Twenty easy-peasy tips for supporting language development

Happy Children Playing Kids (Photo credit: epSos.de)

When Nica was only a baby, I was nervous about not knowing how to talk to her to help her develop language. Does that sound odd? I don’t know where I got that from, honestly. Lots of people will say ‘oh, they’ll learn sooner or later, one way or another, just from being around people talking’… While that is true, I have also found, from all the research I did to allay those initial first-time-mom nerves, that there are attitudes, approaches and techniques that some parents develop naturally (while others may need to learn them) that can make a difference to how much and how fast children learn language. Each child is unique and even applying this ‘program’ equally to all children would not of course ensure they were all speaking in full sentences by the age of one… but it is about maximising their potential for acquiring new language.

Afterall, not all households are equal in the way that children are exposed to language. For example…

• Is there continual background noise from TV or radio or long periods of silence in which to explore making sounds? Do adults mostly talk to each other over the child or do they involve the child and talk directly to them?
• And if they are talking directly to the child are they asking incessant, ‘testing’ questions or are they putting words to what he sees?
• For that matter, are they trying to shift the kids onto their adult view point or are they entering the child’s world and speaking about what the child sees from their eye-level and about what is interesting to them?
• Do grown-ups get down and talk to children eye-to-eye or shout at them from across the room and then get mad if the kid doesn’t immediately follow their ‘order’?
• Is there one language in the household or two (or more) and how much do they overlap by?
• Is the baby treated like a package to be moved here or there or are they treated with respect and like they understand so much, from day one?…

Yes, there are many, many variables which means there are things that work better and things that are less helpful when it comes to a child picking up language.

As I say, I was nervous, so I read a lot (that is what I do, when I feel adrift). So, now, I want to share with you all some of the things I learned on that journey of how to tune in and help our children develop their language skills to the best of their ability and in their own time – without ever pushing, testing or putting any pressure on them to know any more than they feel enthused to learn for themselves. We are very much following their lead, here, but doing it from an informed point of view, rather than just hoping for the best.

Here are my top tips for talking to the zero to two year old set:

1. Turn off the TV. Even if you are a hard-core tele-addict (which honestly I can empathise with), try and turn off the TV even if for only 30 minutes a day – but more is better. Babies are unable to distinguish background from foreground sound. Any background noise seriously messes up their chances of focussing on the sounds coming out of your mouth… or the toy they are banging on, or even the sounds they themselves are uttering. They need to be able to really pick apart which sounds they are creating, what is doing what, which sound is coming from whose mouth etc. This helps them build their first understanding of cause and effect as well as help them begin to build associations between words and objects or people. The more clearly they can hear you, the faster they can begin to learn. So, give it a go: turn off the TV, especially before your kids are two.
2. Carve out half an hour a day of one-to-one time with each child:  You are dedicating this half an hour a day to connect and communicate with your child – is this not what being a parent is all about? The idea is that you let them lead the exploration and play, completely, in this time. And, of course, make sure there is no background noise or interruptions. It can feel hard, to begin with, to just ‘be’, with no props, just you watching and following your kid’s lead in play but the pay-off is immense in terms of closeness, understanding and language development. Ideally you are aiming for half an hour per day with each child – if you can’t do that, do as close to that as you can: 15 minutes with each child/a day or 30 minutes with one kid one day, 30 minutes with another the next. The important thing is that you have one-to-one time where all the language is for them. Here is my first post on this practice and the research that led to it.
3. Create shared focus: apart from the no TV rule, this is the single most important tip I ever received about supporting emerging language skills: talk about what they are interested in, at the time they are interested in it. Children are far more likely to remember a word if it is about something they are focussed on – this is proven. In the case of babies (and this applies to toddlers, too, really) the best way to create shared focus is for you to jump onto their wavelength. Don’t try and pull them to yours (“look at that birdie”; “play with this toy, this way”), all the time. Try and use this as time to get to know your child and what fascinates them and holds their attention. And then speak about what they are engaged with, or in other words…
4. ‘Sportscast’. Narrate (from the child’s view point) what they are seeing, touching, smelling, hitting, etc. – especially for that half-hour a day but also at other opportune moments in the day. This is a version of what Magda Gerber, author and founder of RIE (Resources for Infant Educators), calls ‘sportscasting’. It works wonders not only for helping children interface with the world but later, as they grow older, with other children, too, even averting and disarming all manner of childish spats. But at the tender ages when language is first developing (say between 9 and 15 months) the primary purpose of narrating a child’s activities back to them, in my view, is to give them words for that which they are experiencing. And, as I said above, children learn the most when it is something they are actively engaged in (rather than something we want to teach them). It is amazing how much a child’s first words can reveal to us about what their priorities are. My kid’s first signs (which came before spoken words) were all about things which she loved, like ducks, ceiling fans and lights – hah!
5. Scaffold: my mum, the language teacher, tells me this is a term coined by Vygotsky. If I understand it correctly, it is basically a fancy word for continuing to speak to your kid about one level ahead of where they are at, if that makes sense. You provide the ‘scaffolding’ for them to learn at their own pace. You don’t speak to them in long, rushed, complicated sentences that are way above their ‘pay grade’; nor do you speak about stuff that is not in the room and expect them to understand (not when they are babies, at least); you also don’t need to teach them with flash cards… nor, to go to the other extreme, do you need to either talk down to them or, worse still, talk to them like Elmo or like you yourself are a toddler who doesn’t quite grasp grammar yet (‘daddy take ba-ba’?!). Talk to babies in real sentences with real words but…
6. Keep it simple. Make sure to enunciate and speak clearly. Not all the time, in some uber-self-conscious kind of a way. They need to hear natural speech flow with its inflections, emphasis, tone, etc… but when you are speaking directly to them, it can be helpful to think of babies almost like little foreigners to whom you do the respect of speaking with easy, ‘beginner’ words, with clarity and enthusiasm. But mix it up and pop some more advanced words in there every now and again – they may surprise you and repeat a five syllable word right back at you.
7. Have fun. Nothing squelches learning faster than being ‘taught’ or worse still, being ‘corrected’. That just presses us back into our emotional shells where we want to hide until we know we will be safe rather than humiliated or made to feel small. So for the sake of your child’s learning but also for the health of your relationship and, perhaps more importantly, just for your own enjoyment as a family, keep it light, joyful and playful.
8. Learn and share basic sign language. I have blogged much about this before, but essentially, babies are able to communicate using their hands months before they are able to do so with sound. This is because it only takes a few muscles to shape your hand into a sign whereas speaking involves coordinating your breathing, your vocal chords, your mouth shape, your tongue position – all together. It is no wonder it takes a while to master. Children as young as six months can make their first signs. It gives you a real window of insight into a child’s mind, what they notice, what they are interested in but most importantly it gives them an avenue to begin to express to you all that is inside them, from basic needs like ‘milk’ or ‘potty’ to their wonder of the world (‘cat’!!). Research has also shown that babies who are taught to sign actually benefit from a lasting boost to not only their language skills but also their IQ so that at “8 years, those who had used sign language as babies scored an average of 12 points higher in IQ on the WISC-III than their non-signing peers.”
9. Be responsive: when your baby coos, coo back; when they ga-ga, ga-ga right back at them. This is the first lesson in communication: that we listen and respond, that we take turns, that we talk to each other – this is all valuable information that babies use as foundation for learning how to talk.
10. Be positive. As they get older and start to use real words, make sure to notice and emphasise what they are getting right. In fact, it is a helpful rule of thumb to respond to most attempts at labelling something by saying ‘Yes‘. They say ‘bid’ you say ‘yes, it is a bird’. This helps build their confidence that, first and foremost, you did understand what they were trying to communicate. Then any ‘correction’ is easier to receive, too, right and kind of seamless. I call it ‘auto-correct’:
11. Aut0-correct. If they make a mistake no need to make a big song and dance about it, afterall they are only little and, frankly, doing an AMAZING job at picking up language from scratch at an alarming rate, I am sure. So instead of saying ‘no, it is not a do-d0, it is a dog, can you say DOG?’, try simply repeating back to the child what they said but using ‘auto-correct’ (like a kind of auto-tune but for words – lol). They say ‘it is a do-do’, you say, ‘yes, it is a dog’ (correction made and heard. No fuss.)
12. Practice expansion. ‘Expansion’ in this context, is when you gently, lovingly, seamlessly expand on what your child has just said – this is a part of scaffolding, really. You repeat what they said back to them but add onto it, for example they say ‘ball’ you say, “Yes, it is a red ball” – you expanded on what they said emphasising one word addition to what they said. As they get older and bolder you can get fancy with this but the basics of ‘expansion’ is just about agreeing and adding to what they are saying in very small increments so that they are anchored in a word they do know and can add another one on, in the right place, with your help.
13. Repeat, repeat, repeat. If there is a new object or word you are noticing they are interested in, repeat it in different contexts. ‘Ah, you see the crane. It is a big crane, isn’t it? Shall we go take a closer look at that blue crane?’, etc…
14. Make sound effects: kids adore them. A love of language and communication starts often with a love of sounds, of exchanging them backward and forward between mama and baby (or papa or granny or… and baby). It doesn’t need to be about words, animal sounds, the car vrooooooming by, the prellllllllll sound you make when you pick baby up and the ‘ping’ of the toaster popping (repeated by daddy for fun) can all become little ‘word games’ that delight your little listener.
15. Read or recite lots of fun little nursery rhymes – kids enjoy them and the ability to recognise and create rhymes is an important milestone in a child’s language development that shows how they are grasping and manipulating sounds. Kids especially like the ones with accompanying actions like ‘pat-a-cake’ or ‘ring around the roses’.
16. Read simple books with lots of repetition to build word-familiarity. (but don’t worry, they’ll make sure you really get the ‘repetition’ part of this tip.)
17. Sing – singing is another fun way to practice new words, often with rhyming, too. And because of the rhythm, it can make it easier to memorise.
18. Tell stories. I am a huge fan of story telling for kids. The little ones especially like stories about themselves, either real or imagined (as long as they are the protagonists). Auto-biographical stories like this actually help integrate the right and the left hemispheres of the brain as well as to provide narrative for events of emotional significance in a child’s life. The book ‘The Whole Brain Child’ by Dan Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson really goes into the power of story telling as a technique not only for locking-in vocabulary but also for developing memory (exercising it like a muscle, really) – as well as for processing and integrating difficult or emotional events (such as a car accident, for example – although I feel that is food for another post). I also LOVE this post by Jennifer of Hybrid Rasta Mama on the power of story telling for young children. I am convinced our daily ritual of a bedtime story has really helped my daughter remember words for the things and people she sees each day in a way she would not otherwise do.
19. Get down to their level, engage in eye contact and let them read your lips: this is such a simple tip and yet it can yield great benefits. And it is all about respect, too – you are showing them you care and respect them enough to make the effort to come to where they are and look them in the eye while you talk to them. Who doesn’t feel appreciated when they are engaged with, fully? Plus kids can learn a lot from simply mimicking the shapes you make with your mouth as you talk.
20. Listen. When a kid talks, pay attention. If possible, ‘listen with your eyes’ as we say in our family. Demonstrate that you are really engaged in what they are saying by focussing on them with all your energy for a moment (even if to say, ‘I need to give the cooking my full attention right now, but you are really important to me and I want to hear what you have to say, so as soon as I am done here, it will be your turn and I will give you my full attention’)…

