children

Girls and computers: just three things

Jeni — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 23:04:08 +0100

One: My article in the Women in Technology series came out about a month ago. It was actually inspired by this comment on the post I wrote a while ago on women in computing, which asked about encouraging your daughters to take up computing. I found it easier to write about that than my own experiences, which have been rather mundane.

Two: Read OMG Girlz Don’t Exist on teh Intarweb!!!!. It’d be hilarious if it weren’t so dreadful.

Three: We’ve been looking at possible infant (ages 4-7) schools for our eldest. The two nearest both have interactive whiteboards in all the classrooms and regular IT lessons. In one school, the children are taught how to touch type; this at an age when they can hardly read and write. When I was in school, touch typing was on typewriters, for the girls who aspired to be secretaries. (I Mavis Beacon‘d myself during my year out of university; it’s the most frequently used skill I have next to the ability to read.)

Sleeping 'til 6am

Jeni — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 21:45:48 +0100

If you don’t have children, you probably don’t appreciate that sleeping until 6am can be a luxury. Even if you do have children, perhaps you have angels that even in their toddlerhood had to be awoken at 7:30. Or perhaps that’s just what you told your friends.

It was a great relief to me when my youngest turned out to be a better sleeper than her older sister. She found her fingers early on, and soon got into the habit of sucking them as she fell asleep or when she woke up in the middle of the night. So night times themselves haven’t been too bad this time round.

But mornings… We stabilised around 5:30am, but over the last several months she’s been waking earlier and earlier, so 5:15 was about the latest I could hope to be undisturbed and 5am certainly wasn’t unknown. And she would scream and cry until I got her up and into our bed, tucking into her early morning feed. And, having got that wound up, wouldn’t go back to sleep. So I determined to do something about it.

There are two lessons I learned from tackling my eldest’s sleep problems. First, that you only change behaviour if you’re consistent. Second, that if you want to be easy on the child (as I do) then you have to be prepared to spend time on it: you can’t fix these problems overnight, or even over a week of nights.

The technique I adopted was to use an alarm clock to mark the time when I would get her up. Other parents have used music, which is probably more gentle, but mine was just an ordinary beeping alarm clock because that’s what I had. I’d read that you should start with a time about 15 minutes before the usual awakening, so that they get used to being woken up rather than waking up themselves. But I couldn’t bring myself to have an alarm wake me earlier than 5am so that’s what I started with. And I decided to move the clock on just a little bit (2 minutes) every day, rather than wait for her to get used to a particular time before changing the alarm.

At first it was pretty hard. There were a couple of days when the alarm actually woke her up, and she fell back asleep again after her feed. But then she adapted to the early alarm, and started waking up crying at 4:45am. I would get up, hug her through the bars of her cot, stroke her hair, hold her until the alarm went off, and we would both snuggle into bed in relief. Knowing the alarm was coming soon helped keep me consistent: no getting out of the cot until it went off. But it was hard, and if I hadn’t learned that these things take time I might have given up, thinking it would never work.

Gradually, the alarm time got to 5:15. She got into a pattern when she would wake up crying (before the alarm, of course) but if I just sat on the floor by the cot she would, in frustration, lie back down in her cot and gradually calm down as she sucked her fingers. This was quiet, at least, and Bill would only be temporarily disturbed on her first wakening. I, on the other hand, would sit motionless, my legs gradually losing circulation, terrified in case moving would disturb her again.

One morning, when the alarm time was around 5:30, I had to get move while she was in her post-waking/pre-alarm state, to deal with my other daughter, but my youngest stayed calm. So I changed tactic slightly, and when she woke I sat at the edge of the bed. Just seeing me there was enough to get her to lie down again, and the bed was more comfortable for me than the floor. And there was definite hope: she was waking later and later as the alarm time changed.

This morning the alarm went off at 6am. For the last week or so, if she wakes before the alarm (and sometimes she doesn’t), she may grumble a bit but I don’t need to stir. This is an inconceivable luxury compared to a month or two ago: an extra hour or so in bed, and a peaceful awakening.

Of course I can’t guarantee that this will work with your child, but if you’re having problems with an early riser, it’s certainly worth a shot.

Book recommendation for parents

Jeni — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 22:27:13 +0100

Some of my fellow presenters at the XML Summer School were swapping tales of warring children as we chatted, and I mentioned the book “Siblings Without Rivalry” and promised to blog about it.

But first, you should get (and I really mean get, because you will re-read it again and again) “How To Talk So Kids Will Listen and How To Listen So Kids Will Talk”, which is also by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish. (Actually, get two copies because you’ll need one to lend to the other adults in your children’s lives.) “How To Talk…” provides the basic parenting skills that “Siblings Without Rivalry” then builds on.

The trouble with recommending parenting books is that everyone has their own parenting style, reflecting their own childhood experiences, thought-through philosophies and dammit-won’t-you-just-go-to-sleep frustrations. When you read a parenting book, it either fits with your style or it doesn’t. And if it does, then often you’ll think “yes, well I knew that already” and wonder why you bothered.

