Nobody wants to get divorced, but there are ways that separated parents can minimise the impact on their young kids. A new study from La Trobe University has found that shared care, under the age of 4 has a negative impact on very young children. I talked to the lead researcher Assoc. Professor Jennifer McIntosh about what the research found and how divorced or separated parents can manage their living arrangements in ways that are helpful to their young kids.
GUEST POST: A Labour of Love July 18, 2010
Photo by Lisa Jay
BY A BADENHOP
I have a confession: sometimes I watch Private Practice. A few weeks ago there was an episode with a woman in labour. Having heard that a drug free birth would be best for the child she refused intervention from the doctors. After three days of increasing angst, the baby was finally born ‘naturally’ and all the pain was worth it. While I could applaud her tenacity, there were a few things that annoyed me about the episode 1) the woman was apparently in enough pain for the doctors to implore her to take drugs, but she could still string a sentence together (bah! call that pain?), 2) she wasn’t red in the face at all, and 3) the one that really gets me – the implication that if you just tried hard enough in your labour, you would have a beautiful ‘natural’ delivery of your baby.
I am really blessed to have two beautiful children. Prior to the birth of no. 1, I thought that while labour would be difficult, it would all go pretty well because I was someone who was good at toughing things out and had even been described as a ‘pocket battleship’.
Round 1. Happily, I went into labour just three days after the due date, and everything seemed to be going really well. For the first 18 hours I went without pain relief, spending time in the shower and bath, with birth balls and heat packs and music, trying to reduce the pain signals to my brain with noise, splashing, stress toys (a dolphin whose flippers were lost in the battle) scratching noises and singing (which degenerated from actual lyrics to ‘la, la, LA’ to primal screams of pain which I’m told you could hear down the hallway). After a period of a couple of hours of one long excruciating contraction, I was sure I must be in transition. Imagine then, my devastation when I was told I had not progressed at all since my previous examination. Not even a centimetre. My midwife in the birth centre then suggested I use gas, then pethidine, then an epidural with syntocinin, and then after 26 hours, with my baby showing signs of distress, I had an emergency caesar (for which I needed a spinal block because the epidural wasn’t working properly).
Round 2. Having had only one caesarean that had healed up well, I was able to try labour again, with more intensive monitoring, and went back to the birth centre to give it another shot. I had joked with friends that all I needed for this labour to be better than the last was for the baby to come out! This time I went into labour a few days before the due date, and the labour progressed really well from having a few odd contractions at 2 am to regular consistent contractions by 9 am. My waters broke immediately after my first examination at the hospital and then it was really on! After a few hours of intense labour, I really was in transition and, having been asked not to push, I requested an epidural. It was after that that everything went downhill. My baby’s heart rate was dropping, but not recovering after contractions. This went on for a period of time that is now all a little blurry until the point when a doctor hit the emergency button. Sirens blaring, my room was suddenly filled with people, I was pulled down into stirrups, and told to ‘Push, Push, PUSH!’ while my little boy was wrenched out of me with forceps in a matter of minutes. Shellshocked, we waited. My husband was certain it had all gone terribly wrong. And then, joy of joys, we heard his little cry, and over a series of debriefs and checks were reassured that he was 100% healthy.we It seemed that my placenta had come away from the uterus during labour (a placental abruption) and there probably would not have been time to prep for a caesar if forceps weren’t able to be used.
There’s so much more I could say about my labours. They certainly weren’t what I expected. I’ve found it cathartic to write down my birth stories and talk it over with people, but I confess to feeling a little envious when I hear about straightforward deliveries, and a little frustrated when people imply that with the right formula you will have a good labour. Prior to our first child, our birth class facilitator taught us that while it was good to have ideas about how you wanted your labour to go, the only really important outcome is a healthy baby. Now when I talk to expecting mums about labour I likewise encourage them not to get too hung up on the labour details – you never know quite how its going to go! At the end of the day, regardless of the process I am so thankful that the result was two healthy children.
What was your labour experience and do you feel like you have recovered from it? Did you feel any pressure from people to do/not do anything in your labour? What have you found helpful in dealing with the unexpected?
The Prodigal Teddy July 9, 2010
Photo by C. Roe
We had a disaster last week – a disaster entirely of our own making. A disaster that, with a little more resolve, could have easily been prevented.
