Time to break some rules

There has been an incredible transformation in our house since my last blog entry.

The TV has hardly been on after school - although our son is still wedded to his computer games- and my daughter and I have found other things to keep us busy. We've been to the park after tea, we've been swimming, cycling, entertaining friends for play dates, playing "Sorry", and one evening last week the kids went to the driving range with their Dad whilst I was working away.

The net result is that the kids are far more engaged, with us and with each other, and, especially in the case of my daughter, far more articulate and mature.

She's only five, but actually my daughter's at the age where as a mother I have to encourage her not to behave babyishly any more.

Prior to our conscious efforts to spend more time with her rather than relying on electronic media to entertain her, she was routinely behaving as if she was still 2, frequently reminding me that "I'm your baby, Mummy".

Kids frequently get a bum rap for "attention-seeking behaviour", as if they do this on purpose, with no other reason but just to make life hell for the adults around them. We can always choose how to respond to this. Either we can react impatiently, and perpetuate the mistaken thinking that kids are indeed out to get us, or we can get curious about why they are behaving in this way. Kids seek attention because they are missing something from us - either a feeling of comfort, or because they are ready to learn something new.

My daughter's babyishness I now recognise was both of these things. It's the only way she knows to demonstrate that she needs me. She wants me to respond to her in a particular way, to give her reassurance, and also to show her the way to grow up.

Little did she know that this behaviour was actually "turning me off", and causing me to back off from her and react impatiently, giving me cause to retreat ever deeper into my own world of distractions. I guess this is the viscious cycle that it is easy to fall into, such that parents develop a misconception about their children's behaviour and what it means. What I needed to do was wake up and get curious.

By paying attention to what our children's behaviour is really about we are instead able to respond in a way that is far more appropriate for both of us. In my daughter's case we both needed to learn something new about each other - I needed to learn that her babyish tendencies were actually a cry for attention, while she needed to learn that it's time to grow up, and I can show her the way.

Showing her the way has involved taking on new habits, and breaking a few rules.

For example, the rule that floats generally around young children, that they need to be in bed early, eight o'clock at the absolute latest, really needed to be broken in our house. This is because my daughter was neither tired enough nor secure enough to say goodnight to us so early, particularly in the light nights of June, and especially if all she'd done since she came home from school is watch TV, pick at her tea, get shouted at, watch more TV, then get impatiently packed off to bed.

It is truly shameful having to admit to all this, but really in my daughter's world this is what was happening. No wonder she didn't want to eat her meal at tea-time, nor go to sleep at bed-time.

Breaking the early bedtime rule has meant that we're more open to doing more activities after school and into the evening. School finishes at 3pm, there's still a good six hours left of the day, which are desperately difficult to fill if we've got an unbreakable set of rules in our mind about getting our kids to bed early.

Likewise, the rule that I'd made up about feeding my kids fresh home-cooked food every day has also had to be relaxed in the face of spending time having fun after school. Don't get me wrong, feeding our children properly is still high on my agenda, but not at the cost of leaving them in front of the telly while I concoct in the kitchen.

My daughter has been much happier on a diet of fish fingers, hot dogs, omelettes and "time with Mum" than she ever is sitting at the table in front of lentil bolognese or roast dinner. Sometimes we need to recognise that our kids need a different type of nourishment than just food.

Of course the other spin off benefit of all this is that when the kids do eventually go to bed they sleep much better, with fewer requests for yet more drinks of water, night lights, trips to the loo, or making sure that the dream -catcher is hanging straight, or that the house spider (which has become a pet) is safely in its corner.

Kids are past masters at making up all kinds of excuses to bring us closer to them, to help them feel secure and comfortable. The trick is to recognise what lies behind these tactics, and respond to what our children are really needing, in a way that works for everyone.

The postscript to this has got to be "be flexible". Because my husband and I both work from home this can be both easy and hard. Easy because we're our own boss and needn't work to strict "office" hours; hard because it's much more fun to be with the kids, so sometimes work doesn't get done when it should. As with everything there has to be balance, and an open mind about breaking rules, especially ones that we may have created for ourselves.

The Wisdom of Children

Many people know that this is a particular fave topic of mine. I could write a book about it - oh yes - I have written a book about it, though this is something which I keep forgetting about because I'm too scared to do anything with it - but that's a whole different story.

Anyway, I've been reminded of this whole wisdom thing a couple of times over the past few days.

I took my ten-year-old son to see the drama production of Philip Pulman's "His Dark Materials" on Friday at the Theatre Royal in Bath. It was presented by Bath Young People's Theatre, and it was stunning. The oldest member of the cast was 19, and the youngest 10. We sat in the theatre for over 5 hours absolutely gripped by the performance, although I have to say that I'm glad my son and I were familiar with the story and the characters before we went along. I'm sure that without having read the trilogy beforehand it would have been quite tricky to figure out exactly what was going on.

Lyra Belacqua is the principal character in the story. She's a 12 year old girl brought up in the belief that she is an orphan, though the truth is much more intriguing. She is deemed to be a child of destiny, and she has many adventures on the way to fulfilling that destiny. With the help of the alethiometer, the Golden Compass of the film version, she is able to detect the truth about any situation. As a child she is able to read the alethiometer - it takes a particular state of mind, which eludes us as we grow from children to adults, and we lose our innocence.

One of the other things we tend to do when we reach adulthood is forget how wise and capable we were as children, and, in forgetting, we then develop the tendency to underestimate those who are children around us. My kids never cease to amaze me with the things they say and do, and I hope that I never lose the ability to be pulled up by them, and be reminded again of their wisdom.

What on earth am I talking about? Well, here's an example. The other day we were sitting around the dinner table and debating what we would do with the remaining days of the school holiday. We'd done golf, we'd done cycling, though to be honest hubby and I were hoping we might get to repeat at least one of these activites. Our daughter was keen on the idea of cycling, but our son would not be drawn on anything. He actually said he couldn't think of anything he'd like to do. (I wonder if this is his policy - to deliberately not volunteer any ideas in the hope that he'll be able to stay at home and play on his computer?)

After we'd made it clear that a day staying at home and playing computer games was not on the cards, our four-year-old daughter suggested that she brought her bike to the golf course and cycled round while we played golf. Hubby and I stopped in our tracks. What an ingenious solution! On the face of it, it catered simultaneously for everyone's preference who had expressed one, and cycling round the course couldn't be that different from driving a buggy or pushing a trolley round, could it?

We were amazed at how she had created a solution that would accommodate everyone at the same time - and still manage to make it so that we would be spending time together. She was able to do this because of her innocence - it didn't cross her mind, as it did ours, that other members of the golf course might not take too kindly to a child using the fairways as a cycle path. She was also able to do it because one of her main gifts is making sure that everyone's happy, and that everyone gets to join in.

In Pulman's book Lyra'a gift is story-telling, which gets her out of many scrapes. In real life all our kids have their own particular gift and motivation, just like we did. It's fun to listen out for their gifts - and to try and reconnect with our own.