It was my SIL2 that first started using sticker rewards on Gavin with some amount of success.  After that she shifted to Thomas the Tank Engine badges because it was obvious that a Thomas reward worked far better than any old sticker.  It was only when I bought Gavin a Thomas Sticker Book with 700 stickers that I realised the true power of stickers.

My friend and mother of my god daughter told me they used a lot of sticker rewards at my god daughter’s play school.  “Finish your water and you can have a sticker,” “wash your hands and you can have a sticker”, and so it goes.  Whenever they needed the toddlers to do anything they weren’t willing to do, a sticker would always do the trick. 

Although the first lot of stickers we bought for Gavin didn’t exactly work like magic, I think they were great for setting the stage of stickers as a reward.  They taught Gavin that if he did something we asked, he’d get a sticker.  While he liked the yellow chicks on the stickers, he wasn’t crazy about them, so if the task he had to do to get the sticker was too much to his dislike, the sticker reward simply wouldn’t work.

The magical effect of stickers didn’t really take on a whole different meaning until I bought the Thomas Sticker book.  Now, whenever I offer him a sticker reward, he’ll usually come willingly.  For those nasty tasks he dislikes, I can often read the tormoil in his expression as he wrestles between his dislike for the task and his desire for the sticker.  If he’s struggling too hard to get off the fence, I’ll sweeten the deal with two stickers - one before he does the task and one he’ll get after he completes the task.  So far, it’s worked fairly consistently.

And since we have 700 different Thomas and Friends stickers, I think it’ll be a while before he gets bored of these…

The added bonus from this book are the pictures of trains that Gavin can practice colouring in.  Perhaps now Mummy can take a break from drawing ugly trains that only her own toddler would recognise…

Popularity: 3% [?]

Something every parent ought to make mandatory items for the “go bag” are a box of coloured pencils and some blank paper.  Until I saw Gavin with his crayons and paper, I never realised how much fun a child can derive from coloured pencils (read: keep them occupied long enough for them to stay seated).  As you can see in the photo above, it certainly kept these two little munchkins occupied for a while as they painted the table red - literally.  Thankfully, the colours are washable, although I swear I was getting some pretty dirty looks from one of the waiters when he spotted the scribbles on the table cloth. 

One comment we often receive about Gavin is that he is very well behaved.  He also sits pretty well at the dinner table (by toddler standards), especially when we’re out to dinner in a restaurant.  Admitedly, in the earlier days, either hubby or I (or one of my in laws, if we were out with them) would have to take it in turns to take Gavin for a walk around the shopping mall while we waited for the food to arrive.  Once we discovered his love for Thomas and Friends trains and started using them to help keep him occupied, we found we could actually keep him seated sometimes for the entire meal.

It wasn’t until I was down in Singapore with my BFF, when she brought out her magic markers for her son Jack to draw, that I realised how effective coloured pencils (or pens) can be to help a toddler sit still.  And since Gavin loves to draw (read: make Mummy draw trains for him), the coloured pencils serve as an excellent back-up for the days when he gets bored of his Thomas and Friends Take-Along trains.

The hubby often wonders what I put in the “go bag” that makes it so heavy.  Well, I guess that’s the problem of carrying around a big bag - you tend to put everything and anything in it.  Although in this case, the bulk of the weight is caused by Gavin’s water bottle and his Thomas and Friends Take Along trains (c’mon, you can’t expect to carry all that metal and not expect to feel the weight of it).

These days, the essential items for this bag are:

• two diaper changes
• wet wipes
• dry tissues
• two sets of clothes (since Gavin can get quite messy eating and sweaty running around)
• a pair of socks
• Thomas and Friends Take-Along trains (essential characters are the Gordon and James’ tenders and Percy)
• Thomas and Friends Magnetic Board Book
• Coloured pencils and a note pad
• water
• snacks - Milo bar for bribes in the car seat, Milo packet drink, other snacks
• balloon pump and balloons for making animal balloons
• stickers for good behaviour
• reuseable bags for miscellaneous shopping purchases

Popularity: 3% [?]

