I turned 40 this week. I’ve got lots to be thankful. Most of it goes to my beautiful family.
This song Hallelujah was written by Leonard Cohen, and I first heard it performed by the Choir of Hard Knocks! I mostly like male vocal renditions, but this particular video showing Alexandra Burke singing the song is breathtaking. The power of her voice really honours the song.
Pick up Woman’s Day or Vogue magazine, and wish you hadn’t? If those magazines aren’t dressing up food, they’re dressing down skinny emaciated girls. On my recent weekend flight back to celebrate my birthday with my folks, I noticed a fellow passenger with one of those glossies in her hand touting a firmer body for the Australian summer. Can I say something? I don’t think she’d ever get there. Fortunately for her, not all men are convinced that beauty is about being stick thin. Here’s my guide to beauty for all women.
Beauty of Personality: I remember having to approach a young nanny in my playgroup and give her an orientation regarding use of Montessori jobs and materials. She looked at me like I was a leper or lech or paedophile, or WORSE, a Montessori Nazi. Now does she think I’m going to ask her out or something? What a turn off. I’d rather prefer a gorgeous smile, engaging warmth, and confidence. Much better to shake your doubts and extend your energy girl! Confident guys like confident girls!!!
Beauty of Scent: Lingering subtle perfume. Your perfume has to remind me of you when you leave the room and establish gravitas when you enter. While you should stay away from the cheap stuff, don’t just assume just because it’s expensive and it’s French that it’ll automatically suit you.
Beauty of Informality: I’ve seen some plus size mums at school in the tightest see-through exercise outfits – it’s not a good look. You know, I wouldn’t bat an eye in the gym, but if you were doing the school runs – I’d go for neat and presentable casual clothes. Suits are great and attractive, but really, everyday wear is about pragmatic clothes which are stylish and comfortable for you. If you want to know, I like Kelly @ Be a Fun Mum’s ideas about fashion. From what I know she goes from attractive classic wear to vibrant wearable colours – and look at how she flicks her hair back! Wow. And you shouldn’t need to feel like you have to show cleavage or dress like a school girl.
Beauty of Nature: I love beautiful hair. I like cropped hair. I like short hair. I like long hair. I really like shiny glossy light flickable hair. I love sensuous curls. I like hair nicely styled. WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?
Beauty of Natural Colours: Understated makeup is best. Having stage make-up for this day and age is not on. Reapply and smooth it out at night – cracking or caking is not going to look very nice.
Beauty in the Details: You either have a perfect coat on your nails or not at all. I absolutely love beautifully done nails. But I also absolutely detest cheap chipped chewed nail polish.
Beauty and Pride: Men are really into well-polished shoes. Beat up old leather is not a turn on. Go polish your shoes. Guys are really into that! Not the act of polishing – the end product.
Inner Beauty: You don’t have to be a saint. Everyone has an inner light which is beautiful to people who tend to look for it. Doesn’t matter even if you use terms like ‘WTF’ all the time. I can see this kind of beauty. It’s all about heartware, folks. Start cultivating some now and let it shine.
Zoey’s post 10 Things I Won’t Discipline and then Kelly’s follow up post Childishness or Foolishness has inspired me to start a sushi train. This time I’m promoting the definition of discipline focusing on the root word ‘disciple’. This post talks about my main disciple – William my son, the best of us.
Discipline of Composure: We once had a violin session which started out badly – William was tired and grumpy. He was reduced to tears and refused to play his violin. I waited till he settled himself down, got him to have a break, return, and start from scratch – warming up, and working with basic pieces. Eventually, he had a fantastic practice and finished off feeling positive. That ability to centre himself is important – concerts aren’t going to wait for anyone. Everyone is human and everyone is affected by emotions, we however need to learn how to bring ourselves back from the brink and get back into the zone. That discipline of composure, son, will give you strength beyond your peers.