Put it together and what do you get? An awareness and enjoyment of language exploration with your kid, that is non-stop, along with half an hour a day of dedicated one-on-one connection and communication time, free of distractions, that is all about following your child’s lead and talking about the things (toys, animals, movements) that catch their eye and that are interesting to them. You really learn a lot about your child doing this and as a result both of you feel more and more in tune. It is also proven to boost not only their language skills but their IQ, too – in the long run. Why not give this approach a try?

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See also

• http://www.asha.org/public/speech/development/parent-stim-activities.htm
• http://www.ivillage.com/baby-talk-8-easy-and-fun-ways-improve-your-babys-language-skills/6-n-136622

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Please note: I am neither a childcare professional nor a speech therapist. I am a mom and the above is my opinion only and is not a substitute for professional advice. If you suspect your child has any language delays you should speak to your doctor or seek the help of a specialist that can help your child overcome any potential or actual issues.

With love,

~Gauri

Emotional release feels good – to kids, too.

The other day I was driving and the memory of a dear friend of ours who passed away some years ago, just before our wedding in fact, popped into my head. Perhaps I never grieved his passing properly as I had so much going on at the time. I really wanted to cry, to get the emotion all out and ‘get over it’ once and for all, but I could not because I was driving.

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Once, when I was a waitress at a casino (long story), I dropped a tray full of glasses and they broke. This was before the casino was open and my colleagues rushed around me to help tidy up. I burst into tears. My friend said ‘but they are only glasses’. The tears gushed forward. It was NOT about the glasses. That was just the last straw. All that stress and pent-up emotion I had been carrying around the last few days, was finally bursting out. I picked up the glasses but let the crying flow on. It seemed to be what I needed at the time.

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Very often I have had the experience that I feel so much better after sharing. Having someone you can just let it all out with and really vent about what is going on in your life, knowing they create a safe listening space, don’t judge and don’t take things personally (or try and make it about them or whatever). Sometimes you just need to tell someone how you feel for it to shift. 

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Today, I listened to my child cry for over twenty minutes. I was there, right up close to her, holding her at times, touching her at other times, engaging in eye contact whenever that felt right to her. She cried until she cried herself to sleep in my arms.

I would not have done this some time ago. I would have done what most parents do and tried hard to distract her (“look at the doggy”; “do you want a cookie?”) or tried to fix it (“is it because you are scared of the noise?”) or plain placate her (“there, there, you can have that toy and that one, too, if you want” – okay that is too far, but you get the picture). This time, I just stayed firm and weathered the storm with her, peacefully, lovingly.

This is NOT an easy option. It is hard emotional work for her and for me, as her ‘listening partner’. I am doing it because I have come to a place of understanding that for children (as well as for adults) the road to emotional health and wellbeing comes through full expression of our feelings. Whenever we do not allow ourselves to fully accept, express and release whatever emotions come up for us, they stay within us, lingering, festering, clogging us up.

