Can You Teach Children Resilience?

I've got a parenting dilemma, and it's all Robbie Williams' fault.

You see, despite my previous misgivings, I recently signed both daughters up to a "Performing Arts" session on a Saturday morning. I always knew it would be mainly for the benefit of my 5 year old, who is very much into dressing up and performing, but her older sister also often enjoys "putting on a show", so I figured I would try them both with it.

The younger age group has an hour first thing in the morning - split into 20 minutes of singing, 20 minutes of dance, and 20 minutes of drama. For those aged 6+ this goes up to 3 x 1hr = 3 hrs in total. After the first session, both children declared it to be "brilliant" and couldn't wait to go again. Excellent. So I signed them up for the rest of the half-term and bought them each the t-shirt.

After last week's second session, younger daughter was still full of enthusiasm, however, DD1 seemed a little subdued when she came out and didn't say much. To be honest, this isn't unusual for her, so I put it down to a strenuous morning and didn't think much of it.

Until, that is, we heard this song....




...which apparently is one of the songs they had been dancing to. It prompted a very sudden, and very definite, outburst of "I don't want to go any more" from DD1. Trying to get to the bottom of the whys and wherefores didn't really bring me much joy - all she would say initially was that it was "boring" (presumably because they were practising the same songs/dance routines as the previous week?), however, she did later admit that she "missed us".

I don't know why this has riled me as much as it seems to have done. After all, I knew from the outset there was a good chance it would be less her "thing" than her sister's. I suppose I was thrilled to see her initial joy, and yes, there is the fact that I have now paid for a half-term up front based on her declarations that she wanted to carry on!

It's also not the first time this has happened - we had similar tears at the start of Rainbows, then Brownies, school choir, and even school swimming lessons! It seems her initial reaction to something is to give up if she isn't immediately comfortable with it.

I suspect, however, that deep down I am projecting too much of myself onto her. The poor child not only looks like the spitting image of me, but we are both very alike in temperament. We're both introverted, and not particularly good with strangers or new situations.
However, I very much enjoyed performing in my yoof, and did a lot of drama etc - it was one way I was able to build some confidence and pretend to be someone else for a while, and I suppose maybe I was hoping it would be the same for her.

So now I find myself in a dilemma. She is still at the age (not yet 8) where perhaps she has not yet found her niche, and by forcing her to do something that she doesn't want to do I am preventing her from fulfilling her potential. Or, alternatively, she just needs a bit more time to feel comfortable, and once she gets over her initial hump maybe she will enjoy it...in which case a gentle push might be a good thing for her. I guess I'd like her to demonstrate a little bit of staying power - but is that unrealistic at this age?

Answers on a postcard, please....

Maternity Leave is Wasted on Babies

Babies, eh? Cute little, adorable, needy creatures that rely completely on you, and you alone for all their needs. Right?

Wrong.

Apart from the whole breastfeeding thing (let me state at this point that I'm a big advocate, so this is a major flaw in my entire argument, but we'll handily gloss over that for the sake of my argument), let's face it, most babies couldn't give two hoots who provides them with clothing, nappy changing, feeding, bedding, bathing etc etc. Anyone can do it. Yeah, ok, there's a certain bonding element, but you're not going to love your child any less simply by outsourcing some of these activities to someone else on occasion.

Babies are fundamentally boring in the very early days, and not even you broody types can tell me otherwise. For the first few weeks, all they really do is pooh, cry, feed and sleep-at-all-times-except-when-you-really-want-them-to.

Number 2 daughter proves the benefits of box-sleeping

I remember before I had children of my own, a colleague with two daughters who were then roughly the same age as my own two daughters are now said to me that secretly she wished she could have had her maternity leave then, instead of when they were tiny. While to some it may be sacrilegious to admit it, I can totally see her point.

Now that my children are at school, I hear a lot of mums who have stayed at home until now say to me that it might be time they also now looked for a job. My tongue-in-cheek advice to them; don't do it. Yes, you may have a couple of extra hours free in the day while your offspring are at school, but believe me, you will need this time to do all the added administration that comes with school-age children. Dentist appointments, playdates, after-school clubs and school forms don't magically arrange themselves!

Then of course, once they have finished with the school day, there are extra-curricular pick-ups and drop-offs to be negotiated. A logistical nightmare with more than one child, as you can guarantee they won't ever be in the same place at the same time. Hockey practice will clash with choir rehearsals, and Brownies will never handily be at the same time as Rainbows... Plus there's always the odd child who will insist on having a birthday party on a school day. Try telling a 5 year old that they have to go to after-school club instead of a birthday party because mummy's working!

Plus, one major (dis)advantage a school-age child has over a baby is of course the power of speech. Yeah, so maybe your baby will cry when you drop them off at nursery or with a childminder, but a nice cinnamon latte with your colleagues later, and you kind of get over any guilt you're feeling. A child, however, can look you in the eye and ask the question all working parents dread; "WHY MUMMY?". Why can't you drop them off at school every day, why do they have to go to childcare, why can't you come and help in class, why can't you come on a trip... They're manipulative little beasts that know exactly which buttons to press and which heartstrings to tug for maximum effect.

And yes, they are actually more fun - you can do so much more together! My daughters like rollercoasters, and music and riding bikes, just like I do.