We know it’s a bad idea to let Birdy take Teddy out in public places. Normally when we go to the shops or a cafe or to church, we insist that Teddy stays in the car so he doesn’t get lost. But last week Teddy went to daycare. And as anyone, even an Octopus, could have predicted Teddy was left behind at daycare. I know. Shocking case of parental neglect. But wait, it gets worse… It was a FRIDAY!
You know what that means, don’t you? Two long days and three long nights without Teddy.
But hang on, why am I calling him Teddy, like he’s just some home brand generic teddy? He has a name. It’s January. Birdy named him herself when she was two years old. My husband and I were quite impressed. Birdy was born in January, so it’s a pretty cool name for her teddy.
I bought January when I was pregnant. My husband, who has a more pessimistic mindset than me, wouldn’t let me buy any baby things for about the first six months, in case it didn’t work out. But I was so excited I just had to get something, so I allowed myself to buy just one teddy for my unborn baby. That teddy turned out to be January. That baby turned out to be Birdy. I’m pretty attached to them both. So naturally I was quite pleased that January became the teddy she bonded with and cuddles every night.
I was very attached to my teddy as a child. He was blue with hardly any hair and he was called Peter Bear. I remember a few distraught times (after I’d got in trouble for something) when I was genuinely convinced that Peter Bear was the only person in the world who really understood me. Fortunately that conviction never lasted too long. But he was there for me when I needed him. That’s why I always hoped that Birdy would also have a special teddy to be her unconditional friend.
Well, you’ll be glad to hear we survived the weekend without January. Birdy even managed to sleep OK, but not without a few tears before bed each night. Any time she got upset about something, she’d ask for teddy and then cry even more because he wasn’t there. And I actually found it harder to calm her down her without that simple, dependable comforter that I automatically turn to when she’s upset. I felt almost as pleased as Birdy when January finally came home again. I’ve made him promise to never run away again.
Do your kids have a special teddy or comforter? Have you ever left it behind in a hotel, playground or at a friend’s place? Did you have a special soft toy as a child that you still remember?
Mind the bed bugs don’t bite July 1, 2010
I saw a status update on Facebook that amused me recently. My sister-in-law (Aly) described how her 3 year old climbed into their bed in the early hours of the morning and they grudgingly allowed her in. After lying still for about a minute she started bouncing around. They told her to keep still and she said, “But I’m a froggy. I want to hop, hop, hop like a frog.” So her Dad said, “We don’t want any frogs in our bed. No more froggy jumps please.” After a short pause a little voice piped up, “Can I leap like a deer?”
I can relate to this story, especially lately. Last night I said to Birdy, “Night, night, mind the bed bugs don’t bite.” And she said, “Well if they do, I will just crawl into your bed!’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I bet you will.” I think because the weather’s been so cold, a certain little person keeps turning up in our room at about 4 am. And I must say it’s quite convenient because it’s a lot warmer if she curls up with us than if I have to go and settle her in her bedroom!
We’ve come full circle on this one, but it’s partly an age thing. When Birdy was little we had a rule that she couldn’t come into Mummy and Daddy’s bed until the birds were singing. This was mainly because she’d wriggle and squirm so much that none of us would get any sleep. I was pretty firm about it, because I thought that if she came into our bed I’d never get her out again. But there was one day a few months ago when neither my husband or I noticed that she’d got into bed with us until we woke up and found her asleep between us in the morning. And I thought, well if it’s not disturbing anyone, then what’s the problem? So now we let her stay there as long as she doesn’t start doing the cha-cha in the middle of the night.
Last week on my radio show I interviewed Rozanna Lilley from the Children and Families Research Centre at Macquarie Uni about the way children and families sleep around the world. Her point is that in most cultures, some form of co-sleeping is the norm. Not necessarily bed-sharing, but sleeping together, rather than expecting infants to sleep alone. The idea that children have problems sleeping is a relatively recent phenomenon in western cultures, and it may be that our expectations of children have changed, rather than that their sleeping has become worse. To hear the full interview click here.
Anyway, we actually quite enjoy it when Birdy comes to snuggle up with us. So far she hasn’t vomited or wee’d in our bed, though I’m sure the day is coming. Obviously I might feel differently if I had four kids, but with just one, she’s actually quite a good hot water bottle. I’m sure I’ll have second thoughts about it when summer rolls around though!
Do your kids climb into bed with you? What time of morning is OK? Do you let them sleep in your bed, or is it strictly a kid-free zone? What rules do you have to make sure everyone gets a good night’s sleep, or as good as possible?
