I was tired after a whole day of class and it takes a long time to walk from class back home with a bag full of books, a toddler’s school bag, a laptop and many other things with her happily toddling along, picking up stones and leaves along the way, dwaddling… I found myself nagging and almost at the verge of coercing, can you pls hurry up and walk faster!?!

Then at the end of the day as I was preparing for the next day’s worship on the Father Heart of God, I read this: -

"The other day I rushed into my den urgently needing some information from my files. As I sorted frantically through my papers, my five-year-old son repeatedly blew his shrill tin whistle. I told him again and again to stop. There was a period of silence followed by a deafening blast right next to my ear, including a spray of saliva. I reached around, swatted him with the back of my hand and bellowed at him in anger. Immediately I felt that the Spirit of God had been grieved. I remembered the biblical statement that God is slow to anger and delights to be merciful. I took my son in my arms and asked him to forgive me. It was only right that I should correct his disobedience, but our children should always know that we discipline them because we love them, and not because we are venting our momentary frustration.

Our Heavenly Father is at this very moment being slandered and misrepresented all over the world by man’s cruelty and selfishness. Not only in the home, but in all forms of human government. His laws of love have been ignored and our mangled hearts continue on in carrying out injustice to all those smaller and weaker than ourselves." Excerpt from John Dawson’s article on The Father Heart of God

Oooo here I am ministering the Father heart of God in class and causing wounds to my own daughter at home because I failed to represent God rightly. How sensitive am I to grieving the Spirit of God when I discipline Sophie? O Lord, teach me your ways.

I finally got a copy of The Creative Family by Amanda Blake Soule! I love her blog and when she launched her book I wanted to order one from Amazon but I found it at MPH (plus Citibank card holders get 20% off now).

I had such a wonderful time reading it on my off day. Yes! My off day! James watched Sophie on Wed afternoon while I went off for my long awaited off day. Not quite an off day but nevertheless, a whole afternoon to myself. SO NICE LAH……… What did I do? I went to the National Museum to collect some tickets for Sophie n her kiddy friends for this Sunday’s Museum for Toddlers, jumped in in time for the guided 1hr tour, walked to City Hall, had to go to MPH (cannot help myself!!!), bought books, sat down at Ben & Jerry’s for ice cream (also cannot help myself) to read, shopped around a bit and met James for dinner and movie coz it was also our date night.

Anyways back to the book, it totally inspired me. I like it that she was so personal about her life and her ideals in bringing up the family creatively, very Waldorf. And of course, the photos totally swept me off my feet. Plus the fantastic craft ideas.

Two things spoke to me
1. She believes in purchasing good art and craft materials that can be used by anyone in the family. Not separating what the adults use from the kids. I thought that was pretty cool. That helps to educate the kids about these materials, encourage them to be creative as a family and to be careful with the materials that they use. It’s like WOW even the adults use them, it must be very special!

2. She writes about family creative time where the family just sit together quietly and do their own creative thing – e.g drawing, crafting etc. That’s really cool! Funny how James is an artist but we’ve never done this before.

The book is inspiring and causes me to think in all directions BUT unfortunately, not all can be done easily here in Singapore since we do not have a strong crafting culture and we do lack creative spaces e.g. parks, oceans etc. But it’s ok, I love the challenge of thinking out of the box and doing within my means anyways. I’ll just work with what we have!

As a result, I have since brought Sophie to the park and made sure she walked on the grass and not just the pavement, I’ve bought a pair of shoes and earrings on a whim just because they looked pretty (I’m generally a stinge), we’ve also drawn and painted together just Sophie and I.

Since coming back from Shanghai, I tried to change Sophie’s schedule to this

8am Wake up and Breakfast

9am Play

11am Lunch and Bath

12pm Nap

2pm Play

3pm Tea

530pm Dinner and Bath

7pm Sleep

because one day she slept for 2 hrs for her nap and the next day she slept for 1 1/2 hrs so I thought, wow!, maybe it’s time to change her nap schedules to allow for more time to go out in the morning and afternoon. It was great while it lasted coz one morning we went to Borders in the morning and had breakfast and all without any hurry to come home for her nap.

But duh, it didn’t occur to me she was just adjusting to being back home from all the travelling. The next day, she woke up after 1/2 hr. !?!?!