After today’s experience in the car seat, I think I am at a loss to understand my son’s car seat habits.  All the same, I’m still going to attempt an analysis of what happened today.

Yesterday, my grandma called to tell me my uncle was in town and could I please pay him a visit.  Admitedly, he couldn’t have picked a worse time to visit since we were planning hubby’s birthday party for today, tomorrow we had to attend a friend’s son’s full moon party and he would be leaving the following week.  Nevertheless, attempting to be the dutiful grand-daughter, I decided to pop over this morning before we got too caught up with the plans for the hubby’s birthday party.

I took it easy in the morning and made sure I told Gavin where we were heading.  To put it simply, he wasn’t keen to go when I asked him if he wanted to visit Tai Ma.  Perhaps because he finds it boring, but he never seems to enjoy visits to see his great grandparents - whether it is the hubby’s grandmother or my grandparents.  Since I had already told my grandma I would be over in the morning, I pushed on and packed the car with my last train bribe - Toby - in hand. 

When I seated Gavin in the car seat, he started whimpering as per his usual early signs of protest before launching into the all-out bawling.  Quickly, before he could get any further, I whipped out Toby and pressed the train into his little hand and asked, “Oh!  Who’s this?”  For a moment there, I was almost afraid that Toby wasn’t going to be enough, but we made it. 

When we arrived at my grandma’s house, Gavin didn’t want to go in until I promised to take out his train magnet book.  For someone who doesn’t really enjoy visiting my grandparents, I have to say that Gavin behaved quite admirably.  Possibly his only failing was his unwillingness to sit in my grandma’s lap or to be affectionate with her.  Yet, to be fair, he doesn’t really see her often enough to have much of a bond with her.

After a while, he was starting to look tired, so I thought I had better get him home before he became unmanageable in the car.  I was a little worried about how I was going to get him back into the car seat and had even contemplated making the short drive home with him seated on the floor space in front of the front passenger seat.  To my surprise, he allowed me to seat him in his car seat without a whimper or complaint and all this was happened when he was quite tired and usually his most uncooperative!

My SIL2 reckons he was too tired to complain.  Personally, as terrible as it sounds, I think he was just eager to leave my grandma’s place.  Why do I think so?  Because he willingly - almost eagerly - kissed my grandparents goodbye when I told him we could leave after he kissed them goodbye.  I’ve noticed that when Gavin is eager to leave a place, he is usually most compliant with any requests, such as saying “goodbye”, kisses, etc.  So when I said we could go home but I needed him to sit in his car seat, I guess he really was keen to go home.

So if I want Gavin to cooperate in the car seat in future, I’ve got to make him so eager to get to the destination that he would happily sit in his car seat to get there.  Unfortunately, that’s a lot easier said than done.  Nevertheless, I’ve got to try because I’m running out of workable bribes for the car seat - we already have all the main characters from Thomas and Friends, so it is questionable whether he would still sit in the car seat even if we bought him more trains to use as bribes.

Popularity: 6% [?]

I was with my MIL in Secret Recipe looking for a birthday cake for the hubby when we spotted this:

It’s a great idea for a child’s birthday cake - especially if your child is particularly fond of a specific character.  Sorry about the terrible photo.  In case you’re wondering, it is a flat sheet of white icing that has been painted with food dye and placed over a regular cake.  I’m sure there are plenty of cake shops out there offering this service, but this particular cake was done in Secret Recipe.

Secret Recipe offers a range of generic pictures you can choose from but if you want something special - like a photograph (or in this case - Thomas), you have to bring in the picture to be scanned.  I’m guessing the concept works pretty similarly to the process of scanning pictures to be printed out on an ink-jet colour printer (except with food dye so the icing is edible). 

