Tag: parenting

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You never forget your first book

My daughter has “discovered” reading. She has found her “first book”. The book in question is Girl Online by Zoe Sugg (aka Zoella). It’s not a literary classic, but a good read, an engaging novel and my daughter loves it, because she loves anything to do with Zoella.

When I say she’s discovered, I don’t mean she’s just started reading.  She’s 11 – and she’s never had problems with reading either, BUT she’s never engaged. She’s never been even remotely interested or excited about reading…until now.

Continue reading “You never forget your first book”

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Storytime is vital for reading development

Bedtime stories are an integral part of a young child’s life all over the world, in every culture.  No matter what language you speak or where you live, or even if you don’t have access to books, bedtime stories have been practised since time immemorial. Wondrous World books have been developed specifically to help with reading development, as well as simply to provide gorgeous, personalised adventures that will become story time favourites. Continue reading “Storytime is vital for reading development”

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20 basic life skills all kids should know by 16!

In this digital, convenience-centric and consumable age, children are spending more and more time in front of screens and less time with parents, learning manual, useful life skills that will help them to live independently (hence they don’t leave home until they’re well into their 20s or later!). We need to address this situation!   Continue reading “20 basic life skills all kids should know by 16!”

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Would you pretend to be childless for a job?

How discrimination against working mums is still rife

A recent news item revealed that mums looking to go back to work have been told to leave out maternity leave from their CVs to give them a better chance of getting a job. Continue reading “Would you pretend to be childless for a job?”

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How to live a “cleaner” family life

Over the last century it’s thought that over 80,000 chemicals have been introduced into our daily lives. They are toxic and they are everywhere… in the atmosphere, in our cleaning products, in food and drink, cans and bottles, in our toiletries, furniture, toys, clothes, house paint, drinking water and even in our computers. We actually even make toxins ourselves through our own stress. Continue reading “How to live a “cleaner” family life”

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Are your parents up to the job of carer?

And have you agreed the boundaries?

One in four grandparents are looking after their grandchildren on at least a part-time basis. They have become a generation of carers. With the cost of child care, the lack of places, and if you have a parent who’s retired, willing and available to step up to the task, it’s easy to jump in and accept their offer to “help out” without thinking the situation through completely.  Continue reading “Are your parents up to the job of carer?”

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Don’t let books become extinct!

Get your child to pick up a book today.

International Children’s Book Day (today, 2 April) celebrates the wonder of children’s books everywhere. The day is designed to inspire children to pick up a book and get reading. We desperately need that inspiration these days, as children are far more inclined to pick up an iPad or iPhone and start playing Crossy Road or Flappy Bird than pick up a book and start reading.

April the 2nd was chosen to mark this day for young literature lovers, because it’s Hans Christian Andersen’s birthday. Andersen was the author of many famous children’s stories, fairy tales and poetry, like “The Little Mermaid”, “The Tinderbox”, “The Ugly Duckling”, “The Snow Queen”, “The Nightingale”, “The Emperor’s New Clothes” and many more. His stories have inspired plays, ballets, and both live-action and animated films.

Organised by the International Board on Books for Young People (or IBBY), the aim of International Children’s Book Day is to promote books and reading to young people and this is becoming increasingly important.

Not only are children losing interest in books, but so are adults, and the book industry is in a very difficult place. Much like the media, everything is going online; bookstores are under threat, with chains such as Borders already falling victim. Books are no longer treasured like they were, and they seem to have become largely disposable items.

It was sad to see recent news that a library in East Bay, Alameda in the USA had been criticised for putting 100,000 books into the trash. Not even the recycling either, but the regular trash!

While angry residents showed up at a special meeting to express their outrage, the Alameda County library director said they just wanted newer, updated books.

She said about 172,000 books had been discarded over the past two years, due to the need for more shelf space after spending about $3 million on new books.

