Even as I type this I still find it hard to believe that Moomin will be a year old at the end of this month.  A whole year old.  How?!  It's cruel how quickly time slips through our fingers, I can still remember going into labour to birth her.

As she's our fourth baby, she already has a toy shop worth of toys that were once her siblings as well as token additions just for her.  Advertisements, shops and catalogues are near exploding with noisy, shiny things that she absolutely needs, apparently.

She can't talk yet, what with her being 11 months old and nor can she write her own birthday list.

What would she want though if she could tell us?  It's not hard to work out, all it takes is an exercise in observation.

So I present to you, the birthday list of what a one year old really wants to play with:

Crunch.

If you've ever read my brief bio you'll note the phrase 'semi-crunchy' a term I use somewhat tongue in cheek.  There's lots of terms and labels we can attribute to our parenting styles, yet often I think we should let our parenting define the type of parent we are as opposed to the label we're adhering to, afterall, parenting isn't being it's doing.  I think at times we can become a little fixated with keeping up with the mumsies of whichever parenting style we associate with.

So what is 'crunchy' ?  Are there degrees of crunchiness?  Am I crunchy enough?

When the emotions are bigger than the child.

As an adult I think we're often guilty of neglecting to acknowledge the immensity and complexity of emotions that young children experience.  For some absurd reason we seem to assume that until they reach puberty they rely heavily upon the basic instincts of emotion such as sadness, love, happiness and anger.  To an extent they do, yet the problem is that for crude basic emotions, they're actually incredibly large emotions.  A tantrumming child isn't merely being a brat, they're often struggling and lacking the capacity to contain a reactive emotion.  Sometimes an emotion simply becomes too hard and too big to manage.  It has to go somewhere so quite literally it explodes. It comes to the point where they can't control the emotion so the emotion begins to control them. They're furious, indignant and upset. Words are eaten by the flames and the ability to rationally communicate is replaced with lashing out and primal verbalisations.

Occasionally if we're lucky enough we can spot the signs of it brewing and intercept through validating it before it escalates and helping them to understand it; to reason through it with them.  Other times, we're not so lucky.  At this point reasoning is futile.  They're unable to contain the emotion, the emotion is controlling them so they have an inability to reason with it, let alone with you.  The more you try to invalidate and extinguish it, the stronger hold it takes over them and the harder they'll fight against you and reason.  It's tempting to issue sharp words yet since when does fire cancel fire?  Rather than diluting it, in our quest to extinguish it we only feed it.  Their campfire is now a bonfire

It doesn't matter how ridiculous/annoying/pointless we feel the catalyst was, to the preschooler experiencing it, it matters. At this moment in time, it's all that matters.

They're not thinking, they're feeling.  The worst part is they can't stop feeling.  The feelings are consuming them.  And growing.

Yet anger and frustration can be contagious.

Our job is to try and not catch it.

They need us to remain calm more than ever.  They're neither ready nor able to be calm right now yet they need us to be, to represent the calm after the storm.

This isn't to say we mollycoddle them and encourage their outbursts. They'll say hateful things ("I HATE you!") they may even lash out physically.  We need to remember this is the emotion not the child.

Often I'll  try to stay calm (no easy feat for me an i'm only human, I often fail) and let them know i'm here yet I'm not talking to them until they're able to listen. Sometimes, when it's got this far all you can do is let the emotion burn itself out.  Don't retaliate.  If he's screaming at me, I'll turn away.  If he's hitting, i'll block.  The idea is to dilute this.  If only one person is screaming or lashing out without a reaction or retaliation, it will eventually cancel itself out.  Starve the fire.

Eventually they will calm.  Often he'll storm away and remove himself from the situation be it hiding under his train table or sitting in the hall.  On a good day he'll even return and apologise, here is the opener, he's ready to talk.  More importantly, he's ready to listen.  Sometimes he'll just look so exhausted and scared by the enormity of his emotions that if he appears calmer i'll ask him if he'd like a cuddle to help him calm down.  This isn't a reward nor a forgiveness, this is the basic human need for contact.  For security. This is where we can dissect the emotion that triggered all this, to talk about what happened and to reiterate why things happened or decisions were made.  To explain the effect their behavior and emotions have on others.  There is no blame here, only acknowledgement.  You can still acknowledge that perhaps something you said or did caused this whilst maintaining that what you said or did was appropriate and right.  It's important we validate the emotion, it's okay not to like what they're told or asked to do, it's okay to feel angry etc whilst still enforcing that screaming/lashing out isn't okay and your initial decision isn't changing. Reiterate why you made your initial decision, the one they so disliked.  If we want them to lean to accept what we/decide, we too have to learn to accept their feelings towards it.  We can tell them what they can/can't have, where they can/can't go etc but we should never attempt to tell them what they can or can't feel about it.  You can still accept something without liking it.

They probably don't understand their reaction themselves, they'll be exhausted and a little perplexed.  This is why we need to trace it back to the emotion that triggered it.  The more we teach them it's okay to feel something, the easier it will be to then explain that it's not always okay to act on it.

