Playdough Saturday!

Things are always different when we're at my parents' place. They live on a four acre permaculture smallholding and for an HSP (that's a whole other blog post waiting to happen) it's so much easier for me there. This morning I felt capable of making playdough. It's been a long time. I'm not sure if I've ever made it with my children, but I have great memories of it as a child, the smell of it, the salty taste on my hands, making all sorts of shapes and things with it. Since three-year-old Ben's teacher had just recommended him playing with playdough to strengthen his hands for writing it seemed like the perfect time.

I wanted to find a recipe that didn't include cream of tartar, because I was sure we wouldn't have that in the house, and I don't remember it being in the recipe as a child. Luckily I found one on the Cbeebies site that was perfect. A bit awkward that it was in cups (and surprising for a British site) but we had some measuring cups in the drawer, so it was all good. Once we'd mixed the salt, flour, and cornflour I split the mixture in half and coloured half of it red and half blue.

The children had plenty of fun helping me make the dough, and the fun continued once it was kneaded into balls and out on the table. With the help of the cutters I used as a child and various other kitchen bits and bobs they have spent the morning making shapes, mountains, babies in cradles, graves for their Lego men (that was George. He has an interesting mind), pancakes and ice cream.

For an added bonus, while I had the cornflour out, I decided to introduce them again to non-Newtonian fluids, which flow when they're not under pressure but go hard when force is applied. We've shown Oscar and George this before, but I don't think they remembered. I mixed a bowl of cornflour with a little water and put it on the table to show them how it worked. Ben was a little freaked out at first, but Oscar and George were fascinated and George spent at least three quarters of an hour deeply engrossed in this single bowl of cornflour. Now Ben is pretending it's Mount Doom from Lord of the Rings and is digging it out onto the table.

We got a little science in with this, discovering that these fluids work as they do because on the microscopic level you have little grains of solid in a suspension in a liquid. When the fluid moves slowly the particles can move past one another, but under impact there's no time for the particles to move aside and make way, and so they behave like a solid.

Of course as an HSP parent I'm exhausted now and they're still going strong four or five hours later. There's playdough everywhere. But they're having fun, and that's what counts.

What's Under Your Sink?

A plunger? Cleaning cloths? Bleach? Antibacterial spray? Febreeze?

'Poison' by Cavin on Flickr (license)

'Every week around 500 children under five [in the UK] are rushed to hospital because it's thought they have swallowed something poisonous.' (Source: nidirect.gov.uk)

I remember this kind of incident in my own childhood (due to berries on a blackberrying trip not household substances.) Being taken off to hospital by worried parents. Orange juice with an emetic concealed inside. Staying in hospital overnight. The high bars of the hospital cot. Even if no ill effects unfold, the repercussions of possibly ingesting something poisonous are unpleasant for both parent and child.

I want to address a fundamental strangeness in the way we organise our kitchens. To be clear, it's the way I organise my kitchen too. We have cleaning products under the sink. Pretty much everyone does. My parents do and always have, as far as my memory goes. Almost every house I've been in, when I've had cause to look under the sink, shows the same arrangement. Bleach? Under the sink. Window cleaner? Under the sink. Dettol? Under the sink.

We don't keep a lot of chemicals at home (and when I say chemicals I mean cleaning fluids and the like. Of course everything is composed of chemicals, from the H₂O in the taps to the O and CO₂ in the air we breathe.) Most things come clean with water or water and a little washing up liquid (Ecover if the supermarket has it.) It's best for the environment and your personal health not to rely on too many nasty chemicals. But still, I don't want my boys indulging in their own form of speakeasy on the kitchen floor.

'Chemistry Bottles With Liquid Inside,' zhouxuan12345678, cropped. (License)

Do most children show an interest in swigging bleach from the bottle or rummaging in the medicine cabinet? None of mine ever have. They're very clear on 'that's medicine' (it's all under lock and key anyway), or 'that's a nasty chemical.' They know not to touch. But Ben, in particular, loves cleaning. It's one of those things I pray he won't grow out of. He's forever rummaging under the sink and coming out with cleaning spray so he can 'help' clean up.

