmental psychology, I had naively chosen the course thinking it would tell me something along the lines of "and then, aged 12 months, the child can understand this, and is physically able to do this..." What it actually teaches you is a history of theory: this guy did a study where this happened, so he said children develop like this, then this guy came along and said actually, I think it's like this and did a study to prove it. Even the genuine experts aren't experts.

I have already written about how I don't trust the advice of people who've made their name out of being a nanny - their job is to resolve behaviour issues quickly and without drama. This includes Supernanny and Gina Ford; to me, neither can be classed as any sort of an expert when they don't have children themselves and are busy making a substantive living out of telling us what to do.

I love Sarah Ockwell-Smith; her approach to parenting is much more gentle and close to my own ideas. She is more knowledgeable, as she has four children of her own so you know that what she's telling you to do, she's tried and tested on her own kids. She does her homework, and her advice is backed up by reference to studies as well as her own experience. Still though, for every study saying one thing, you can usually find two saying the exact opposite. I love what Ockwell-Smith has to say, but I would probably call her "well read" rather than a parenting expert.

I am a massive fan of attachment parenting; I bought a Dr Sears book and loved every word of it. I still don't think Dr Sears or his wife are experts. I think they have a lot of valuable experience, and a lot of great ideas, but they can't possibly be parenting experts when every child and every parent are different. Also, the whole point of attachment parenting is that you go by your instincts, not by a set of instructions!

It is also worth noting that health visitors are not experts. In order to become a health visitor in the UK, one must be either a registered nurse or a midwife - so someone who looks after sick people, or someone who deals with pregnancy, childcare and immediate post-natal care. Training to go on and become a health visitor then takes just one year (if training full time). How much do you think a person can learn about babies, child development, sleep issues, weaning etc, in one year? On top of learning the regulations and requirements, that is. The majority of advice a health visitor gives out is based on their opinion. Considered as it may be, it's still just one person's opinion. I'm the first person to say how utterly amazing our health visitor was - but over the last two years I have heard some horror stories that made me realise that sadly, she was in the minority. Health visitors are not parenting experts; they are people who have weighed a lot of babies.

I am not a parenting expert. You are not a parenting expert. Your mother is not a parenting expert. Your mother-in-law is not a parenting expert. The woman up the road who keeps telling you to put a hat on your baby's head? NOT A PARENTING EXPERT.

I know a lot of stuff. When S was born I was so worried about every single tiny aspect of parenting, I bought a shedload of books, and I borrowed even more from the library. Do you know what I learned? I learned that everyone has an opinion on how you should raise your child. And you probably shouldn't listen to any of them, unless they resonate particularly with you. Even if it's your mum. 

I do definitely consider myself to be an expert; I am the world authority on my child. I know that when she wakes crying in the night, I can usually get her back to sleep with a bit of Baa Baa Black Sheep. I know that she loves porridge and hates eggs. All children are different though, and I'm willing to bet there aren't many other toddlers out there for whom being handed a banana on the way into the supermarket guarantees their mother enough time to do the shopping before it gets boring.

I don't know anything worth knowing about your child, though. And neither does anyone else - except you. Do not listen to them.

So what do you do? How do you decide the best way to raise your child?

I can't tell you what to do, but I can tell you what I've done thus far. I read a lot of books; I always have at least one parenting book on the go. But I only stick with the ones whose ideas seem reasonable to me after the first few pages. I've never reached the end of a Gina Ford book. I ask people whose children seem happy and well adjusted (not necessarily "well behaved"). I don't ask people who are always on Facebook complaining about their kids. And then, I put it all together and I make my own decision. What feels right to me? What can I not bear the thought of doing? What will get us through tonight, and not make me feel like the world's worst mother?

At first, it's terrifying. After a while, I found I began to trust my own judgement. I began to trust that actually, yes, this is my child and I do know best. Better even than a so-called expert.

There will always be someone who disagrees with your approach; there will always be someone who tells you in an authoritative tone that you are doing it wrong. To those people I generally  point out that S is my child, and it's my choice.

Of course, since I'm not an expert, you should feel under no pressure whatsoever to listen to a word I have to say!

Follow the Giggles!

I've been reading this book lately, called Playful Parenting. It's all about how we parents need to lighten up and play more. The basic premise of the book is that when a child is "acting out," they're doing that because they don't feel connected - and the best way to reconnect is through play. 

The author, Lawrence Cohen, says that we should all get down on the floor and play with our kids more. And not the kind of play where you're trying to sneak education in, but sitting there and playing with whatever they want to play. I've been working on that lately, and S seems to like it. These days, when she sits on the floor with her Lego, she often clears a space on the floor next to her and pats it saying "come on Mummy!"

One of the really interesting ideas in this book is using laughter to diffuse difficult situations. So when a child is doing something you'd rather they didn't, rather than shouting at them, or giving them a lecture about why they shouldn't do whatever it is, you find a way to turn the situation to laughs. Silly voices, funny faces, falling over are all winners - as are things like pretending to be scared of ridiculous things (potatoes, people with brown hair, your own hands). Basically, being really daft. 

When I first read this, I thought what you're probably thinking right now: that's all well and good, but how does the child learn right from wrong if you're busy pulling faces? 

A little while ago, S realised that she could pile up the pillows on our bed and climb them to get to the headboard. Then she could put her leg over the headboard, and pretend it's a horse.  The first I knew of this was that gut-wrenching thud as she fell off the bed one night, and I went running upstairs to find her half under the bed, crying uncontrollably. Kids only ever remember the fun part of things though, don't they - and so, she keeps on climbing up there. 

