Margarine and Sugar

How to teach your kids about gratitude (oh and ourselves too). I now know why my Dad used to trot out the Margarine and Sugar story every time he felt we were showing ingratitude or a lack of appreciation. The story goes like this: “When he was a boy in the early 1950′s he and a friend had 70 miles to cycle home on the last day of their youth hosteling holiday. All they had to eat was half a tub of National margarine ( something to do with...

Do not get up!

You know something great about parenting twin teens? They sleep in! How crazy is that, the very thing I also moan about is actually fantastic. It’s how you get the parenting respite isn’t it? When they were little they went to bed early and then we had an evening; time to chillax and hang loose. Then came the in-between years when that evening time got squished and squashed they stayed up later and so did I. I remember a dear friend telling me...

Beam Me Up Button

“I didn’t sign up for this, no-one told me it would be like this.” I threw myself on my bunk crying “I don’t want to be a mother any more, I can’t do this, why on earth did I have children” I think we should all be issued with a beam-me-up button which painlessly transports us off for parenting respite. I’d like to go somewhere where I’m bathed in healing light, given a nice hot drink and a biscuit, my shoulders are massaged and someone...

Better Breakfast Brigade

 Thanks to my CFS/ME I’ve been learning just how important it is to keep our blood sugars balanced. Feeding our children cereal, toast ( especially white bread) with jam, chocolate spread or marmalade or any other so-called breakfast option is doing them a disservice. I am tempted to say abusing them. Yes, strong words, but honestly we worry about them crossing roads, encountering drugs, stranger danger while “safe” at home we feed them the...

If we are like trees then……..

As I continue my journey parenting teenage twins and my ongoing dialogue about screen time, I have found an idea forming which is incredibly helpful to me. It is enabling me to get a clearer picture about what is going on and my part in it. It may be obvious to some of you but for me it’s a sort of coming together of many ideas, experiments and frustrations into something tangible and useable in my everyday encounters with teendom. Suppose your child...

Why we need a break?

  We need a break so we can think straight, reflect, gather ourselves, plan and prepare, get things straightened out, remember who we are as well as a host of other reasons. But why do we have to get it by plugging our beautiful children into screens? Apart from fear of letting them go outside, which I’ve written about here, I think we’ve lost our communities, our village of friends, relatives and neighbors which we need to raise a child. Too...

Let Them be Bored

“They never leave me alone”, how can I ever get a break. If we constantly “entertain” our children either with TV and electronic gadgets or by ourselves hovering around how can they learn to be with themselves, by themselves, to play alone, with others or to entertain themselves. When they do learn this then space is created for us to do what we need to do. Yes they may be bored and moan and create, initially, and we must hold this space until...