Sometimes the difficulty lies in admitting we could have these feelings in the first place. ‘I shouldn’t be upset about something so little’ or ‘only a petty person would still be angry about that!’  – we judge ourselves and think we should be above these base feelings. But we are human. Feelings come whether we want them or not. Then our only choice is how to deal with them. Many of us (consciously or more often unconsciously) distract ourselves with other thoughts or by staying busy and/or we stuff the emotions down with food, alcohol or narcotics. Anything to stop us from admitting we feel things we ‘shouldn’t’ or don’t want to feel.

These emotions, packed down like this, continue to affect us and come out in strange ways, everything from passive-aggressive comments, defensiveness, a chip on our shoulder and the like to actual physical ailments said to be caused by ‘stress’; not to mention a difficulty in attracting and maintaining happy, stable, mutually supportive relationships, on all levels. Whenever we move to honestly look at and ex-press (literally: ‘push out’) our feelings we feel lighter, happier within ourselves, stronger and more capable of moving forward.

I have known this for myself for years. It is only slowly dawning on me that this could be the case for the little ones in our lives, too.

We are often so afraid of children’s emotions that we move Heaven and Earth to stop them coming up, but who is this helping? And are we doing this because it serves them or because these strong, passionate, free-flowing shows of emotion make us feel uncomfortable? Or even because they make us feel inadequate as parents – ‘if they are crying it must be because I did or failed to do something’, ‘there is an un-met need I did not attend to… what is it?!’, ‘I am just not good enough’…? Or perhaps we just fear judgement and what others will think of us if they see our child crying or raging in a public place. And these are all understandable fears but should we let them guide our behaviour toward these innocent beings we love so much?

I am lucky. As a mama-blogger and living among this powerful community of natural mammas in Northern California I have learned so much. Through many different channels, I keep coming across this idea that there is another way to approach and support a crying, distressed child. Time outs are not for me. I have read too much Alfie Kohn (or should I say ‘enough’) to  know that if I respond to my heart’s desire of hugging my child at her hour of need (rather than outcasting her) this is actually the best and most effective thing I could do, as shown by research. [I don’t mean being soft or permissive. I am actually quite assertive on many levels with her. My ‘no’ means ‘no’ but when she is sad or mad about it, I don’t punish her for it. That is a whole other huge topic though and much has been blogged about it, so let me stay on track here.]

Anyway, one of the main ‘authorities’ I kept being pointed to in this field is called Patty Wipfler and she is the leading light at an organisation called Hand in Hand Parenting, here in Palo Alto, CA. Here is the thing though. I kept hearing about her. Lawrence Cohen who wrote Playful Parenting (a book I LOVE) recommends this organisation. This is an internationally famous book, what are the odds that he would recommend a center just down the road from me?! And that is not all, my online blogger-friend and inspiration Genevieve  co-founder of the Peaceful Parent Institute also talked of the amazing teaching from this school called Hand in Hand Parenting. She is based in New Zealand. That was that, I thought: ‘I have to go check these people out’. So I signed up for one of their courses.

Given the international exposure this place has obviously got, I expected the workshop to be in a shining, modern room filled with eager parents. Nope. There were three of us on this course, in a dingy room in a local church. Hey, I am not complaining, it was very cosy and family-like, rather than big and corporate (which is what I expected). It was run by Todd Erickson who has trained with Patty.

Image by World of Oddy via Flickr

The mini-course was called ‘Tantrum Training’ and though I joked a lot about the fact that they were going to teach me how to shout ‘noooo!’ at the top of my lungs and stamp my feet with aplomb, it was actually freakin’ fabulous!

Their work is all about what I was talking about, above. It is about meeting and honouring the child’s emotions, rather than trying to repress, suppress or otherwise distract from what is going on, inside them. As one participant said, allowing her kid to work on and release his emotions, now, was helping him not accumulate baggage to carry around with him, later – hahaha. Loved that one.

Hand in Hand’s approach, in a way, brings together many practices I have been gathering from many sources over the years (some way before being a parent). NinjaDad said theirs was like the SmartPhone of parenting philosophies. Old phones just made calls. New phones unite phone, camera, games console, video recorder, computer, etc… lots of things you love all in one place. Hand in Hand Parenting did that for me: it brought together lots of disparate ideas and practices and organised them neatly into one system AND added in some new components that made the whole run better. Perhaps it is apt that they are just down the road from Apple :)

A quick summary of their teaching (as I understand it) goes like this: set aside some ‘Special Time’ to connect through play with your child each day and build a strong bond with them – that is the ‘prevention side’ (and they have specific advice, tips and guidelines for doing that); if/when a strong emotion arises for your kid, don’t move to distract or otherwise suppress the emotion coming up. Let the feeling come and be expressed fully. Know that the tears, the raging, the trembling are just the way to ex-press (push out) the feeling that is trapped and welling inside them. The crying, the tantrum is not the ‘problem’ but your child’s way of solving the problem and letting the hurt and frustration out!

