The Mule

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...

The UK news this week has been dominated by the story of Jimmy Savile, the television presenter and media personality currently under investigation for a string of sex offences. It's emerging that Savile, who died in October 2011, abused a series of young people - the exact number is yet to be established - over a showbiz career that spanned several decades. Our reaction: shock, horror, sadness even, but surprise? Not really, because, we sort of knew, didn't we? We sort of know. We have uneasy feelings, gut reactions, hunches, intuitions, sixth senses. The hairs stand up, very slightly, on the backs of our necks. We don't know how we know. But we do. No one could capture this better than poet Simon Armitage , a former social worker, in his poem, The Guilty : They look us dead in the eye and deny it. They turn out their pockets - nothing but biscuits and shreds of a tissue. They will undress their children this very minute. Suggest their names, they are astonished. ...

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 .

Sleep training, controlled crying, and crying it out: is it ok, or isn’t it? New research has just been published in the American Journal of Pediatrics suggesting that: “Behavioral sleep techniques did not cause long-lasting harms or benefits to child, child-parent, or maternal outcomes. Parents and health professionals can feel comfortable about using these techniques to reduce the population burden of infant sleep problems and maternal depression.” The research is already being hailed as a victory by those who claim that sleep training is an essential parenting rite of passage and completely harmless to the child involved. The Daily Telegraph headlined: ‘ Leave your baby to cry, scientists say ’, whilst the good old Daily Mail claimed, ‘ Letting babies cry rather than rushing to comfort them is secret to longer sleep (for infants AND parents) ’. This is not a new debate. The fight over whether or not sleep training is harmful rages constantly amidst parents, faceboo...

I'm really excited that the Huffington Post has featured my first article for them on the front page of their UK edition today! Click here to take a look, or read on below... Dear Nick Clegg Like most parents, I’m sure you love your child fervently, and want only the best for them. Like most parents, you like to think that the decisions you make are in your child’s best interests, now and in the future. And like most parents who delegate the care of their children to paid strangers, you choose to ignore several decades of psychology and neuroscience, which show quite clearly that the loving and nurturing environment and secure attachment experience provided by a mother cannot be replicated by a childcare worker of any quality. Of course, like most parents, you’re quite sure your choice is the right one, and this wouldn’t necessarily matter quite so much, if you were ‘like most parents’. But you’re not: you’re the Deputy Prime Minister. You recently announced your plans for c...

In our society, everything has a price. A quick google of the question, 'What is the value of a mother?', brings up a whole host of articles, all of which suggest just how much money it would take to employ someone to complete the tasks that a mother does for free. This UK article puts the price at £37000 per annum for a mother's 71 hour week, while a US article gives the figure at $117,856 for a stay at home mum. Women often have to think in these terms of profit and loss when deciding whether to return to work. How much will I earn from my job? What will the cost of the nursery / childminder be? What will I actually end up with? Talking with one stay at home mother today, she told me that after many calculations she realised that if she returned to work and placed her children in childcare, in financial terms she would 'break even'. Many women face a similar scenario, but some return to work nevertheless, feeling that there is a gain for them in continuing wit...

At first glance I thought the book Raise Happy Children looked a bit 'gimmicky', but I could not have been more wrong. This is by far and away the most practical and helpful parenting book I have come across, and if you don't win the free signed copy I am giving away this week, I highly recommend that you buy it anyway! The book, originally published as Teach Yourself Bringing Up Happy Children, first got my attention when I read this rave review from Sue Gerhardt, psychotherapist and author of the brilliant Why Love Matters : "This is a parenting book which stands out from the crowd: easy to read without being superficial, lots of useable advice on recognisable situations, and gives a sense of being safely guided by very experienced and wise experts. It's a book which can range from practical advice to raise blood sugar with a snack after school to a spiritual dimension. Much of its advice is based on very solid research and understanding too. I liked this boo...

As a full time mother I know myself to be distinctly in the minority, and often experience that rather awkward, exposed feeling of realising that everyone else apart from me has left the dance floor. In the twenty first century Western world, the 'norm' for many women is to return to work and choose alternative care for their babies and children, and increasingly, pressure from government, society and the material world dictates that less and less women are making the choice to remain at home with their children. In 1981, only 24% of UK women returned to work within a year of childbirth; by 2001, it was 67%, and the most recent figures from the Department for Work and Pensions says that 76% of mothers now return to work within 12 to 18 months of having a child. Prior to motherhood, I was a therapist, a profession which has a fairly long history of upsetting feminists and women in general with the news that care by someone other than a primary attachment figure, and in particu...

Attachment - the invisible threads that connect us to our children - woven from elements no lab could ever replicate: Love, Time, Connection, Closeness, Understanding...to name just a few. A healthy, strong and positive attachment means happier, calmer children who grow into adults who are better able to cope with life and make happy and healthy attachments with others. Through you they are learning about the joy of 'relationship', about how wonderful life can be when you connect deeply with another person, when your eyes meet in laughter, when you love freely and without constraint. For some, attachment comes naturally from the moment of birth, but for others, the weaving of the threads can take longer, perhaps because of a traumatic labour, unsuccessful breastfeeding, difficult life circumstances, or even spectres from our own childhood that can suddenly rear up and haunt us when we become mothers and fathers ourselves. Still others miss the first days or even months or y...

Often we really want to help our children express how they are feeling, but find that our questions are met with silence or a change of subject. In this situation, we might feel that they are not opening up to us, that the lines of communication are broken, that they are keeping their feelings bottled up. We might find ourselves asking,"Why won't you TALK to me?!". But there is something we can do. We can play with them. Through play, we can connect and communicate with our children at an emotional level, in a way that feels safe, natural to them, and fun. Why? Play is a Child's Natural Language Play is the way that a child makes sense of their world. Children use play to process and explore events that they experience, from the day to day, such as shopping and 'mummies and daddies', to the traumatic. Children who have witnessed or been involved in a frightening situation will rarely, if ever, choose to process this by talking about it. Instead, they re-...

I hold my baby every time she cries...just for comfort. I know she isn't really hungry, but I let her come close and nurse anyway...just for comfort. As she falls asleep, I'm always there; singing, rocking, nursing...just for comfort. And most nights, she sleeps in my bed...just for comfort. By day, I notice her, noticing the world, and if she looks lost or confused, I pick her up...just for comfort. I let her move away, branch out, explore, until she falls, or hesitates, or looks to me, and then I offer her my arms...just for comfort. When she's scared, or sad, or cross, or lost, I try to understand, to be there...just for comfort. And any time she wants to snuggle, day or night, I stop everything else and hold her...just for comfort. --- I write...just for comfort. I paint, I dance, I sing...just for comfort. I take a book, light a lamp, and get cosy...just for comfort. I laugh with friends...just for comfort. I walk, I run, I dream, I plan, I travel...just ...