Discipline of Objective-Oriented Thinking: Picture this: you are at the Perth Royal Show and your son wants more than the one show bag you bought for him. So you look down and say, “Did you bring your money? Well, if you don’t have enough money, we can only afford to buy you one show bag.” So following that one incident, the entire year he starts saving up all his monies – from gifts, from over-and-above type chores, and by not spending on small items. Eventually, he amasses more than a hundred dollars this way for the next Royal Show. I can’t believe that a 6 year old would have this sort of tenacity. Amazing!
Discipline of Logic: Picture this: you’ve got a son with a fist full of cash at the bloody Royal Show. You’ve promised him one show bag and he’s able to blow his hard-earned money on however many else he wants. You know how irresistible those bags are? Can I tell you something? The kid buys himself ONE showbag because that’s all he decides he wanted. There’s no point in spending hard earned money just because he can. How proud do you think I felt? My heart was bursting!
Discipline of Initiative: Following Masterchef, Wills decides he’s going to cook dinner and dessert for the family. He prints out a Spag Bol and Apple Crumble recipe from the net and brings them to me. So I run him through how to create a shopping list. Then I bring him to the grocery store. Then I stand next to him in the kitchen helping him with everything from knife skills to timing and tasting. He eventually turns out a pretty impressive Spag Bol. Good on you son, that kind of initiative plus the determination to cook an entire dinner is fantastic! What discipline!
Discipline of Self-Control: Young William would eat all the fruit on the cake and then I suppose the cake, and save the chocolate truffle to the end. He’ll then put the morsel into his mouth and savour it for the longest possible time. Apparently, he learned this “save the best for last” from one of the other children in school … and has been doing it since. I just love how you think, son.
When our little boy Wills was 12 months old, we knew that he’d be starting full time Montessori school here in Perth at the age of three. So we started to look for child care close to us where Wills could go for half a day or so, once or twice a week. We didn’t need long term child care as I was a stay-at-home parent doing my Master’s studies, and had my MIL close by.
Family Day Care seemed to be in line with what we wanted for our family – Family Day Carers are child care providers who would take care of up to four wards in their own homes, and are governed by policies set forth by Family Day Care WA. The choice of child care provider of course was up to us, and this was very much what we wanted.
We picked a family day care lady who was absolutely gorgeous. She was five minutes from us, had a lovely granny flat converted to a play house, and had four absolutely lovely teenage children. Of course, William, who was then 18 months old, was unimpressed and bawled bitterly when I left him for a short play that first day. I was devastated – and felt awful that morning. But I knew the experience was good for young William, and he needed to get used to a larger circle of people.
With his time at Family Day Care, he was exposed to other children, a new carer, stories, toys, games (he got really good at T-ball), art, and craft. What I thought was really cool was that he was exposed to different lunchtime food provided by the family day care provider. It’s not that we eat Asian food exclusively, to the contrary we don’t. But our lunches then were different to what they’d be served, and it would be nice to know he developed a taste of pumpkin soup outside our family. A new story to tell, son.
Family Day Care turned out to be just fantastic for him. His carer was better than we expected, and I still have very fond memories of her and her children to this day.
Families face child care choices is a recent article on WAtoday which revisits my issue of a dearth in parental support in Perth and the rest of Australia. I touched on this in my About page mentioning my fantasy non-profit organisation with a range of child care services, satellite office facilities and other amenities.
The article mentions that economists propose new parents “clarify their family’s priorities” with the arrival of a baby but then mention the hard fact that these child care services would decimate wages. That’s the punch line isn’t it? With an average daily charge of “$72.20 per day for care,” this means working parents with newborns would have to earn an additional $26,000 in wages to afford child care services in Sydney – a little less if you needed child care in Perth.
I’m afraid despite the choices mentioned in the article, most parents, especially those lower income wage earners would have fewer choices in child care than is alluded to.
The following are some child care links that provide information to parents seeking support in child rearing.
The last 9 years as a parent have seen me trawl through childhood memories reflecting on how my parents brought me up. I remember all too well instances which involved unjustified smacking, questionable choice of movies, not too healthful food and beverage provisions, and interesting decisions involving education. I don’t personally blame my parents for these things, they were doing the best they could for us. In fact, I think of these memories impartially because in fairness there were many good times and great points of my childhood. And yes, I felt loved.