While some of these books may have been extremely tatty, most would have been gratefully received at local schools, child care centres, preschools, infant schools, family day care centres, playgroups and crèches.

So let’s put a little more thought back into books this month. Give gadgets and TV the heave-ho for 30 minutes a day. Encourage children to pick up a book for this time instead. Do this every day for the whole of April if you can.

Many kids aren’t natural bookworms, but once they find a book they enjoy and get into the habit of reading, they start to really enjoy it. Sometimes it just takes a little encouragement.

Set up a household competition with your kids – give them an incentive to get reading. If they’re too little to read themselves, read to them or encourage them to look at the pictures and flick through the pages for half an hour a day.

If you have any old children’s books you don’t want, that have been grown out of or that you simply don’t have space for, don’t put them in the bin! There will be a charitable organisation, child care centre, preschool, playgroup or crèche near you that would love to have them.

Published for CareforKids.com.au on April 2 2015.  http://www.careforkids.com.au/newsletter/2015/april/1/reading.html

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Is your job worth the cost of child care?

Originally written for CareforKids.com.au: http://www.careforkids.com.au/newsletter/2015/february/11/perspective.html

According to a recently publicised survey in the UK, a fifth of working parents are considering reducing their hours or giving up their job altogether because of child care costs. This is just as pertinent to Australians as it is to UK parents, as child care costs reach unachievable levels on both sides of the world and parents are being forced to make difficult decisions.

The UK survey of 1,000 parents of children aged up to 16 also found that many were planning to cut back on essentials this year, because of the financial strain of child care. And one in five said they are thinking about reducing their working hours or quitting their job.

In our own survey last year, we revealed that of the mums who had not returned to work, a fifth said this was because it simply wasn’t financially viable to do so.

Removing parents’ choice as to whether or not they continue to work after having children is not the answer for families or for the economy.

This lack of choice is due to the following key factors:

  1. The extreme lack of child care for children under two years old
  2. The cost of child care
  3. The fact that many parents feel that their children are too young for centre based or family day care under the age of two
  4. The fact that nannies in-home care still doesn’t qualify for child care benefits
  5. Operating hours aren’t flexible and aren’t meeting parents needs
  6. Slowness of employers to truly embrace the need for flexibility for

    7. both parents so that they may share the child care load.

Parents of the youngest children are most under pressure and find it almost impossible to keep up with their current work conditions and pay levels vs. child care costs.

This leads to the inescapable question for many parents: is their job worth the cost of child care? Usually this still falls on the working mum’s door, as it’s still more likely that the father has the better paid job and better career prospects. So women are still having to make the choice between career and children. This will inevitably have a trickle down effect to the Australian birth rate, because couples simply won’t be able to afford to have children.

Published for CareforKids.com.au on 11.2.15 –  http://www.careforkids.com.au/newsletter/2015/february/11/perspective.html

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Am I a crap parent?

Parents are increasingly coming under fire for parenting styles.

Hands up who sometimes feels they’re not quite up to the mark on the parenting front? Hands up who has actually been told that by a family member, colleague, friend or even by someone at the school gate who is essentially a total stranger?

It would be interesting to be able to see how many of you haven’t put up your hands. I imagine it’s very few. Much like the public view that every pregnant woman’s bump is open to touching and stroking by total strangers, there seems to be a growing trend that allows people to think they can criticise parents on the job they’re doing, no matter whether they know them or not.

I have indeed in the past been told, even by my own dear father, after a few wines at Sunday lunch, that I’m doing “a crap job” at bringing up my daughter. This was sparked by her unwillingness to eat her peas and my unwillingness to make her. Personally I prefer to save my energy and pick my battles. But what gives my Dad the right to think he can say that? Presumably his own parenting perfection…ahem.