Use feelings in explanations.  Tell them how being shouted at or hit made you feel.  Explain the impact their words have on you.  Ask them how they'd feel if someone they loved said they hated them, or hit them.  Use basic rudimentary emotions that they are struggling with to explain this such as sad or hurt.

I never ask for nor demand an apology.  I feel prompted apologies are meaningless and strip the child of the process of reflection and regret.  They become a get out of jail free card and meaningless. As such, he apologises in his own time.  When he feels it.  When he thinks it.  I'll often thank him for apologising and ask him what he's sorry for/about again opening up the channels for reflection and understanding.  It's important they understand why they're sorry, to do that they have to feel it.  Sometimes the sorry may come immediately other times it will take it's time yet strangely as much as you crave the 'sorry' it's often more appreciated when it's later then you expected it.  It shows they've thought about it.

Recently The Preschooler opened my eyes to another aspect of emotion that I'd somehow not considered before, their inability to combine two battling emotions.  They can feel frustration and anger, they can feel happiness and excitement yet what they can struggle to comprehend is love and anger, love and hate etc.

The Preschooler frequently screams at me lately that he hates me, to which i'll reply along the lines of how that's quite sad or a shame because I still love him.

One evening when he'd been particularly inflammatory and made me terrifically cross, I told him I loved him.  He surprised me when he replied that I can't love him because i'm angry with him.  He genuinely couldn't grasp the concept that you can be angry with someone, hate what they say/do yet still love them.  He appeared to believe that all emotions are transient and you can only occupy one at a time.  This explains the 'i hate you!' in place of 'I hate what you're saying/doing'  The emotion is a whole and the person is a whole, thus if you dislike what the person has done you must thus dislike the person along with it.

I'll admit I've never given thought to this before; the difficulty a child faces accepting multiple emotions and worse, tangled emotions.  Sometimes we have to go back to basics.

Yet it absolutely reinforces that my initial reaction to his hate speech was to state that I loved him.  This is the seed that will grow the understanding that you can love someone yet dislike them at the same time.  That some emotions are unconditional.  That you can love someone in-spite of them as well as because of them.  That he realises even when i'm horrifically cross with him, I still love him.

At times he'll try to make sense of it and when calm he'll either say 'I'm sorry for saying I hate you' or more amusingly 'I hate you a million and love you one' the latter is new.  The latter is showing the growing understanding that you can feel conflicting emotions about someone simultaneously.

I don't think we always give children enough credit for the steep learning curves they go through emotionally.  We often underestimate their level of understanding and their ability to cope with what they feel.

Not being allowed to play ball inside might be logical to us yet that doesn't mean that to them it's not the end of the world.

They must learn to understand themselves before they can understand the world around them and sometimes, maybe, just maybe we just need to remember to try and understand them too.

Competativeness

The school are holding a competition.  The worst kind, a crafty kind.  I send the little darlings to school to do all that messy creative stuff so that we don't have to do it at home all the time.  It only ever leads to mess and disappointment as like me The Spawn have grand ideas yet limited artistic ability.

The challenge?  To decorate a boiled egg for Easter.  Sounds frightfully simply, neh?

The Husband and Things One & Two had a failed attempt earlier in the week with childrens paint that resulted with grotesque looking drippy things akin to toddler nappy contents, you know the kind from after they've eaten all the crayons.

Fast forward to a last minute attempt last night , the night before it's due in, with some permanent markers.  In my defense I did try to dye them according to Google yet even that failed to work.

I provided them with an egg each and the pens and left them to it, afterall it is their project.  They did their best.  Although rather fond of craft, Thing Two prefers to do things spontaneously and not to order.  She likes to free think and not adhere to specifics.  Thing One is like me, poor sod, no patience and very little craft gene.  The Preschooler wanted in on the action despite the school Nursery not taking part so I helped him create his own too.

Then came this morning.  Evidently some parents have some difficulty with understanding that this is a competition for the children.  Their competitive nature took over and a glance around the playground showed some efforts worthy of Pinterest.  You look at these epic creations, picture perfect, not a single visible drip or brush stroke.  Everything is highly defined, unnaturally neat and damn near perfect.  It doesn't stop there, they have to go the whole hog and create whole islands and tanks and what have you to display them in.  Fair play you think, then you look at their child.  There is no way that snot nosed, disinterested little child went anywhere near that entry.  You see the hungry look of competitiveness in their parents eyes as they painstakingly cradle these creations that you just know, they made.  Yes, the parents. Their children have absolutely no interest in them, why should they?  They didn't make them! Cheats! Cheats! Cheats!

It's not just the lack of fairness that perturbs me, it's more so the message they're sending to their children. That it's all about the winning.  They have eradicated the taking part.  This should have been a fun activity for the children to do themselves.  Nobody was expecting anything to remotely resemble it's apparent theme, it should have been a mass of dribbly, speckled blobs that are the childrens vision, their pride and joy.  They've stolen the taking part from them.  It's become a lesson in fierce perfection rather than an expression of creativity.

