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Why is my toddler throwing things down the toilet!? A guide to toddler behaviour

21/1/2020

I am a mother to a wonderfully feisty 2 year old. A 2 year old who engages in behaviour that at times I am amazed and in awe of, but which at other times leaves me frustrated and exasperated.

If you are a parent of young children I am sure you have experienced these same feelings and you know exactly what behaviour I am talking about… the throwing of hard toys at your head, mashing and smearing banana everywhere, climbing on all the furniture and emptying packets of rice/flour/whatever they find in the kitchen all over the floor! Let’s also not forget dropping things in the toilet and hanging upside down!

If you are anything like I am, I am constantly asking Why!? Of my toddler, and the answer, is that there is actually a very good reason for these behaviours. Children have an intrinsic need for play, to explore their environment and help them to make sense of the world around them. These repeated patterns of behaviours are known as schemas and are an incredibly important part of your child's development.

Raise Yourself Before You Raise Your Kids

13/1/2020

I first came across this phrase a couple of years ago when I was watching a Sadhaguru video on Youtube and my daughter was still very small. He spoke of how we cannot expect our children to be a certain way, if we are not, we do not need to direct our efforts of teaching onto our children for them to learn.

Our children are like sponges they absorb and take in everything around them, they learn to talk and walk without us physically or directly teaching them. They have picked up how to say goodbye or hello as they have seen us do it so many times.

Problematic praise vs real recognition - how to motivate your child

6/1/2020

We are in a society that has almost exclusively moved away from any physical punishment of children in the name of discipline (yay) with Scotland, Wales and the Channel Islands making “smacking” against the law this year (catch up England). Furthermore, lots of parents are now recognising that shouting, shaming and almost all punitive corrections are also, at best, not achieving what we want and at worst, harmful in both the short and long term. Many parents know to try and stay positive and so reward and praise have become the “go to” for getting children to do, and not do, what we want them to.

There is a problem though, and I was once the person who sat there and cried,

“if I don’t have those, what the hell do I have?”.

Listen up. It is going to be ok.

In this article I am going to take you through how reward and praise aren’t always the best choice, and then I am going to tell you just how to give your child the recognition they need, making them more likely to do what you want, and more importantly, it could make them want to do what you want them to…

The benefits of open ended toys

11/11/2019

Big manufacturing companies have led us to believe that in order to optimise our children's development we need to buy toys that are specially designed for educational purposes, but actually this is the opposite of what play experts have found.

Children and babies learn more and respond better when they are exploring everyday objects, particularly natural objects, such as sticks, pine cones, stones, and what might be described as open ended toys.

Can I Help, Mum?

14/10/2019

“Can I help, mum?”

How many times have we heard this from our toddlers? When we're making dinner, hanging up the washing, cleaning the windows.

My daughter asks this as I am about to make some pizza dough for dinner tonight.

I hesitate. It would be so much easier, cleaner, and quicker on my own - but can I say yes?

This time I can (sometimes we can't).

A Change is as Good as a Rest: Toothbrushing Trials

9/9/2019

One thing I noted in my recent blog for It’s A Sling Thing was the phenomenon of “Mummy do it”. As much as you may try to share the aspects of child rearing equally, your little one may make their preferences felt. Aside from being frustrating, this can lock the roles for different tasks in place. One way around this is to insist on taking turns. If you are consistent with this, it should become automatic, however, in the early days this can be frustrating & tedious. Nowhere is this more evident in our household than in the task of tooth brushing.

Kids hate routine but they love rhythm

24/6/2019

We hear a lot form "experts" in parenting and childcare that children thrive in a routine. "Bedtime" routines and "getting ready for school" routines. "Get baby into a routine otherwise you'll make a rod for your back" (Where are all these rods? If they really existed we could build something awesome).

I hear about routine all the time. My favourite one is at the end of the summer when every other parent I meet tells me they cannot wait to get back to school to get their kids back into their routine.

Well I hate it. Seriously! and so do my kids. But I tell you what they love and what they need, it's rhythm, and here is what I mean by that...

Bedtime battles and bad babies

20/5/2019

“She finally gave up the fight”
“Yes, we won!”
“Don’t let them win”
“Is he good?”

We often use these kinds of phrases about even the most peaceful of bedtimes as we try our best to lull and soothe our little ones to sleep. The language of conflict often gets used even more when we are struggling, and it feels true. We feel like we were fighting for them to sleep, and that they were fighting against us.

Now, few of us are genuinely adopting military tactics in our children’s bedtimes (unless we are going out, when we plan their bedtimes using every ounce of strategy we possess, only to see those go the least to plan!) But there’s nothing wrong with the phrase “bedtime battles,” right? It’s just a phrase. We don’t really rule our children under martial law. No, of course we don’t, but that isn’t really the point.

I stayed quiet about smacking last week and this is why...

25/10/2017

A guest blog from Holly Heather of Calm Birth, Calm Parenting.

I stayed quiet last week whilst the smacking debate was raging through social media.

Fundamentally I agree with Scotland's decision to make smacking illegal. I don't think it is ever the right choice for discipline. I don't think it is a good parenting tool.

I agree with all the arguments that hitting adults is classed as assault and abuse, and so should hitting children.

I agree that there are a million other things we can do instead of using violence towards our children.

And yet....

“What are we doing to our children?” - Good question…

13/10/2017

(A response to the telegraph article by Hilary French dated 10th October 2017)

Whilst I don't disagree that technology and social media have a part to play in teenage mental health, I love how it's so easy to blame these simple things for the issues young people are facing today. The society we have created for them, including excessive use of social media is a problem but whilst the media and the government have us focused on how the “evil” technology is damaging our teenagers, we are happily distracted from looking at government policy, the education system and common parenting practice and advice as a potential cause.