Pre-school

Is it OK to be bored by your children?

30/06/2014 by MrsSavageAngel Leave a Comment

I’ve been at home with Oscar since the day he was born. I’ve cared for him, entertained him, taught him, fed him, kept him alive. I’ve spent two and a half years generally worrying about everything we’re doing. And it doesn’t change. 819 days down the line and I’m still worrying. Only now it’s less about how much he’s eaten or how many poos he’s done in a day and more about the tantrums he thrown and his continued lack of discernible speech. God knows in a few months it’ll be something else, I’m sure. My whole life has been taken up by him and in January 2015 he starts nursery. I’m so excited for both of us. He will get so much out of it and I will get time to do other stuff. Like think, write, work, breathe? Who knows. Whatever, it’s safe to say I can’t wait! 24/7 care is exhausting. In five months everything will be changing and when I think about it I do a little internal happy dance. I can’t wait. But on the other hand, in five months everything will be changing and when I think about it my stomach drops. My son will no longer be the baby I’ve dedicated every minute to since he was born. He wont be with me 24/7. What on earth will I do? Time is going far to fast and it scares the pants off me.

I can’t wait. But in the same moment I absolutely can. It’s so confusing, although I don’t expect any of this will ever change. I have a sneaky suspicion it’ll be like this for his whole childhood, possibly his whole life.

But for now I have five months. And in that five months I feel like I should be making the most of every second, committing every tiny detail to memory, finding exciting things to fill our days. I know I wont ever get this time back.

And yet some days I just can’t do it.

Some days I leave him to play alone, while I do boring stuff like washing or finding an electrician or eBaying old clothes. It’s just stuff. It wouldn’t matter if I did it later on, when he was asleep, would it? But some days I just get so bored. Of him, of us, of what we do, no matter how much I attempt to mix it up. I get bored of the tantrums, of the things he wants to do, of the time we spend together. And I feel like the worlds worst bitch when I do. Don’t get me wrong, there are some days when I feel totally blessed. Days when I suddenly realise I’m doing what I was always meant to do. Days when things feel so sublime I think I might explode from the perfection of it all. But there are days when I am so bored with the everydayness of it that I want to cry. And some days when I do.

How do I make those few short months count? How do I make the most of the time we have? How do I keep the boredom at bay? Basically, how do I keep things perfect? D’you know, I’m not convinced I can. And the more I think about it I’m not convinced I should try. This is life. It’s not an exam. I don’t have to get top marks in everything to be a good mother, a good person. Do I? I’m with him. Just because we’re not doing exciting things, making exciting memories every minute, and just because I find him boring sometimes doesn’t mean I don’t love him. Imagine if you had to spend all that time with anyone other than your child. I’m sure you’d be sick of the sight of them sooner or later. And quite rightly so. And I wouldn’t have a problem with that, so why do I feel bad about occasionally being sick of the sight of my son? It’s definitely one of the things about being a stay at home mum that no one mentions when you take the decision to be one!

I think nursery might actually be the best thing for us. It’ll give us time to miss each other. Maybe then I’ll be more able to appreciate the time we do have, the things we do together, the love we share.

Yeah, thinking about nursery today only makes me do an internal happy dance. 🙂

Play nicely children!

25/03/2014 by MrsSavageAngel Leave a Comment

My deep desire to get out of the house when Oscar was tiny, resulted in a child that has socialised a lot since he was tiny. Not as much as a child in a massive family maybe, but he’s never been isolated. We’ve been going to groups regularly since he was 7 weeks old and having people over for the longest time. “Sharing” anything (toys, space, me) has never been an issue. In fact until very recently, Oscar seemed quite content to basically ignore the other children and play quite happily on his own (he can be a very focussed “player” when he wants to be). There have been exceptions to this rule. For example,watching him and Isabelle tickling and laughing at each other, is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen but on the whole that just the way it’s been. But as any parent of a toddler will understand, this is all changing. He is much more aware (as it should be) of other children and the things they’re doing. And he made me wholly aware of the effect of these changes all of last week.

