Picture from phone

Popcorn sleeps with us on the „Big Bed”.

When its time for bed, I take him in and we cud­dle on the bed until he falls asleep. This can take any­thing from just a few min­utes — he falls asleep while nurs­ing; to an hour or more — we goof off or he is just not sleepy enough.

Well, tonight was one of those last ones. It was OH SO FUN!

These days our rou­tine goes some­thing like this — he kisses every­one good night and we enter the bed­room. He then insists on switch­ing on the mon­i­tor (so later I can hear him when he wakes up), then we play this game of him in my arms and try­ing to turn off the lights, but I move him away right before he reaches the switch. He laughs like nuts at that one. After its dark, we go to the bed and I put him in, after which he starts to make excited noises „Ah, ah, ah!” and gets into posi­tion, ready to take a feed. I lay down, he latches on and set­tles. I pull his lit­tle blan­ket over him and snug­gle him in. He searches for the ties on my pants to pull on for some reason.

Then, tonight, he started to make low, grunt­ing noise. I replied with the same. We play this game from time to time, so its noth­ing new. He grunts, I grunt. He squeals, I do the same and all with­out him let­ting go of my breast or me stop­ping smelling his fine lit­tle hair and smiling.

After a bit I saw he is not tired yet and unlatched him. Then he turned over and grabbed my hand and started to play with it. Pointed at the win­dow when­ever he heard a car/truck/train and we chat­ted about it. I asked him where his var­i­ous body parts are and he duti­fully showed me. He was point­ing at my nose and hair, so I answered as asked. He started to play with my hair and cud­dled into me. I started nois­ily to smell under his chin and he laughed and wanted more. So we spent some time tick­ling and laugh­ing. Then he was sign­ing ani­mals and we made some grunts, moos and what­nots. At one point I thought he was sign­ing bunny, but he kept on doing it, until I real­ized that he was sign­ing ‘water’. In the dark the two look pretty sim­i­lar. Water? He has never asked for this before. Water? Aaa! Water? Aaaah! I really didnt feel like tak­ing him out into the house and get­ting him too excited, so I thought its worth try­ing to keep him in the bed.

„Ok, mama will go get water. Wait here” I said while going up and leav­ing the room „Wait here”.

And I go and fill a water bot­tle and walk back fully expect­ing him to be walk­ing back in the hall­way, but not. I get in the bed­room and hear him „A! A! A!”, sit­ting up in the bed, wait­ing for me. I could have eaten him right there and then, cute in his pink jammy. Instead I offered my bounty and he had a few sips and pointed to where the bot­tle should go. I put it there.

Then we lay down again. In the dark with just a bit of light from the monitor’s indicator.

He wants to nurse, so we are back in our posi­tion. He is in a silly mood and lets go of my breast  just enough to utter:

„Goidigoo”

I burst out laugh­ing and reply

„Goidigoo”

He pauses, then repeats slurred by his full mouth:

„Goidigoo” — and latches back straight away.

And I can feel the smile on his lit­tle face.

I repeat and fill the room and the dark­ness with a louder laugh. And we do this for awhile, being way too loud for any self respect­ing going to sleep team, but who cares.

And it went on. He was fin­ished with his sec­ond go for milk and then chat­tered about. At some point was hav­ing fun plop­ping his head on the bed and gig­gling. He bonked my nose and then was kiss­ing me. Then looked for my belly but­ton and blew straw­ber­ries on my now cold tummy. He def­i­nitely likes to make peo­ple laugh, that lit­tle one.

And at some point I said its time to sleep. He came in closer and laid on his front. Then turned to me. Then after a few min­utes turned to his back, plopped his lit­tle foot on my leg and fell asleep. Holding the tie of my pants.

Even though, I admit, some nights I wish he would just go down quickly, so I can do the things I have in my head. Other impor­tant things, you see. There are those nights. But over­all I love our moments in the dark bed­room, just the  two of us, even when they go on for awhile on those few mag­i­cal nights when we goof off or he is just not sleepy enough.