This is genius stuff and so different from what we are taught and see modelled in the world most of the time. And the most important thing is: it works!

Yes, it is hard to see your child cry and ‘do’ nothing but actually you are doing a lot. The advice we are given by Hand in Hand, when the child starts to tantrum, cry or rage, is to move in closer, touch them in some way that feels natural and comfortable to you both (i.e. don’t force it) and engage in eye contact (or at least provide opportunity for them to see the love you have for them pouring from your eyes, when/if they are ready to look at you) and stay with them as they feel it all out. You can literally say to them ‘I am staying with you, I am not going anywhere’ along with other short (non-intrusive) support statements like ‘I know you are feeling sad’ or ‘you are very mad that you can’t play with your trucks anymore because it is raining’ (or whatever). But mostly you just stay with them, holding the space for them to express anything that they feel.

If you go back to my initial examples from my life, you’ll know there are times I wish I could have done that for myself and times I am grateful others were there holding a non-judgemental space for me when I cried or just talked about how big my feelings were getting about whatever little thing sparked it that day.

And here is the thing, with this new approach to my child’s upsets came huge relief for me. You might think this is ‘harder’ than distracting and in a way, it is (as I said). It is deeper work. It involves pure, unconditional listening, empathy, caring and emotional availability. But in other ways, once I got past some of the objections in my mind (like: ‘isn’t this just like ‘cry it out re-packaged for more sensitive hippies?’ or ‘will all this crying damage my child?’ or even ‘will letting her tantrum openly this much make her spoilt and soft?’), once I got past those though, this felt lighter to me. This act of stepping toward rather than away from my child’s pain felt empowering to me, too, as a mother. Before, each time she cried I felt a stab of helplessness followed by a flurry of activity to try and stop that noise. Now, the invitation is to stay calm and centered as I invite her into my certainty that all is well, even as the tears, the feelings are flowing. And with this she can follow her own instinctive pull to express her feelings in the most natural ways that come to her, until all of them are spent.

And, as I said, the beautiful gift is that it works. Anya woke up from the nap she fell into, between tears, and despite my fear that she might be withdrawn, brooding or angry at me, her mood was happy, trusting, playful. And in general, since starting this work on a more systematic basis, she has been calmer, more at ease and more confident. Even her dad commented on it. I am new at this, but she really seems MUCH less anxious about separating from me, too, which is huge and I am (despite continuing to find my own individual path through this teaching) seeing more and more ways this is bringing us closer together and helping her release a back-log of fears, anxieties and upsets. Bless this system and others like it, for helping us parents find new ways to dance to rhythm of our own hearts.

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Sources of further information:

1. The Right Use of Will – this is an… uh… unusual book I read a while back. But I have got to tell you it changed me and it introduced me to what I still think is the best method for identifying and releasing pent up feelings. If you can embrace the hippy in you, suspend your disbelief and read this with an open mind, it might really speak to you. It did to me.
2. Hand in Hand Parenting – online courses (for those of you not based in the Bay Area)
3. Hand in Hand Parenting Blog – full of fabulous real life stories of how connecting through ‘Special Time’ and deep listening (what Patty Wipfler calls ‘StayListening’) are benefitting the families using these powerful tools for whole-family-emotional-intelligence
4. Aletha Solter and the Aware Parenting Institute – Aletha Solter is a world-renowned author and teacher in the area of effective, gentle parenting. Her website (linked her) has a wealth of articles and resources to help us learning parents
5. Playful Parenting– information on Lawrence Cohen, PhD’s brilliant books and lecture series
6. BabyCalmer – a facebook community of like-minded parents
7. The Way of the Peaceful Parent – the facebook page of an inspiring gentle parenting instructor, full of wisdom and practical advice

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Do you do this for your child – practice what Patty Wipfler calls ‘StayListening’ or what, Aletha Solter calls ‘crying in arms’? How does it work for your family? Are you seeing the ‘results’ – a happier, more connected child that expresses their feelings easily, often, fully?

A compostable potty – why did nobody tell me about this?

So, did you know that you can buy a potty that is both made from eco-friendly materials and completely biodegradable? Nope, I didn’t either. But I stumbled across the Becopotty on Amazon (okay, hardly hidden, right?) and now I just don’t understand why more people aren’t buzzing about it.

It is made from rice husks and bamboo waste and is super-durable and yet, if you plant it in your garden it will immediately begin to decompose. Magic.