Quite suddenly everything was stressful. I’m not even sure it’s a “it’s mine” thing, but I’m guessing it is. I was expecting it at some point and in my experience I was expecting him to start snatching things back or pushing and pulling. And maybe he’ll start doing that, but at the moment he seem to get infinitely more angry with himself than others. It’s horrible to see. Other children only have to touch things that are near him and he starts throwing himself to the ground crying in a dramatic fashion (who could he have got that from 😉 ) But he does other stuff too like head-butting the floor or the fence! It’s like he’s a shaken up bottle of coke that doesn’t know how to let the pressure out. I know it’s frustration through a lack of understanding, but god it breaks my heart 🙁 . I’ve tried being patient and keeping calm and explaining that it’s OK to feel cross, that the toys aren’t going anywhere/aren’t his/etc. I have no idea if he understands me. It doesn’t seem to make things a whole lot better at the time and I can only keep it up for so long! I’ve also tried the firm, “that’s enough”, approach, but that doesn’t work either. It was pretty bad on Thursday. He threw himself on the ground so many times at toddler group, people started thinking he was falling over or off things. He spent nearly the entire time upset, so in the end we left early. And as soon as we were out of the door he was fine.

One thing I am loathe to say is “you must share” because a) he has no idea what that means b) I’m not convinced it would the help the situation at the time and c) if I was him I would want to know why? and I don’t really have a better answer than “because it’s polite”. So how do I best explain the concept of sharing? As a friend asked the other day – how old are they before they understand? I’m guessing it’s not yet? In conversation with a Montessori nursery manager recently we discussed how all preschoolers, dislike “sharing” even if they understand the language surrounding the concept. She told me that if the children really want to play with the same thing they encourage them to play with the item together. And I like that idea. It doesn’t feel like you’re asking the child to give anything up, but does encourage the idea of collaboration.

But that doesn’t stop my not yet two year old banging his head on the furniture and scaring the other mothers and breaking my heart.

I know it’s his age. I do know that. And I know he’s going through a proper developmental change at the moment. He’s sending me very clear signals that things are a changing for real. None of this worrying about seeing toddlerhood coming on the horizon. It’s smack bang here! He’s waking up much earlier again and over the past week he’s learnt how to get out of his grobags – sort of! This week he has broken the zip on one and learnt how to get his arm through the neck hole of another! This morning he woke me at 6am to find him with both arms stuck through one arm hole. He’s like a not very good Houdini! So we’re going to have to ditch the grobags, in favour of a duvet. It’s not that big a deal. Really, it’s not. It’s just he’s been in a grobag since he was 8 weeks old and looking at toddler bedding on Sunday made me cry.

If I wanted a true signal that things have changed then I guess this is was it.

Different but the same….

11/11/2013 by MrsSavageAngel Leave a Comment

Recently I’ve been looking for something to do with Oscar that isn’t just about him running around. Don’t get me wrong – Oscar is a child that gets a lot from running around, but I am keen to exercise his mental abilities as well as his physical capabilities. When I heard Lana, a friend from toddler group and a qualified teacher, was setting up a pre-school maths course we were keen to give it a go. Ben was super keen – I think he’s trying to temper my somewhat language based background with his more science based one (he’s always going on about how he can’t wait to “do a science” with the boy). So we signed up to a course with Top Banana Learning and had our first session last Wednesday.

BJ721_-_Abacus

The idea is to introduce children to the concepts and language of maths from a really early age and I have to say he’s loving the counting based song and stories we’re sharing with him at home. Wednesday’s class was great fun (who doesn’t love a pirate themed counting game?), really well planned and executed with real enthusiasm. The only thing I wasn’t expecting was that Oscar was the oldest child in the group by about 6 months, if not older. It doesn’t sound like much but the differences were clear. He wanted to run around and look at everything, while the younger children sat or crawled slowly. I feared for their little fingers and despite being a completely average size for his age he loomed over the younger ones like a giant. What I wasn’t prepared for was how this was going to make me feel. I felt like I was back at Baby Sensory which, for me, was not a good experience.

When Oscar was 6 months old we did a Baby Sensory course. Baby Sensory is a fantastic concept and enables the youngest of children to develop their senses in a fun way. Although there was a real mix of ages in our class, once again, Oscar was the oldest and physically very advanced for his age. He was crawling around and curious about everything. The other babies lay or sat, engaging with the session, Oscar – not so much. He had mobility and he was going to use it. But rather than just letting him get on with it I felt he should be joining in, should be enjoying watching the activities, should be this, should be that. Baby Sensory started to stress me out to the point where I dreaded going. I felt like my son was different and I felt like other parents were judging him and me. Its hard to explain, but I felt like they thought he was “naughty”, because he wasn’t doing what everyone else did. The odd thoughtless comment didn’t help and people took to calling him things like “crazy”, “trouble” and a “lunatic”. Affectionately I’m sure but it was awful, I was awful. I became embarrassed and ashamed. When I tell people now how he crawled at 6 months and walked at 10 months I’m so proud, but at the time I just wanted him to be “normal”.