I have boobs.

Mr.Blab has motor­ized vehi­cles — as a full proof kid pacifier.

„A! A! A!” vocal­izes the lit­tle dude while daddy holds him and they check out the trucks, cars, busses, planes, heli­copters or any­thing that can pos­si­bly pass in eye or ear range around our house.

„A! A! A! Voo! Voo! ”

„Bus?”

„Aaaaah..” — the widely known sign for approval or agree­ment fol­lows. Aaaah, like a relieved sigh for being under­stood. We love it. We repeat it often even our­selves. It has become part of our fam­ily vocab­u­lary. Aaaah… Its not just a flat aaah, it is kind of musi­cal in its pitch. Its almost two sounds — a high Aaa and a low aah. AAah.

So they stand there, at the front door, hav­ing some strange con­ver­sa­tion of their own. Sometime Mr.Blab takes off into the front yard or chases the weird vehi­cles next street that are nois­ily lay­ing the new road.

Mr.Blab also plays won­der­fully the extended feet of the Dodman. He is like a mobile lad­der for the kid. He requests to be picked up. Mr.Blab com­plies. Then he just points „A! A! A!” and Mr.Blab goes in the direc­tion of the lit­tle fin­ger. Often it will mean just going around the house and play­ing with the light switches. He loves them things. He might go and point at some food he is try­ing to reach. Or he just dri­ves takes Mr.Blab out­side and directs him to pick some fruits and points to his mouth „A! A! A!” (fill this space!).

That fin­ger is a pow­er­ful weapon while a boy is rid­ing his daddy.

In short, the boy has fig­ured out that he can lit­er­ally play his daddy with just one finger.

Shh..don’t tell anybody.

No. Not because its sup­posed to be demean­ing to be a respon­sive father to ones chil­dren. But because its more fun that way.

Aaah.

Image by Pedro Klien

„Lay your baby down in her crib. say good­night and leave the room…
…Make your checks brief and any inter­ac­tion min­i­mal. Don’t touch, pick her up, or cud­dle her – sim­ply say, “Mommy/Daddy is here, go to sleep” and then leave, even if he is still cry­ing.” ¹

______

Last night started as any night, noth­ing spe­cial or dif­fer­ent. A few hours after going to sleep, Popcorn started to wake up. Woke up once, I went and fed him and that was all good. Woke up again, same deal. Usually he kind of sleep­ily cry/calls for me. But this time it sounded a bit more like actual cry­ing. I was not sure. But then he woke up 5 min­utes after the last one and sounded a bit dis­tressed. Went in cud­dles, boo­bie and he fell asleep again. I poke my fin­ger in his nappy to see if there is a hor­rid poo or some­thing caus­ing him some dis­com­fort. Nothing. Mr.Blab by this time was ready to go to bed and joined him.

Image by .Dianna.

Just as I started to brush my teeth, the lit­tle one woke up again. Crying. By now I am feel­ing a bit annoyed, as I am think­ing „Cant I brush my teeth in peace”. So I hurry and decide its time to make some checks and see if we can fig­ure out what is the problem.

Image by MarkyBon

Three of us walk to the chang­ing table. Popcorn is whim­per­ing and when we got him on it, he started cry­ing again. I quickly undo the nappy and hope for some­thing that will explain this. Nothing. Only the same few small red spots on both of his cheeks he has had for a few days.

Mr.Blab wets the wip­ing cloth and read­ies to clean the bum — we can see if it will bring a reac­tion from cutie lit­tle, by now wet faced, Popcorn.

Whaaaaaa!

Image by sean dreilinger

There sure was. The few red spots were def­i­nitely caus­ing him pain. I have a really close look and see some tiny white bits and real­ize that its thrush and it most likely really enjoyed the lansi­noh cream I put on before bed (to pro­tect the skin!) and went to town grow­ing. And became the cause of some seri­ous ouchy bum.