An Education June 28, 2010
Given Australia now has our first red-headed female Prime Minister in Julia Gillard, I’ve taken a bit of inspiration from our new PM and decided to focus on education today. You see, we’ve started thinking about where Birdy might go to school and it’s really quite a big decision.
We’ll probably just send her to the local public school for primary and then maybe to a Christian private school for high school. I went to an Anglican school and it actually had a big impact on my faith. But my husband went to every kind of school known to man (Christian, public, Catholic, he even did correspondence from a caravan for a year) I think he went to 11 schools in total, so I’m certainly hoping for a bit more stability than that for Birdy!
Of course every parent hopes their child will do well academically, but I actually don’t want my daughter to go to a school that gets the most brilliant results. I’ve known a number of people who went through their entire school life feeling dumb, because they were in the bottom half of their class, but they actually went on to get over 90 in the HSC. In a really selective school, even very bright kids can mistakenly spend six years of their life feeling like the slow one. Which isn’t great for the self-esteem. If you’ve spent your entire formative teenage years feeling inadequate it’s very hard to re-program yourself later. So I wouldn’t consider one of the most elite schools unless I happened to have an extremely gifted and talented child.
Now that I have a bit of distance from my own school days, I actually think that the friendships you make are the most important aspect of school life. That’s what forms your character, that’s what determines the kind of person you become, and with that in mind I think that proximity is quite important (except of course for those who live in isolated areas where its not really an option). If you want your child to form strong friendships and have a sense of belonging and community and to get involved in the life of their school, then traveling an hour and a half on the bus is probably not conducive to that. So for me a big priority is going to be that it’s relatively local and we can all get involved in the school community. That’s probably just as important as whether it’s private, public, Christian, Catholic, selective, co-ed or whatever.
What did you look for when choosing a school for your kids? What did you love/hate about your own education? Are you in favour of private or public education? Have you had to choose different schools to suit different children? What would you do differently and what have you learned along the way?
Mirror Mirror on the Wall June 17, 2010
Photo by Lisa Jay
Today Birdy told me she loves pink.
I’m still coming to terms with this. I hope it’s just a phase, but I have my suspicions that Birdy’s love affair with pink may be long and enduring.
I’m not entirely sure how it came to this.
When my daughter was born, my husband and I were determined to dress her in any colour BUT pink. However after a month or so of having her constantly mistaken for a boy, we started to buy one or two pink items. Then we realized she actually looked really good in pink. Now there would rarely be a day that goes by when she isn’t dressed in something pink and sparkly.
I think all little girls seem to be attracted to sparkle and bling, (just look at the number of fairy dresses in every toystore!) but a couple of recent incidents have made me question my daughter’s ideas of beauty.
The first was a moment relayed to me by my hubby. He was about to pop on a DVD when the phone rang. In the meantime, the TV was left on The Bold and the Beautiful for just a few moments. On screen was the image of a dolled up older woman, with soft-focus camera, over the top glamour makeup and a sparkly dress. “Look Daddy she’s sooo beautiful!” Birdy exclaimed in excitement. My husband recoiled in horror!
The other incident was with my sister. I’d bought some cardboard people, which Birdy and her cousin decorated by cutting out heads and clothes from magazines. My sister later told me that Birdy consistently chose the bling-bling glamour dresses and hairstyles. All Birdy’s paper dolls ended up looking like celebrities on the red carpet.
I certainly don’t think I’ve done anything to encourage this! I’m not the most fashionable person… I rarely even dress up. But you’ve only got to look at the images of women that surround us on billboards, magazine covers and advertising to realize that glamourous seems to be the only female model on offer. You don’t see many fun, healthy images of women and girls in the mainstream, so it’s no wonder that Birdy’s ideas of beauty are the airbrushed, stylized images she sees all around her.
Girls need to know that there are many different ways to be beautiful and that every person can find a style to suit their personality and their body. Of course, parents can model healthy attitudes, but young girls growing up in this saturated media environment are going to have a real battle on their hands to maintain realistic ideas about health and beauty. What we need are ethical advertisers and editors who are serious about their responsibility to the next generation of women.
As parents, we need to offer our kids a broader definition of beauty, both in how we respond to our own appearance and to theirs. But we should also take delight in the natural beauty around us, in animals, plants, artworks, waterfalls, sunsets, sailboats, good food and in the faces of those we love. Perhaps then we can help our girls to intuitively understand that there’s more than one way to be beautiful.
Do your girl/s love sparkle and bling? When did they start to develop their own ideas about fashion and beauty? How do you try to encourage healthy ideas about body image?