Parents these days are constantly being picked up on aspects of parenting, and it’s not just by their parents either. It’s apparently by anyone and everyone. Even the talented, beautiful Australian actress and mum, Cate Blanchett, who by the way doesn’t employ a nanny or cook apparently, says she feels criticised for her parenting by other mums! This is not isolated. Our 2014 Annual Childcare and Workforce Participation Survey revealed that 57 per cent of mums had felt stigmatised as a bad parent (for either working or staying at home) by other mums. So what happened to the sisterhood?

Whether it’s for their children’s eating habits, gaming, noisiness, dress sense, vocabulary, table manners, bedtime, supermarket etiquette, attitude, it’s all fodder for other people’s comments. And however you parent, it’s never right or good enough for some people.

Personally I like to hide behind the thought that these dissenters are generally bored, unhappy, unfulfilled or just generally not very nice.

A recent article by Queensland University’s John Pickering, a self-confessed non-parent, highlighted the “growing and seemingly widespread view that parents these days aren’t doing a good job – that in fact they’re doing a “crap” job”. So it’s not just me, then!

He goes on to say that parents are being told they “are out of touch and too soft. They give in to their kids too easily. They’re over-involved helicopter parents, or under-involved don’t care parents. Or they could be bulldozer or lawn-mower parents (the ones who smooth the way for their child’s transition through life and make life difficult for everyone else in the process).”

As Pickering points out, this criticism is simply the “kids these days rhetoric, but applied to parents”. And of course the world is very different to how it was “in their day”. Particularly when it comes to working families.

When I grew up, working mums were in the minority. I can barely recall any of my friend’s mums working full time. Nowadays it’s almost the reverse. It’s not just due to a need or desire to be career woman either; it’s also a matter of economics.

In our parents’ day, you could very easily afford to buy your own house and pay a mortgage on one average salary. Today that is almost impossible. And this surely has to affect our way of parenting. We’ve had to adapt. But more to the point, what are we consciously doing that’s different out of choice as opposed to necessity?

Pickering’s article gives an overview of a 2012 study surveyed thousands of English adolescents in 1986 and again in 2006 to determine the extent that parent-child relationships had changed over 20 years:

The study showed that parental monitoring of youth behaviour and parent-child quality time increased from 1986 to 2006. Parents in 2006 also expected more from their children than they did in 1986, including the expectation of being polite.

The authors concluded that their study failed to provide any evidence that the quality of parent-child relationships had declined over time, and that there is little evidence of any decline in parenting across the target population.

This finding corroborates earlier studies, which analysed parenting patterns across generations and found that both mothers and fathers tended to spend greater amounts of time in child care-related activities in the 1990s than they did in the 1960s.

The major trend, says Pickering, is the appetite for evidence that informs decisions about parenting. Parents want evidence that what they are doing is effective.

“They invest time to research whether vaccines work; to find evidence that “breast is best”; evidence that car seat A is superior to car seat B; evidence that certain toys are developmentally appropriate; evidence that the discipline strategies they use are effective.”

Pickering believes that the physical, emotional, financial and intellectual resources that parents are now investing in raising their kids have never been greater.

We don’t get everything right. And none of us is perfect.

Regardless of what we’re doing differently, the vast majority of parents are simply doing the best they can in the only way they know, and we should stop criticising and start to be more supportive.

After all, two of the key things a parent can teach their child are compassion, and self-control.

To view James Pickering’s article in full, click here.

Originally published on Feb 18 2015 for CareforKids.com.au: http://www.careforkids.com.au/newsletter/2015/february/18/parenting.html 

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Inspirational Woman: Zoe Tuckwell Smith

Zoe Tuckwell-Smith is one of Australia’s best-loved young actresses. Known for her leading role in Winners & Losers, she has appeared in many films and TV series, including Home & Away, All Saints and thriller, Gone. She lives in Melbourne with actor/director partner Damon Gameau and their one-year-old daughter, Velvet.

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Your little girl has just turned one! How has your life changed in a year?

Magnificently. I never expected to love being a mummy as much as I do. It’s the most joyful I’ve ever felt!