I dig out the anti-fungal cream and cre­ate a con­coc­tion on his bot­tom with some cot­ton balls and kitchen wrap to pro­tect the area from mois­ture. Get him ready and pick my sulk­ing baby up. His head rests on my shoul­der and I can feel the relief. Why did I even ques­tion him. Even for a second…

We cud­dle and walk slowly around the house to turn off things and head to bed.

We snug­gle under the cov­ers, where Mr.Blab is wait­ing for us. Quickly, with a touch of guilt, but mostly with heavy heart of a mom with a child in pain, I offer a breast that is swiftly accepted and sends my lit­tle man to sleep.

In peace till the morning.

Image by _Nezemnaya_

What if we were a fam­ily that fol­lowed the approach of Crying it Out?

How would have the night been for my child?

Silence.

True, some say you only leave the child to cry alone after you make sure they are fed, clean and not too hot or cold. Some even add a — not in pain — clause. But how can one be sure of that last one? Not all pain can be visu­ally traced to a cause. And when one adds in all the phys­i­cal dis­com­forts a per­son can have, the pos­si­bil­i­ties become so vast, its stu­pid­ity to think that you can judge that cor­rectly from the out­side with some­one that can­not even explain a thing.

But they CAN com­mu­ni­cate. And they do.

Image by Jon Bradley

„Ensure you’ve done a check list like this — she’ll not hungry,she’s not in pain (Teeth), she hasn’t wet through or dirty, she’s not too hot or cold. If you have checked all these things relax, she just wants some­one with her.” ²

Since when have emo­tional needs like desire for love, affec­tion, close­ness, warmth, com­pany and avoid­ance of iso­la­tion become unrea­son­able and too much to ask for. Not from just any­body — from our parents?

Crying by babies and chil­dren is a clear sign that some­thing is wrong.

Would we be so quick to ignore if it went on some­thing like that:

„Maaamaaa, please, hug me”

„Daadeee..I am scared. Protect me”

„Please some­body, its lonely here, its dark…Mammy…Daddy…it hurts”

„Oh, nooo…I was left…this is not right…help me…love me…this doesnt feel right..”

Image by Michael Headrick

Silence.

Silence.

Silence.

.

_____________________________________________

Note: the images are from Flickr and since what I am talk­ing about to me is cru­elty against chil­dren, I feel its impor­tant to stress that they are not con­nected in any way to the topic I am dis­cussing as far as I know. I just used them for illus­tra­tive purposes.

If you have been read­ing me for awhile, you would know I have been look­ing into my own par­ent­ing approach and that of oth­ers to try and fig­ure out what is it that makes sense to me. A lot of the tac­tics, tricks and ways we use to par­ent are just habits ingrained in us from soci­ety and our own par­ents. We dont chose them.

I am try­ing to chose mine. I am try­ing to be thought­ful about it.

Its some­what hard. The more I think about it and dig around, the more I real­ize how much unsa­vory auto­matic responses I have. Still, I think I have man­aged to escape a lot of the things I didnt like from my own mother’s artillery of ped­a­gogy. She is never wrong. She is great — always. Things that hap­pen to me always have a greater effect on her and I am always reminded of that. Most recently, when I chopped off the nerve in my fin­ger, I had to not only lis­ten to how this is so upset­ting to her, but try to con­sole her. It was MY fin­ger that got man­gled. It was ME who had surgery. Something is wrong with this pic­ture.  Generally we have butted heads a lot, mostly because my life is unsat­is­fac­tory for her. Yet, she has always ver­bal­ized to me how I can tell her any­thing. Dont we all say that? But when our actions and responses to hon­esty are judg­ment, annoy­ance and lec­tures should we be  sur­prised that the line of com­mu­ni­ca­tion will dry out? I think not.

So, I think I have escaped the big holes, but I still have a way to go to improve and become the par­ent I wish to be. Recently I read a book and watched a lec­ture that have been won­der­fully thought pro­vok­ing and spoke to me. Really gave me lots to pon­der and look at this from a few dif­fer­ent angles.