Don't get me wrong,  I never for a moment expect Thing One or Thing Two to win, but it would be nice if an imperfect, genuine entry won.  Something a child did with minimal supervision and interference.  One of the lopsided ones you have to squint at to figure out what it's supposed to be.  One of the ones where you can almost picture the child, tongue firmly poking out in concentration, as a paint brush overloaded with poster paint redecorates the kitchen as well as the egg.  One made with love and determination.  One made with the notion of making something coming first and the idea of winning an afterthought.

Thing Two got a silver star the other day for randomly commenting to a teacher that she doesn't so much care about winning things, she just likes taking part and knowing she's tried.

It would appear some of the parents could do with understanding that.

I'm a firm believer that activities like this should be done in school time, among their peers under the supervision of teachers with zero interference from parents.  This has nothing at all to do with my general allergy to childrens crafts, honest.

Dear Government: Leave our kids alone

Dear Government, Selfservatives, Wilshaw et al,

Recently the media has seen an influx or reports saying that parents are failing, nurseries are failing and child minders are failing our children.

You're telling us that our children aren't prepared for school by age 5.

Your solution to this?  Start them earlier so that they'll be better prepared. This is against over 200 experts in early years telling you this will have catastrophic and detrimental effects on our childrens long term development.  Your 'solution' also directly goes against recent reports suggesting that 4 in 10 under threes are missing out on bonding with their parents.

Is it any wonder?

With so many parents worrying about how to heat their house, put food in bellies and keep their homes as they face increasing conditionality and harsh sanctions in their money.  Families are dissolving under the stress of ridiculous and draconion welfare reforms and the vast pool of unemployment that you're only increasing through forcing more people into it including the sick.  The lucky ones who manage to find a job discover that despite working full time they still can't support their families financially and are still under the ruthless and barmy conditionality to have access to the much needed inwork benefits because despite rising living costs you still refuse to introduce a living wage to allow people to live independently of you.  Can't have that can we?  You'd lose some of this iron tight control you've got over us.  You want us dependent on you.  You're literally banking on us all being in your in-work benefit trap.

You're closing surestart centres.

You've taken the bookstart scheme away.

For families that want/need health visitors, there simply aren't enough of them to adequately support families.

You're constantly undermining parents and destroying families.  You ruthlessly dismantle our basic human rights to family life.  You completely dismiss the important roll of parents and the positive impact a sahp can have, if the parent chooses to be one.

You introduce earlier free childcare to the exact places you're stating are 'failing' our children, encouraging them to be apart from parents, the exact people they're supposed to be bonding with and then in the next breath announce that lone parents are going to face increased conditionality and forced into work related activity as their youngest child reaches three whilst they utilise the (apparently 'optional') free 15 hours early years preschool placements.

Not once have you addressed the glaringly obvious, that maybe so many children aren't ready at 5 because 5 is too early to start formal education.  Let our children be children.  They have a fundamental human right to childhood.  Plenty of countries such as Sweden and Finland start formal education far later then we do yet equally and indeed outperform our children throughout their school life excelling in education and life in general.

We are nurturing humans not building robots.  We're teaching them all that you lack, compassion, tolerance acceptance.  These are people.  They're precious.  These are the poor little sods that will one day have the immense and epic job of trying to piece back together the country you're destroying.  To undo the hatred and prejudice you're inciting.  These aren't your weapons nor your little employable soldiers, these are the only chance of a saviour you have.

What are you teaching them?

You're teaching them to be classist as you make ill informed sweeping judgments damning lower and working class parents as failing and make patronising statements declaring they need checklists.

Guess what?  Bad parenting knows no class.

Generally speaking, if a child isn't toilet trained or speaking in sentences by age five it is not from lack of parenting yet more often then not developmental.  It is condescending, insulting and down right moronic to cast assertions that it's down to bad financially disadvantaged parenting.  Maybe if referrals were easier to come by and waiting lists shorter these children could get assistance sooner.

Support don't hate.

Have you left your child in a pub lately?

I'm one of those parents.  You know the ones you're damning and judging.  We're financially disadvantaged. We're poor.  We're lower class.  Oh no, naughty, scummy, bad bad us.

We're so bad at parenting because we're not middle class that we have three articulate, creative, intelligent and happy children two of which are incredibly academically advanced.  Oh no.  Slap our wrists.  We're not fitting into your crass paradigms. Quick! Sanction us!

You're teaching them to vilify those who's only crime is being poor and trapped within the failing economy that you created, when the real villains are in your own quarters, yes people like Maria Miller.

You've broken our economy, our sick, our poor, our NHS and now you're trying to break our children.

You want my child in your clutches earlier?  Come and get them.  I double-fucking-dare you. You'll meet an army of me.  You will not get your grubby destructive paws on my children.  That I promise you.

It's not the parents that are failing our children, it's you.

Leave our kids alone.

Sincerely,

Mama Undone.