It is a little on the small size (even for my 22 mo kid who is ‘young’ by many people’s potty training standards) but it is fully functional and it has become our travel potty – the one I carry everywhere I go. I love that it is compact and one-piece which is much easier to deal with when we are out and about. I also like that it looks like a potty – it doesn’t have bells, sing a tune or have Disney characters plastered all over it. It is just a potty – which gets Penguin* used to the fact that potties are for peeing and pooping in. That is it. They are not toys and we expect nothing from them but relief :)

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Disclaimers? There are none! I don’t normally blog about products, at all. I don’t get any endorsements and I am sure BecoThings who make this potty have never heard of me. Translation: this is a completely independent review.

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* Ummm… yeah, still experimenting with online nicknames for my little one. Perhaps this one will stick?? Hahaha!

 

G-whiz I hope these green diapers work!

I am finally coming over to the light side. I am trying some properly environmentally friendly diapers. These are the G-diapers which are (self-proclaimed as) the most biodegradable nappies (nods at British friends) in the world. The inserts are 100% biodegradable and can be either flushed or composted. They have a very neat video of them degrading in soil next to two other types of nappies.

 Okay, with the word ‘Earth’ in my moniker you’d think I would have sorted the green stuff out first. To be honest I have spend most of my energy on the Loving (myself as I recover from PPA and my daughter demonstrating it through co-sleeping, breastfeeding on cue, etc.) and generally learning to be a Mama (which with just me and my working partner and very little other support has been a… learning curve) so that the Earth bit though still very important has been, I confess, a little neglected. I mean, I still use environmentally friendly cleaning products and body-care products… although I also try to chill and not be so hard a*se that I tie myself in knots over these things. I do what I can. I reuse, reduce and recycle. I drive a Prius… although the verb kind of undoes the noun there, no? And I fly, maybe once a year or so – but across an ocean – so that pretty much undoes everything else I could do, somehow, even though I do carbon offset.

… Anyway, before giving birth I always meant to use cloth diapers. I looked up the local service… hey I am a hippy but a realist about my own energy and commitment – hand washing pooey diapers wasn’t going to happen. But I quickly found out there are lots of trade-off every way you go. With a service there is the mileage of the van that comes to collect your diapers and swap them off plus they tripple wash the diapers so they come out clean enough for you to put (communal) diapers on your precious baby’s butt. Tripple washing in a state with a water shortage is, well, not that environmentally friendly, after all. Bummer (no pun intended). So things weren’t as clear cut as I might have started off thinking.

So, then, partly through laziness, partly through compromise I turned to compostable and more environmentally friendly (ish) disposables. We tried Nature Babycare first. They are biodegradable and lovely as a product… but they leak and, let’s be honest, performance counts. I am a hippy but I am a modern, urban hippy and expect quality (and less laundry than having to wash 3 outfits a day because the diapers keep leaking). So, we turned to Seventh Generation. Those are not biodegradable but at least they are chlorine-free (the poison that is in bleach and that is just that – a poisonous killer, in nature). Those worked really well for us. She can keep one on all night – no leaks. Fabulous… but I still felt bad about contributing to landfill in such a huge way. There has to be a better solution, right? I also tried the WholeFoods own branded diapers for comparison (they are also not biodegradable but chlorine free). They left some weird, micro-ball residue behind so we stopped using those, too.

Now, finally, at 16 months (!!!) we are going greener. We are trying G-diapers. A couple of my friends said they didn’t work for them, the fit wasn’t right and they leaked. I believe them of course and still I need to try something different for all of us, so here we are seeing if they work for us. I am feeling really good about this, I have got to say. It is the little stuff, right? Hooray!

I’ll come back and post to let you know how we get on with these. ‘Tis rather exciting really.

I will say for now, that they are super fresh looking and make her butt look that cutilicious round shape of natural diapers that I adore. Here’s hoping they work!

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Interesting diaper review: http://www.keenforgreen.com/b/battle-green-disposable-diapers

Ekhart Tolle wrote a children’s book?

Image by Tim Pierce

Did you know Ekhart Tolle had written (co-written, to be exact) a children’s book? I stumbled across it today at the bookstore. I read it cover to cover (well, it is a children’s book!). I didn’t buy it. First because it is really for kids who are much older than Anya, so I can always come back for it later if I feel the urge. Secondly, though I loved the message I did not particularly like how it was presented. The story is not very well written – it does not flow or have poetry at its core as so many good children’s books do (and I don’t just mean the rhyming kind). The story line itself – about a kid who gets bullied and is scared to go to school for fear of being picked on again – is kind of weak and flies off on odd-fitting tangents about cats getting mauled by nasty neighbourhood dogs (a parallel which allows Milton, the protagonist to compare how easily the cat bounces back because it lives in the Now) and a dream sequence about feeling the inner light, the energy flow in the body. As I say, I really like the message: don’t get drawn into suffering because of what happened in your past or what you fear will happen in the future, stay in the ‘Now’ by paying attention to what is here in the present and connecting with the feeling in your body. That is all stuff I want Anya to learn, of course. But above all I hope to show her, to model how to do that (yep, still working on it – but surely that is the best way to impart this stuff). Plus the ridiculous thing is that, at this age (16 months) Anya pretty much does live in the Now, naturally. The last thing I want to do is create a problem when there is none. If there comes a time where she is struggling with this kind of stuff (mind stuff) then I hope to remember this book. In the meantime, in the Now, this is not a book we need in our library just yet… although I will say I did feel warm and glowy reading it and though this book wasn’t perfect (I wasn’t even a fan of the art, to be honest) I am soooo glad people are writing books with spiritual messages for children. That makes my heart smile.

