What is an Educational Philosophy?

I've been thinking even more than usual about education for little kids this month and, freakishly, I feel like I've come to a small conclusion about my own 'educational philosophy' (for want of a better term).

This all came about because Asher had a trial day at John Colet School. I really like the school and think that with it's emphasis on manners (and the reason behind them), structure and intellectual rigour it would be a really good fit for Asher. I have always said that it's not just about a school being 'good' but about it being a good fit for a particular kid, and I think that John Colet will be right for Asher. So, we talked to the headmaster and he suggested we think about starting Asher in Kindergarten this year. He is old enough, just, to have started Kindergarten at the beginning of the year, but at the end of last year we knew he absolutely wasn't ready for school. Now, after almost six months at KU Preschool his social skills have improved markedly and there are kids he knows from preschool who are his friends, who he wants to invite to his birthday party. So he went along for a trial day and it went OK for Asher, but we met a marked lack of enthusiasm from the teacher. She actually seems like a good teacher but she does have a bias. She's one of the people who believe, in her words that 'children, especially boys, who start school young will always be at a disadvantage' compared to the other children. Since teacher perceptions influence educational outcomes (and probably how much students enjoy school!) I really don't want Asher to have a teacher (for 3 years) who firmly believes that he will always be behind because of his age. I know Asher, I know how incredibly quickly he picks things up, I know that he has a long attention span and can sit still and focus for reasonably long periods for a child of his age-group and what I want for him is a teacher who believes in him.

Since we've ruled out that option we have to looks at 'what now' and my two next favourite options are a) send him to John Colet School to start Kindergarten next year or send him to the local public school for Kindergarten half-way through this year. My next steps will be to talk to the local public school about a mid-year intake and to put Asher on the wait list for John Colet. The other possibility is, of course, is to send him to the local public school Kindergarten starting next year. If we do that I'm worried he'll be bored. Not all of the time of course, but considering he reads pretty well and his level of numeracy is quite astounding, he has a decent grasp of science that pretty much leaves handwriting and the arts to focus on. And this brings me to my revelation.

I think I really like John Colet because they seem to teach to a subject, theme or text, and use that to teach a variety of things at a variety of levels. Conversely, at the local public school they use a text, theme or topic to teach skills set out in the curriculum.

At John Colet they study something, and use that study to develop skills. For instance, John Colet teaches Shakespeare, even to the youngest children. This will help them learn vocabulary and reading, public speaking and drama, storytelling and probably a bunch of other things. This means that kids who are already proficient in one area can be encouraged by what they can do and directed to work on what they find difficult. This seems to me to be a really good strategy for teaching to a bunch of levels - got gifted kids in a class? No problem, Shakespeare is tough enough for serious scholarship. Got kids with intellectual/physical/social difficulties? No problem, there's something in the work for everyone.

The public school model is fine when all the kids are at a pretty similar level, but when you have kids with quite disparate needs this model seems to be less robust, and more difficult to ensure all kids are getting their learning needs met.

So there you go, it's not massive or complicated, just a small difference in framework which seems to have the power to change the way a classroom works. It also has pretty clear implications for where I would like MY kid to go to school.

Five Books That Changed Me

I read Leslie Cannold's recent blog post about books that 'changed her' and thought it was a great meme, so here are my picks. These are not necessarily my favourite books, just some books that were important in shaping the way I think or defined a point in my life.


James Thurber: The 13 Clocks
"The cold duke was six foot four and forty-six and even colder than he thought he was" makes me think that Thurber is the grand-master of the perfectly turned phrase. This book is a favourite of my fathers and a favourite of mine. The book is aimed at children but is so lovely to read out loud that it appeals to adults as well. It is a simple fable about the power of love, but the language is so wonderful that it literally makes me tingle.

Salman Rushdie: Midnight's Children
This book smacked me upside the head with its layered complexity. It also made me crave samosas. It's another beautifully written book and taught me a lot about magical realism as a genre. I read it when I was at Uni, and really trying to understand post-modernism and relativism and I think in this book Rushdie crystallizes some of these ideas into novel form. Having visited India after reading the book I feel that immersing yourself in this novel is good practice for dealing with immersing yourself in India.

Marilyn French: The Women's Room 
This blew my mind at the time I read it (toward the end of high school) and inducted me into the world of the card carrying feminist.

Peter Carey: Bliss
I read this while I was still at school and Carey is a very grow-up author. This story introduced me to a whole level of adult uncertainty and gave me the idea that the adult world is just as messy and difficult as the world of adolescents.

William Gibson: Neuromancer
Introduced me to 'cyberpunk' and Gibson's special form of page-turning prose. It's a dense, cool book and I love it. In some ways it defined my entry into the world of being a professional Internet person.

And number six, the non-fiction book that has changed the way I think the most:
Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn: Half the Sky
This book has completely changed the way that I look at the idea of 'helping those less fortunate' in developing countries. None of the stats or stories were a big surprise to me, having studied similar stuff at uni, but the presentation of the material made me look at aid on a micro rather than macro level. Think of that hippy story about the hundred starfish....



Now, write your own list, like my friend JM has, and leave a link to your blog in the comments (No blog? Then comment with your whole list!).

Load sharing - Paid work, parenting and the 'Mommy Track'

I came home from work today, at about 6:15pm to find all the lights on, mess everywhere and no one home. Normally at that time of day there are kids eating, a father in the kitchen cooking and cleaning and a mother racing around bribing kids to eat another mouthful while tidying up toys and putting a load of laundry on. It was obvious that the house had been abandoned in haste and my mind jumped straight to the worst conclusions. Horrible images of ambulances and glaring hospital lights were immediately running through my head. Of course, it was fine, Sanjay had just dropped the baby-sitter at the train station and no one had tidied up the toys during the day.

But when I’m at work during the day who is responsible for the cleaning and tidying that I do when I’m at home? At our house both adults have reasonably flexible work arrangements, and both contribute to the running of the house and the care of the children. I’ve started working three days a week, sensible hours, for a government department and Sanjay does wine sales for a small company. He works from home (they have no office) and there is heaps of flexibility for him, because it’s all about the sales results. So far this is working really well.

So what happens with the kids now that I’ve started a day job? Asher is in preschool three days per week, 9am til 3pm but because I couldn't get Kiz into any local childcare on such short notice we have a babysitter. She is a family friend who doesn’t have regular work at the moment. She knows the kids and she knows our routines and our arrangement has been working brilliantly so far. She arrives around 10am (I leave the house at 7am but Sanj is around) and hangs around playing with Kiz, doing her own work when he’s asleep and until it's time to pick up Asher then she hangs out with the two of them until we get home. We haven’t noticed any behavioural changes in the kids, and they both seem to really love the babysitter and get a lot out of their time with her. As I think I said before, it's a really good arrangement.

Since I’ve started at this job I’ve again raised the possibility of me being the primary income earner. Despite taking time off during these early years of my children’s lives I would like to remove myself from the ‘mommy track’ and get back into what? A career track? A daddy track? Why is it so hard to have meaningful work with adequate remuneration and some level of flexibility? I want to be able to deal with the dramas that inevitably crop up with young children and aging parents and I want to be able to spend time with my kids but that doesn’t mean I don’t have valuable skills. In my personal experience mothers who are coming back into the workforce and mothers who work part time concentrate more fully on the work they are doing and waste less time while at work. Mothers get very used to being efficient and might be more reluctant to ‘waste time’ changing jobs if they have the option of staying put. Is it up to mothers (and fathers!) to ‘sell’ these advantages to employers? Is it up to savvy employers to work this out? Will we continue to see amazingly innovative small businesses started by parents who want greater flexibility in their work arrangements?

I don't know where I was going with this post anymore - I've been writing it over several days, with work, kids and the usual chaos. Which is kindof an pertinent to the subject of the post, really...

Yes, I did choose to vaccinate my kids actually...

I know I rarely blog at the moment, but this has been boiling away for weeks now. I've always been pro-vaccinating, but it's an issue that keeps rearing it's ugly head for me. A few weeks ago when I was putting Kiz on the waitlist for childcare and the woman told me I'd need to verify that he'd been vaccinated. That's fine, it's what they need to do to protect us all, but when I said that he was fully vaccinated she almost looked surprised. The next week I took him in for his 18 month 'well baby check' at the Early Childhood Health Centre and when the nurse looked at his records she said that she was very pleased to see him fully vaccinated. Again, there was some level of surprise there.

Here comes the ranty part: I'm guessing that parents who refuse to vaccinate have never watched their tiny baby struggling to breathe, drowning in their own thick secretions despite hourly suctioning, from a disease that is routinely vaccinated against. I'm willing to bet good money that those non-vaccinating parents have never watched their baby go blue and limp as he stops breathing, only being rubbed back to life by hospital staff. I'm pretty sure they haven't had to press the red emergency call button or scream to the nurses' desk for help.

I've been there, done that and I'm thankful every day that I got to bring my tiny baby home with me, and that he's growing up into a funny, determined, clever, loving toddler. Pertussis, or Whooping Cough, makes older kids and adults sick. It makes us cough and cough (another name for the illness is 'The Hundred Day Cough' and it's no exaggeration) but after that generally healthy adults get well. Unfortunately it's not quite so simple for babies and small children. Babies die of this illness.

Wakefield's harmful hoax on the link between autism and vaccines was disproven about 10 years ago, and one well designed study after another continues confirms that there is no link but parents are still refusing to vaccinate their kids.

I'm quietly confident that the majority of parents who don't vaccinate their kids don't know anyone who has died or been left crippled by polio either but yet they feel that the potential harm to their child from the vaccine is higher than the risk to their child of contracting one of the diseases we vaccinate against. These people (and I know one or two) are sensible. The people I know are well educated and responsible parents, they buy cars based on their safety ratings, they do a full reference check before they let anyone babysit their kids (I read somewhere that it's middle class, university educated, parents where vaccination rates are dropping, I'll try to find a reference) but they clearly don't have a basic grasp of statistics. I am having difficulty finding the numbers on side effects and adverse reactions, however vaccines are many times safer than the diseases they prevent.

And really, this is the key point. It really is safer to vaccinate your kids than not. We all love our kids and want the best for them. We don't think twice about popping them in the car and driving somewhere, many of us have or visit backyard pools/ponds, almost all of us drink hot beverages and do at least some cooking but statistically all of these are far more likely to injure or kill our kids than giving them their shots.

I'm not going to get into herd immunity here (check out this animation for a good explanation), but every parent who exercises their choice to not vaccinate makes it more dangerous for those who can't be immunised for some medical reason and for the people whose response to the vaccination does not give them total immunity. If we can learn anything from the lessons in places like Haiti, with it's cholera epidemic, we are really only one natural disaster, one sick person, away from an epidemic. So yes, I know that vaccines aren't perfect, but I want to give my kids the best possible chance to stay healthy throughout their lives, so I choose to vaccinate my kids.

Kiran, 5.5 weeks old

Belated first day of preschool roundup

Asher's first day went really well - we couldn't have asked for more - but since Monday I've been overwhelmed with heat, cranky kids, a proposal for some paid work, a lovely wedding of a dear friend and more heat, so I haven't had time to update. Now we are sitting quietly inside, Asher is eating toast and watching some really random kids show, Kiz is in bed (Me: Kizzie, do you want some more toast or do you want to go to bed? Kiz: Bed! ...and the poor tired hot kid toddles toward his bedroom) and I'm meant to be working on a proposal.

Anyway, to cut to the chase, we love the place and feel like we should have sent him there earlier. We like the teachers and we like the focused vibe of the place and more importantly, Asher already seems happier there than at his previous childcare.

We all went together to drop Asher at preschool for the first time. We hung around for about half an hour, bumping into two people we know and chatting with Asher's teacher and when we left he seemed pretty happy. He was digging a hole to see how deep the sandpit was, and what was on the bottom. When I arrived to pick him up he was happily playing a board game with a teacher and a few other kids. They all seemed to be quietly concentrating. He was pleased to see me, but not overly so. Unfortunately the next few days were tough. I think the stress of the change had got to him somewhat and I dealt with sub-tantrum wailing of the pathetically unreasonable variety on-and-off for two days.

I'm looking forward to seeing what next week, when he'll be there for three days, brings...

Preparation for Preschool

Tomorrow my 4.5 year old has his first ever day of preschool. He's been in childcare for a while but this is different. He will take his own lunch, he needs to be more responsible for his own belongings and, most importantly,  there is a very different focus. At childcare the focus is on keeping the children safe and more-or-less occupied whereas preschool is unashamedly a place for learning skills for school. This is what he's looking forward to at preschool. He happily tells people that they have 'two group times' (group time at childcare was as close as they got to 'lesson time') but of course he is still anxious about the change. I'm anxious about the change too - school hours, school holidays, having to pack lunch and turn up punctually for drop-offs and pick-ups all add to the difficulty. If I didn't think this was a very important move I certainly wouldn't have bothered.

It's been a tough few months for us. While my Asher is finally getting more social and outgoing, he is also becoming harder to deal with, wilder and harder to settle. I think this is because he needs more balance in his daily activities. At the moment he climbs trees, rides his scooter and plays cricket with his dad and plays happily either by himself or with friends but what is lacking for him is more formal instruction. For some kids this might not matter as much at this age but for my son it does. Asher is a bright kid and he thirsts for knowledge, so I feel that this will be a great move for him but the settling in period could be tough for all of us. I'll try and let you know how it goes tomorrow.

The kindness, and otherwise, of strangers

Because I *still* don't have my drivers license I catch public transport with the kids a lot and I've noticed that little kids seems to bring out the best and the worst in public transport users. This morning I went into the city with Kiz to pick up a few Christmas gifts for the kids and as I was sitting on the train I noticed that the woman beside me was silently weeping, with tears dripping down her face. I didn't want to embarrass her, but I didn't want to ignore her distress either. I fished around in my bag and found a half used travel pack of tissues and put them on the seat between us. As I got off the train I gently touched her arm and pointed to the tissues. We smiled at each other and I got off the train. It made me feel so good to provide the kind of help that I would have liked had I been in her situation (and I have sat weeping on trains, wishing for a tissue).

On our way home we caught the bus. Kiz and I were both tired and hot and so he wanted to yell while I wanted to play mindless games of solitaire on my phone. The yelling toddler wasn't pleasant, but I had tried talking quietly to him, feeding him snacks and even, at one point, putting my hand over his mouth. Kiz kept yelling and I started to get angry glares from a guy at the front of the bus (his shorts were offending my eyes but did I give him dirty looks? No! I'm too polite). An elderly couple were sitting opposite me by this time and when the bus stopped they got up and moved. As the old man went passed me we had this little exchange:
Him (crankily): My wife's not well, can't you keep him quiet!
Me (apologetically): I wish I could but...
Him (even more angry): You could if you really wanted to!
Me (calm but bemused): How?
The old man then stomps further up the bus to sit with his wife, I tear up, mortified, and try singing very quietly to Kiz while imaging all the cruel or kind things I could have said.

...which, I guess, balances out all the people who wave, smile or play peekaboo with the baby or engage Asher in polite conversation, the woman on Tuesday who told me I had very well behaved children and the hundreds of people of all nationalities, ages, backgrounds, genders, etc who have offered to help me on or off buses, or given me a hand with the stroller on the stairs at train stations.

To all the helpers, I send out my heartfelt thanks, to the grumps: may you never need to rely on the kindness of strangers

Language update

I've been looking through this blog trying to work out what Asher's language was like when he was the same age as Kiz is now and I'm wishing that I had updated more frequently! I know that he had a bunch of words by the time he was Kiran's age, but the blog doesn't relate how many, or which words (I think I might have a list written down on a scrap of paper somewhere though - which is the exact reason I try to blog my updates). So, in the spirit of too-much-detail-never-being-enough here is the list of words, in no particular order, Kiz says recognisably (as of today, with him being ~16.5 months old):
Bird
Puppy
Mummy
Daddy
Asher (kind of - because the 'sh' sound is to hard so it comes out something vaguely like 'ah-gar')
Baby
Ball
Na (for nose)
Ta-ta (which can mean 'thank you' or 'give it to me' depending on context. He also mimics when we say 'thank you' with the correct intonation and a decent approximation of the sounds of the words)
Nigh' nigh' (night night)
Car
Hello
Bye-bye
Apple
Yes
Bear
New today are cracker and Chacha (Hindi for fathers-younger-brother/Uncle) but I'm not sure if they will stick (I think he's starting to learn a word or two every day now).

He also asks for songs with the actions and sweetly sings 'row row' so that I will do the actions with him. He has a kind of grasp-y sign which means he wants something but no signs that we have taught him and he sometimes strings two words together ("hello puppy" "bey-bye Daddy"). He often insists on taking a book to bed with him, which is very cute and like Asher at the same age he loves being read to. I'm really loving watching the process of the little guy learning language, and this time I'll try and make more notes about it here.

Happy Diwali!

Tomorrow is Diwali and here is another post about me trying to deal with being an atheist who lives in a predominantly Christian country trying to raise kids to have a sense of Hindu traditions. Today I went fossicking around the interwebs looking for information on celebrating Diwali with kids (yeah, it is the day before I clearly like to be prepared). I didn't have a clear idea of what I was looking for but rangoli colouring in pages, while nice, weren't quite it. Eventually I found I wonderful blog post from Devis with babies which was just what I was looking for. So, in the spirit of Insta-Culture Ways to Celebrate Diwali With Your Child* I'm going to list the things we do (and the things I plan to do from next year onwards).

1. Lights! It's all about light, so we already light candles and leave the doors open for Lakshmi but next year I'll put up the Christmas lights (and, because I love having fairy lights up over summer they will probably stay up over Christmas and maybe until the end of daylight savings). I'd like to get some diyas, or make some with the kids too. I'm terrified of fireworks, and nervous of sparklers so I've bought a bunch of glow sticks so the kids get some 'light' to play with. Maybe in a few years they can play with sparklers (while I hide inside and don't watch).
2. Sweets! Next after the lights in importance seems to be sweets, so I'll try making something sweet with the kids next year. I find any cake or biscuit based around almonds or other nuts to be appealing to my Desi inlaws so today I made almond and cranberry biscuits which have an almost burfi like middle, but are far more suited to my white-girl palate. I'll take them tomorrow when we go and visit my inlaws for dinner.
3. Presents are important for kids and we explained Diwali to 4 year old Asher as 'Indian Christmas' which only works because we don't really let Jesus in to our Christmas celebrations, so he thinks of Christmas as 'the festive season' and not a religious event. Last year I got both kids a little present and this year I'll do the same.
4. New clothes are a Diwali tradition too, and this year I didn't think to get new outfits but I'll try to remember next year (remind me!). Maybe the new clothes will come to be our traditional Diwali gift for the kids. I always wear traditional Indian outfits at Diwali, even though we just have dinner at home with family, and tomorrow is no exception - although I don't have a new outfit, which would be more appropriate.
5. Decorating the house is another Diwali tradition and I didn't even think about it this year, but next year I might try a few Diwali crafts with the kids. Perhaps I'll hang up a Bandanwar (door hanging) or try doing a rangoli with the kids and I'll definitely go with the fairy lights.
6. Games, particularly gambling games, are traditional at Diwali (because of the association with Lakshmi the goddess of wealth and abundance) and I'd like to remember to play boardgames, dice or cards with the kids at Diwali. Maybe when they get a bit older we can introduce a simple gambling game (like 'Queens' which is a game traditionally played by my mother's family, but I can't find any reference to it online).

Please feel free to remind me next year to get a bit organised a bit earlier! What traditions do you follow through the year? Are there any other non-Indians who celebrate Diwali?

Oh the questions of a 4 year old!

I didn't think the Starbright, Meditations for Children book Elvira brought us today would cause quite so much difficult conversation with my 4 year old. When I pictured parenting a preschooler I expected to have to field questions about things like why the sky is blue (It's got something to do with, ah, reflection or refraction - lets look it up!) and where babies come from (they come from a mummies tummy! - How do they get in there? - Ah, well, ah, when a mummy and a daddy love each other very much and want to make a baby they, ah, well you've seen little plants grow from seeds? Well babies kind of grow from special seeds. Kind of) but Asher still surprises me. Not just difficult but doable questions like 'What is shift work' 'What is the government' and yesterday, driving through the rural fringes of Sydney, 'Is that a Tapir?' (it was a remarkably tapir shaped cow, for any punters out there who might be wondering) but tonight I needed to try and explain magic, guardian angels and what his imagination is!  

I always try to answer Asher's questions simply and honestly, with appropriate depth and detail (I find the key is to answer the question he's really asking, without getting into details unless he asks further) because I feel that is the respectful way to address the genuine questions of a smart kid. And it appears that it's not just his parents and immediate family who think he's a bright kid. We spend a lot of time with some pretty exceptional preschoolers, so Asher seems bright and inquiring but relatively normal for his age but Asher's childcare teacher has noticed his facility with language and his literacy and numeracy skills and has suggested we get him assessed. We are somewhat ambivalent about this and cagey about having a preschooler labelled as 'gifted and talented' (or whatever) but it seems the benefits might outweigh our niggling reservations - we aren't overly happy with how things are at childcare and feel this might be the key to changing things for the better. We are going to ask what they are planning to do with the information with respect to looking after his 'special needs' with the follow-up question being why they aren't currently providing him with a more thought-out program.


So for now, send us sympathy. We need to try to answer all this smart little kid's difficult questions and give him with enough food for thought without overwhelming him. We want to provide for his thirst for knowledge without burying him under our expectations. Really, in the end, we just want the kid to be happy.

Kiran's Mundan: After

It was a good day. The ceremony, inside because of the threat of rain, went well - there were three pundits, fruit, chanting, fire, no shoes and Asher running around taking photos. The ceremony took a little over an hour and Kiz stayed pretty quiet throughout. I bribed him by shoving raisins in his mouth.

After the ceremony we shaved the little guy's head. My 'aunty' Margaret did the shave and Kiz stayed still and quiet. After the shave there was food and drink and lots of exhausting socialising. People were lovely and complimented me on my outfit (I gave credit to Tim and Jen who sent it from Singapore every time) and asked me if we were thinking of having more kids (it's unlikely we'll have more).

Now it's all over and I'm so tired I'm quivering. Kiz is asleep, Asher is staying out at Turramurra with his grandparents and I've finished the piece of toast I had for dinner. I'm going to leave the mess and slink off to bed as soon as I've finished my herbal tea.

Kiran's Mundan: Before

My baby is losing his hair tomorrow, and he'll no longer be a baby when it's gone. Tomorrow is Kiran's mundan where I (symbolically) lose a baby and gain a toddler. Considering he's almost certainly my last baby that's *it* for me in terms of parenting babies. Unsurprisingly I'm feeling a bit maudlin and nostalgic-in-advance (there's probably a word for that) about the next step in our journey as a family. I'm going to miss my baby and I'm going to miss the special joys of being a mother to a baby.

Tomorrow morning there will be a ceremony with the Pundit at my inlaws place. There will be a hundred or two guests. There will be lunch. Then there will be our little Kiran as a child, not a baby anymore. The next step is a tough one for me because I've always always found toddlers tough going - the neediness, the stickyness, the looniness - and it was only as I parented Asher that I realised that they also have their good points. They are hilarious, loving and watching them learn is better than watching TV because there is *always* something going on.

And so, family life moves on to the next stage. I'll put an update here or perhaps I'll only manage to put pictures up on Flickr.

They say a picture speaks a thousand words...

...and if that's true, then I'm still blogging, albeit in a slightly different format. Check out Flickr for the latest updates, leave a comment or two and I'll be back here to give a more wordy update within the next day or two.

Past time for an Asher update

Asher writes his name!
Originally uploaded by karmakeda

There's an aphorism that goes 'where the attention goes, the energy flows' and it's a principle which I feel has been active in our household recently. Because of the focus on getting the baby to sleep there hasn't been as much attention on Asher, and we're all suffering a little because of it. Asher's behaviour has been a bit ratty and he's been having trouble getting to sleep. So this post is all in honour of Asher and his amazing achievements.

Asher has never been one for drawing faces. I have tried to encourage drawing because it's something I loved as a child (and a big kid too!) but no dice. I thought it was *probably* because he's uncomfortable with the fact that his drawing don't come out the way they look in his head but I also worried that it might be a symptom of something else. Did he perhaps have underdeveloped fine motor skills? So this week when he said he wanted to write his name I wrote his name on the Magnadoodle for him to copy. The photo is of his first attempt. I was surprised and amazed by the result! His letters are really recognisable and his grip on the pen is reasonable. Reading and writing are some his favourite things.

His other obsession-of-the-moment is the zoo. He has a map of Taronga Zoo that he carries with him almost all the time and busily "does map referencing" looking at the symbols then turning the paper over to the map and looking for the coordinates and finding the symbol on the map. His pretend play centres around going to the zoo, looking at the animals and using the map to find his way around the zoo. All very cute.

Our other big development is that we have started night-time potty training. I went to the supermarket with Asher and we talked about pull-ups being for kids who were ready to wake up when they needed to do a wee in the night. He suggested we get some and we talked about putting them in his cupboard for when he thought his body would be ready. A few days later he came to me and told me he was ready to try the 'special pants' and he's been in them ever since. He's only had one wet pull-up in the week or ten days he's been using them. Rather impressive for a kid who had a very wet nappy most mornings. So much for a week or two of dry nappies as a marker of ready to be dry at night.

As well as the exciting developments there is also more of the same. A kid who manages to simultaneously have us in fits of laughter and drive me so mental I distract myself from losing my temper by composing ads for when I try to sell him on eBay. I love him.


In Kiran news: I got into Tresillian on a cancellation - we are going next week. Eeeep!

Time to call in the experts

I've done what I'd tell any of my friends to do, were they in my situation. I went and talked to my favourite nurse at the ECHC and I have a referal to Tresillian's residential program. The nurse also talked to my therapist and they have decided it's urgent and that I need to get in ASAP which means I'll get in on a cancellation.

I actually know what the problem is and what needs to be done, but I'm incapable of doing it. Kiz needs to learn to get to sleep without my nipple in his mouth, ideally by himself in his cot, and he needs to eat more food so that he doesn't get quite as hungry during the night. I need to stop feeding him between the hours of say, 11pm and 5am and he needs to be able to get back to sleep and stay asleep without indefinite screaming. Unfortunately I can't do this on my own. It's a tangled circular problem and I can't go in to help the poor little guy get back to sleep in the night, exhausted, wanting to do anything to get back to bed, smelling of comfort and his favourite food and expect a few pats to settle him. I can't imagine waking up with a hungry rumble in my tummy and ignoring the smell of toasting bread and bacon frying and I don't believe I can expect the equivelent from a baby.

I could do it, I could wait it out and cope through this period of next-to-no sleep but I'm not sure my sanity, my relationship with my husband would remain unscathed - in fact, I'm not even sure that my children would remain safe from harm with their mother this bone tired. Until we work this out and I get some more sleep I'm going to maintain my holding pattern, trying to get as much sleep as I can, feeding Kiz as much food during the day as I can and getting him to sleep the only way I can (breastfeeding him to sleep). I'm also instituting some of the suggestions from Elizabeth Pantley's book - today's job might be to sketch out a going-to-bed book, and we already attempt an hour of going to bed ritual time, I'm working on developing his relationship with his teddy and helping him to love his cot. Tonight I'm hoping for better than last night - seven wake ups in 11 hours and, like Aprill said, you gotta know when it's time to hire the experts.

He's now been on the outside longer than he was on the inside

The little Kiran, as anyone who has spoken to me knows in exhausting detail, is not sleeping for long stretches at night. Part of the problem is that at 9 months he isn't really eating much solid food. He is breastfeeding pretty much 3 hourly around the clock. Meaning the longest streatch of sleep I get is about 2.5 hours.He refuses all our attempts to feed him. Back when I was childless, and knew far more about parenting, I thought that a baby like that just needed a firm hand and a bit of persistance but it doesn't work that way. This kid is really really stubborn. Stubbornness, I believe, is a tempramental thing, not something acquired, and I'm holding on to the thought that it can be a really positive trait, something that will serve the little guy really well when he has gown-up goals he wants to work toward. It's kinda grasping at straws, but I need something to get me through this time.

So, being the problem solver that I am, I've been thinking about why he doesn't eat and how I can help him eat a bit more food. I think at the beginning he didn't like the sensation of swallowing, because of the sense-memory of mucous and suction from when he was sick with whooping cough as a tiny baby. Now he's a bit older I think the reason he doesn't eat much is to do with his stubbornness. It's a bit freaky having power and control dramas with a kid under one - I had always associated that kind of thing with toddlers, with two-year-olds asserting their independance.Anyhow, the other day I plonked a bowl of weetbix down in front of him and let him at it. To my surprise he knew what to do with it. He stuck the spoon in the bowl and then in his mouth and then actually swallowed what went in his mouth, rather than spitting it straight out.

So I've just been running with that, letting him make as much mess as he wants, helping him out when he seems to want it. As soon as food starts coming out of his mouth again I wipe him off, wipe the highchair, wipe the floor, remind myself that there will be less wiping up one day and we do something else. At best he's eaten about 60ml (3 tablespoons) volume of food in a day (yesterday) which doesn't seem to be enough. I know a five-month-old who eats that much each meal. Hopefully soon it will start being more satisfying to him and he can get more of his calories during the day so he won't wake so much at night. And the No-Cry Sleep Solution will help me to get him to sleep better by himself and if it doesn't then we'll be off to Tresillian because I'm getting pretty close to the end of my tether here.

Is love really colourblind? Is the easter bunny an athiest?

The things kids notice, and fail to notice, are really really weird. I've been reading the wonderful Peter's Cross Station and have been inspired to look for ways to talk to Asher about race so when Asher mentioned Trisha from his Play School DVD I saw my opportunity. We were at the cafe yesterday morning and he was talking about the DVD and I asked him what Trisha looked like. He replied that she wore a purple shirt, which is quite true, but not quite what I was expecting. I agreed that she did and then mentioned that her skin looked quite dark brown and asked him if he'd noticed. He said he hadn't so I then started chattering about how his daddy had dark brown skin too, and I had very light brown skin and he and Kiran have medium brown skin. I don't think I did particularly well, but at least I've broached the topic. He's barely noticing gender, so the fact that he doesn't notice 'race' isn't that surprising to me. I'd like him to hear about this stuff from us, rather than hear things of dubious veracity in the playground.

The other topic thats been on my mind a lot recently (particularly with all the chat about Richard Dawkins in the media) is kids and religion and, more specifically, lack of it and how that fits in with a childhood in a nominally Christian country. I'm an athiest and Sanjay is (he's lying on the couch and I just asked him) an agnostic. My parents are nominally Christian and Sanjay's parents are Hindu, or Sikh (the distinction is blurry to me) and I'd like my kids to understand their cultural heritage, but I'm not keen for them to be indoctrinated into a belief system. So, with all this in mind, when we walked past the local church on Sunday and Asher mentioned that there were a lot of people around I chirpily told him that the people had been in the church because it was Sunday, and that on Sunday people who were Christians sometimes went to church to pray to god. I reminded him that he had been to the Gurdwarra with his Grandpa Sham and told him that that's where Grandpa Sham went to pray. The poor kid didn't really understand what I was blathering on about and just said "Mm-hm" in an agreeable tone and that was that.

Luckily the Easter Bunny is about as religious as the Tooth Fairy (or Santa Claus, I guess) so we can get into the easter spirit with massive amounts of chocolate and perhaps sugar fuelled tantrums.

Kiran update

Yeah, they grow and change so fast when they are little!

At 5 days shy of 9 calendar months I've realised that the little Kiran is doing a few things that are new this week. The big one is the pointing finger. He presses buttons on Asher's toys with his pointing finger and he is just learning to pick up tiny things with pincer grip.

The pincer grip is really helpful, because the kid is still subsisting almost entirely on breastmilk and I'm hoping a newfound ability to pick up Cheerios will encourage him to eat more of them. Because he's a healthy, active baby he needs lots of food and because I don't pump milk, mostly because my milk seems to have problems with high lipase levels, the kid needs me around pretty much all the time (at the moment he feeds 3-4 hourly around the clock. Like a newborn). It would be revolutionary to be away from the little guy for 6 hours without worrying whether or not he'll consent to taking a bottle this time.

The other thing that's kinda new is that he has started cruising a bit more. He's been taking the very occasional steps while holding on to the couch but today I was lying on the couch and he came right up so he could blow raspberries in my face (and so, like any attuned mother I moved my cushion and changed ends. Kiz followed me up the other end).

Stay tuned for a post some time in the next week on how an athiest and a nominal Hindu handle Easter.

Quote of the week

Scene: getting ready to go out to the park for a ride on the scooter
Sanjay: Asher, where is your scooter and helmet?
Asher: I assume they are in the garage

What sort of three-and-a-half year old 'assumes' things? He was right or course, the scooter and helmet were in the garage.

Happy birthday Clare

For Clare's birthday mum compiled a book with twenty-one letters to Clare from some of the women in her life. She did the same for me for my 21st birthday and it's a lovely thing to have. For Clare, as for me, the sentiments are moving and some of the writing is hilarious. Because I think she is so great, and she is so important in my life I'd like to share my letter to her here:

Little Sister Clare,

I remember when you were born, slippery, blue and surprised. Left on your mother's belly for just a moment before you were whisked away so that the nurses could 'get you started' with a bit of oxygen and suction. I was still a child at the time but clearly saw what a miracle it was to have a new person arrive in the world. You grew into an incredibly sweet little thing, always thinking of others but still managing to do your own thing. The cutest example of your compassion is the time I found you, at around two years old, clutching a photo and sobbing inconsolably. You were looking at a photo of a howling baby Michael and you were sad for the baby.

As you grew into a child, then an adolescent, you continued to be sweet and compassionate, which didn't always make life easy for you. You were torn between doing things your own way and not hurting or even offending other people. And now you're becoming an adult, and I think you really have managed to maintain your integrity to hold on to a certain innocence. You live close to your ideals, you are incredibly caring and you are learning to protect yourself at the same time. You've managed this better than anyone I know, so I don't really have any advice or words of wisdom to share with you. Instead I'll give you three big-sisterly reminders:

• Look after your health - get a check up occasionally, eat healthily, wear sunscreen
• Value your friendships - look for the friends who bring out the best in you and then look after them. They will save you many times over.
• Ask for, and accept, help - this one can be tough. Asking for help without relinquishing independence, agency and personal responsibility is hard and when we need help is often the time it's hardest to ask for it.

I'm so incredibly proud of the person you are growing to be, I'm grateful for all the help you give me, both practical and emotional. I'm in awe of you and I feel smug and lucky that you are going to be a part of my life, and the lives of my children, for the foreseeable future.

Thank you.