The lec­ture was from Alfie Kohn. The DVD is called „Unconditional Parenting” and he also has a book with this title. The basic gist of it is that we want too much con­trol over our chil­dren. More con­trol than rea­son­ably expected. This over con­trol­ling and dis­re­spect­ful par­ent­ing makes for some meek or aggres­sive self cen­tered children.

Start with this video, unfor­tu­nately its no avail­able for embed­ding — Youtube video

Punishment/Time out as a way of con­trol­ling chil­dren’ behavior:

Positive rein­force­ment is a dif­fer­ent form of con­trol. It sim­ply tries to con­trol with dan­gling carrots.

The DVD is won­der­ful and we watched it in one go, even though I thought we might spread it over a few nights — its 2 hours.

.

The book was „Raising our chil­dren, rais­ing our­selves” by Naomi Aldort. It is less approach­able than Alfie’s work. I would say a lot of the exam­ples she gives are too sim­pli­fied and unbe­liev­able, but as a whole it was a good start for some inter­est­ing dis­cus­sions with Mr.Blab. We both found it use­ful as a way to expose our own short comings.

Here are two of her videos and a few pos­si­ble solu­tions and approaches. The first one is won­der­ful and an easy step to start from:

I will leave you with a point that Alfie Kohn made in the lec­ture that was so sim­ple and clear it will stay with me for­ever, I hope. It went some­thing like this:

We want our chil­dren to grow up to be

happy / con­fi­dent / capa­ble / inde­pen­dent / suc­cess­ful / [insert your hopes].

Now think of the way we deal with them when we are rush­ing out the door in the morn­ing, or try­ing to get them to do some­thing, or when they make a mis­take or have an acci­dent. Do we treat them in a way that ensures and nur­tures them to become the above men­tioned people?

He said it bet­ter, so do get his DVD if any of this speaks to you. I highly rec­om­mend it.

The kids room.

Oh…the kids room.

Sigh.

Shudder.

There was a time when I thought (hahaha) that the room that the kids call their own could be tidy. That it could be pos­si­ble to walk through it with­out risk of injury or step­ping on some old for­saken fruit. I demanded action. I demanded some assis­tance. I got upset when oppo­site me I was met with resis­tance — with blank hurt stares that would just move limp limbs pre­tend­ing to be doing all this ‘impor­tant’ work.

Then I real­ized my self­ish ways. Then I imag­ined if some per­son I was depend­ing on would come and demand I keep my place the way they deem accept­able. I didnt like it. Not one bit. And life has been much bet­ter. No. The said room is not tidy, far from it. But we dont spend after­noons sulk­ing at each other and the kids do have some own­er­ship of their room right now. And they do have lit­tle sprees here and there when they improve it or work on it.

Then the other day they wanted to have the bunk beds set up, which required us to enter and dis­turb the estab­lished flora and fauna. And then Mr.Blab and I couldnt help it, we just had to clean it up a bit. It took us an after­noon and part of the next morn­ing to fin­ish up. I was impressed, they had man­aged to reach a sophis­ti­cated level of chaos. Sophisticated, because it was not just stuff thrown around, but care­fully posi­tioned out of its place — be it under the beds, or on ledges, or behind other piles of unknown stuff. It was an unknown sys­tem of orga­ni­za­tion only reveal­ing itself to the lit­tle ones.

We cleaned it all up.

Worst dis­cov­ery: a half eaten pear dated Way Too Old.

They like it of course. Miss Fab is walk­ing around and try­ing to keep every­thing in place. Little B is less impressed, but she responds to her sister’s requests to pick up. It will not last long, we all know that. But its their room, not ours, and they can have their own rules there.

When we cant stand it any­more, we will com­mando run in and make it liv­able again.

Now I have a new craft project — to make some big pil­lows for the comfy floor read­ing area we created.

They will be able to hide a bunch of pears under there too,  if the need arises …

I am sure every­one has felt like they dont belong at least once in their life. Sometimes it can be an empow­er­ing feel­ing, but mostly its drain­ing and lonely.