Keep your pants on! June 11, 2010
I’ve got a bit of a problem. I wouldn’t mind some help with it. You see, my delightful daughter just will not keep her clothes on. She loves nothing better than to take off every stitch of clothing and run around the garden naked.
You might think the cold weather would deter her, but no. The other day I was washing up at the kitchen sink while Birdy was swinging in the backyard and I was sort of watching her out of the corner of my eye. Anyway, when I finished and went outside, there she was still swinging, but with no pants on! She’d taken herself to the toilet and just not bothered to put her clothes back on. Even though it was quite chilly outside, she was happily swinging away, nudey rudey!
Actually it’s quite the norm in our street. Half the kids in the neighbourhood run around the backyard with no clothes on. Some of them even do it in their front yard and nobody seems to mind. But I’m just curious about at what age that becomes no longer socially acceptable. At 2 or 3, it seem to be OK for kids to run around in their birthday suits, whether it’s their birthday or not. But she’s three and a half now, and I’m just wondering when I have to start cracking the whip, stamping the foot and saying, ‘Right, that’s it. No more stickers without your knickers’ or words to that effect.
Because no matter how much myself, my husband or my sister tell Birdy to keep her clothes on, she just seizes any opportunity to be free of them. And I don’t want to crush her earthy, independent spirit, but at some point it’s going to have to stop. Either that or we’ll have to move to a remote Pacific Island where its more socially acceptable to wear very little.
Do your kids like to be nudey rudey? Have you managed to control their exhibitionist tendencies? At what age is it no longer acceptable for kids to run around the backyard with no clothes on?
A time for change June 3, 2010
Wow. Life has certainly changed for us in the last few weeks. I’ve recently returned to work after three and a half years of being a full-time Mum. There’ve been some big changes to our schedule and some big changes in routine for Birdy. But for me, the biggest changes have been the psychological ones.
Not only am I no longer defined by my parenting role (“What do you do?” “I’m a full-time Mum.”) but for the first time in five years we’re NOT trying for a baby (or as the parenting blogs put it TTC – trying to conceive). This has required a massive shift in my thinking.
For those who aren’t familiar with my backstory, we started trying for our first baby almost exactly five years ago. It took us about a year to get pregnant and nine months later, our little girl Birdy was born without a hitch. A year later, we decided to try for number two. We fell pregnant straight away but discovered at eight weeks that the pregnancy hadn’t progressed. That was five miscarriages ago now. In the past two years numbers 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 have all come and gone. As you can imagine, just dealing with this situation has almost been a full-time occupation for my husband and I.
Last week, I saw a renowned miscarriage specialist and heard an explanation of unexplained recurrent miscarriage that totally changed my perspective. Rather than being a result of the body being unable to carry a baby to term, repeated missed miscarriages may be the result of the body hanging on too long. That is, it’s completely normal for a large number of fertilized embryos to be abnormal. In most people, these embryos are spontaneously aborted before you even know about it. In recurrent miscarriage sufferers, the body’s quality control filter may be set too high – meaning abnormal pregnancies are allowed to progress for longer than they should. In this case, achieving a successful pregnancy is just a numbers game… if you have the endurance to keep playing.
After our last traumatic miscarriage in March this year, my husband and I knew we were close to throwing in our hand. Landing my new job in May cemented that decision, for now. I still hope that one day we will try again, but for now, we’re just getting used to the idea of not being pregnant any time soon.
But that’s not the end of the story. After my last miscarriage I felt an overwhelming sense of despair at the idea that I would never again have another child. And that convinced me of one thing. I’m not ready to give up. Even though I can’t face the anxiety of another pregnancy right now, I definitely want more children. So that leaves one obvious course of action: Adoption.
Cautiously, prayerfully, hopefully we are considering whether there might be a little baby out there somewhere who might become part of our family one day.
If we choose to go down that road, I know it will be a long and sometimes painful journey. But it’s been a long and painful journey anyway. Maybe adopting could be the light at the end of the tunnel.
Rain, rain go away. May 28, 2010
Photo by Lisa Jay
Have you ever noticed how many kids songs there are about rain? “Rain, rain, go away, come again another day”. Then there’s the one that goes, “Drip, drop, drip, drop rain is falling down.” On the one hand rain can be an enormous opportunity for fun. Gum boots! Raincoats! Umbrellas! Jumping in puddles! Splashing! Mud! Glorious mud! It’s almost like the perfect plaything! When I was a kid, growing up in the big droughts of the 1980s, rain was almost always exciting. For the first five minutes, anyway.