So why do we keep our cleaning fluids under the sink? What's the point? Why spend time fitting child locks and desperately trying to barricade the cupboard? (In our previous residence we used a stick to 'lock' the doors.) I understand that you don't want to put certain things under the sink, but there are plenty of things that could be stored there. Tinned food. Food in plastic and glass containers. That could fill a whole cupboard, and meanwhile all your horrible bleaches and sprays could be up at adult eye level, well out of the reach of little hands and mouths.

So isn't it time for a fundamental reorganisation of our kitchens, and of our mindset regarding where things 'should' be kept? Do we have to keep our bleach under the sink because Mrs Jones next door does, and so does Mr Hughes the next door down, and so do your parents, and so do your friends? Educate your children about what's safe and what's not, but if you can, keep dangerous substances out of reach.

[A little post-script. It's not only cleaning products and medicines that can be harmful. When George was younger I invited him to smell some powered ginger. Instead of sniffing he blew, and the powder billowed up right into his eyes. On that occasion we rushed him straight to A&E where the doctor confirmed that ginger was one of the most painful things you could have in your eyes. He had to have anaesthetic eye drops for three or four days afterwards. And it's not just ginger. The more obvious one is nutmeg. The ingestion of 'five or more grams of nutmeg causes acute nutmeg poisoning.' (Source: toxnet.nlm.nih.gov) Be careful with spices as well as the more conventionally 'dangerous' kitchen items! ]

Young Male Suicide

Max Kurzweil - Despair (Creative Commons)

A year ago, give or take a few days, a friend committed suicide. He disappeared, leaving friends and family in panic for his safety. He loaded his backpack with concrete. He left a note in his car, and he drowned himself in one of the most beautiful places in the country. No one could believe it, because he was such a fun guy. His life was played out through photos of football matches in fancy dress, travels to the most far-flung places, love of good music, an arm flung round the shoulders of friends all around the world. There was not a bad word said, and that was before he died, not afterwards.

Afterwards his Facebook page, always the news-bringer, lit up with messages of love, sadness, disbelief. Friends from around the world were in shock. He had been a great traveller, an experiencer of life, someone who seemed to grab every opportunity with both hands. He had brought joy and love and great fun to people in almost every continent, and now they were reeling.

This was a single tragedy to many people. It happened, and people moved on. They felt sadness, deep sadness, but life goes on. But 'three young males take their own life on average every day across the [UK].' Three, every day. That's over a thousand a year. A thousand young men who take themselves out of life and leave a wrack behind them, a knock on effect of grief and loss and disbelief that ripples through thousands. Too many people have stories like this to tell of the man who they never thought would do something like that, but did.

There may be light at the end of the tunnel. (G Meyer, on Flickr)

The supreme tragedy of this to me is that many of these young men aren't suffering from severe long-term depression or chronic physical illnesses. They are afraid or pressured or at the end of their tether at that precise nadir of their lives. They are in a situation that could be turned around, somehow by someone, if only there were more awareness of how these things happen. They could carry on and overcome their problems, and look back on that time as one of the worst in their life, but one that they got through. One that they survived.

I don't know how to solve this issue. I wish I did. But surely spreading awareness must be a key step. Be aware of the men in your life – especially the young ones, the ones who seem to have it all but are going through a bad patch, the ones who put a brave face on it but perhaps spend each night in fear. Please, be aware. Don't be afraid to reach out. Surely it is far, far better to offer help to someone who doesn't need it than to miss someone who does? Offer them love, understanding. Help them solve their problems. Help them realise that they don't have to go it alone.

And if you are a young man in this situation, please, speak to someone. Anyone. A friend, a doctor, a stranger at a bus shelter. Anyone. Give yourself time. We don't want you to die.

Please, save a life.

How My Children Lost Their Faith

Halloween iPhone-Desk Paper by arsgrafik on deviantArt

It's that time of year again. You know. The time that you can't mention. (Shhh! Hallowe'en.)

Yes, that time. As a Pagan – a very loose Pagan, but a Pagan nonetheless – Hallowe'en has a strong place in my feelings. It's a special time of year. I feel closer to the dead and the not-yet-living and to the threats and wonders of all of those things.

Temporary Altar by Bart Everson on Flickr

But I keep hearing reports that pupils aren't allowed to talk about this in my children's school. It sounds as if some teachers allow it, while others don't. As always with children, these things are unclear. To be honest, it doesn't bother mine much. To them Hallowe'en is about sweets – America's fault, I suppose – despite the fact that I don't get sweets out on Hallowe'en. But this discrimination does bother me.

The problem is that my children attend a faith school. I know the words 'faith school' conjure up images of extreme Muslim academies teaching small children to be terrorists. At least, the tabloid papers would have it that way. But probably most Muslim/Jewish/Church of England or other religious schools are pretty much like the Church in Wales one my children go to. A good, open, friendly school with good teaching and a great learning environment.

But there are issues. Despite some small evidence that they learn about other faiths, Christianity has a very large place in their schooling. It's the only faith that I hear my children talking about in relation to school. And recently George got into trouble during prayers. They accept him not putting his hands together and not saying the words, but he was turning his back on the teacher. I explained that I could tell him that it was rude to turn his back, and he shouldn't do it, but I couldn't force him to pray.

'But this is a Church in Wales school,' I was reminded.

Ibaraki Kasugaoka Church light cross by Bergmann

'Yes, but it's the only school in the area. We have no choice but to send our children here. And forcing someone to pray makes a complete mockery of prayer,' I reminded them.

My son's teacher, a lovely woman, thankfully acknowledged this. What would I have done if she didn't?

It seems that there's not much I could do. Religious schools appear to be pretty much exempt from discrimination laws. It's a confusing subject to research (especially with a mild migraine and a Lego-obsessed three year old in the room), and the Armchair Backseatologist has done it much better here. But the National Secular Society's page states, 'Many faith schools are granted exemptions from equality laws which are meant to ensure that schools cannot discriminate against pupils because of their religion or belief.'

There's something very wrong in this. Discrimination is discrimination. Yes, some discrimination can be positive – teaching children of different abilities differently, for example. But surely it's wrong to say to a child, 'You cannot express your faith in our school.' If their argument is that they're not celebrating Hallowe'en as a part of faith, then why is it a threat? If it is a part of faith, then surely it's wrong to suppress it? I'm sure that if that faith was Judaism or Islam they wouldn't be met with this response, but Hallowe'en straddles an odd border between Paganism and Christianity, and it apparently scares the Church in Wales. Discriminating against one particular form of faith is even worse than discriminating against them all.

There's Probably No God by Dan Etherington

The result of this attitude towards faith? Oscar, 8, not only believes there is no god, but also that Jesus never existed, no matter how much evidence there is that he was a historical figure. George's thoughts are going the same way. They have been so pushed into the Christian faith that they are revolted by it. Really, is this the way we want to introduce our children to faith? My family has a wide spectrum of views including Pagan, Baha'i, Judaism, and Christian (Church of England and Church in Wales). There's probably even some Catholic somewhere in the woodwork. I would like my sons to grow up able to choose what to believe, whether that be a religion or atheism, rather than either being indoctrinated into one faith, or so sickened by it that they cannot believe in anything.

A Caveat On Jumping to Conclusions

This is far from how I looked, I must say.

If you walk past our house at the moment you'd see that my husband keeps me in a cage. Half-naked, the pressure of the bars leaving red marks on my skin. The door is latched but not locked. Obviously I'm too scared to leave without permission. Either that, or I'm deriving a sexual thrill from my captivity, regardless of the children in the room who are able to watch this gratuitous display. They're so inured to the sight that they don't bat an eyelid. In fact, after a time, George crawls in with me. It's disgusting to see such a display. Appalling. There are no words.

You might be tempted to call social services or the police. You might be tempted to whisper or make comments about how terrible the situation is in my house and what my children are exposed to. You might even feel like popping an anonymous note through the door telling me where I'm going wrong. People do this. I know that, because I've had it happen.

If you actually stopped and came into the house you'd be able to see around the corner of the settee. You'd see that on my chest is a large ginger cat with a severe wound on his leg and a plastic cone on his head. He's just had his shattered leg repaired with intensive surgery. There's just enough room in the cage for him (and his cushion), me, and a litter-tray, food bowl, and water bowl. I'm not actually being abused by my husband or shamelessly living out sexual fantasies in front of the children. I'm trying to help the cat heal faster by giving him comfort at what is probably a pretty terrible time for him. I'm spending a couple of hours a day with him, at the very least. It's not easy, but it's best.

Yes, this is a kind of allegory. You may wander past this blog and look in and wonder at my life. You may tell me that I and people like me 'probably all freely have sex in front of [our children]' or be 'appalled' at the fact that my life and my children's upbringing doesn't closely resemble what you believe to be best. But, as with most things on the internet, you need to remember a few things. Blog posts are rarely the sum and measure of a person's life. They don't present every aspect of what happens in a house. They are written by real people who actually exist in a real place and time. These people really have feelings. And I don't just mean me - I also mean the many other people I know who are subjected to vile rants because their beliefs don't match with those of the (usually anonymous) commenter.

Even if my blog posts were not a highly edited glimpse into my life, even if they reflected the absolute reality of everything that goes on in my house, rather than just reflecting the high points and the low points, I would still have no reason to be ashamed of my parenting. It's rather astonishing that this needs to be pointed out to people. My children are very healthy and happy and well-adjusted to life. They are kind and generous. They are naughty and playful and conscientious and they do well at school. They are protected and they are loved and they are held.

My children are looked after from around 6a.m. (5a.m. if we're unlucky) until 8a.m. most days by their father, who then leaves for a very responsible, very demanding, and very selfless job. They are looked after from 8a.m. until 9p.m. by me. Of course we're still on duty even outside of these times. Until recently, when Ben started afternoon school, there were no regular breaks or time out. From mid 2005 to September this year parenting has been a 24 hour responsibility, as it is for many parents. There is no placing them in daycare or leaving them with babysitters outside of the family. There's very little leaving them with babysitters within the family either. There is being on call all day every day, and for a large portion of the night, too. That's including Christmas, Easter, weekends, and holidays. Now that duty has been reduced to 22 hours a day during school days – but even then you have to be on hand for the sudden phone call from the school. It's a hard job, but a very, very rewarding one.

I don't parent like every other parent, but then I don't tell the other parents I meet to stop bathing their children every day or not pierce their young daughters' ears. I don't tell them to make their children run around naked more or to stop spanking them or grounding them or feeding them junk food. I don't tell them to stop smoking around them or to keep them away from tabloid newspapers. I probably grumble about these things in private. I'm not a saint by a long shot. But I wouldn't have the gall to call them out for it. I certainly wouldn't leave anonymous notes to that effect.

I bring my children up in much the same way that my parents brought me up. I hold them when they need holding. I read to them and cuddle them and watch television with them. I hold their hair back when they're sick and clean their mouths afterwards. I let them into my bed when they're scared in the night. I discipline them when they're naughty and praise them when they're good. I let them have sweets, but not too many sweets. I feed them good food, but I also indulge their fancies. I'm not going to change my style, since all the evidence points to the fact that it's pretty successful. But I'll let the people who know me judge whether or not I'm a good person – those who actually come into my house and see my children and interact with me, rather than those who are looking in from the road or who drop anonymous notes through the door. The same goes for this blog. I'm happy to enter an intelligent debate. I'm happy to consider alternatives. But I won't accept irrational and accusatory comments from anonymous callers. Not any more.