Last week, we had a few days where every time we went upstairs to get ready for bed, S would run straight to the bed, pile up the pillows and climb onto the headboard. I would have to drag her down, by which point she was giggling and having a good old laugh, kicking and twisting her body while I tried to change her nappy. I told her off. I said "no we don't do that." I physically held her body still while I put her nappy on. Then the kicking started, and she kicked me squarely in the chest several times. I ended up shouting, we both cried, and S went to bed without a story a couple of times. I felt like the world's worst mother, shouting at a toddler who was just trying to have fun. 

Then I remembered the Playful Parenting book, and figured it couldn't hurt to try. The next time she made to climb up the pillows, I dragged her down by her feet and tickled her. Then I sang a song. We sang Wheels On The Bus approximately four hundred times, and then she gave me a cuddle and I sang Rock a Bye Baby and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and then she lay down in bed, gave me a kiss, cuddled Ted and went to sleep. 

I was astounded, but still concerned that I had distracted her attention from the problem, rather than dealing with it. The following night, the same thing happened almost exactly. The night after that, S lay down on the bed and demanded that we sing Wheels on the Bus. 

And just like that, she had stopped doing this thing that had been driving me batty for weeks! Looking back, she probably started doing it because it seemed like fun, but then the fun of winding me up probably surpassed that. Once she had my attention in other ways, there was no need to go off climbing over the headboard of the bed.

Since my success with this, I've tried to remember to be more playful with S. I sit down on the floor and build Lego towers with her, or sit at the table with her and do a running commentary on what she's colouring or sticking. 

Being a single parent, stressing over money and trying to keep on top of the never-ending washing pile, it is difficult sometimes to muster the energy to play the fool and make light of a situation. On those evenings where S was kicking me in the face and chest, I was so exhausted I just wanted to lay on the floor and cry. It was the worst feeling in the world. But weirdly, in the long run, finding that little bit of energy to handle the situation differently made a world of difference. S went to be smiling; I left that room feeling pretty good. 

I'm still reading the book; I'm hoping to get more tips from it - and I'm sure S hopes I do too!

Wordless Wednesday 2014-09-17

We Love Co-Sleeping

I make no secret of the fact S shares my bed; I love that she's right next to me. Over the weekend I read a post on Mummascribbles that inspired me to write about my own experience of co-sleeping.

When we were in hospital, we had the most fantastic nursery nurse called Kit who came down from NICU (because S was under their care) to help with feeding. There were a lot of tears; I was so tired and stressed with the whole situation and felt like I was failing at motherhood already. Kit showed me to do two things that literally saved us. The first was "Kangaroo Care" where I would undress S and put her down my top. She would happily sleep "skin to skin" on my chest. Although I had her sleep in the fish bowl cot over night (for the most part), when she woke early in the mornings I would get her out of the cot, pop her under my shirt, and doze off sitting up. It was heavenly. This did cause a bit of a fuss among the midwives though, as they would often come round to check on us, look into the cot and gasp "oh, where's your baby?" She was so tiny, they couldn't tell she was under my shirt!

The second thing Kit showed us was how to feed lying down. She put up the side of the bed, and put a pillow against it so there was no chance of S going anywhere, and I fed her laying down. I was against the idea originally; I thought the midwives would tell me off (there was one lady who was very disapproving), but Kit said "sod them, she's your baby. You're her mum, and it's your decision what you do with her." (that sentence has stayed with me ever since; sometimes it's on a loop in my head)

When we finally came home from hospital it was on the condition that I never let S go longer than 3 hours between feeds. That first night, we discovered the roof of my new flat had been leaking the entire two weeks I was in hospital; my bedroom ceiling and walls were soaked. We spent that first night at the ex's house, and then came home to sort the flat out. The council delivered a massive dehumidifier (the size of a cooker; the sound of a train) and showed the ex how to work it. Unfortunately he never quite got around to passing that information on to me, so I wasn't aware I could switch it off overnight - I slept downstairs, on the sofa. I had the moses basket next to the sofa, and my mobile next to my head, with alarms set for three-hourly intervals.

Every time the alarm went off, I would wake S (she was jaundiced so often needed to be woken to feed), switch the TV on for some company, and feed her. Then I would put her back down in the moses basket, ensure the alarm was set for another three hours' time, and go back to sleep. Within a couple of days, I was so crazy from sleep deprivation, I found myself waking after ten minutes, panicking about where I'd put the baby; was she suffocating somewhere under my duvet? Had I missed the next feed? I was going bonkers! When I finally moved back upstairs to the bedroom, the three-hourly feeds continued, and so did my panicked waking, until the health visitor told me it was okay now to leave her to sleep as long as she liked between feeds.

Now that S was waking for feeds, and her jaundice was clearing, I found it more and more difficult to get her to go back to sleep afterwards. She began to wake every three hours, and I was exhausted. One morning around 3am, I remembered Kit's words. I propped myself up with a lot of pillows, lay S on my chest, and put a small blanket over both of us. We both slept soundly for five hours. It was heaven. This quickly became the norm after early morning feeds, and then one day I thought to myself, you have a big double bed; there's plenty of space for S next to you. So I put a little blanket down for her to sleep on, and although she went down in her moses basket, the first time she woke I would feed her in bed and then put her down next to me. We both slept a lot better. Eventually I did away with the moses basket all together, and began feeding S to sleep in my bed. When she woke in the night, I would feed her laying down and we would both just fall back to sleep. We carried on like this until S stopped breastfeeding at 17 months

Now, S is 29 months old. When she goes to bed at night, it is in my bed. There was a brief spell when she was sleeping in the cot, but it stopped as suddenly as it started and now she very rarely sleeps in there (and only at her request).

