The Trials and Tribulations of Researching Vaccines if you're just a Mummy

I've put some up some posts on Emervents triggered by a conversation I had about vaccines on facebook. Yey for social networking!

Thinking about Vaccines? Thinking of Googling? Found AVN or VISA? Think again.

and

Critique of AVN's 10 Reason's Parents Question Vaccination

As with all blog posts about issues I feel strongly about, they are WAY long.

Thank you Messies Anonymous

My thank you letter to Messies Anonymous. Some things just change your life for the better:

A life long hoarder and messie I've been subscribing to your emails for a year now. Having just one thing to work on for the day, whether that be "stow as you go" or "work on your inspiration point" made it easy for me to follow a "get well program" without being overwhelmed. For a long time I was only able to do that one thing in the email, sometimes not managing to do it at all. Then one day I realised I'd cleaned my inspiration point as well as done a ten minute tidy - two things in one day! A few months later I realised I was regularly waking up to a clean kitchen. And yesterday, yesterday was a revelation. My aunt dropped in for coffee, looked around my living room and said, "This is such a lovely room!" No-one has ever said that about my house before. My husband also called to ask if we could have someone for dinner that evening and I could say yes with absolutely no feelings of panic. The livingroom and bathroom were clean and tidy, the kitchen was ready to go. Guest for dinner? No problem.

What amazes me about your program is the way the change sneaks up on you. Once I was committed to doing at least one thing a day (and having the emails dictate what that thing was meant I didn't have to think, just DO) the magic happened on its own. I still read your emails, and I still do that one thing even though my house looks as though I no longer need it. I keep the Messies Manual by the bed and read that when I feel like I'm getting behind again or when I need more motivation to dejunk. I do it because I know that I still need it, that my bad habits are still lurking in the background waiting to be given free rein again.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for your inspiration and help.

http://www.messies.com

Just what is Bad Mummy Syndrome anyway?

Every now and then I google Bad Mummy Syndrome just to see what turns up, and the other day I found this. I recommend you go there before continuing, it's refreshingly short (and the other stuff on the site looks like it might be worth a tickle with the eyes). They're quite unsympathetic to us Mummies who suffer from Bad Mummy Syndrome so I wrote this for them:

Hi, I'm such a fan of Bad Mummy Syndrome that I named my blog (paltry, don't bother going) after it.

You guys seem so hard on us that I felt I had to respond.

I argue that Bad Mummy Syndrome is not about perfect mummies pretending to compete to be the worst mummy of all, the Bad Mummy Syndrome is a dialect. It's CODE. It's a code we use to tell other Mummies (or Daddies) that most of the plethora of rules and systems we are bombarded with these days from books, media, and well-meaning interfererers are at best, designed to make us feel inadequate, and at worst, shite to the point of dangerous.

Examples:

"My daughter is still in nappies and she's four! I'm hopeless at this toilet training thing!" is code for, "My mother, my mother-in-law, my grandmother and every other fucking busybody who would tell me how to rear my children is giving me a hard time about this. I know my daughter and I know she's unlikely to be psychologically scarred, but hey, mark me Bad Mummy for not fitting in."

Bad Mummies of my generation would probably roll their eyes in sympathy at this, generation Y might give a sympathetic "Meh." But after the eye rolling and sympathy noises comes the really, really important bit. The listening Bad Mummy (Bad Mummy Two) must now appropriately denigrate herself. Why? Because if she doesn't, Bad Mummy One really IS a bad mother. If she doesn't, Bad Mummy One is all alone.

So, Bad Mummy Two might say, "Mine slept with us until he was five, we just couldn't convince him that a separate bed was the way to go!" This is code for, "I tried, I tried everything, but in the end the nightly screams and tantrums wore me down, I figured that he must, for some reason only known to him, need me at night and I opted for a quite life with sleep in it. Half the world is telling me that co-sleeping for that long will cause deep Freudian traumas that only emerge in his teens. But I know he's a happy kid who got what he needed. Sue me for Bad Mumminess why don't you."

Other translations might include:

"I caught my two year old drinking liquid soap today." Is code for, "I'm so fucking tired, and she's so fucking precocious that NOTHING is safe in the house any more. They say you have to watch them every second but how is that really truly possible if you have to look after everyone else as well?"

"I locked my three year old in her cot for half an hour yesterday. When I got back she'd thrown all the toys I'd given her onto the floor and had nearly broken the gate she was shaking it so hard!" Is code for, "I had to separate us or I was going to physically hurt her. She has screaming rages over such tiny things and it goes on all day, drilling into my skull, I think I'm going insane. If I don't get a decent break from her soon I will simply go catatonic."

I could go on and on. But I'm thinking I'd be pressing my luck.

Bad Mummy Dialogues are not about "competing to be the worst Mummy", they are not about being unable to admit to our own perfection, they are about reassuring each other that these things are normal. That it's normal to have problems, that it's normal to feel like strangling your kids (they can be unbelievably frustrating, even the little angels!), and it's normal to feel completely inadequate and at sea.

The reason this reassuring dialogue is couched in terms of imperfection, the reason that it takes the form of a public flogging is that we are bombarded from every angle with the possibility of perfect parenthood. Advertisements flaunt unattainable visions of perfect families in much the same way they flaunt unattainable physiques. Books and seminars offer miracle solutions and cures to all that ails your potentially perfect offspring (and if they're imperfect it's your fault by god, get your act together woman!) It seems there isn't a parenting problem under the sun that doesn't have a book on it or a product out that promises miracles.

