Results tagged “parenting” from Birmingham Post - Lifestyle Blog

Before I had a child I assumed the challenges of being a working mum could pretty much be resolved through good childcare.
If you had enough money, I figured, you could pay for someone you trusted to look after your baby while you worked, had your legs waxed, or did whatever was needed to keep heart and home together.
What I hadn't accounted for was the ferocity of that tug that defies rationality and yanks you to your kin leaving a trail of scattered papers, ringing phones and unfinished work in its wake.
Take yesterday as an example. It was a day I would normally have been at home with Arch, my not-yet-two-year-year-old, but it so happened that I needed to be at a conference.
I arranged for him to be with a friend, whom he knows well and who has a little boy of a similar age that he plays with often - my godson.
They were to go to the Sealife Centre in the morning, have a picnic lunch and go to the park in the afternoon. Sorted.
The hitch in the plans was that the day before Arch had been unaccountably sad. He was still sad yesterday, so when I left him with our friends it was with the niggling doubt that what he really needed was his mum.
I went to the conference.

It's been almost two weeks since my last posting - sorry about that - but I've been ill.
And being ill when you've got a not-yet-two-year-old in the house is, I've discovered, an art in itself.
There was l lying motionless in the back room when my husband slipped me a cup of tea. "Arch doesn't know you're here," he whispered.
I knew that my chances of resting would be blown as soon as the ever-perceptive toddler heard an untoward noise, so I hid, listening out for the best opportunity to sneak to the loo.
Being sick with a child, proved to be about balancing the difficulty of keeping cover against the stress of being kissed and jumped on and pulled,
By the afternoon, I decided I just about had enough strength to sing Wind the Bobbin Up and allowed myself to be discovered.
I've no doubt my recuperation was hindered as a result, but what can you do? Any tips on being poorly when you've got a little one will be gratefully received.
Meanwhile I see it is a condition worthy of psychological study. A paper has been written "Drawing on social construction theory, we explore the meaning of being an ill parent, highlighting the tension of being a parent and patient."
That's some consolation. But I just want to know how to sleep with one eye open.

The women in our antenatal group, including myself, would claim we were not competitive.
We would all agree that children develop at their own paces and that it is invidious to make comparisons between them.
And yet when would meet up, with nothing in common other than our infants mewling and puking in our arms, there was nothing else to do but say things like: "My baby has a lot of wax in her ears, does yours?"
Before we knew it, what we had intended to be a friendly gathering of women who had all had their first babies at the same time became a subtle kind of competition - all done with a middle-class niceness that could not possibly be faulted.
I would love to say that I was immune from making these comparisons and the subsequent pride of anxiety that they evoked, but I was not.
However much I wish it otherwise, there is evidently an insecure part of me that is exposed when I'm amongst women with children the same age as mine.
There is no shortage of those complaining about competitive parenting syndrome but really the problem is not with this antenatal group or that particular preschool. Most of the time we can not avoid those gatherings anyway.
If we truly felt at home in ourselves, the progress of our children's peers would be a cause not of concern, but delight. If it isn't, it's time to go gently and remember how honored and loved we really are.

In the two minutes it takes to dash to the washing machine from the bathroom with a reeking bucket of poohy nappies, Arch has managed to open the child-proof cap on the big bottle of mouthwash and drink its contents.

As I dither trying to decide whether my priority is to comfort him, make him sick or wash my hands, I recall a newsletter from a company called Real Coaching Solutions saying women are natural multitaskers. Ho ho ho! In my dreams.....

How I wish I was the kind of woman that could indeed type a report, negotiate a deal, plan dinner for the family and remember to wash the football kits all at the same time. Motherhood would be a breeze if I could. Even watching Arch and washing nappies simultaneously has me flummoxed.

Given that I'm that kind of person, in my 21 months of being a wing-and-a-prayer mum, I have tried to give up multitasking whereever I can.