How do you juggle working as an actress and being a mum?

I don’t really! I only went back for a few months after Velvet was born to finish up a job I’d been on for some time. It was really difficult juggling it all. I’m finished now and have taken the rest of the year off to be a mum.

Are you a healthy eater?

Yes, I eat really well and enjoy cooking a lot. I prefer savoury food over sweet any day and I’m sure most of my wellness comes from having healthy, nourishing food and a good all round diet.

And how do you stay fit and strong?

I’m a huge fan of baby wearing (wearing or carrying a baby in a sling or in another form of carrier).  It’s both strengthening for mamas and calming for babies. I’m stronger and fitter now than I was before having a baby for sure.

I also do Pilates only once a week to help with core strength, particularly after having my baby.  Other than that I get enough incidental exercise running around after our girl; playing, crawling, lifting and jumping around is my workout!

As far as my mental wellbeing is concerned I mediate by simply breathing steadily when I can for about 20 minutes a day, usually while velvet naps. I also like to stop now and again during the day and really take in a moment very consciously and fully experience it, kind of like making life a meditation and drawing inspiration from whatever is around me.

What are your favourite Ere Perez products and handbag must haves?

The only makeup I wear when I’m not working is mascara and Ere Perez natural almond mascara is my absolute favourite. It’s so gentle. I know it’s a big makeup faux pas to admit that I often go to bed without taking it off, but my eyes have never been irritated by it, so there you go!

I’m also a fan of any product that does multiple things, so the beautiful beetroot cheek & lip tint is a good one for me to keep in my purse for a little extra something if I’m out and about and feel like a pep up!

How do you most like to spend family time?

I just love to be outside in nature. We have an incredible environment where we live. Amazing walks. We head out with velvet in the carrier and wander in the sun or rain or whatever.

What are your strengths and weaknesses as a mum?

I’m patient and feel like I understand our girl really well. I just get her and she gets me. I’m creative and inventive with games and things to do, that’s the actress in me. My weakness is finding time for myself. I actually don’t crave it like some mums do, so I have to force myself to go and exercise or whatever. I prefer being with Velvet; she’s brought so much joy into our lives.

You also have a blog, urthlingz. How did that come about and what are you hoping to do with it?

It’s just my little outlet really. I don’t know what it is other than my intuition speaking from time to time and a desire to reach people’s hearts. I can feel it evolving organically. I have a sense that more and more my inspiration for it will come from my journey as a mother and the joy of experiencing life in new ways with our girl.

Zoe is currently working on a documentary called “That sugar film” with her partner Damon Gameau. 

The documentary is a unique experiment to record the effects of a high sugar diet on a healthy body, with the protagonists consuming only foods that are commonly perceived as ‘healthy’. Damon highlights some of the issues that plague the sugar industry, and where sugar lurks on supermarket shelves. Zoe stars alongside other well-known actors and actresses, including Stephen Fry, Isabel Lucas, Jessica Marais and Brenton Thwaites.

Zoe Tuckwell Smith: Una Mujer que Inspira

Zoe Tuckwell Smith es una de las actrices jóvenes más amadas en Australia, mejor conocida por su papel en la serie “Winners & Losers”, también ha participado en muchos filmes y series de televisión incluyendo “Home & Away”, “All Saints” y la película “Gone”. Zoe vive en Melbourne, Australia con su pareja, el actor y director Daman Gameau, y su pequeña hija Velvet de un año de edad.

¡Tu pequeña hija acaba de cumplir un año! ¿Cómo ha cambiado tu vida durante el último año?

Ha sido genial, nunca pensé que disfrutaría tanto ser mamá. Es la alegría más grande que he sentido.

¿Cómo le haces para combinar tu rol de actriz y tu rol de mama?

En realidad no lo hago, sólo regresé un par de meses después de que Velvet nació para terminar un trabajo que ya había empezado, fue muy difícil; terminé y me dediqué el resto del año a ser mamá de tiempo completo.

