Last week my sweet, kind, spirited and funny little boy called me an idiot. And I felt my heart crack. As he has grown from toddlerhood to boyhood we’ve had our standard supply of tantrums and meltdowns. Typical and normal, a manifestation of big emotions, tiredness, hanger and expected patterns of behaviour for his age…
parenting
We capture the firsts, but what about the lasts?
Anchored in what felt the baby and toddler time warp, I would think ahead to the future, because you know, ‘this to shall pass’ is the obligatory mother manta, and I would wonder what it would be like when there would be no more anxiety around sleeping, napping and wake times. No more smooshed sultanas…
Lounge pants and other good things we need right now
I wish I could be the type of person who had something truly profound to say. To be knowledgeable enough to speak with insight and wise enough to speak with reason. Amidst an ocean of content, information, graphs and curves there is already so much being said and much of it is not something I…
Consent and the six year old
It was Charlie’s birthday party, there were 20 something mini Ninjas in our backyard. Loud and free they are screaming, jumping and laughing. So much wild laughter and the sound is like balm to the soul. Children’s laughter is pure joy and comes as a gentle reminder that innocence is not always lost. There were tears…
I was emotionally derailed by a Kindy concert
I am watching Charlie doing the moves to “Santa wear your shorts” it is the night of his Kindy concert, I’m smiling and laughing and then suddenly I am holding back tears I didn’t even realise I was holding on to. I hold my breath and suddenly I am remembering when he was a newborn, a time when advice, solicited…
Raising a feminist son when the T shirt says “The future is female”
Last week Charlie and I were walking along Southbank when I saw three women pushing strollers walking towards us. Three mums, three strollers and three little girls. One of the mothers was wearing a T shirt that said “The Future is Female”. They were talking animatedly and laughing at one another and they looked the…