Archive for the 'Parenting' Category

Lateral Thinking

Published at Friday, July 20, 2007 in Parenting. 2 Comments

Jeannie has brought home her workbooks from school as it is the end of term.

In her Maths book she was set the following question by her teacher.  Write down 10 lots of three number that add up to 18.

Jeannie put in the following answers

18 +0 + 0 = 18

17 + 1 + 0 = 18

16 + 2 + 0 = 18

15 + 3 + 0 = 18

14 + 4 + 0 = 18

13 + 5 + 0 = 18

12 + 6 + 0 = 18

11 + 7  + 0 = 18

10 + 8  + 0 = 18

The teacher’s comment was   “These may be right but I did expect   10 + 5 + 3 = 18  9 + 6 + 3 = 18″

To me, that was good lateral thinking.  I don’t see too much difference between using 0 and 3 (except it is easier to add up of course) and if she hadn’t wanted 0 to be used, she should have said.

Tooth Fairy: First Pay Out

Published at Monday, July 2, 2007 in Diary and Parenting. 3 Comments

BREAKING NEWS: Jeannie just lost her first tooth.  Wild excitement as it is overdue because most of her class have multiple gaps.

How to be a Great Dad

Published at Wednesday, May 9, 2007 in Parenting. 0 Comments

zen habits has an article on How to be a Great Dad.

7. Read to them. This is one of the most important things you can do for your child. First of all, it’s so much fun. Kids books are really cool, and it’s great when you can share something this wonderful with your child. Second, you are teaching them one of the most fundamentally important skills (reading) that will pay off dividends for life. And third, you are spending time with them, you’re sitting or lying close together, and you are enjoying each other’s company.

In addition to this good advice, I also advocate writing with them, or just writing whilst they are around. Children want to do what you are doing. Recently, my son has really picked up his writing skills, and one of the contributing factors is that I have put down the PDA, stopped typing (so much) at the keyboard and picked up a pen and started writing on paper.

If a child sees you doing that, he will be more likely to copy you. In the same way, that if you sit around and watch TV, they will do the same.

Reading is something I’ve done with all my children since they’ve been born. It is no suprise that my eldest loves reading. When I take her to ballet I see other children playing games on Nintendo DS, whilst she will be devouring a library book.

Plague House

Published at Tuesday, January 23, 2007 in Diary and Parenting. 3 Comments

All is not so well in the house. Gabbie has got rubella, probably caught from the MMR jab she had (although the doctor says it has been going round recently). She had a dreadful Saturday night, really restless and unable to sleep. And on Sunday, the rash really came out and my wife took her to the hospital (on Sunday night the duty doctor is at the hospital). They took one look and said “classic Rubella” and home they came. We are on pregnent lady avoidance watch now.

On top of that, Jeannie has a stomach bug/ache/something wrong and is off school as well. First visit to the Doctor’s is inconculsive and a sample is required. She has not been sick and is still eating so we don’t know what is wrong.

Ryan, on the other hand is fine and had a very busy weekend. Firstly, a party on Saturday morning, followed by a boxing match, sorry handbags at football in the afternoon. Sunday morning was swimming and then Flushed Away, a film right up his street.

The nightmare hour from hell

Published at Monday, December 18, 2006 in Diary, Extension and Parenting. 0 Comments

Or How Many Parents Does it Take to Change a Light Bulb?

Let me recount the events in strictly chronological order (times invented because really I was too stressed to know exactly what time it was).