The book is called “Milton’s Secret: An Adventure of Discovery through Then, When, and the Power of Now”. For Amazon’s reviews, go here: http://www.amazon.com/Miltons-Secret-Adventure-Discovery-through/dp/1571745777/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1303703079&sr=1-1

Breastfeeding with teeth: does it hurt?

One of the most common questions I get, when people are surprised that I am still nursing a one year old (which isn’t that often as it isn’t surprising to that many people) is ‘does it hurt?’ and the answer for us has been: ‘no!’ Okay, there is an exception and that is when baby is teething. At those times her latch gets a little – shall we say? – funky and, especially at the end of a feed when she is not really getting any milk anymore but is comfort sucking and/or drifting off to sleep, then she lets go of the strong latch and – yikes – it hurts as her teeth feel sharp like needles on my nipple. Yowser. The worst has been if she has, at that time, actually pierced the skin, then each time I go to breastfeed, that same tooth that caused the problem naturally finds the groove it pierced last time and digs into the wound – not good.

I dealt with that by just feeding consistently in a position different from the one in which she caused the pain in the first place. Since it was when she was falling asleep that she bit me and hence we were lying down at the time, I basically just feed her with me sitting up (classic cradle position) for a few nights and have found that gives the breast enough time to heal, totally.

But as you can see, that is an exception that proves the rule – and the rule is that if she is breastfeeding it doesn’t hurt (it is only if she isn’t actually breastfeeding but falling asleep with my boob in her mouth while teething that there is danger). So, Anya has had teeth for months and months now and I can sincerely say it has been a great experience 99% of the time… thankfully. Afterall it is all about the position of the mouth. I can suck my thumb without biting it, can’t you? I guess babies evolved to not bite the boob that is feeding them.

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NB Photo is not of me and is by HoboMama.

Mrs Meyers is my new best friend

Image by Anne With An "E" via Flickr

I discovered Mrs Meyers products and I love them. I am not much of one for product reviews or endorsements. I am also not much of one for cleaning, given half a chance… but with Mrs Meyers I am happy to clean and clean. It just makes me so joyous, I want to sing while I clean, a la Cinderella but without the animals. Genius! Who thought of putting aromatherapy together with cleaning products? [Umm… I guess Mrs Meyers did!]  So simple, so perfect for me. Yumm!…

Don’t push the milestone river

Image via Wikipedia

Have you heard of Magda Gerber? Neither had I. She came to my attention through a ‘Discover Your Baby’ group I occasionally drop-in on. Her philosophy in childcare seems to sit comfortably alongside many of Steiner’s insights. She is, above all, insistent that we listen to and respect our children as full human beings already, now. She says that if we enfold them in our love they will unfold in their own time and so her teaching gently reminds us not to try and mold our children or push them to learn and grow at a fast pace that suits our ‘parent egos’ more than our child’s developing sense of wonder.

Rather, Magda Gerber (in no way related to the Gerber baby food company) urges us to sit back and observe our children’s natural development (especially aged zero to two, I believe). She says parenting and childcare are being overriden by a ‘faster, more, better’ culture that clutters our children with excess attention, toys and general interference. In contrast, “she urged parents to observe their babies and wait for their cues, never rushing them into sitting, walking, eating, or talking before they signal their readiness to do so.”

This totally resonates with my inner feeling. With eating we very much followed Nica’s cues and waited for her to signal to us that she was ready to start eating and I feel confident that was the right thing for her. With walking, likewise, I have a very relaxed attitude predicated on the fact that I have long been sold on the benefits of crawling for brain development, co-ordination and building core-strength (of the torso). However it was at one of these ‘Discover Your Baby’ classes that I was shown a blind-spot of mine.