After that, she refused to sleep longer than 1 hour for her nap so we’re back to

7am Wake up and Breakfast

8am Play

11am Nap

12pm Lunch and Bath

1pm Play

2.30pm Tea

3pm Nap

4pm Play

530pm Dinner

7pm Sleep

She struggles more to sleep now coz she’s so ACTIVE! There’s just so much to see and do! But it’s just a season coz she’s back to sleeping comfortably at 7pm again. For a week or so since coming back, she has been crying to sleep, sometimes even up till an hour. Sigh… I thought we were done with sleep training but nay, apparently they’ll keep challenging it up till 21 years of age. HAHAH… beyond that, it’s not within my control anymore i’m afraid.

The thing about having kids is that they keep on changing. Esp babies. So the schedules keep changing. That drives highly choleric (schedule conscious) mums absolutely crazy. I think that’s why a lot of highly driven women i know go nuts when they have babies. Like we are in absolute control of our workplace and subordinates but have absolutely no control over our lil one. I mean they don’t really tell you when they wanna eat, pee or puke right?

But I thank God coz I’m learning to relinquish control. Hopefully and prayerfully.

Whenever she whines, I’ll try to distract her or give her something to stop it. BUT James has been telling me that I should stop doing that coz it just encourages her to whine more Anyways… I was quite at a lost so I wrote an email to my Aunt Agonies of Parenting. This was my question and complain letter, edited. Haha… Here’s one of the replies. It helped me a bit and I think it might benefit some parents who are going through the same so thought I’d just share. If you hv other suggestions and strategies, pls do share!

Dears mothers that i respect very much,

I’ve been having some problems with Sophie. Sophie whines and clings onto me a whole lot. She’s totally fine when there are people around and they are ok tohold her BUT when it’s just the two of us, she needs to be clung onto
me most of the time. I have two main questions.

Question 1
Sophie has a habit of whining and making loud demanding noises (sitted on her high chair) when we’re eating coz she wants our food too. Normally we would give her a biscuit to gnaw at while we have dinner outside but recently coz we started giving her bits of our food, she’s starting to demand that. What should I do? Ignore her? Give her the food? Can be really stressful. The good side is that she loves to eat and I have no problem with feeding her.

Question 2
When we’re home, Sophie is ok to play on her own if I leave her in the play yard and I disappear. She can do that for up to 15-20 mins on good days, maybe 2-3 times a day. Beyond that once I appear, I’ll let her out and she’ll want to cling onto me. I can distract her with a toy for like 1-3 mins and after that she’ll want to cling onto me again. I’m not sure if she’s gotten into a habit of doing this. So I end up bringing her from toy to toy, place to place so that she can
play on her own for a bit while I do something else. Are all babies like that? I know some mothers leave everything else and be with the child when she’s awake but I’m not sure if it’s normal. I have a feeling she’s bored coz once I bring her out, she’s fine. There’ll be less whining.

Answer:

Ha! Ha! Sounds like little Sophie is due for some disciplining.

You know me. Whining drives me nuts and I really cannot stand it so when my girls started whining when they were about Sophie’s age, I went on an over drive to curb it. Usually they whine because they want something and if they are able to speak, I will ask them to to speak instead of whine because I will not entertain them when they do but I will respond when they speak. In this case, Sophie can’t really speak yet but she can ‘speak’ using her body language. What might help is to ask her to SHOW mommy what she wants eg: pointing to something or ask her questions where she can answer with a nod or not.

Question 1

My children all eat at the table with us during meal times. We figured that it will keep them occupied and at the same time we can watch them while they have their meals as well ie: no need to allocate another timeslot to feed them and wash up. It is a habit which we have cultivated since they were young and even till today, we all have our meals together. It helps to promote family bonding and everyone gets to share their stories for the day during mealtime conversations and even when my girls have appts with friends etc, they will still make it a point to be back for dinner. I know in some families, whoever is hungry eats first and the rest eat later etc and we find that in such families, there is no time allocated for the family to be together during the day unless they have family devotions every day!

When we go out, they would also have their meal with us and we would usually either order something which is suitable for them (where they won’t get messy, say, fish and chips or pieces of meat cut up where they can use the fork etc) or if we know that the food served at a restaurant we are going is not going to be suitable, we will bring our own food or they stay home. Usually at this age, we will go to a family friendly eating place and save the nice places for our dates together where the children stay home or are at a friend’s who is babysitting. I think exposing your children to eating together in a public place is very impt cos they will pick up good habits at a young age and will have no problems handling eating at a fine restaurant when they are older. I remember my girls first started going to a proper sit down quite posh restaurant at 3 yrs old and it was quite an adventure trying to get them to hold still and not drop the cutleries on the floor (this restaurant has wooden floors so every sound of a falling cutlery is like a big gong going off!) but they did really well and half the time sniggering away…

You are blessed to have Sophie loving her food and seems like she is a very adventurous eater as well. By this age, the youngest was already eating like an adult ie: rice and the full works. Of course, we always have soup or a dish with some sauce where she can put some of it on her rice or it will be too dry and veg cut into small bit size pieces. They all love mash potato and drummettes which they can hold and eat. Never had problems feeding my girls because if they don’t eat up whatever’s on their plate, they go hungry.

So,

1. time your mealtimes together so that she won’t feel left out while both you and James have your meal.

2. give her a plate as well when you dine outside so that (again) she won’t feel left out and give her food which are child-friendly (ie: suitable for her and won’t make a mess like mash potato!). bring a bib and some wet wipes and a change of clothes just in case.

Question 2

My older girls had each other to play with when they were growing up so having company is never a problem. I child proof my living room then (it was easy cos it was a 3 room appt like yours and we cordoned off the kitchen and the rooms) and they practically have a HUGE playpen. They basically can roam anywhere within the confines of that room and certain areas were a no no like the TV and the electronic stuff and they know not to touch them.

When it comes to the youngest, it was a bit diff cos she is on her own. My hub usually hangs around during the mornings and do his work at home and she’ll will play around him. He plays with her occasionally but generally she is just happy just to have him around as company. He usually leaves for work once I get the big part of the morning chores done ie: cooking, marketing etc, stuff that requires me to be away frm her for a longer period of time. By that time, our lunch is ready and we will eat together although at times, I eat alone with her if my hub has to go off early. Then in the afternoon, she naps and then later the sisters are back frm sch to play with her.

There are however times when I have to be alone with her during the mornings as well and when I need to cook, I usually have her in one part of the kitchen playing, usually with some cooking toys or I will give her an activity to do which does not require much supervision like sit her on a table and doodle with crayons and yes, I sometimes babysit her with Sesame St. Those days the morning TV progs are pretty good, Blues Clues, Barney and some good wholesome cartoons.

It helps to minimise the time you need to spend away frm her. I usually plan to cook both lunch and dinner in the mornings, at least the main dish or the main preparations (like cutting, chopping etc)for dinner and I’ll do only the veg in the evenings. When the children were younger, we have meals that required the least preparation time and easy to dish up like steaming fish, stews & spaghetti sauces (which can prepare in bulk and freeze the rest for a rainy day). Having grown up drinking soups almost everyday, I do the same too and prepare in the morning for dinner as well. Laundries are done at night when they are asleep and I do the folding of clothes etc while playing with them, that’s why got pic of them in the laundry basket etc. By the time they are 5, they fold their own clothes and by 7, they do the laundry. Requires a lot of planning initially but once you get the hang of it, it is a breeze and don’t get discourage if you don’t get it right the first few times, it gets easier.

Bear in mind that children go through different phases. Sometimes when they are not feeling well, sleepy, tired or teething, they want to cling and it is the most frustrating times believe me! Thankfully these are just phases and it passes. I’m thankful to have my hub who is really more patient with the kids than me and I guess after a while they realise that they have to learn to play on their own cos mum is busy. I usually spend a lot more time with them in the afternoons when all my stuff are done. in fact the youngest learned how to play on her own at a very young age and she is quite good at entertaining herself.

I wouldn’t recommend being available for the child at their every beck and call. When you have one, it’s okay, wait till you have two. Children are creatures of habit. Once they are used to hving you there whenever they whine, you are a dead duck! It is okay for them to cry a little and wait for you till you are free unless it is an emergency. Those mums who leave everything and be with their child either are very patient, have a calling for this or have a maid at home to pick up where they left off so that they can be with their child all the time. Seriously, train them when they are young or it will follow you …..