Pre-nightmare hour from hell

12:30 Plumbers finally arrive to move toilet
16:30 Plumbers leave having only taken out toilet and not put in new toilet, promising to return tomorrow (voucher worth 0.00000001p)[1]
16:31 Panic about not having a toilet
16:32 Remember that we have a new downstairs toilet fully working.
18:00 remind children to use downstairs toilet
18:01 Put a potty where the old toilet was
18:45 Wife leaves for work dinner leaving me to put all three children to bed

During nightmare hour from hell

19:00 Gabby crying. Get Jeannie to read her a story
19:10 Give Ryan bedtime story
19:20 Say night night to Ryan and goto Gabby
19:22 Ryan wants his mummy.
19:23 Return to Ryan. Gabby crying again
19:25 Settle Ryan. Ask Jeannie to read to herself until I can give her a story
19:30 Settle Gabby. Put down.
19:32 Gabby crying. Ryan needs the toilet.
19:35 Take Ryan downstairs. Find the bulb has blown and there is glass all over a dark toilet floor. Ryan desperate and not wearing anything on his feet. Gabby crying still
19:36 Find dustpan and brush. Cannot find torch. Gabby crying. Send Ryan to get slippers
19:38 Ryan cannot find slippers. Tell him to put on wellies.
19:39 Find different torch. Sweep up glass.
19:40 Ryan goes to toilet.
19:41 Help Ryan flush, wash hands, take wellies off, get back up stairs.
19:42 Darryl from down the road knocks on door with kids to help me move the old washing machine out so the council can collect it[2]. Gabby still crying.
19:50 Get washing machine out front. Thank Darryl telling him I owe him a beer.
19:51 Gabby has cried herself to sleep. Jeannie is asleep as well. Ryan is in bed but awake
19:52 Try to change bulb in toilet. Not knowing whether it has blown for a reason (it looks now like it just fell out!) turn off lighting circuit. Turn off wrong switch (it is a new circuit board) and turn off in turn, upstairs lights and then downstairs power (resetting clocks).
19:52 and 30s : Ryan comes down because the lights went off and on. This wakes up Gabby
19:55 Settle everyone again and change lightbulb. It works.
20:00 Find out Sky+ box will not turn on

Post Nightmare Hour from Hell

Opened bottle of Hobgoblin and drink. Slump in chair

And the answer to the question about the lightbulb? Clearly more than one.

[1] In actuality, it seems they will return as they left most of their tools behind.
[2] Has to be out by 7:30 am the morning after you call, despite them giving themselves 10 days before they have to collect it.

Confidence trick

Published at Thursday, November 16, 2006 in Parenting. 0 Comments

We’ll have to find some way to build Jeannie’s confidence. Today, she was given the wrong school dinner, sausages instead of macaroni cheese. Whilst she isn’t completely a vegetarian, she would never eat sausages. Instead of saying so to the dinner lady, she simply walked to her table with the meal and left the sausages, only eating the vegetables with it. We only found out because she was hungry later.

Maybe it isn’t confidence as she is quite confident in most situations; asking questions in class, doing ballet, standing up to do things in public places. Maybe, it is just a situation where she will meekly accept what people tell her.

She is completely different at home, btw and there is loud complaining if we give her something she doesn’t want to eat.

Brain Gym

Published at Tuesday, November 14, 2006 in Diary and Parenting. 2 Comments

I was reminded of something that happened at this weekend by a LiveJournal entry of a friend where he was basically made to feel very uncomfortable in a group situation. I found myself and Ryan in quite an uncomfortable situation just this last weekend.

I take my son to weekly music lessons and he enjoys it greatly. Or he did until this term. Last year we had an excellent teacher and learnt a great deal. However, this year we have a new teacher who is basically very poor indeed. I’ll go into details on this later, but basically a group of parents went to the offices to complain the previous week, hoping something would change.

Change it did, but I think for the worse. At the start of the lesson, the teacher said we should do some exercises to “wake the children up”. Ryan, having been up since 6am didn’t really need waking up, but anyway. The teacher said that we would do some Brain Gym exercises and immediately my alarm bells started ringing.

I had heard about Brain Gym before on an excellent website called Bad Science, written by Guardian journalist, Ben Goldacre, where it was described as “a vast empire of pseudoscience“. The teacher had the children do an exercise called “Brain Buttons”, best described by Ben :

Is there anything else I can do to make blood and oxygen get to my brain better? Yes, an exercise called “Brain Buttons”: “Make a ‘C’ shape with your thumb and forefinger and place on either side of the breast bone just below the collar bone. Gently rub for 20 or 30 seconds whilst placing your other hand over your navel. Change hands and repeat. This exercise stimulates the flow of oxygen carrying blood through the carotid arteries to the brain to awaken it and increase concentration and relaxation.” Why? “Brain buttons lie directly over and stimulate the carotid arteries.”

I felt very uncomfortable as Ryan and the other children were encouraged to “turn on their brain via the buttons”. Do I tell Ryan not to do the exercise directly, or help him attempt it? In the end, I simply offered him no help and he actually made no attempt to do it. However, I was quite annoyed that I was put in the situation where my child was made (or encouraged to make) to do some nonsense exercise without my consent. It was a music lesson! Looking round, I could see that some of the other parents were looking puzzled as well, whilst the rest were making an attempt to help their children. I think if one of the other parents had told their child not to do it, I would have done the same. I wish now that I had said something.

Anyway, we then settled down to another poor attempt at a music lesson. But that is another story.

Getting up an hour earlier

Published at Sunday, October 29, 2006 in Parenting. 0 Comments

Apparently, today is the day that “the whole country gets an extra hour in bed”.

However, the writer of that comment is not a parent. For, in reality today is the day that small children get up an hour earlier.

Childphasic sleep

Published at Friday, October 27, 2006 in Diary and Parenting. 1 Comment

It would be nice to have one night where I can sleep all night long without interuption. If I’d known this was going to happen I’d have slept all day as a student instead of just until lunchtime. Last night was just an example of a typical night. We are woken up by Ryan being sick. He has a wonderful turn of phrase, inspired by Charlie and Lola and told us he was “a little bit ill”. He was okay actually and I put it down to too many sweets. In the morning, he seemed okay, but very pale. He was “ill and feeling a little bit poorly but ok”. Meanwhile the parents are said to be “a little bit bloody knackered”.

Tooth update: The tooth is still in, but seems to be quite mobile. It is now in the place where the other tooth had been and at about 45 degrees. We dare not touch it to see whether it still moves. Gabby fell over backwards attempting to walk last night and the tooth stayed in, so fingers crossed on that.

Parents evening

Published at Friday, October 20, 2006 in Diary and Parenting. 1 Comment

Well, I’m not one to brag, so I’m not sure I should write this down, but I think some record of it should exist; if only so we can laugh at it in years to come in a “to think, your teacher said that!” sort of way. It the middle of Jeannie’s parents evening, her teacher referred to her as a genius.

Okay, it was only in reference to Jeannie’s bedroom being such a mess (she is not like this at school apparently) but it was pleasing to hear that she is doing so well. This is her first proper year at school and she had fit in really well. Apparently, some of the other children have found it hard to settle down to working all day as last year (in Reception) there was a lot more play. Jeannie on the other hand found last year quite boring, and is enjoying school much more.

Her reading as we know is very good (reading age about 8 or 9) and she has already met this years targets to reading (so her current target is part of Year 2). Her teacher is determined to get a Year 3 level piece of work out of her by the end of the school year.

Of course, it is not all perfect all the way down the line. Her handwriting has some odd non-conformities such as her “d” being the same height as her “a”’s for example. However, this isn’t just a thing she has got wrong. Her teacher is sure she knows how to do it properly, she just doesn’t want to. When told about it, she will just smile. And it is such a mischievous smile. In a way, I think this is better than her being a perfect little girl. She is quite the stubborn one too.

Her maths is strictly average, but she always adds interesting points to the class discussion. I think this comes from her asking the most awkward questions at the most inappropriate times, like when we were with some quite religious friends and she asked me “Which is older, the Dinosaurs or Adam and Eve?” Not knowing our friends really well, I didn’t know how best to answer it without causing possible offence.