Our living situation means that even if I wanted to, I could not put S in her own room - the noise on that side of the building is too much, and there are often sudden shouts or car horns. Although there is noise outside our room, I am right next to her so if she is disturbed I can usually help her back to sleep fairly quickly.

One of these days, we will move house to somewhere that's not this noisy and disruptive. S will have her own bedroom, and her own toddler bed. And she may well use it. But if she stays in my bed, I really don't mind. Yes, I sometimes get kicked in the face - but it's worth it. I believe that co-sleeping has helped us to develop a very strong bond. When I get into bed at night to read a book, S usually puts her head in my lap. When the alarm goes off in the morning, S wakes up and says "come on Mummy, let's go!"

On a weekly basis, I hear she's not still sleeping in your bed is she? or ooh, you want to get her out of that habit as soon as possible and other such niceties - as if she's picking her nose and wiping it on my leg. People offer to help me tidy up our spare room so that S can have her own bedroom - as if I weren't capable of tidying the room up myself if I wanted S to sleep in it. People tell me it was ok when she was small but now I really need to kick her out and have my own space, as if my entire life is not intertwined with S's any way. As if it's any of their business.

To clarify: I don't think it's unhealthy that I share a bed with my two-and-a-half year old. I don't think she needs to be in her own bedroom. Most importantly, I don't think it is of anyone else's concern where my child sleeps. 

I have shared my story because when I first started co-sleeping, I felt like I was being terribly naughty and shouldn't tell anyone. I thought if my health visitor found out, I would be in trouble, and feared the judgement of other mothers. The fact is that I was sensible in my co-sleeping when S was small. She was never in a dangerous position where she could get trapped down the side of the bed or smothered by a pillow or my duvet. Yes, there are terrible situations where babies have died whilst co-sleeping with their parent(s), but what is rarely mentioned in the sensationalist news reporting of these is that for a lot of babies and parents, co-sleeping is the right idea. Lisa, who inspired this post, co-slept with her baby because her son Zach found it hard to settle anywhere but on one of his parents. When babies are very small, being close to their mother helps to regulate their heartbeat and breathing. 

Every parent should make their own decision when it comes to co-sleeping. For some, like me, it can help to forge a close bond and foster confidence and happiness for parent as well as child. For others, baby is in their own bedroom from six months, and I'm sure they're just as happy. None of us is an expert in this parenting malarkey, and it is important to remember that what works for your friend, your mother, the nosey woman down the road, won't necessarily be what works for you. 

Book Review: A Salad for All Seasons by Harry Eastwood

I was sent a copy of "A Salad for All Seasons" By Harry Eastwood to review, along with some lovely Florette salad to go with it. 

Being one of those people for whom "a salad" is "some lettuce and whatever's in the fridge," this book was a bit of a revelation! The first revelation was that Harry Eastwood is in fact a woman. She was a co-presenter on the Channel 4 show Cook Yourself Thin and has published a couple of other recipe books.

The book begins with a dictionary of leaves for each season - a photo of what they look like, their name, and how they taste. This is especially useful for those of us who tend to stick mainly to iceberg when we're picking our salads! 

After this, the book is split into sections by season, with each boasting several recipes for salads. What I like about these recipes is that they're not just a bunch of greenery to go with your meal, but a meal on their own. They include fish, bacon, cheese, fruit and dressings - everything you need to make a delicious meal.  At the end of the book, there are recipes for glazes, dressings, pestos and vinegars. Each one has a photo above it, so that you can see what your concoction is supposed to look like - always a bonus!

I love the way this book is set out - each recipe has its own page, with a large photo of the finished dish to tempt your taste buds. There's a little blurb at the top of the page, about the salad, what it goes well with and other notes.  Many recipes also have a note at the bottom to say what you could swap in - for example, how to make the salad vegetarian, different fish etc you could use.

This is one of those gorgeous books that you could happily just sit and look through for a long while. The recipes are simple and easy to follow, and don't call for outlandish ingredients you couldn't easily find on the shelves of your local supermarket.  I'm definitely looking forward to trying out some more of the recipes in the coming weeks!

My Sunday Photo 2014-09-14

Saturday is Caption Day! 2014-09-13

Weekend Blog Hop 2014-09-13

Happy Weekend!!!

If you're reading this on Saturday, don't forget it's #ArchiveDay on Twitter!
Tweet an old post and find loads of hidden gems to read.

Don't forget we've set up a Twitter account for the Blog Hop.

Do please go and follow @WeekendBlogHop. We will use the account to RT your links.

We're doing an Instagram Linky again this week. Do please ensure you follow both of your hosts.

My Instagram profile is here

Laura's Instagram profile is here

And now, on with the shenanigans.

The Bloggers' Showcase this week is this post from The Dadventurer... because really, is there any parent who can't relate?

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Note: The above badge is for the Bloggers' Showcase only. If you would like the Weekend Blog Hop Badge, you can find it at the bottom of this post.

