Raymond Parenting

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Changing Houses

Posted April 23, 2012

Maybe we should have organized our lives like many families do, and change houses every five years or so. Then you avoid getting too attached to just one house.  Instead, I've prided myself on the fact that my children grew up with a 'sense of place' and always knew where home was.  That was how my husband and I grew up and we fit right into the mold. 

We've lived in our present home for 36 years.  It is a 1912 house and we've added on and changed things to suit us over the years.  All our children, grandchildren and even all our dogs are measured against the woodwork in our kitchen.  When we remodeled this kitchen 20 years ago a previous plank of measurments was carefully removed and is stored in our garage.

Are we being overly sentimental or does every family go through this even when they have moved frequently?

 

Massive construction of infills all around us have turned our neighborhood into a development zone.  Each time an old, wartime house  goes down (most demolitions last around 17.5 minutes) we put up with the dirt, dust mud and noise and about a year later we study what goes up in it's place.  Then we watch to see who moves in.  Mostly we only see a moving van and by the next day it seems each family has gone underground. Few children and nobody sitting on their porch to wave to and stop and talk to about the weather.  I imagine the parents are working all day and children are elsewhere and when they arrive home they must scurry inside - so fast we never catch them.

We often travel to Victoria.  We wish we knew a neighbor we could ask to take in our mail or watch the house.  Nobody knows us here any more.

I realize many neighborhoods are not like ours and I hope you feel at home in yours. And when we move in June, there will be tears - because our roots go very deep here - but I'm optimistic that we'll eventually feel at home in ours, too.

Thank you for reading this.  It's all I felt like writing about today.

 

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New Baby?  Find the Magic Spot in your Home.

Posted April 9, 2012

 

So, it seems that in 2012 being at home can be a challenge for some women (perhaps at-home dads too?).  In particular, let's say the prospect of spending lots of time at home with a new baby can see scary and stressful to some women.  When I was a newborn mother ('olden days) I worried about the same thing.  What will I do here all day? I'd been a very involved kindergarten teacher until a week before our baby was born.  Having been exposed to the feminist movement during university years, the idea of being 'just a housewife' or 'homemaker' definately was to be avoided.

Some new mothers fill their days with group get-togethers, shopping or baby classes - in order to keep busy each day.  These weren't available and wouldn't have appealed to me anyway. 

That was OK, though because soon we found our "magic spot."

I think it was my 5-week old baby that led me to the magic spot.  I had been doing a lot of carrying her with me as i moved from one room to another in our small house.  When my mother called from California one day, I had to set the baby down somewhere, quickly.  I arranged a blanket on the floor - happened to be near a palm plant - and laid her down hoping she would be happy while I talked.  She was!  While I watched her from where I had to sit by our phone (no portables yet), I saw her begin to stare at that palm.  The fronds moved slightly when the furnace came on, and she kept watching.  Eventually she began to fuss, but calmed herself again in a few seconds.  The call lasted about 15 minutes and when I hung up, I picked her up.

Later that day, however, I began to think about that 15 minutes in the morning and how it represented an experience for her, not just a place I could park her for a few minutes.  So we returned to the palm after her nap.  I brought a chair from another corner of the room - one I'd found comfortable for nursing her - and set it in "her corner."  I was an avid reader (thankfuly not parenting books!) so I placed a little table beside my chair to stack my books and magazines on and made room for my decaff coffee. 

I began to refer to this corner as "her station."  "Our station."  Not really a glamorous name for a spot that had by now acquired some magic, but it built nicely into my story of our day when my husband got home.  He would alway say "What did you two do today?"  I would tell our story: "First she drank her breakfast milk and then took a nap.  I took a shower and when she woke up, I put her at her station for a little while.  She loved it!  Especially when I sat down right beside her with my coffee.  After that, we we went out on the back porch and watched the neighbors, saw clothes hanging on the line and sat down and listened to the birds for a while.  Then I put her in her crib to hang out so I could get dressed ...and she fell asleep!  When she woke up from that nap, she had another feeding and back to her station while I made some phone calls.  This time I moved her bouncy chair to the station so she could watch her palm tree from a different angle.  I think she loved that...." 

Slowly I began to think of our days as a collection of fascinating experiences for her, with naps (and breaks for me!) interspersed.   We began to do some of the same things each day at approximately the same time and I realized I could actually see her changing and developing before my eyes.  It was almost as if she began to be able to predict when the time at our magic spot in our house was coming.  Sometimes she would fuss as I was putting her down.  Other times it seems her arms waved in anticipation.  Some days her impatience or fussiness meant she wasn't in the mood; other times she would stretch her interest for 30 minutes.

As for me, this time became something i looked forward to several times a day.  I drank my coffee there, at my lunch there and nursed my baby there.  The sun came in and warmed us in that corner, casting interesting lighting at different times of the day.  On weekends, my husband wanted to hang out at the 'station' so he could participate in observing, reading and watching.

Babies do well with lots of 'down time.'  Down time and self-regulation opportunities will come more easily for your baby  on the days when you aren't out doing errands.  Predictability is appealing to babies.

Look around for a magic spot in your house.  Let the sun come in and - maybe - buy a palm plant.

 

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Is He a Picky Eater?

Posted April 1, 2012

Dear Kitty,

Our two-year old son is a very picky eater.  We try to make him eat with us but he says he isn't hungry and misbehaves at the table.  My husband is especially concerned that we eat dinner together as a family (we also have a 4 year old who eats well), so my son's resistance is causing a lot of stress. Our day home provider says he eats just fine for her, which is also frustrating.  He only wants to eat toast, kiwi and yogurt.  Oh, and he loves noodles (plain).  What can we do to get him to be a better eater and stay at the table with the family?

You may be dealing with two issues here.  First is the issue of the supper time meal being especially problematic with behavior issues, etc.  It's a good idea to think back on what your son has eaten all through the day.  If he has had a reasonable breakfast (most kids do if they had milk first...) and has eaten pretty well at the day home, it's very possible he simply isn't hungry at supper time.  He may have already taken in the calories he requires for good growth and development that day and has no appetite left.  It's really hard to sit still and eat when you aren't hungry.

The other issue is that toddlers usually do not prefer to have a large variety of foods (even though nutritionists wish they would) and often get stuck on certain things they will eat - to the exclusion of everything else.  Of course then, just when you've bought 10 kiwis on sale, they become the refused food and he may only want carrots.  Parents are wise to go with the flow of these food jags and look more at whether your son has tasted all the food groups through the year instead of through each day or week. If so, you've done a good job!

Seldom do food issues result in weight loss, so I suggest at dinner time you ring a bell to let everyone know that food is on the table if they are interested and then go ahead and enjoy your own meal without counting heads.  If someone comes up later saying they are hungry, you can serve small amounts of what you served for dinner.  Do not worry that because of not eating dinner he will wake up from hunger during the night.  He may wake up but it will be from habit rather than hunger.  When he says he isn't hungry, we must believe him and allow his stomach to remain empty until morning...time for a good breakfast.

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