Leashes.

Yup, I'm one of THOSE mothers, the ones that chain their kids like dogs.

Well I kind of did with Rockchick. She was about 18 months, had been walking since 15 months and decided she was too big for the pram, she performed Houdini type escapes whenever I put her in it, and if she was not in it she would pull things off the shelves and run off so fast I had trouble watching her. So I bought a baby harness.

I was 20 years old, standing in the middle of the local mall, with my "perfect" baby that was so easy (first baby, remember?) in her leash for the first time. She was crawling along the ground with her head between her hands sobbing her little heart out, banging her head on the ground, and then turning around and smacking my legs as hard as she could. I stood stunned watching this performance, having no idea what to do about it, and feeling fairly mortified at the 50 odd people who had stopped to see what the commotion was, and I actually heard SOMEONE say "OMG what a terrible mother, I would NEVER chain my child up like it was a dog!"

Now that makes me angry. There are two reasons you chain up a dog, to protect others, and to protect the dog. To stop the dog running away, into traffic. To stop the dog getting into things. To anyone that says "don't chain your kids up like a dog" I say, don't you love your kids as much as your dog?

If any parent feels the need to "chain their kids like a dog" I say, good on you for doing whats right for you, and protecting your children in your own way. If you dont need/want a leash thats your right. But why belittle others?

Although I think its becoming more accepted again, slowly.

So anyway, on with the story.

I am getting sick of getting the pram out of the car, and putting two kids into it every time we go anywhere. CheekyLala can walk now, and BankyBoo is close (by close, I mean she can, but won't in public, and still reverts to her knees a lot). So I decided to buy Cheekylala a leash, and I found one of those ones that is a backpack with an attachment for a very reasonable price.

Being a bit more clued up this time round, I stuck it on her for the first time at home. We walked all round the house together for a minute or so, which she found very fun, and then I started stopping her going in certain directions, just a little bit. After about 5 minutes she seemed fairly used to it.

Then we went out. Our first outing with the new "system" (being me carrying Bankyboo and Cheekylala walking on her leash) went fairly well. Mostly. We went to a local foodcourt with a kiddy playground and met a few other mothers there, and that went fine. Then we went to the supermarket.

Now my local supermarket has 4 trolleys with two toddler seats. Thats right FOUR... feel sory for the fifth person with twins (or two children under 3) that walks in. Out of the 50 plus they must have in store at any given time... So being able to have one on the leash, and one in the trolley was great.

We managed our shopping with only a few minor tangles and one topple, and got to the checkout. CheekyLala saw the chocolate bars, and that was the end of her good mood. No chocolate equals baby on ground sobbing.

I'm pretty sure the guy in line behind us thought she was screaming because she was on the leash, as he was shaking his head at us and tutting under his breath. After a short glare in his direction and a fairly loud "NO DARLING, YOU CANT HAVE CHOCOLATE, ITS ALMOST LUNCHTIME!" and pointed look over shoulder at the judgy man, he seemed to decide not to look at me any more at least. I don't really blame him, I sincerely doubt he had kids, and hey I was a perfect parent until I had kids too.

No no, the one that ticked me off was the "perfect mother" in the next checkout. She had two perfect boys with her, sitting on one of the benches along the wall with not a hair out of place, nor a crease in their clothes, nor a sound from their mouths. And she looked at me like I was the worst mother she had ever seen. And I really wanted to walk over there, spill something on her perfect clothes (there was some yoghurt in my trolley, that would have done it) then ruffle her kids hair on the way back.

But I didn't. Just.

xx The Ramblings of Another Mother.

Cotton Wool Kids

I have been thinking about this post for a few days, and uhmed and ahed about weather or not to write it. Its a tricky subject. But its one i have strong opinions on (note the use of the word OPINION here) and I finally decided to share them.

You have all seen those kids wrapped in cotton wool right? The ones whose parents have made a spotless environment for their kids to live in, with no germs ANYWHERE and the childproofing is still on all the doors and windows, cupboards and the toilet even though their kids have been using the toilet for several years now. (just ask permission dear)...