Now for the #WeekendBlogHop

The rules are simple:

• Link up your BLOG. Please do not link up individual posts! 
• Comment on the most recent post of the two blogs ahead of you in the linky. If you have already commented on that post, pick the post published before that. 
• You can comment on more if you like!
• If you tweet your blog using #WeekendBlogHop and tag @mylifeasamummyx and @singlemahoy we will RT as many as possible.
• Please follow at least the two people ahead of you in the Instagram linky.

Link up your BLOG here:


Link up your INSTAGRAM here:

Happy Weekend!

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Long Term Vs Short Term Parenting

I've been thinking lately, about the difference between short term and long term parenting. Or, really, short term and long term anything. I think once you become a parent, you tend to start thinking more about long term than short term. You can't just live for today, spend up at the beginning of the month and run out of money by the 10th of the month - now you have someone else to consider. The majority of us, when we become parents, start to look at the bigger picture, the longer game.

As I've mentioned before (on social media as well as here), I've been reading ToddlerCalm, a fabulous book which I will be reviewing shortly.

The author of this book, Sarah Ockwell-Smith, has children of her own. She gives sound advice supported by evidence she can back up with reference to studies. Early on in the book, she makes a point about long term and short term parenting, which I found really resonated with me.

Here is an example: you are trying to cook tea/have a conversation with a friend/watch a TV show and your child keeps whining at you, trying to get your attention. You've told them "in a minute, mummy's busy" around five hundred times - but they keep on whining, and it's driving you round the bend.

The short term parenting response to this thinks only about the short term: I need this child to shut up before I go crazy! You might snap and tell them to shut up, you might even shout, pick them up and physically put them in front of the TV or a toy. Some parents may even get so stressed they lash out and hit their child.

The long term parenting response involves thinking about how you want your child to feel, how you want them to treat other people as they grow up, what you want them to be like when they grow up. So you would think, I don't want you to grow up thinking it's ok to snap or shout or call names or what have you, and you would find a more calm way to get the point across so that they learn the correct responses to situations.

Sometimes juggling between being a parent and doing other things is hard and we all make short term decisions to resolve immediate situations. I think the idea is that over time, you do more of the long term than the short term. 

This brings me on to my parenting pet hate: parenting "experts." I am a strong believer that there is no such thing as a genuine parenting expert. One thing that really stuck with me from Toddlercalm though, was the idea that the parenting "techniques" a lot of these people expound fall under the umbrella of short term parenting.

Someone like Supernanny has gained her "expert" label by being a nanny. When people hire a nanny, and when a TV show is only 46 minutes long, it's the quick fix that wins the points. Yes, sitting the child on the naughty step will stop that behaviour; as I've mentioned before, the response you get is a Pavlovian, behaviourist response similar to what you get when you tap a puppy's nose to stop it from biting. Supernanny does not need to care about the long term parenting of your child; by the time your child has grown into an adult who is perhaps not as caring or compassionate as you would hope, Supernanny (or any other parenting expert) will be paid and long gone.

Similarly, it doesn't make great TV to film the nanny getting down on the floor and trying to diffuse the situation by playing with the child, or by having a long, drawn out conversation about what the problem is, and do they want a cuddle and are they having a hard time coping with mummy going back to work and how can we make them feel more secure.  Shows like Supernanny are famed for getting quick results but I don't think quick results are necessarily the best.

I'm the first to admit I often fall back on the short-term parenting a bit too often; being a single parent, there's nobody else to take care of S when I'm feeling a little frayed around the edges. I just have to crack on as best I can, and try to take lots of deep breaths. Sometimes I do just let her have an ice pop when she's not had her tea yet. Sometimes I do let her go to bed late because I can't be bothered to wrestle her up the stairs before she's finished her puzzle. Sometimes she kicks me hard in the chest or face when I'm trying to put her pyjamas on, and she doesn't get a bed time story that night.

I am working on that though. I am working on taking the deep breaths, and on teaching my child the correct way to behave. Long term, I want her to know I love her unconditionally, whatever she does. I want her to know that if she's having trouble behaving in a socially acceptable way, or having a hard time generally, I will sit down and try to help her - even if that just means sitting next to her while she cries until she's calmed down enough for a cuddle. It's important to me, that she knows I will still be there for her, even if she doesn't want a cuddle right now.

To me, my child sometimes does the "wrong" thing but not because she's trying to be deliberately naughty or difficult. She's pushing her boundaries and establishing rules in her head. Short term, I could sit her on the naughty step until she calms down and is more subdued, but long term, I'd rather help her through her problems and have her know 100% that I will always be there - because there's nobody else for her to rely on.

Please note - as with all of my posts about parenting, this is my view, and my view only. I know that I am in the minority, and half the world now seems to think the naughty step is some sort of holy grail of parenting. I do not judge anyone's parenting choices; I have neither the time nor the inclination to pay that much attention to what anyone else is doing. My time and attention are taken up with my own child; as, I am sure, are yours.

Lee Evans at the O2

I used to love going to see comedy shows. Back what I was young, free and single (disposable income, no need of a baby sitter, lots of friends to go to comedy shows with), I used to attend them quite regularly.

Most of the comedy shows I have seen have been local events though, and I'm sad to say I've never been to the O2.

Although there is a lot to be said for the intimate setting of what Jimmy Carr once referred to as a "village hall" (my local venue for most shows), I should imagine a show at the O2 would be worth the effort of getting there. Especially to see someone like Lee Evans, who is an amazingly talented comedian.

Here are some of my favourite Lee Evans lines:

• Have you noticed ever time there's a murderer on the loose, they have that advert pop up from B&Q - "this week, hatchets, half price!"

• I love restaurants, and that's the thing now, they always boast about now, restaurants - home made cooking - I don't want home made cooking, that's why I'm here, 'cos I don't like the shit at home! Yeah... you know! And they don't say whose home it is, do they! Could be a mental home, couldn't it!

• I tried water polo and my horse drowned... that was a nightmare!

• People tell me, Lee, you should take up golf. You know what I say to that? F*** off!

• This bloke, I swear he's in any supermarket car park. He's great. He walks across the car park, and he's got one of those fobs, and he opens his car before he gets there. [posh voice] "ha, ha, ha! I don' know if you saw what I just did there, but I actually opened my car door before I actually physically got there!"

• I like it when the waiter asks you if you want Parmesan cheese on your dinner. Yeah, give me essence of puke all over me tea!

So yeah, if anyone wants to buy me tickets to see Lee Evans at the O2, pay for travel, perhaps a hotel, and get a fantastic babysitter for S - do please feel free!

Wordless Wednesday 2014-09-10

Why I Am Not Potty Training My Child

Several months ago, I went online and ordered a potty. It arrived, and we put it in the living room. After a few months, S sat on it... and tried to push it around the living room like a ride-on toy.

I had vaguely thought that I might try potty training some time over the summer. Nursery was closed for two weeks in August, so if S wasn't trained by then, we would concentrate on it during those two weeks.

Talking to a friend, she told me she had trained her daughter completely, with no accidents, in a week using the Gina Ford potty training book. I balked at this suggestion; I have a deep-rooted mistrust of anything Ford has to say. My friend persisted though, telling me: if you can get your head past it being Gina Ford, it's a great book. I bought the book. It's a Gina Ford book. I got as far as the first case study, where she calls the child stubborn, and describes it as a nightmare. When the child had issues over eating tea, Ford advised the mother to take his tea away, and if he asked for food later not to give it to him. He was shut in his room to dress himself (at age four, when previously his mother had always dressed him), and bribed using a star chart to change his behaviour. At that point, I threw the book across the room. I'm not bribing my child or manipulating her behaviour in that way.

I've not been overly bothered by a desire to get S potty trained; I always figured she would get there in her own sweet time. I've been inundated with advice from well-meaning friends though, who seem to think S should be potty trained by now and completely out of nappies. I'm given advice almost daily: "what you need to do is..." or "what I did was..." The assumption seems to be that because she is two years old, she shouldn't be wearing nappies any longer. Don't worry about whether she's ready, whether she wants to be potty trained, whether she's capable of thinking "I need a wee, I'd better sit on the potty."  People delight in telling me how they potty trained their child, but a lot of the stories I hear do not sit well with me. Even the term "potty training" bothers me. It sounds like something you do with a dog, not a human child. 

Over the last few months, S has occasionally expressed a desire to sit on the potty. Sometimes she does a wee in it, and proudly shows me... and then she gets a nappy out and brings it to me, asking me to put it on. Sometimes I ask if she would like to take her nappy off and use the potty when she needs a wee; about half the time she says yes, and takes her nappy off. The other fifty per cent of times, she says very clearly, "no!" Many times when she says she wants to take her nappy off, she sits straight on the potty and waits until she's done a wee - even if that's ten minutes or longer. Just as many times, she gets bored and goes off to play, and ends up going on the floor. 

A well-meaning friend bought S some pants, which I offer to S from time to time. Only once has she agreed to put them on, and then ten minutes later she wanted them removed and replaced with a nappy. To me, this says that she is not quite ready to go into "big girl pants" just yet.

When S returned to nursery after the holidays, I asked them to offer her the potty when they went for nappy changes, but not to make a big deal out of it. She always seems to say yes to using the potty there, probably because all of her friends do. Yesterday I went to collect her, and found that she had sat on the potty twice, and done a wee both times. She was very pleased with herself, and rightly so. I'm still not taking away her nappies and making her exclusively use the potty though. As soon as we got home, I gave her the option of removing her nappy and she declined. I offered her the potty several times before bed, and she refused each time.

Meanwhile, I've been reading Toddlercalm (review on its way!), and it's all about giving a child as much control as possible over their own lives. This is similar to what I've previously read in Happiest Toddler on the Block, and something that resonates with me more than training my child like an animal. S is the person who knows best when she is ready to use the potty or toilet, and when she wants to stop wearing nappies. We have potties in the house; we have a step and a toilet seat.  She can use them, or not.

In this article on the Huffington Post site, Steve Hodges MD says that he believes few children are genuinely ready for toilet training before the age of 3. In this article on Babble, Hodges goes on to say that children's bladders are still growing up to the age of 3, and they are best placed to do that when filling and emptying uninhibited - without the child trying to hold it in for fear of not getting a star on a chart. 

Yes, it's entirely possible to potty train a child before they're properly ready - and I believe these days a lot of children are trained very early, out of some weird sort of one-upmanship, or parents following Gina Ford's overall plan of working to a schedule (right, you're two, time to get rid of the nappies!). But that doesn't mean it's the best thing for the child. I believe the likes of Gina Ford have encouraged us to believe our children are lazy, manipulative tantrum machines that need to be whipped into shape and "broken" into the correct way of doing things like wild animals. That is not how I see my child, and it is certainly not how I ever intend to treat her.