So “How To Talk…” and “Siblings Without Rivalry” fit with my style of parenting, or rather, since I’m not an expert practitioner of the techniques, how I’d like to parent. They emphasise the psychology of parenting — the unspoken messages that your children take away from their encounters with you and the impact they can have on your children’s behaviour. And they provide simple (as in easy to understand, not necessarily easy to implement) guidance about what to do to make sure your children are getting the messages that will help them grow up to be independent, well-rounded, emotionally secure individuals.

The underlying philosophy is one of respect for your child and respect for yourself. As I read “How To Talk…”, I felt freed from my own expectations that I would be patient and kind and loving all the time (and the guilt and despair when I wasn’t). Parents get irritated and impatient, and sometimes behave badly, but just as we can’t expect our children to be happy and well-behaved all the time, we can’t expect that from ourselves either. On the other hand, if we expect our children to express their emotions in non-violent ways, we have to do the same. If we expect our children to apologise when they do wrong, we have to do the same.

If that philosophy doesn’t gel with yours, then these books aren’t for you.

“How To Talk…” has chapters on helping children deal with their feelings, getting them to cooperate, handling disobedience, encouraging autonomy, praising and avoiding pigeon-holing children. I haven’t got “Siblings Without Rivalry” in front of me, but it applies the same techniques specifically to sibling interactions, and covers things like avoiding competition and how to handle conflict. The chapters each follow the same basic pattern, which is a bit of theory and explanation, some skills to learn, some cartoons that illustrate the guidelines, some exercises, some more discussion, and then details and parents’ stories. The cartoons are a bit cheesy, but help to bring home the abstract ideas; the exercises are actually useful if you do them, even in your head; the parents’ stories help you see you’re not alone, and give more examples of how to put the theory into action. It can get a bit too American for a repressed Brit like myself at times, but not overly so.

And the skills that they teach are both useful and simple if you can suppress your natural urges. For example, they talk about how to respond to your child’s emotions (particularly negative ones) by reflecting back how they feel, or just saying “Uh-huh”. It sounds easy, but it’s so hard when your child is upset not to offer solutions. Yesterday, my eldest had her face painted and was absolutely devastated when the butterfly had to be washed away. I just rode through her sadness with her; trying to suppress it (“It was only face paint, don’t be so silly!” or “We’ll do more face painting soon, no need to be upset.”) would very probably have made things even worse.

Similarly, when a child asks questions, instead of just providing an answer, you ask the child for their thoughts on the topic, or show the child how to find out the answer themselves. This is great advice because constant “Whys” can get turned back to the child (relieving parental irritation); you don’t have to be the fount of all knowledge.

Before I read these books, I followed some Supernanny techniques, and picked up some things from Tanya Byron and “House of Tiny Tearaways”. Some of them, such as being consistent, praising, and early bedtimes, have been extremely useful. But I think the crucial point, which is sometimes lost amongst naughty-step rules and sticker charts, is engagement. For example, “How To Talk…” discusses time outs and concludes that what children need when they misbehave is some time with an adult to talk through their feelings and try to come up with alternative ways of dealing with them. Having tried that many times, I can attest that it works.

My children are still very young, but the advice that the books contain can be used with children of any age. Even teenagers. Don’t feel there’s no point in reading them because your children are too old or too young. (In fact, you can even get something out of them that helps with interacting with the adults around you!)

By the way, if you visit the author’s website, you will probably be put off by the slightly cultish and highly commercial air of the site, so don’t.

Just read the books, dammit.

Today's life-skills: shoelaces and playdoh

Jeni — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 19:42:09 +0100

I learnt two new life-skills today.

First, how to tie my shoelaces using the Ian Knot. It’s very quick, and works just as well with anything with loops, such as supermarket or nappy bags.

Second, how to make playdoh. A standard recipe all over the web is:

1 cup flour
1/2 cup salt
2 teaspoons cream of tartar
1 cup water
2 tablespoons oil
1 teaspoon food colouring

You mix the flour, salt and cream of tartar together in a big saucepan, then gradually add the liquids and stir continuously over a low heat until it becomes a ball. It looks really liquid and gloopy at first, then suddenly, bam, its playdoh. It’s more squidgy than the stuff you buy, but that just makes it all the better for rolling and cutting and squooching and so on. You can add glitter and other things, but I didn’t today. And apparently it’s bad for pets.

I actually couldn’t find any cream of tartar at the local shop, so substituted the 2 teaspoons cream of tartar with 6 teaspoons vinegar, which works fine but gives it a rather acrid stench. Apparently another substitute for cream of tartar is lemon juice, which might smell rather better. Also you need a lot more than 1 teaspoon food colouring if you’re doing it blue, as I was — more like half a bottle or more.

The right kind of indoctrination

Jeni — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 19:39:45 +0100

Preparing dinner. Our three-year-old suddenly exclaims, “Reduce! Reuse! Recycle!”

Too much Bob the Builder (who, for those without three-year-olds, has decamped to “Sunflower Valley” and now lives a zero-carbon lifestyle, constructing eco-friendly sunflower-oil-extraction factories and the like).

Get ‘em young, that’s what I say.