Imagination

I was watching a programme on imagination last night for my Psychology Degree course and was struck by something an artist featured in the documentary said, he was shown with his young son so his words have a particular resonance for children:

Issam Kourbaj


I believe there is a problem of consumer society in general that there is so

much ready things just we have to do very little and it’s there. I am much more

interested in having very little and making something out of it, rather than

having so much and doing very little of it. One needs to find out things rather

than just open the mouth and having the spoon ready for us.

Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?

Schooling the World

Schooling the World: The White Man's Last Burden trailer from lost people films on Vimeo.

Guitar Hero

Keeping up the unconditional parenting

We've struggled a bit these last two weeks, everyone has been ill and I have been exhausted. To make it worse Mr Toddler was beginning to resemble a child from a supernanny episode... So yesterday finally the light bulb came on, of course it's not him with the problem, it's me! In my exhaustion I had forgotten to show him the respect he is used to (there has been a lot of nos unfortunately) and had forgotten to have fun with them, parenting for me should not be about controlling my children but enjoying the time with them. I realized I had been very conditional in my behaviour towards him and it had made him worse.
So today we are still tired and ill but we are together again, no longer me and them, mommy loves you no matter how many times you pull my hair!!

Stop Shouting!!!

This is one of those days when I doubt all my parenting skills... Mr Baby has a chest infection and we've been advised by the doctor to stay at home until he finishes his course of medicine, the first couple of days were ok but today Mr Toddler has pretty much shouted at me all day, demanded something, been rather mean to his brother as well as throwing various household objects around. After a good few hours of this I'm afraid I told him off (in the sense of using a very firm voice and the word NO), he calmed down immediately. This really worried me as I really wanted to go with the unconditional and non-judgemental way of doing things, but after a day of explaining things to him (if you push your brother it will hurt and he will be very sad) with him just getting worse, I just needed to say no.