The Mule

The question of whether or not babies can learn to 'self-soothe' continues to divide parenting writers and experts. Does a baby left to cry alone in their cot eventually find ways to comfort themselves, to make themselves feel better? Or do they simply stop crying after a while because they realise that nobody will come and that there is nothing they can do about it - they learn that they are helpless? Let's look at this from a fresh angle. Regardless of where you stand on this issue, let me ask you a question: How do YOU 'self-soothe'? Think for a moment. The shit is hitting the fan. You are distressed. You have lost your job. Your relationship flounders. Someone close to you is sick. The usual suspects. You feel 'emotional'; you are upset, jangled, stirred. What do you do? How do you try to regulate yourself, to bring yourself back into balance? You might sit with your difficult feelings for a while, aware that they are part of life's patte...

Dear Daughters Brace yourselves, I have a confession to make. It may or may not surprise you. Here goes... I don't like being woken up in the night! I REALLY don't like it! I can't stand it! Maybe you thought it just washed over me - all part of the service - like chopping cheese into chunks or sitting through Waybaloo - well you're wrong. Being woken up and dragged from the delicious depths of sleep two, three, four, five times a night is WAY more irritating than that! WAY MORE! And, quite frankly, I'm bloody well sick of it! It's not just the nights - which are bad enough - it's the evenings too. For five years now I have had my enjoyment of every single evening compromised in some way, either because I've been trapped in a bedroom breastfeeding, singing, storytelling or simply begging you to go to sleep, or because I've had to abandon my delicious food / fascinating film / other grown-up activity, and go back upstairs to soothe you back to...

Responsive Parenting begins in utero, as we start, however tentatively, to recognise a life at once within and beyond ourselves, and to consider their needs alongside our own. It is this deep and strengthening connection with another person, and the resulting desire to respond to their needs rapidly and with love, that forms the bedrock of Responsive Parenting. Responsive Parenting is not about how we feed our babies, how we transport them from a to b, or where we lay them to sleep. It is deeper, and much much more important than that. Maternal responsiveness - the way mother (or other main caregiver) watches, understands and meets their child's needs - has been shown in study after study to be fundamentally important to everything from language acquisition, to social competence, to long term emotional well being. Here is my definition of Responsive Parenting: Responsive Parents: Observe their children, notice and interpret their cues, and take prompt action. Respond to the...

I'm aware that the title of this post makes me sound a bit whacky, and, to be honest, I quite like that. I'm hoping you've already got a mental picture of me, hair matted, eyes rolling, dancing naked around a ceremonial fire with my tits swinging in the breeze. Or perhaps, worse still, you've got me eyeing the camera sexily as my daughter stands on a chair for a bit of 'extreme nursing'. Of course, none of it was really like that. Let me tell you the actual story. Like most mothers who breastfeed beyond one, or two, or three, I didn't set out with that plan, it just happened. My daughter loved nursing, and so did I, well, most of the time, and when I didn't, I loved her, and could see that she loved it, so kept going anyway. In many ways, nursing a child who no longer needs you as their main source of nutrition is easy, compared to the frantic dependency of babyhood. It becomes more flexible, more negotiable: a mutual loving experience that is almost...

I lie with you until you are asleep, Ten minutes, twenty, thirty, often more, Clocks tick, frustration builds, yet still I keep, And stay with you on your side of the door. Out there, my old life tempts, a voice cries, "Fail!", And tells me there are better things to do, Release: the world shrinks down, we both exhale, And drift together, touching souls, we two. In age, perhaps, you'll do the same for me, And hold my papery hand, and stroke my hair, You'll know the worth of love's proximity, The gift we give by simply being there.   A final kiss, a sigh, a comfort deep:   I lie with you until you are asleep. If sonnets about parenting peel your potato, see here for another: Sometimes I Pass the Place Where We Once Lived .

People make different parenting choices, and that's fine. We don't all want to sleep with our baby in our bed, carry them in a sling, or nurse them until they're three. We might not like the idea of routines, we might despise the thought of spoon feeding a baby purees. But whilst these issues are often a source of interesting and sometimes heated debate, none of them really matter, or at least, they pale into insignificance compared to the bottom line, which is this: Parents need to be Responsive . No matter what other choices you make, as long as you try your best to be consistently and lovingly responsive to your child, you are 'getting it right'. Tantrums - which mostly happen at the toddler age - are a difficult area for all parents and it's sometimes hard to know what to do. But how we respond to our children in these testing moments is very important. I've written a detailed post about responding to distress in general here: Everybody Hurts: Ten Ways...

Everyone is suddenly talking about Attachment Parenting . As the world recovers from the shock of a mother breastfeeding her three year old on the cover of Time , the media spotlight is being shone on this parenting approach, and it seems like everyone, even Alanis Morissette , has got something to say. As someone who breastfeeds toddlers, has a good sling collection and shares her bed with a two year old, it's great to follow the debate, but it also makes me wonder - what do babies really need? In an ideal world, would all children be 'attachment parented'? Is this what we are aiming for, all babies snuggled into their Ergo's, a sort of 'mass conversion', a 'de-buggying'? Would this make the world a better place? Parenting websites, Facebook pages and forums are consistently bogged down with people debating the right and wrong way to parent, and never more so than now, as we all wonder what we need to do to be 'mom enough'. People can get pre...

"What kind of woman breastfeeds a toddler?" : this question has been asked this week in a variety of tones, ranging from total disgust to mildly shocked curiosity. Much has been made of the fact that Jamie Lynne Grumet, the woman pictured nursing her three year old son on the cover of last week's Time , is 'young and pretty'. There's apparently been some shock that a woman who looks like a trendily dressed model would behave in such a way. It seems like a lot of people associate extended breastfeeding with a very different kind of woman - stereotypically larger, rounder, hairier, hippier, older, uglier and weirder it would seem. This got me thinking. What kind of woman actually nurses her child beyond one? This week I've put the word out and asked mothers who do to send me a picture and a few details about themselves, including their reasons for keeping on breastfeeding. The Time cover, for all its faults, has in many ways paved the way for other women t...