As with all other posts on this blog, I don't care when or how you potty trained your child. I don't care what you think I should be doing with my child and I really do not have the time or the inclination to judge anyone for their choices. For me, for S, we are doing what is right. And that is all that matters to either of us.

Sugar Free September: One Week In

When I first noticed the idea of Sugar Free September on the I Quit Sugar website, I posted a link on social media with a random thought that perhaps I could give it a go. A friend responded that since I'd managed to give up social media for Lent, this should be easy.

That friend probably didn't realise just how much sugar I was eating/drinking on most days. A 500ml bottle of Coke has 10.5 teaspoons of the white stuff in it, and I was drinking two most days - plus chocolate, ice cream and the other usual suspects. In her I Quit Sugar books, Sarah Wilson recommends that you check the labels of foods, and avoid anything with more than 5g of sugar per 100g. That rules out about 90% of what you'll find in the supermarket, including a lot of fruit - grapes are mostly sugar, for example. Bananas are around 50% sugar - and as they get more brown, their sugar content increases.

Although I started this adventure on September 1st, I did begin cooking meals from the books and avoiding sugar a couple of weeks earlier. But September 1st was when I stopped drinking Coke, and really avoiding sugar. There have been a couple of "slips" but generally, there has been little fructose in my diet.

So what have I been eating? Breakfasts have been smoothies with things like plain (full fat) yoghurt, cucumber, celery, coconut water, berries (one cup  per 2-3 portions so not a huge amount) and coconut oil. Lunches have been home made soups or scrambled eggs with ham, mushrooms etc added. For tea, I've mostly had chicken or steak with steamed vegetables - because I'm a bit pants at forward planning.  There are loads of recipes in the I Quit Sugar books, but really it's not so hard to come up with something that doesn't have sugar, once you get your head around it. 

These are some of the clever tricks I've learned from the book:

• Really the only thing I've been using to sweeten anything is rice malt syrup. A few people have mentioned agave nectar, which is a favourite of health food shops everywhere - but agave nectar is 70-90% fructose, and fructose is what I am aiming to avoid with this exercise.
• Cooking for one can prove a problem, but a great way to get around this is to make use of the freezer. Sarah Wilson is a big fan of "par cooked & frozen" veggies - where you steam the vegetables for a couple of minutes, plunge them into cold water to halt the cooking process, and then freeze in portion-sized bags. My freezer is full of broccoli, kale and carrots just waiting to be thrown into whatever I'm cooking.
• If you've made something (anything) a little more runny than you hoped, you can add chia seeds to it and wait a few minutes - they soak up huge amounts of liquid so will make your liquid thicker.
• Replacing sugar with fat means you don't feel hungry, and don't have to miss out on things tasting good. If I have a craving for something sweet after dinner, the advice is to eat some cheese.

Monday and Tuesday were hellish; I knew to expect some withdrawal from sugar, but was expecting a headache. What I actually had was two days where I just felt so mortally tired and drained of energy, it was all I could do to slump in my chair and type out the bare minimum of work. On Monday I actually had a nap. I felt awful. On Thursday, I felt like I had the worst kind of hangover - you know, the kind where your insides are shaking and you're not entirely sure you won't pass out. On Friday though, I woke up feeling a little more alive. I had a headache from Friday to Saturday, but that has gone too now and I feel a lot better.

For me, the worst part is in the evenings; I'm not hungry, but I habitually go out to the kitchen, looking for something to eat. The few times I have "slipped" this week have been in the evenings. And I've noticed the effect immediately. For one thing, the food I ate didn't taste half as good as I expected - much the same way as one craves a McDonalds but when it arrives in the cardboard carton, it doesn't look or taste the way your brain was telling you it would and you kind of resent having been lied to. The experience of eating it is not as heavenly as you imagined it to be, back when there was no chance of you being able to have what you wanted. That sort of thing. I didn't feel too great physically afterwards either. Again - much like a McDonalds.

This last week, I had intended to exercise more, to drink loads of water, to be all fit and healthy. What actually happened was that I felt dog rough, and on some days I barely even took 5000 steps. I did go for a long walk on Monday morning, but regretted it by mid-afternoon when I just wanted to crawl under my duvet and hibernate. After that, there was precious little in the way of exercise.

I've come to the end of my first week, and I find I've lost 3.5lbs without really noticing or trying.

I started this because I knew I was eating too much sugar, and that I needed to do something about it. I did have a thought at the back of my mind that I would probably lose a little weight - but I wasn't expecting it to be this quick or easy!

I would like to add here that I know 3.5lb is a lot, and one is not supposed to lose weight quickly for various reasons. I also know that usually, when I've tried new regimes before, I've lost weight purely because I've eaten less - because I couldn't eat the nice things I wanted to eat, I couldn't figure out what to do so I would skip meals. I've not done that this time around, though. I've eaten loads. When you do something like this, you always get the naysayers who will pick holes in what you're doing. Calorie counting has been such a massive part of our culture for such a long time, entire generations have been born and died believing that calorie counting is how one loses weight. So I expect to get people telling me I should be keeping an eye on my calories, or not eating fat, or eating more fruit, or whatever else. 