¿Comes sanamente?

Sí, como muy bien y además me encanta cocinar. Prefiero la comida salada que la dulce y estoy segura de que mi bienestar proviene de comer alimentos nutritivos y de tener una dieta sana y balanceada todo el tiempo.

¿Cómo le haces para mantenerte fuerte y en forma?

Soy fan de traer a mi bebé para todos lados, ya sea cargado o en carreola. Es muy buen ejercicio para las mamás y a la vez muy relajante para los bebés. Estoy mucho más fuerte y en forma ahora que antes de tener a mi bebé.

También practico Pilates una vez por semana para tonificar mis músculos, en especial después de haber tenido a mi bebé. Además hago mucho ejercicio accidental al correr detrás de mi niña, al gatear, saltar, y brincar junto con ella, esa es mi rutina diaria de ejercicios.

Mi bienestar mental también es importante para mí, por eso cuando Velvet duerme siesta aprovecho para meditar 20 minutos diarios; simplemente cierro mis ojos y respiro detenidamente. También me gusta hacer pausas durante el día para poder apreciar el momento y vivirlo al máximo. Es como hacer de la vida una meditación e inspirarme con todo lo que está a mi alrededor.

¿Cuáles son tus productos favoritos de Ere Perez y los indispensables para traer siempre en tu bolso?

Sólo uso mascara cuando no estoy trabajando y la Mascara con Aceite de Almendras de Ere Perez es absolutamente mi favorita. ¡Es tan suave! Sé que es un gran error admitir que a menudo voy a dormir sin desmaquillar mis pestañas sin embargo mis ojos jamás se han irritado con ella.

También me encanta la Barra de Labios con aceite de rosa mosqueta en tono “Love“. Soy fan de los productos que te dan múltiples beneficios así que el Tinte Multiusos con extracto de betabel es esencial para traer en mi bolso ya que me da un extra si ando fuera y quiero animarme un poco.

¿Cómo suelen pasar su tiempo en familia?

Amo pasar tiempo afuera, en la naturaleza, tenemos un medio ambiente hermoso en donde vivimos, hacemos unas caminatas increíbles, salimos con Velvet en su carreola y disfrutamos del sol, la lluvia y todo a nuestro alrededor.

¿Cuáles son tus fortalezas y debilidades como mamá?

Soy muy paciente y siento que entiendo a nuestra hija muy bien. La entiendo y me entiende. Soy muy creativa e invento juegos y cosas qué hacer, saco a la actriz que hay en mí.

Mi debilidad es encontrar tiempo para mí, en realidad no pido mi tiempo tal como lo hacen otras mamás; así que tengo que forzarme y salir a hacer ejercicio o cualquier otra cosa. Prefiero estar con Velvet, ella ha traído mucho gozo a nuestras vidas.

También tienes un blog: Urthlingz. ¿Cómo es que empezó el blog y qué esperas de él?

En realidad es mi pequeño escape. No es más que mi intuición que habla de vez en cuando y el deseo de llegar a los corazones de la gente. Puedo sentir como evoluciona orgánicamente. Tengo la sensación de que mi inspiración proviene de mi experiencia como madre y del gozo de experimentar la vida en nuevas formas con nuestra pequeña.

Zoe está trabajando actualmente junto con su pareja Damon Gameau en un documental titulado “That Sugar Film”.

El documental es un experimento único que registra los efectos que tiene en un cuerpo sano llevar una dieta alta en azúcar, los protagonistas consumen sólo alimentos considerados como “nutritivos”. Damon destaca algunas de las cuestiones que abundan en la industria del azúcar, y nos habla sobre su nivel de importancia en los anaqueles de los supermercados. Zoe protagoniza el documental junto a otros actores y actrices muy conocidos, entre ellos Stephen Fry, Isabel Lucas, Jessica Marais Y Brenton Thwaites.