With all this advice and help out there, where are the excuses for shoddy parenting in any form? We speak in terms of the Bad Mummy because we know this, we know that in the public eye there are no excuses. We are ashamed, guilty of not attaining an ideal that is as impossible for most parents as a Kate Moss figure.

So next time you overhear us "competing", please, try cracking the code before you come over all judgmental. It's fear of harsh judgment that gave us Bad Mummy Syndrome in the first place.

Relax, Ms Whole Foods Puritan, relax.

I’ve just come back from an encounter with one of those god awful parents. Ms Wholefoods Puritan, you probably know the type:

“Oh no, dahling cheree can’t have those for lunch, my children have never TASTED white bread.”

"My children don’t get choices, they eat what they’re given!”

“This woman was giving her kids FAIRY BREAD!! at a QUARTER to FIVE!!!!”

I was trying to be polite I really was. My eyes were quivering in their sockets with the effort required to keep them from rolling skywards in bored exasperation. “Relax, get over yourself!” I wanted to say, “No healthy person has ever died from occasional consumption of fairy bread. Your obsession with food is going to rub off on them and not in the way you think. As soon as they get a tiny bit of freedom they’re going to be gorging themselves on all the food you wouldn’t let them have and they won’t know how to leave it alone because you didn’t let them take it for granted you silly woman!”

But of course I didn’t, I did try to say something like maybe the errant mother thought the kids would like a treat since they were all having a play togther but she wouldn’t let me finish the sentence. I also thought of telling her about my cousins who weren’t allowed anything nice so they bought or borrowed treats and hid their contraband under the bed. However, she was too busy telling me that her children’s love of lentils was due to the fact that they’d never had icecream to listen.

I know people who grew up with parents who thought that certain foods had inherently evil qualities. I was one of them. My mother would go through phase after phase. First it was dairy products that were causing all her ills, then it was wheat, then sugar (she was an alcoholic so I used to think that the sugar allergy was hilarious given that it’s one of the breakdown products of alcohol). But the alltime evil foods were processed foods - the ones with the dreaded additives. Preservatives, colouring, artificial flavouring, they were all inherently evil and the nasties would hang around for years doing hideous things to your insides. She was always very vague about the exact nature of these things, but cancer came up a lot.

I don’t buy the idea that if you restrict your child’s diet to nothing but wholefoods they’ll grow into serene, well behaved little angels with a model health record. I do believe in not allowing too many sweet things, letting them go hungry before dinner (depending on the age group, it’s a bit too hard on babies and toddlers to my mind) and making their first taste of food something savoury, like pureed brocolli. But outlawing fairy bread, cup cakes, and the occasional jelly bean is sheer lunacy because you’ll end up creating a desperate desire for the things that they see all their friends enjoying but can’t have themselves.

Choosing healthy foods is one of the first ways kids practise the fine art of making good choices. I want to let my children make lots of mistakes, I want them to practice choosing so they are not making their first real life choices when 18, head strong and behind the wheel of a car. I want them to be able to know the difference between yummy foods that are loaded with sugar and salt and yummy foods that are good for them so they are not making their first choices when they move out of home for the first time. I heard of a girl who ended up with scurvy because she lived on white bread and jam for most of her first year at Uni. Guess who wasn’t allowed white bread at home?

I encourage my children to eat well. I tell them why we are eating what we are eating but the rest is up to them. I let them get sick on easter eggs and marshmallows because I know they’ll remember the experience for next time. Even at two years old my youngest knows that too many easter eggs will make her feel unwell. I feed them fruit and chicken soup when they’re sick so they’ll associate those foods with comfort and feeling better. And my favourite rule: Nothing makes food taste better than eating it at a friendly dinner table when you’re ravenous.

My mother was an “eat it all or else” Nazi, my step-mother was a “you must try it, but you don’t have to eat it. If you don’t want it there’s fruit and cheese in the fridge and you can get it yourself. Remember, what you don’t eat today you get tomorrow in another form!” (My step-mother is a soup and fritters from leftovers cullinary genius.) Guess who’s cooking was my favourite? and guess who’s table I try to emulate today? My step-mother’s.

So my message to Ms Whole Foods Puritan? Relax woman. Let them have the occasional hamburger with their salad, let them see that junk food is a tasty thing that they can access but is not desirable all the time. Withhold it and you’ll create desire for it sure as free range eggs are happy eggs.

So it turns out that...

...if you're making a banana smoothie and drizzle the honey over the vanilla ice cream the honey turns rock hard and it sounds like you've got a blender full of bullets for, like, ages.

Toddler Twister

Today 2yo composed a song. There was one verse, "Daddy's not afraid of Mummy any moooore!!" She accompanied herself on the ukulele and had the rest of us in fits of laughter. We have NO idea where the words came from. Daddy is not owning up to anything anyway.

Later on we had an activity conundrum.

2yo: "I want to do painting?"

Bad Mummy: "No, it's too late for painting, you can do drawing or play dough."

2yo: Thinks. "Pasting!"

Bad Mummy: "No, you can do drawing or play dough."

2yo: "Pasting!"

Bad Mummy: "Drawing or play dough."

2yo: Thinks. "Drawing WITH play dough!"

So that's what we're doing. She's going to show me how.

Mummy Wordle Made from Tweets. Tres Cute.

I wish I could say the same for the html they give you to paste :-\

href="http://www.wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/799254/Mummy_Wordle"
title="Wordle: Mummy Wordle">