When I think about those few months I still feel ashamed, but now in a completely different way. I am ashamed of myself, that I ever thought my son wasn’t “normal” (what ever that is??). I should have just been proud of him and ignored the comments. Doing things at a different pace is what children do. You can read all the books you like, but as a first time parent you are never going to understand this until you go through it. Why would you? It occurred to me just the other week that despite the seemingly millions of different schools of thought around parenting, children will all do the stuff they need to do eventually. Some will just do it differently to others. Faster, slower, sooner, later, some will thrive at this, others at that. Different but the same, the same but different.

So Wednesday’s group didn’t make me feel bad because of what he did, but because of the memories and the shame it evoked in me. Talking to Lana afterwards I couldn’t help but well up a tiny bit. I didn’t realise how fresh it still was. So she kindly suggested we try the Friday group. We did. He wasn’t the oldest. He didn’t always join in, but then neither did any other child. He seemed much calmer (or was that just me projecting?). We left much happier.

So I think we’ll keep going to the Friday class. He really did enjoy it. He’s taken to walking up and down the bath, pointing at the tiles, while Ben counts them for him and his new favourite book is One Ted Falls out of Bed (a counting book by Julia Donaldson). Maybe maths will be his “thing”. Maybe it wont. Whatever. He can be as “different” as he likes and I’ll be proud of him.

School holidays suck

14/08/2013 by MrsSavageAngel Leave a Comment

When I was a child the school holidays, particularly the six week summer holidays, were my favourite times in the whole world. I remember playing with friends, riding my bike, making perfume out of rose petals and water (really gross!) and attending week long play schemes. And there in lies the clue. I’m remembering the holidays of an older child. I don’t remember those from when I was a littley and no one told me just how disruptive and stressful these could be!

During term time, Oscar and I have a kind of a schedule, much as those children who go to school.

Mondays, we decide on the day
Tuesdays is Noah’s Ark Toddler group followed by coffee with a friend
Wednesday is library or sometimes a trip into Godalming
Thursdays is Hammer Toddler Group followed sometimes by lunch with a friend
Fridays is my NCT group meet up
Saturday is swimming lessons

Its pretty samey, but I need this routine as much as the boy does. I like to know we have something planned for most days. It motivates me to get out of the house. Its important for both of our sanity’s.

However, in the holidays, and particularly in the summer holidays everything stops. All the toddler groups grind to a halt and the library’s activities for pre schoolers cease. I looked into it and most other local pre-school classes/courses (such as baby gym, music, sensory, play etc) also stop. Their hiatus leaves me with no more routine and a baby I can’t explain this to.

Don’t get me wrong, I know why this is. Some toddler groups are run in schools, which need to close their buildings in the summer. Some groups are run by women who have their own older children who need looking after. As an aside, neither of these apply to our groups.

I see many places running classes, courses, schemes and workshops over the summer and these are wonderful, if pricey. I remember going to some myself as a child. But not one of those I’ve seen does anything for under 5’s let alone under 2’s. It would appear that the assumption is that younger children/babies do not need entertaining in the holidays in the way older children do. I can’t think why this might be the case, or is that just my toddler?

OK, so this is the case and we the parents of little children just have to suck it up and get on with it. Right, so we find new places to takes them, different things to do. We find the money to cover the expense and we go. And wherever we go is heaving with older children, as quite rightly their parents have had the same idea. But this can makes these trips incredibly stressful. Anything physical, such as a park you would happily let your toddler roam around, suddenly becomes dangerous with long legs and big bodies fly around with gleeful abandon. As it should be of course. But I’d like to see you explain to a firebrand of a 16 month old that actually he can’t go in that park or as happened in the playpark in RHS Gardens Wisley on Monday that he had to go back in the buggy and be taken away for fear he’d be brained! He was livid with me but what could I do?

Whenever I bring this up my husband tells me to “be the miracle”, In other words, “do something about it”. Or “if your’re not going to do anything about it then shut up”! So I try to not bitch about it and find other things to do. I’d find it hard to do anything about it at the moment, as I have Oscar to look after. Maybe I’ll wait til he’s older. Oh wait then he’ll be off school and I’ll have to look after him. Oh hang on……… 😉

Believe me I do understand the situation. The only people affected by this are parents of young children, who either have little ones to look after or who work. And those who work often have their little ones in day care and probably don’t notice as much, as day care runs all year. Why wouldn’t it? You pay enough for the privilege. Maybe I need to think more seriously about going back to work. That’d shut me up!

Maybe it’s just where I live. My friend in the US says this simply doesn’t happen where she lives. What’s it like in your neck of the woods? How did/do you cope with toddlers in the summer hols? I’d be interested to hear.