Whatever can be said of my childhood, from the nutritional perspective (I was obese as a kid) or from an educational standpoint (government school most of the way), I think I turned out pretty well.
Reflecting on concern I have for my children, I’ve come up with some questions:
If I’m a total stuff up, how can my children model themselves on what NOT to become?
How do I make sure that they look impartially on our failings and yet remember us fondly?
How can they maximise their own potential despite any current shortcomings?
And … how would they develop personal independence yet retain the wisdom to depend on our input?
It’s interesting looking through the retrospectroscope back into childhood, isn’t it? I certainly can remember lots of things from when I was 3yo and upwards. Reflecting on these memories is yet another lesson for your own parenting approach. How do you view your parents? How would you like your children to look at you?
SuperParents welcomes Zoey Martin aka the Good Good SuperParent from Good Good. Zoey is championing gentle discipline through Ministry of Discipline and the 10 Lines of Behaviour. Below is her first MoDiscipline article.
I’ve always approached discipline as doing the least controlling thing possible. Not because I’m lazy, although I do have my moments. But because it’s my belief that the less control I exert on my daughter, the more likely she is to do as I ask. It’s well established that the more cooperative you are in your approach to children the more obedient they are likely to be. As an introduction to how I approach gentle discipline, I thought I would start by looking at things that I don’t discipline in my daughter.
Crying
I never ask her to stop crying, or bribe her to do so. Crying, particularly extended crying is supposed to be annoying, so it gets our attention. But I don’t believe it’s manipulative. It’s an expression of emotion or tiredness or frustration or a sign of being just plain overwhelmed. I want to honour and acknowledge my daughter’s feelings and her expression of them, not teach her to squash them down.
Tantrums
While embarrassing at times, tantrums are just another form of self-expression. Sometimes there is no other option for children except to have a tantrum, because they just can’t regulate their own emotions, and it’s a way to let out all that pent up aggravation out. Usually, in those times, Riley needs more love and affection, not less.
Playing With Things That Are Off Limits
A fine example is the one section of my wall near the play area that is covered with permanent marker. Because at some stage, I left out permanent pens and the toddler got her little hands on them. I think it’s too much to expect a toddler to find a pen and not use it. That graffiti is on me, because I left the pens within grabbing reach.
Not Eating at Meal Times
Toddlers have in-built calorie control. If you don’t force them to eat – ‘just one more bite’ – then they will get all the food they need. As frustrating as it is when you painstakingly make a meal that they turn their nose up at, I take solace in the fact that on the day after she eats nothing all day she’ll have five breakfasts.
Re-Purposing Kitchen Items
Example – taking out a packet of rice from the pantry, pouring it on the floor and then proceeding to pick up the grains of rice to plant in the pot outside. This is experimenting and exploration at its best. Although in this instance I did make sure my little planter did help me clean up the mess.
Being Noisy
Kids toys are noisy. And in general, toddlers are pretty noisy creatures. They run around, yell, often repeating the same thing over and over until you say it back to them. And while I might long for some peace and quiet, my need doesn’t automatically trump my toddler’s need for self expression just because I’m the parent.
Refusal
Toddlers say no, a lot. And it can be pretty difficult to keep your cool when all you get is ‘no’ to every single request. But that’s an opportunity for negotiation, not for punishment. Mostly, it just means that they want to do something themselves, or are frustrated that they don’t have the ability to. Usually a combination of letting them take their time and a collaborative effort will get you over the line.
Making a Mess
That’s what toddlers do. It’s a key part of their job description. Although it’s not necessarily fun to clean up the same thing 10 times a day, it’s still just mess – easily cleaned up either alone or with your toddler’s help depending on what kind of catastrophe you’re dealing with.
Only as Good as Their Teacher
There are plenty of things I haven’t taught Riley yet. I’ve focused mostly on safety issues – not touching power cords or points and not moving things that are too heavy for her. And we’ve also taught her what things she needs to be careful with and what she can be rough with. But I can’t have expectations of her for things that I haven’t taught her yet.