The thing that concerns me now, is staying way from the sugar and keeping this momentum. I'm terrible for starting something new, and sticking at it for a week or so before giving up. I honestly don't think I could have even started on this without the Slimpod MP3 I've been listening to every night for the last 12 weeks. Before, the idea of standing in the kitchen preparing batches of soup and vegetables, of making a roast chicken on a week night just for the hell of it, would have seemed bonkers. With just S and I at home, and with S getting her main meal at nursery 4 days a week, I never really saw the point in bothering to cook proper meals and didn't often bother. I will write a proper post about the Slimpod another time.

Meanwhile, off I go to embark upon week 2. My freezer is filled with lovely food, as is my fridge, and hopefully this week I will have some energy to exercise too!

My Sunday Photo 2014-09-07

Saturday is Caption Day! 2014-09-06

Weekend Blog Hop 2014-09-06

Happy Weekend!!!

If you're reading this on Saturday, don't forget it's #ArchiveDay on Twitter!
Tweet an old post and find loads of hidden gems to read.

Don't forget we've set up a Twitter account for the Blog Hop.

Do please go and follow @WeekendBlogHop. We will use the account to RT your links.

We're doing an Instagram Linky again this week. Do please ensure you follow both of your hosts.

My Instagram profile is here

Laura's Instagram profile is here

And now, on with the shenanigans.

This week's Bloggers' Showcase is this post from Northumberland Mam about Zero Waste Week. I love the amount of information in the post; it really gives you food for thought about how much you waste personally.

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Note: The above badge is for the Bloggers' Showcase only. If you would like the Weekend Blog Hop Badge, you can find it at the bottom of this post.

Now for the #WeekendBlogHop

The rules are simple:

• Link up your BLOG. Please do not link up individual posts! 
• Comment on the most recent post of the two blogs ahead of you in the linky. If you have already commented on that post, pick the post published before that. 
• You can comment on more if you like!
• If you tweet your blog using #WeekendBlogHop and tag @mylifeasamummyx and @singlemahoy we will RT as many as possible.
• Please follow at least the two people ahead of you in the Instagram linky.

Link up your BLOG here:


Link up your INSTAGRAM here:

Happy weekend!

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Our Fabulous Summer Activity Bags

Shortly before S's nursery closed for Summer holidays, S's keyworker L asked me if I'd like a little book bag put together for us to borrow over the holidays. I jumped at the chance - S loves books so much she often cuddles one to sleep!

At the end of term, we were presented with two bags. I had been expecting a couple of books in a bag, but what we actually got was bags stuffed with resources. 

The Dear Zoo bag had the Dear Zoo book, a mask of each animal in the book, stick puppets, play dough mats ("can you make play dough tusks for the elephant?"), a pair-matching game featuring the animals from the book. There was a list of activities, and a list of questions to go with the masks ("can you roar and prowl like a lion?") Oh, and a Dear Zoo cuddly toy - a naughty monkey in a bag marked "Too Naughty!"

The Gruffalo bag had a copy of The Gruffalo, but also a copy of The Gruffalo Touch & Feel book, a Gruffalo peg puzzle, a Gruffalo word mat, a "Gruffalo describing words" sheet (with a picture of the Gruffalo surrounded by adjectives), a woodland background and characters from the Gruffalo to use on it.

Both bags came with a little note pad and pen so that you could write down how you got on.

S really enjoyed playing with the contents of these bags. She enjoyed the Dear Zoo one the most I think, and has asked to play with it several times. She loves to wear the masks and had proper giggles when she realised she could see me through the eye holes. They were mainly used to play Peekabo:

Here are some photos of her playing with the resources:

My favourite photo though, is this one: 

We also played with the Gruffalo bag, but S only seemed interested in the peg puzzle; she did this over and over and over again!

I was so pleased with these resources; S had a great time playing with them. Dear Zoo is her all time favourite book so she really loved all of the extras surrounding the book.

When I looked closely at the resources, the play dough mats and stick puppets etc, all came from Twinkl Resources. I had heard that name before, but I didn't recall when - so I Googled them, and found the sort of website one could get lost in for hours. They don't just do resources for playing with the Gruffalo and Dear Zoo; they have... pretty much anything you could ever want to print out. There are resources for teachers and parents, from S's age right up through the key stages. 

Twinkl say: 

Twinkl Resources is your first choice for easy to use, trusted and high quality teaching materials for educators and parents worldwide - professionally crafted materials with a personal touch.

The website is amazing; I have spent hours going through all the resources lately. One of my favourite parts is the Create page where you can essentially create your own worksheets and flash cards using the templates provided. There's also a great Primary Teaching Forum where you can chat to other users. The forum is split into sections for different subjects or different types of user, for example nursery nurses or childminders. It's a great place to swap ideas and get advice.

Most of the resources on Twinkl are free, however there are paid membership options where you can have access to even more! Gold membership is £24.95 a year, and Platinum membership is £39.59 per year. 

I love the fact most of the resources are free; it means that anyone with a printer can have access to fabulous worksheets, flash cards and games for their children. The paid option is an important one though; without subscribers to the site, they would not be able to continue offering such a wide range of resources. 

I was delighted to be offered a Platinum membership to Twinkl in exchange for writing about my experience and opinion of the site. All opinions are my own.

Dating as a Single Mother

The thing about dating when you're a single parent is that it's such a kerfuffle!

I mean, dating in itself is a pain in the bum - you get dressed up, you put on your best smiley face and basically make like you're having a job interview for an hour or so - presenting your best self, smoothing over the parts best avoided in a first meeting.

But when you're a single parent, there's a whole new level of "argh" - not only do you need to arrange a reliable baby sitter, but you also have vet your date not just in terms of whether you think you could get on with them, but whether your child or children could get on with them. And that is a massive question. 

On the one hand, you don't want a never ending parade of random men coming through your child's life; on the other though, you don't want to bother starting something with someone who doesn't get on with your child.

And then there is the question of children - if they have their own, will they have a different style of parenting, will their children get on with yours? If they don't have children, are they looking for someone to have children with (and do you want more children); are they even interested in a "ready made" family?

In ye olden days, pre-child, you could just go on a date with someone, carefree and without worrying about these things - you could just have fun and worry about whether they were "partner material" at some undetermined point down the road, if and when it got to that sort of point. Once you have a child, their happiness comes before everything else - so even if you don't ever introduce them to your child until you're sure they're worth the effort, there's no point in getting to the point where you're sure about them, if you then find that your child hates them.

I have been in the situation myself, where you're an older child and a new partner turns up who you hate, but is there to stay - and you never get over that feeling, that someone else has been chosen over you, by the one person who you feel should never choose anyone else over you. That feeling haunts my nightmares as something I would never, ever want to subject S to. 

I went on a date the other day (shh, don't tell anyone!) and it was really scary. Having been largely confined to the house in the evenings for some time now, I had nothing to wear. Heck, even brushing my hair is a bit of a novelty these days! And then, once I'd sorted a babysitter and dug out the mascara, I had to actually go and meet the bloke. Terrifying. Well... actually, I'd met him on a dating website a few weeks previously, and we'd been chatting so it wasn't that bad. We already knew a fair bit about each other so didn't have to do that whole "so..." business. Well, I'd be lying if I said there wasn't a little bit of the old "so..." but it wasn't as bad as one of those dates where you have to just start from scratch with who you are.

These days, I work from home and don't have much occasion to leave the house (that sounds worse than it is, honest). When I'm not working, I'm looking after S and my mind is far from the idea of getting a date. So I'm thinking at the moment that internet dating is probably the way forward at the moment. You can do the whole "getting to know you" bit without investing too much in it, kind of like skipping the first few dates. And then you only meet the ones you get on with - and therefore need less of your babysitter's time. In theory.

If any of my lovely readers have experience of dating as a single parent, please do get in touch. I'm interested to hear how other single parents have dealt with this sort of thing.

Wordless Wednesday 2014-09-03

"Look Mummy - Pirate!"

Why I'm Giving Up Sugar

I wrote a post last week about how I intend to take part in Sugar Free September.

I'll be honest; after years of sugar highs (and lows, fixed by eating more sugar), I am a bit nervous as to how I will cope with the withdrawal. I have already begun cutting back my sugar intake and filling my freezer with goodies, so I'm hopeful it won't be too much of a shock to the system.

Here are some things you might not know about sugar:

• In countries where people have free access to sugar, there is a much higher incidence of diabetes. One worrying statistic is that a can of soft drink per day increases your risk of diabetes by 22%.

• Sugar reacts with the proteins in our bodies and changes their structure, forming toxic substances known as advanced glycation end-products. It's no coincidence that those words form the acronym, AGE.

• Back in ye olden days when we all lived in caves, we lived off meat and fats. Our bodies are designed to eat as much of those foods as we need, and then we stop. From time to time we would stumble across sugar - perhaps some berries or suchlike. Since we didn't know when we would come across such a thing again, we would eat and eat and eat, as much as we could. Our bodies don't have that "wait, stop, you're full" signal for sugar because we didn't know when we'd come across some again. This is how come you can easily drink a litre of fruit juice in one go, but you probably couldn't drink a litre of full fat yoghurt in twice the time.

• Sugar is addictive. When you say this, people mostly think you're bonkers - but recent studies have found that not only is it addictive, it interferes with our appetites and confuses our bodies.

• I know the "low fat" diet idea from the 80s is still very popular with a lot of people, who believe if you eat low fat products you'll lose weight.  There's a massive industry built around the idea, and it rakes in millions each year. The problem is that fat doesn't make you fat; sugar makes you fat. And what do manufacturers put into their foods once they've removed the fat, to make them taste reasonable? Sugar. By the bucket load. 

• The sugar in fruit is still sugar. So is the sugar in honey, and so is the sugar in agave nectar, maple syrup and coconut sugar. It's all fructose, which is what causes the problems.

• Our bodies use glucose to perform certain functions - but that glucose is easily found when breaking down proteins and fats in the body. We have no need to put extra glucose into our bodies for general survival and wellbeing.

A lot of people are doing Sugar Free September; it was even on BBC's Inside Out last night. 

Since I started telling people I was doing this, I've had lots of people tell me they would love to do the same, but don't think they could. I'm not going to lie; it is a bit scary. Sugar is everywhere, in everything these days. It's added to everything, even savoury foods, under lots of different names. Our packaged savoury foods are so processed that they are broken down to sugar in our bodies very quickly and can be just as bad as eating sugary foods. I'm finding out very quickly that it's hard to do this if you're going out for lunch or even for a drink. But I'm hoping the results will be worth it!

Throughout September I will be posting  a weekly selfie on my Instagram profile, in the hope that there will be some change in my appearance. I will also update periodically, if I think of anything pertinent to add to this post. If anyone has questions about Sugar Free September, do please feel free to get in touch either here, or on Facebook or Twitter.