Finally, working full-time is a real bummer for your social life. How are you supposed to accept invitations to blogging events, pop round to your neighbour's for a cuppa and a natter, or meet up with lovely blogging friends if you have to book a day's holiday to do it?!

So, yeah, maternity leave is wasted on babies. Who's going to sign my petition?

Hobbies, Homework and Trying to Silence the Guilt.

A few unrelated things this week have got me mulling over this post that's been going round in my head for a while. I've never quite got around to posting it before now as I could never quite work out what exactly I was trying to articulate.

Before I go rambling on, I feel it's probably useful to post a remind of my general schedule: Mon-Wed I work 8.30 to 5pm, and the kids are in breakfast and after-school club from around 8am, until I pick them up just after 5. Thursdays and Fridays I am lucky enough to work a shorter day - 9 till 3, which allows me to take them to and fetch them from school.

Up until now, the kids have not been involved in the round of endless classes and hobbies that other children seem to participate in - no ballet, gymnastics, swimming, tae-kwon-do, piano lessons etc etc. We simply haven't had enough time, and it has seemed unfair to push them to what is effectively another childcare setting on a Thursday or Friday afternoon when I don't see them much beyond bath and bedtime the rest of the week.

The exception to this has been Rainbows, which one or both of them have doing on a Wednesday evening for just over a year now (mainly, I confess, down to the fact that a friend put their names down a couple of years ago when she did the same for her own daughter!). DD1 has now moved on to Brownies on a Thursday, and expressed a wish to do both gymnastics at some point and participate in the school choir, which takes place after school on a Tuesday, a day she would normally be picked up by the after-school club. After some soul-searching and logistical juggling involving my parents offering to fetch her from school and take her to after-school club, I have (perhaps somewhat reluctantly) agreed. I may yet come to regret it.

So far, so good. It will probably appease some of that working parent guilt that comes with "Oh my God, I am not letting my children reach their full potential", and hopefully they will get enjoyment out of it. However, with Year 3 comes the thorny subject of  more homework. (My feelings on this summed up quite nicely by Mostly Yummy Mummy in her post on how much she hates homework.) I can't help worrying that our non-planned time together will become even more scarce.

We recently visited some good friends of ours, whose eldest son is in a private school. From what I understand, it prides itself on academically high standards (he had to pass a sort of entrance exam to go from the infant to the junior school, for example), and rumours abound of children quietly "disappearing" to other schools if they don't quite make the grade.

As well as fencing (!), drama, chess club etc, they are also paying for their son (8) to have private tuition in Maths. He follows something called "Kumon", which apparently is very popular in his class, with most children doing at least one or both of Maths or English to ensure they keep up. (I can't help thinking that it is a bit of a vicious circle...) I am certainly not judging them at all - they have invested a lot in him going to that school, so it is in their interests to ensure he stays there, and I suspect I would probably do the same in their situation, despite my initial reaction of horror. We all want what's best for our children.

I can't help worrying that, whether it is school pressure, time-poor working parents, or time take up by too many hobbies, children these days don't have enough time to just be children. If all their hours are mapped out for them, when will they learn to be independent and explore on their own?

Sparks of Uncreativeness

I haven't been feeling very creative recently.

The blog posts have dried up a little (certainly in comparison to a couple of weeks ago!). Mainly this is down to the fact that work has been ridiculously busy and I therefore have less thinking time. However, even at work my lack of creativity has been noticeable. I have a couple of things I have needed to do that, whilst not really a full-flung artistic extravaganza, are what I would vaguely class as "more creative than normal" - i.e. involving having to think about words and images.

I happened to catch a snippet of a programme on Radio4 last week called Grayson Perry on Creativity and Imagination. Sadly for some reason this is not available as a "listen again" option on the Radio4 website, and I therefore only have the few minutes I caught to go on. It essentially seemed to be a list of what he considered myths about Creativity and the creative process. The gist of his argument seemed to be that artistic creativity was neither easy nor particularly exciting (a lot of the creative process being "dull and repetitive" once the original idea had struck).

To quote from a synopsis of the programme:

"Grayson wants to (...) show how creativity isn't a mystery, but at the same time it isn't necessarily easily accessible."

I can see the argument that says that if it was easy, there would be thousands of great works of art by millions of people. However, what I didn't agree with was the inference that you somehow had to be special to be creative.*

A lot of the joy in writing this blog is not necessarily down to the fact that I have some kind of strange idea that I am going to get discovered for my fantastic writing - I have no such delusions. I have come to terms with the fact that I am never going to be a "creative genius". I can't take a decent photograph to save my life. My work will never appear in a great gallery or library. I do believe, however, that in their own way everyone can be creative.

You only have to look at the joy with which small children scribble their way through life, drawing everyone and everything with complete abandon. Why is this something that seems to be drummed out of us as we go through life, discouraged and disillusioned by both internal and external critics?

I would loveto rediscover some of that joy of experimenting, of letting myself go with something just to see what happens. Whether real life will really let me remains to be seen.

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*Obviously I am making a big assumption that this was how the argument was going to pan out - as I said, I was unable to listen to the whole of the programme, so may well have got the wrong end of the stick. Feel free to correct me if you heard it!