My opinion of these parents is on several levels, my first thoughts are one day their kids must go out into the world and find out its a scary place with germs everywhere and holes in the ground they might trip on and toilets that you can just open up and use. My second thought is that they must be exhausted from both managing to maintain that consistency of spotlessness and from the abject terror they must have of their kids coming into contact with all these risks they have worked so hard to protect their children from. And I also feel sorry for the kids, who have no notion of their own limits and skills, and lets face it, no immune system.

Now I'm no scientist or doctor, but I have done a fair amount of reading articles WRITTEN by scientists and doctors, and the consensus seems to be as follows: you create immunity from interacting with germs, and you create antibodies to everything you come into contact with. You have immunity to chocolate, apples, meat, sand, dirt, airborne things like germs, and you have immunity to illness. You don't get immunity from never being exposed to these things, in fact, by never being exposed to these things we have no immunity to them so when we do become exposed to them we are more likely to develop an allergy from our immune system working overtime to deal with the new "threat" (that's of course not the only way allergy's develop).

Now I get that some children have medical conditions such as mass allergy or low immune system or whatever that means their parents MUST maintain this environment. By if your child doesn't then in my opinion, let them play!

Something else I know is that for the first one to two years of exposure to the real world, your kids will get sick, a lot. And because a lot of the illness they catch will be things that you have never been in contact with (what they call mutations and new viruses) you will get it too. In fact it could go straight through the whole family. That's normal. Its good in fact, because then that's one more thing you have all built up immunity to. Now if you heavily protect your child from all possible contact with germs then they will start getting sick at school, and miss a fair bit. I don't know if it will be worse if you wait till then because I never waited that long, all my kids faced the big scary world of germs before they turned one. And started getting sick. A lot. In fact my twins have some kind of virus right now that has given them both a snotty nose. I believe that their good stong immune systems that have been getting lots of exercise since they were ten months old has kept it that way, and I also believe that if they had just started kindy last month they would be sick, but I wouldn't call them sick, I am just wiping their noses off a fair bit.

Another part of cotton wooling I highly disagree with is protection from "meanness". Like as soon as you see a kid on the playground giving your precious baby a hard time you are in their like a shot to "save" them. I can't stand that. In my opinion, that's setting your kids up for major bullying at school, because, in case you hadn't realised, you will not be present on the school playground to rescue them from the other kids, and they will be so used to being rescued they will have no clue how to handle it. So they will just cry. Or worse, tell the teacher (which has its place) but eventually they will run out of teachers, and remember what we all thought of the "tattle-tale kids" at school? And remember how we treated them? Kids are cruel, they can belittle the crap out of anyone who lets them, and if your kids have no clue how to protect themselves, then they WILL let them.

The part of cotton wooling I do agree with is that I want my children to know that the safest place on earth for them is home. My kids can come to me with ANYTHING and I will listen and support as best I can. As kids they can tell me all about the mean kids at school and I will wrap them in my arms and we can talk about how to handle that when they go back out their again. When I face teenage hood, I intend to at times buy them alcahol so that I know what they are drinking, how much, and where, at least SOME of the time. If one of my girls comes home pregnant, I (sincerely hope) will freak out at some point that they don't see me do it, because they are safe to bring me that in their home. Drug addiction, same thing. If I do my job right, my main feeling on any of that will be gratefulness that they feel SAFE to come to me knowing I love and support them no matter what.

And on a lighter note, when we play monopoly if someone is low on funds the bank will give them a few million dollars as a gift, and if they can't afford to pay the rent of the spot they land on they can sleep there for free that night. We avoid "whos the winner, whos the loser" during games because to me its about having a fun family night. Competition has no place in my home, they can learn about that at school. And we dance stupid dances in the living room with crazy moves, play silly voice games around the dinner table, and my husband and I try to "whip" each other with the tea towels when we do the dishes. Because laughter is a really important part of our home life.

So my conclusion is, cotton wooling their feelings at home is vital, cotton wooling your children from the big bad world is like performing emotional suicide on their behalf. harsh words I know, but that is my honest to goodness opinion. Children that walk out of their incredible safe home world with no idea of what it is really like out there are going to fall flat on their face, and it could be years, if ever, before they learn how to handle that.

Now I would like you to remember that I carefully used the word OPINIONS at the beginning of this blog post. This is all my personal opinions, and how I choose to raise my kids, to the best of my ability. You choose your way.

xx The Ramblings of Another Mother.