Not Sleeping
Whether it be nap time or bed time, I am always a happy camper if Riley goes to bed easily. But sometimes she doesn’t. Sometimes she comes out of her bedroom a million times. And when that happens I remember there are plenty of times when I have trouble sleeping and need a glass of water, a hot drink, some company or just to read a book for a bit.
What kind of expectations do you have for your children? What do you discipline, and what do you accept as part of just being a kid?
Zoey Martin from Good Goog understands what I’m on about! Yes!
From henceforth known here as the Good Good SuperParent, Zoey will be championing gentle discipline on Ministry of Discipline.
I have long believed that SuperParents is more than just one person. Any parent willing to help other parents is warmly welcomed to join us and take SuperParents as your own. I am confident that our team will make it worth your while.
The first post from Good Goog SuperParent is scheduled for tomorrow morning.
A friend of mine requested I come up with this post on SEO for Blogs. I am big on search engine optimisation and online marketing, and I hope that you will agree that SEO-friendly content will benefit all of us in the long run. I have used these tactics and have created top ranking websites and have a personal blog (aside from SuperParents) that is recognised as being one of the best on the internet.
Keywords: Keywords drive everything. I use Google Keyword Suggestion Tool for research, ensuring that I choose ‘English, Australia’ to tailor results (this option is on the upper right of the screen). You should always try to optimise for the region you want to focus on. You should use key terms that are relevant to your category, your own web assets, and to your audience.
Distribution of Keywords: Your post should focus on 1-3 relevant key words or key terms. Using any more keywords dilutes the focus and search engines get confused. Key words and key terms should appear on a) The Title of Your Post, b) On the First Sentence of Your Post, c) Somewhere on the First and Second Paragraph, d) Image Filename, caption and ‘Alt’ text, e) External Links Chosen to Highlight Your Content, and f) at the end of your content. SEO for Blogs however is not all about keywords – remember that keywords are only good with great relevant content. You need to write interesting article that people would want to read.
Deep Linking: Google loves websites with interlinked and relevant content. If you write an article about children’s health, you should look for other related posts on your blog and include that link either within your post or at its end. If you are industrious, you should also create a link from older relevant posts back to your new post.
Referred Links: If you have a related post on another website or blog, you should establish a link from that site back to the post in question, and to ensure the link text includes the proper key words you have chosen.
Google Reader: Get a list of like minded blogs onto Google Reader. When you create posts, do a keyword search for similar posts from other blogs you’re following. Embed links from your post to other relevant posts – then go tell them about it.
Automation of SEO: There are some SEO processes that are automated by widgets, and I highly recommend you to check out services which create links to main pages, generates Google compliant XML sitemaps, and the creation of automated feeds to your twitter accounts.
Unique Content: If you create posts for a particular site and intend to cut-and-paste it on another blog, you must change, modify or add to that content so that at least 25% of it differs from the original post. It is beneficial for you to modify formatting in order for the content to look different from the original post.)
Integrate Your Blog and Website: Integrate your blog and website – make both point to specific and related pages.
Signature: All your posts and your emails should end off with your signature and an html link back to your site.
Blog Roll or Link Exchange: Start a link exchange program for your blog and your website. Make sure to exchange links with sites that rank highly for key terms appropriate for you.
Google Analytics: Install Google Analytics on all your other blogs and websites. Use Google to track where your traffic comes from and major keywords used to get to your site. Google analytics gives you an understanding of the key terms you are found for – look to build on those strengths, and if you have keywords that aren’t bringing you much traffic, work on increasing the use or prominence of those key words. (more…)
We’ve purchased a puppy over the weekend. I would rave on about how it’s a good learning experience for the children to care for a puppy, but frankly, I’m pretty tired out. Wills, my almost 9yo, *did* remark how amazed he was that a puppy required so much responsibility. Now he knows.
Isn’t she cute? OMG – I love dogs.
So puppy training has fallen on my shoulders. I have been making sure that little Tim Tam, a Shih-Tzu Maltese blend has been allowed to go out to ‘eliminate’ (what is this a movie?) every 2+ hours.
Doing a search on puppy training, this is what else I’ve got to do:
