writingwahm

Ever wonder why so many children under five have cavities? It’s not just the overabundance of sweet treats; it’s also a lack of good dental hygiene, according to the British Dental Health Foundation. Once our children are old enough to hold a brush and seem to know what to do, it’s tempting to let them get on with it, but that’s a mistake, and we need to keep tabs on their brushing technique till they are at least six years old.

I know for myself that sometimes you can use teeth brushing time to get on with one of the millions of other little jobs that working mothers have to do, but I’ve recently gone back to more supervision of this crucial activity. The reason? Because I noticed that my little one wasn’t quite managing to reach everywhere and brush with the required thoroughness. With new teeth expected in the next year, it seemed a good time for a refresher in dental hygiene.

When my daughter was born, I remember people saying that the time would pass quickly. At the time, every day brought something new to marvel at, yet when I look back over the last five years, it seems that they passed in a flash. I can still remember being able to hold my baby almost in my cupped hands. This long legged creature who bounces all over me is a far cry from those first helpless moments.

For the first couple of years, I kept brief notes of things I wanted to remember, but I stopped that after she turned two. The time between then and now has been punctuated with a few milestones - talking, going to school, reading fluently - but it still seems to have zipped by. I wonder if I’ll be saying the same thing in five years’ time when I have a ten year old on my hands.

One of the things that parents always worry about is getting their kids to eat. When they are babies and are drinking milk, it’s easy. When they are first weaned onto that mushy pap they call solids, it’s still easy, because most of the time, they’re not strong enough to avoid eating at least some of what you push into their mouths. But when they take control of their own feeding, something changes, and it can last for quite a while.

All of a sudden your kids develop very vocal opinions on their food - and I can tell you that they get louder and more descriptive the older they get. Rather than just spitting it out, they may say yuk, disgusting or any other words that they have gleaned from their frends’ repertoires.  You need to be ever more creative to keep them eating something healthy at regular intervals. I’ll be describing some of the methods we have tried over the next few posts.

‘Daddy quicked me up!’ my daughter said this morning, trying to explain that her dad had told her to hurry. She had leveled the same accusation at me less than a week earlier. ‘You quicked me up and I can’t go that fast!’

My poor daughter just wants to take the time to smell the roses, enjoy her shower, play with her toys. She doesn’t understand deadlines. As a writer, I do, and I have lots of them, so we are fundamentally at odds over timekeeping. So we compromise. Sometimes I get her up five minutes earlier so she can complete her morning tasks without having to rush. And sometimes I just decide to let it go. After all, she’s only five and there’s time enough for her to join the rat race.

I once wrote a piece on getting children to tidy up without going insane. It’s strange how your kids are full of energy when it comes to taking toys out, but suddenly collapse when it’s time to pack them away. I understand that part of that is emotional letdown after a play date has ended or it’s getting close to bedtime, but I still insist that if my daughter takes toys out, she must help to pack them away.

To help with that, we have them stacked in clear plastic boxes on shelves, with one box for each category of toy. Putting away becomes much easier with this system. Of course, I have to help, but I don’t mind that as long as she is doing some too. With both of us tidying up we can get done in ten minutes, especially if we make it into a fun competition. What strategies do you use to make cleanup go smoothly?

It’s amazing when you start to realise that your baby isn’t a baby any more. Of course, I realised that some time ago. My ‘baby’ is five years old, in school and has an impressive range of extra curricular activities. But there’s more to growing up than reaching these social milestones. There’s also a lot of internal development going on, where suddenly your child will take a big leap.

For example, last week when she turned five and a half, she said to her dad: I don’t mind if I don’t get a present. Never did I think I would hear those words. I’m still scarred by the memory of the party where the loot bags didn’t come up to scratch and there was an unpleasant (though mercifully short) scene.

Then, the other day, she asked me to plait her hair. (The background to this is that her hair is short and curly, so the plaits don’t always look as they should, besides which I have never been a hair person.) I said that I would, but I wasn’t sure how it would turn out. She said: Mummy, if you do your best that will be fine with me.  You could have knocked me down with a feather.  How do you chart your children’s emotional development?

It’s not often that you get a holiday as a work at home mom. In fact, you usually have too much to do and cram things in left, right and center. Occasionally, though, the planets align in the right way. This Monday will be a holiday in two of the major markets I work for - the US and the UK. That means I won’t get emails, phone calls or IM chats. In fact, since most people packed up for the holiday weekend some time on Friday, it means the whole weekend is unusually light in communications from others.

What does that mean for me? It means that I can spend more time doing art and playing imaginative games with my daughter, without worrying about the work I should be doing. It means that I can work on a couple of my own projects, without falling behind on clients’ work. My stuff is usually last on the priority list, which most WAHMs experience. I don’t know when this will happen again, so I plan to make the most of it. I’ve had an ebook in the incubator for about eight months. This weekend, I plan to get it close to the birth.

I remember a couple of years ago, when my daughter was ill. Getting her to take her meds was hell on earth. She didn’t understand how something that tasted so terrible could actually be used to make her better. So she fought taking it tooth and nail, clamping her lips together or spitting it out. It was terrible, especially as she was already ill and we didn’t want to make her feel worse.

I was thinking about that because things have improved. Now that she’s five, she’s more prepared to take things that have been prescribed, even if she doesn’t like them and screws up her face. That makes it easier to get her better faster, and is much better for my state of mind.

I wonder at what age we stop counting the half birthdays. When our babies are born, we count the days, then the weeks. This can go on for quite a while. Eventually, we start counting the months. Some time around the age of two, we start counting in years. When you’re old enough to be a parent, you don’t worry about the quarters and halves. One birthday a year is quite enough, thank you very much. But when you’re a little un, every step you take towards greater age is a good one.

My daughter is five and a half today. She was so excited that she came bursting in at six a.m. with the news (I haven’t forgotten the birth, so believe me when I tell you that I already knew.  ) She could hardly contain her excitement. We promised that we would get a pizza this evening. I generally favour healthy eating (though not so healthy that snacks are disallowed) and she’s been asking for this for a couple of weeks. Seems a good time to do it. I don’t know when she will stop counting the halves. Perhaps when she gets into double figures. For today, she’s excited because she is five and a half (which means, in her mind, that she’s nearly six.)

It’s Mother’s Day in most of the world. Strangely, in the UK, Mother’s Day has come and gone, some time back in March. For the rest of us, today’s the day. This year was the first year that my daughter picked out my present all on her own and spent some of her own money on it. I got a beautiful orange baby turtle - a stuffed toy. It seems my daughter felt sorry for me because she had so many stuffed toys and I had none. She’s now got a plan to increase my collection every year, though we agreed I’d forget about what next year’s ’surprise’ is going to be. Have you had anything nice for Mother’s Day?