But then the novelty wears off. I don’t think there’d be a parent in Sydney this week that wouldn’t be tearing their hair out right now! Spending one entire day indoors is a challenge. But after a week or two of rain everybody starts getting a little bit stir-crazy, including Mum. For one thing, it makes so much more mess if you play inside all the time. Secondly, you have to keep thinking of new activities to do.
In the past week, I’ve come to realize how much I rely on going outside and on trips to the park to entertain my daughter. Now that we can’t do that, it’s a lot more effort to try to think of things to do. There’s only so much playdough, cooking and sticking a grown-up can take. My fall-back wet weather activity is the ‘make a cubby house inside’ trick. All you need are a couple of chairs, a blanket and a few heavy-duty rubber bands. It’s can provide hours of entertainment. I noticed when I picked Birdy up from my sisters’ house this week that she’d also reverted to the indoor cubby house option. Way to go.
But no matter how hard we work at keeping our children occupied, and no matter how many creative ideas we employ, there’s no way around the fact that little kids need fresh air, space and exercise. Actually, we all need it, but as adults we get used to going without it. Kids are just more vocal when their needs aren’t met. Keep a two or three-year-old cooped up inside for a couple of days and you’ll soon find that most of your house been destroyed as the energy that’s bottled up inside makes its way out.
I know I can’t be the only one who finds it difficult to keep my little one occupied in the wet weather. We have a new shopping centre near our house, which has a really cool playground in it. So hubby and I took Birdy down there one rainy afternoon only to discover that the playground was temporarily closed. We soon noticed large numbers of zombie-like parents and children aimlessly wandering around the shopping centre, looking for something to do. I guess like us, they also felt the need to get out of the house, but unfortunately there aren’t too many places you can take a toddler who just needs to burn off some energy. Maybe there needs to be a temporary moratorium on the universal ‘no jumping on the bed’ rule while the wet weather lasts.
Do you have trouble occupying your kids in the rain? Where do you take them on rainy days? Do you have a favourite wet-weather activity that always works a treat?
Aussie kids Chockers with Culcha May 14, 2010
Highland dancers at Brigadoon
There’s a line from the movie The Castle that always cracks me up. When Tracey, the hairdresser comes back from her honeymoon in Thailand, she tells her family that Thailand is ‘Chockers with culcha.’ This pretty much reflects the Australian attitude to culture – that it’s something you find overseas.
It’s a bizarre attitude in a country where virtually everyone has a migrant history (except indigenous Australians, of course). But maybe because we’re a young country, we also tend to be a forward-looking nation. People come here looking for new opportunities and hence the emphasis is very much on the future. My own father migrated to Australia from Scotland as a teenager and never went back until just a few years ago. He made his home in Australia and considers himself to be Australian.
Even so, I’d say I grew up with a strong sense of my own Scottish heritage. The Scots have always been good at that – they manage to embrace their new home, but still retain a strong sense of their Scottish culture and traditions. In our home, there was always plenty of Granny’s homemade shortbread, we ate porridge for breakfast, we wore kilts to church on Sunday and on New Years Eve (Hogmany) we’d always have a wee dram and dance a jig to Scotland the Brave.
All this ‘culcha’ must have rubbed off somewhere, when you consider that two of my daughter’s four names are Scottish. Even before she was born I used to play her Capercaillie in the womb- they’re a Scottish folk band who sing haunting traditional songs in the Gaelic language. Just recently, I took her to Brigadoon, the big Scottish gathering in the Southern Highlands. I had a great time dressing her up in Scottish clothing, and we all enjoyed watching swordfighting, Highland dancing and the outrageous sporting event known as cabre tossing. (If you haven’t seen it, that’s where you have to lift a log the size of telegraph pole onto your shoulder, throw it up and make it rotate). Crazy stuff.
I remember last Mother’s Day, Birdy gave me a special Irish leaf tea. When I told her my tea came all the way from Ireland, she replied, ‘Yes and my milk came all the way from Scotland.’ Even at two, she knew something about this place called Scotland. So even though we’re very much Australian, (seventh generation on my Mum’s side) I hope I can nurture some sense of pride in Birdy over her Scottish heritage. After all, we all need to know where we come from.
Have you tried to encourage your child to take an interest in their cultural heritage? Do you speak a language other than English at home? Have you retained traditional dress, cuisine, music or customs from another culture? How do you foster a positive sense of being Australian, while still valuing another cultural identity?