Just like so many parents are in a hurry to see their kids walk and put them in walkers, bouncers and other upright devices (most of which are not only not beneficial but arguably even detrimental to children’s overall wellbeing) modern parents often seem in a hurry to see their kids sit upright, too. Okay, I never bought or even experimented with putting Nica in a Bumbo. I thought they were very silly and pointless – even though others seem to get super excited by them. But I did get very enthusiastic when Nica started to be able to stay seated if I placed her there, upright. And at that point, I started sitting her up and leaving her like that because it was cute, because it gave her access to play with toys in a new way, because it gave me a break from having to hover over her when she was rolling everywhere. There was a downside. She would often crash backwards onto her head. Thankfully we have nice, plush carpet and I quickly learned to put a big pillow behind her when I sat her up…

Well… the Magda Gerber inspired ‘Discover Your Baby’ instructor set me straight. I mentioned to her Nica wasn’t crawling yet (this was at about 7.5 months). She asked if Nica spent much time lying on her back (and belly) or if she spent most of her time sitting up. I said I was sitting her up. She then asked if Nica was able to get from her belly to a seated position and back down again by herself or if I had to sit her up and put her back down? I answered (rather sheepishly, by then) that I sat her up, usually between my legs, because she couldn’t keep herself up indefinitely, yet. ‘Ahh’ she said… According to this philosophy you shouldn’t ‘artificially’ sit your kid up (even if she is able to hold herself there) until she is able to sit up for herself and that the fact that she wasn’t crawling was probably related. While Nica was spending all this time sitting up, she wasn’t practicing leg movements (waving her legs from side to side, etc) that exercise her belly and back muscles getting her ready and strong for crawling. ‘Oh…’ I said.

I took Nica home and immediately started putting her on her back and belly and letting her roll and move around on that plane again. Within two or three days Nica started to belly crawl. Aha!…

It definitely feels related and not coincidental – I saw Nica really practice reaching and pre-crawling for those few days. I guess she was ready and just needed that extra stretching and work-out time.

Generally this approach is reminding me to slow down, to look, listen and feel: look and listen to Nica and her cues; feel what is instinctive and intuitive to me. Breathe.

While I am generally quite laid-back and trusting of Nica’s unfolding into the person she is with her unique talents, temperament and passions, I realise that my parenting approach can still do with re-balancing. I get into my little parenting projects, like signing, and though with everything I do with Nica my aim is to be child-led (where possible), a reminder to see what is there is always timely.

the sound of silence

Image via Wikipedia

At six months I turned the TV off. I had been watching a lot of TV in Anya’s early months. For the first four months she breast-fed a lot, as most of you know, and I chose to honour and respond to her cries for momma by offering my breast, my milk and the closeness and warmth of my body… and while I was prioritising my child’s needs and desires I needed to do what I could to take care of mine, too. I read a lot and then, sometimes, I would turn the TV on while breastfeeding, instead. Occasionally I would put the TV on during lunch, too.

When Anya was six months old (and coincidentally just about to eat her first solids as well as being much more able to move around) I read some research about the effect of TV and background noise in general on a child’s development. I actually heard it from a few different sources but as ever Sally Ward’s work stands out. Her opinion is that babies should be exposed to no TV at all for the first year and after that only for very limited amounts, on momma’s knee.

The reason for this hardline is centered on the child’s developing ability to listen and, in particular, the learned skill of distinguishing between foreground and background sounds. She says she has seen many kids arrive at school with extremely poor listening and attention skills which obviously impacts their ability to learn. Her research points to TV as the culprite.

Kids can also be over-stimulated by TV, as we all know and of course they can be exposed to visions and ideas that are not only way too advanced for them, but positively disturbing in some cases. So, the TV went off. I feel better for it. We enjoy lots of happy, wholesome silence, some sounds of nature and plenty of fun music. Much better…

What is funny is that Anya has somehow still figured out the remote controls the TV (which she REALLY wants me to turn on). She’ll grab it and point it at the TV. She doesn’t know how to operate it, of course, but she has got the general gist of its purpose. It seems kids are hardwired for matching form and function based on trial-and-error and watching adults do stuff. Aren’t they amazing?!

Soothing teething pains, beautifully

I have got Anya a fabulous amber necklace to help soothe her teething discomfort. I chose a pretty one so that it serves a dual purpose and even if it doesn’t work, at least it looks adorable. Actually you can’t see here how lovely it is in that it is gradated with lighter amber at the back, so it it nice to see the colour progression on the skin.

Amber, baltic amber in particular, has been prized for its healing properties for centuries. Here is what the website had to say about it in relation to teething:

“Baltic amber teething necklace is made for wearing (not chewing) when a baby is teething. The warmth from the skin releases the active ingredient in the Baltic amber, succinic acid. Recent scientific research has proved that succinic acid has a very positive influence on the human body. It improves immunity and the balance of acids when absorbed into the bloodstream, it stimulates the thyroid glands to help reduce drooling and soothes red inflamed cheeks. Amber’s anti-inflammatory and therapeutic properties are recognised by [mainstream]  medicine as a natural analgesic, which will help to relieve teething pain and calm a baby without resorting to drugs.” It is hard to know for sure without having another Anya also teething but not wearing the necklace but it does seem to be making a difference. I have several mommy friends who swear by these necklaces, too, so certainly no harm in trying and, as I say, it looks so sweet and grown up!