Why Does Facebook Hate Women's Nipples?

Proving that most of us do have breasts, even if we aren't
allowed to show them.

Breasts. Even their mention can get people flustered. I have a pair of my own. Most women do. This is evolution doing a wonderful thing. We have breasts so that when we have children, we can keep them alive. If we were a bird or some other non-mammal perhaps we'd be dropping insects into our children’s mouths, or perhaps regurgitating our food for them. But we don't. We have these clever things that secrete a perfect feeding formula directly into a child's mouth. Biology is wonderful.

Of course, very many men like breasts. Breasts indicate that if a man is lucky enough to mate with us and we fall pregnant, we will be able to keep his child alive. Evolution dictates that keeping children alive is good. So if you want to breed with a woman, make sure she has good breasts. But mostly in our society (and I'm talking the society I'm familiar with – the mainly white, first world, European-influenced world), it's all about nipples. At least, it seems to be. You can post a photograph on Facebook with practically all the breast except the nipple and areola exposed, and that's fine – unless it's obscured by a baby's mouth, and then that's not fine.

Two naked male chests that I'm very fond of. Not just an excuse
to get Peter Graves and Spock on this blog. Not at all.

The funny thing is that men have these things too, and that is fine. I don't know what would happen if you posted a photograph on Facebook of a man with a baby's mouth over his nipple, but I imagine that would be a-ok. But I dare say most hetrosexual women will find a picture of a man's bare chest just as alluring as most hetrosexual men will the woman's. I dare say that a lot of hetrosexual men would find a picture of a provocatively dressed woman with her nipples covered just as arousing, or more so, than a picture of bare breasts.

There are so many issues here. The way that essentially male morals still run the world, no matter how loud the voice of woman becomes. The way that it's acceptable for women to be sexualised, and controlled by the perception of their sexuality, in a way that men would never accept for their own gender. The way that the function of breasts in Western society has been completely subverted from their actual purpose – to feed infants – into a kind of flag to inflame male desire.

My own breastfeeding photo. No problems on my Facebook
account with it, luckily. I must have good friends.

I have to admit that I'm not the queen of breastfeeding. I didn't battle through all ills and pain in order to nurture my children with the pure milk of my breast. Oscar pretty much flat refused to feed. George developed an allergy to milk very early on. Ben – well, by the time Ben came along it was obvious to me that you could raise healthy, intelligent, well-attached, and happy children without breast milk, so he got his first few weeks and then I elected to go back on the anti-depressants that keep me (moderately) sane, and we went with all of the benefits of bottle feeding. And there are benefits, believe me, especially where my sanity is concerned.

But I do believe in breastfeeding. I believe it's wrong to profit by getting Third World mothers to bottle feed, exposing their children to all of the perils of poor or no sterilisation, to a lack of protection from the antibodies in their mothers' milk when they have poor or no access to medical help, and to privation caused by their parents' small resources being spent on formula feed. I believe that it is heinous to do this purely so that companies like Nestlé can sit back on their profits. I believe it's wrong that the default setting in every doll's set is the dummy, the disposable nappy, and the baby bottle and that we seem to have forgotten that humans are, in fact, equipped with the resources to feed their babies.

Most of all, and here I come to the point of this post, I think that Facebook is wrong. I love what I get from Facebook. Since I find phone calls and face-to-face talking very difficult almost all my friendships are upheld there and I dearly miss friends who have left. But Facebook, it seems, hates breastfeeding. I have heard so many stories of photographs of breastfeeding mothers being taken down from its pages – not even public, shared pages, but private pages that are only shared with people's friends. Conversely I have reported so many public comments suggesting things like 'all Muslims should be exported,' 'all Muslim men should be killed,' and other such lovely sentiments, and this, it seems, doesn't come under their heading of 'hate speech' and is allowed to remain.