We are social beings, we are meant to be part of a group, to share and feel loved and com­fort­able in our sur­round­ings. Its a basic need, I am sure most would agree. Then why do we treat chil­dren like some unwel­comed foreigners?

Put your­self in the shoes of a child in our cur­rent envi­ron­ment. They just dont belong. Most every­thing about them is con­sid­ered annoy­ing and frowned upon. They are curi­ous and want to touch things and explore, which is met with „Stop touch­ing this! Put that down! Oooooh…now your shirt is dirty!”. They are full of energy and love to jump and run and climb, which is met with „Stop run­ning! No climb­ing! You WILL fall off of there! You WILL break your head! STOP it!”. If they havent lost the desire yet, they need hugs and com­fort and touch, which is met with „Not now, I need to do this first. You are a big gir/boy now, you dont need hugs for bed. You are not a baby, right!” or are just left to cry in their room to sleep. They are earn­ing for knowl­edge and expe­ri­ences, but their ques­tions are met with „Because! What kind of ques­tion is that! Why this, why that…I dont know! Stop bug­ging me. Because I said so. The storks bring them in. Ask your dad”.

If they go to a restau­rant they are expected to behave like grown ups or sent to a dif­fer­ent sec­tion, so they wont dis­turb the place. Going to movies with small child? Forget it. The looks and words will be deadly. Taking your child to work? Hahahaha. If the boss doesnt stab your lit­tle toe, your col­leagues will at the first obvi­ous sign that that lit­tle per­son you brought in is in fact a … child!

How about in the home, with their clos­est family?

Having your life back to „nor­mal” after hav­ing chil­dren means liv­ing with them as though they are not there.  It is in fact a very desir­able state of being. Its some­thing to be proud of. Look! I had a baby few hours ago and I am out par­ty­ing as though it never hap­pen! Yooohooo!
„Is he good for you?” is a com­mon ques­tion towards a new mom. „Good” baby is one that — does not demand atten­tion, doesnt want to be held, sleeps all night and leaves the par­ent to do their thing… it is in an essence a baby behav­ing like it isnt there.

But chil­dren are peo­ple too. This is their world too. They want atten­tion, they want love, they want to par­tic­i­pate, they want to be heard, they want to be accepted… but mostly they want to belong. All the traits we find annoy­ing and think we have to stomp over are there to ensure that they get what they need from their time in the slow lane.

Childhood is meant to be a time of learn­ing the ropes. Time when mis­takes are expected, because they are the way to  pol­ish one’s skills. Time when emo­tional or phys­i­cal scars are eas­ier to over­come. A step­ping stone to full blown adult­hood. When we exclude chil­dren from the real world all together on some uncon­sious level they know some­thing is wrong. Something is not the way its sup­posed to be. And they fight.  At which point we won­der what the hell is wrong with them, again! Those pesky lit­tle annoy­ing, demand­ing chil­dren. And thank good­ness for that. If babies dont cry, they will be moved from chair to floor to bed with lit­tle atten­tion more than few smiles here and there. If they never the less become bright nor­mal chil­dren, but are just quiet and fol­low direc­tions to be invis­i­ble and cute, and not run, climb, dis­cover, touch, feel, make mess, ask ques­tions, demand atten­tion etc. etc. then they will def­i­nitely not develop. If they are every­thing we demand of them, they will never BE.

We think we are so good to them, pro­vid­ing them palaces with plas­tic walls and piles of toys and fancy bed sheets, play­ing a few games here and there with them, buy­ing them ice cream and lol­lies. But in real­ity they are just glo­ri­fied inmates, expected to do what they are told when­ever they are told. Go wher­ever we need them to go. Listen to every­one we want them to and not those that we dont want them to. They are sup­posed to not ques­tion or demand any­thing. They are just the bar­rier to our „nor­mal” lives after­all  and we will treat them accord­ingly. Because they sim­ply do not belong.

_

We afford our own kids less cour­tesy than we would a stranger. Really.