'Emma' by  Lies Thru a Lens  on Flickr. I have no problem
 with this photo, but it's odd that Facebook would be far
happier with an image like this than a woman breastfeeding.

There is something wrong with Facebook's policies if it believes that a picture of a woman's breasts is more worthy of censor than a comment advocating genocide and racism. There's something wrong with Facebook's policies if it thinks that a picture of a woman breastfeeding her child should be hidden while a picture of a woman bottle-feeding her child is fine; when you can post pictures of animal cruelty, murder, and dead bodies without issue; when a picture of an oil-sheened woman bending over in the smallest of bikinis is considered less offensive than a child drinking milk.

I don't know who Facebook are trying to appease, but I don't want to be part of that demographic, and I wish their censors felt the same.

The Terrible Taboo of Toddler Nudity

A while ago we got into trouble on facebook – and when I say 'we' I really mean 'I,' careless mother that I am. It seems that Ben (then almost 3) was being too naked in the schoolyard, and a handful of people in the school facebook group were concerned about this.

'Children At Play' by abcdz2000 (License)

There were a variety of problems with his nakedness. It was 'embarrassing' for some of the parents (they were forced to exchange glances and mutterings.) One wonders if they dressed and tended their own children through a veil.

He was also at risk of injury. Penis accidents, I've heard, are rife in countries where little children are routinely unclothed. (Actually, I've never heard any such thing. I made that up.) I suppose its conceivable that his genitals could get trapped between two pieces of some of the wooden play equipment, but I'd hate to calculate the odds.

Worst, of course, was the threat of paedophiles, because everyone knows about paedophiles now and we all know that being aware and afraid of something makes it far more likely to happen. It's like fear of crime. The more aware you are of your vulnerability to burglary, the more likely you are to be burgled. (Actually, I made that up too.)

'I See An Angel' by Shari (License)

Of course I made the mistake of responding to the horrified comments about a child in only a t-shirt, where people could 'see everything,' and things turned into a heated debate. Thankfully most people saw nothing wrong in toddler nudity, but a few people continued to be disgusted.

These memories came back to me yesterday, when, on coming out of school, Ben decided to pee through his clothes. I say decided, but he probably just forgot that he's a big boy now and was wearing pants. What do you do when this happens and you have no other clothes on hand? Luckily it was warm, so I stripped off everything from the waist down, rolled it up and put it in a bag, and let him run around naked.

Later he decided to take his t-shirt off too, and was running around totally nude and obviously very happy with the condition. He was dancing a lot, chasing older schoolboys and revelling in their freaked out reaction. I was watching with amusement, but after my experience before the summer holidays it also made me nervous, and it's a very sad thing to have to be nervous in the face of your child's nakedness.

'IMG_4957' by pixydust8605 (License)

What's wrong with a culture where children are taught that nudity is disgusting and embarrassing? Where 'I can see his willy!' is an exclamation of shock and revulsion? What happens to these children when they get older and their bodies start to change, and they have a childhood of shame to teach them how to go forward into life? I worry about children who are taught that there's a paedophile lurking in every corner and that being comfortable with their bodies will open them to attack. My three boys have spent a lot of their childhood naked and totally happy, but exposure to peers and parents at school is teaching them that this is wrong.

Most of all I worry about the sexualisation of infants and young children. My detractors couldn't see the is sexualisation. They are looking at my beautiful, innocent child and thinking only of sex – and that is wrong. It's almost impossible to guard your school aged children from closed minds and senseless taboos. I hope I can guide them through the minefield safely, without them losing their freedom to be comfortable in their own bodies.
correlation, but to me to have another parent looking at my child and seeing their nudity as shocking and a possibly lure for paedophiles