I’m afraid I don’t know how much it costs, but it’s something to check out unless you already have a Cordon Bleu chef as a SIL or a cousin with a talent for making creative children’s birthday cakes.  Hubby has already told my SIL she has to make a 3D Thomas cake for Gavin’s two year old birthday.  I’m not sure how she’s going to do it but I’m sure she’ll figure something out.  At any rate, she’s going to be Gavin’s favourite person for the longest time after he sees the cake - that’s for sure!

Popularity: 5% [?]

I learned this one watching Lou and Lou Safety Patrol on the Playhouse Disney Channel…

Although I’ve been practicing this for some time, there have been times when I’ve been too lazy to be bothered to carry a bag around and left home without it – big mistake. A “Go” bag – for the new parents to be – is a bag with all the necessary supplies you might require while out and about with your child/baby. Although one would think it is such an obvious requirement, it can take quite a bit of getting used to especially when you’re so used to leaving the house on the spur of the moment without a second’s thought to what you might need to bring with you (just try forgetting to bring spare diapers or even the wet wipes, for instance).

“Go” bags are generally more cumbersome with a baby (especially if you’re bottle feeding because you need to carry milk powder, bottles, and warm water – all the more reason to breastfeed) because you need several spare diapers, changing mat, diaper barrier cream, distraction toys, change of clothes (for baby and parent – as we discovered when I ended up with poop on my shirt one day while we were out), bibs, wet wipes, dry tissues. If your baby is already on solids, you also need to carry drinking water, snacks, baby food for meals and utensils.

With a toddler, the “Go” bag becomes simpler, although the number of distraction toys and activities you require increases proportionally. For instance, whenever I leave the house these days, these are the things I make sure I pack in Gavin’s “Go” bag:

• Diaper
• Change of clothes – at least one full set (since Gavin refuses to wear a bib when eating)
• Wet wipes
• Dry tissues
• Essential toys – like his Thomas and Friends Take-Along trains (don’t ever leave home with them, especially the favourites) to keep him occupied during “boring moments” at the table when we’re waiting for food and drinks, or something else
• Water
• Snacks – normal snacks to satiate the hunger pangs, and bribe snacks for good behaviour
• Camera – to capture those Kodak moments

I used to cram everything into a small backpack that Gavin could carry, but now I find that there are just too many things to fit, plus that little bag gets a bit heavy, so now I just carry a backpack myself.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Now that Gavin has been picking up new words on a daily basis, it is getting even easier to understand what he wants. He has developed words to express what he needs. For instance, he’ll say “bite” when he’s got an itch and he wants us to do something about it - like apply a cream to help soothe the itch.

Despite the increased vocabulary, there are times when it’s difficult to decipher what he wants because his pronunciation requires refining. When he’s echoing a word we’ve used, it’s fairly easy to understand what he means, but when he uses the unidentifiable sound at random, it can be quite a task figuring out the meaning.

For instance, he cannot pronounce “Thomas” so he says something that sounds like “dunno”. I suspected that “dunno” was in reference to “Thomas” because he would sign “train” when I didn’t produce what he wanted – his Thomas toy. It only became clear that “dunno” was “Thomas” when I was teaching him the concept of “big” and “small”. I pointed to his big Thomas toy and said “big Thomas,” then I pointed to the small Thomas toy and said “small Thomas.” When Gavin repeated after me, he said “big dunno” and “small dunno”.

Even with the confusion when the words don’t sound recognisable, the signs and words that Gavin has learned has made it a lot easier for us to understand what he wants. I feel certain that there is some correlation between this and the reduction in tantrums that I have noticed in recent times.

Of course there are still times when his emotions get the better of him and he gets upset before he’s even told me what he wanted. During such times, I realise the truth to what Margot Sunderland writes in The Science of Parenting about how children in distress tantrums lose their words and their ability to communicate. During such times, no matter how I ask him what he wants, he can only cry in frustration.

I find there are two ways to handle this situation that seem to work best.

1. Give Him Words

First I try to guess what he wants and offer him words to express himself. I find the technique that Harvey Karp recommends in Happiest Toddler on the Block works best – short sentences containing only a few words repeated over and over again until he can register what I’m saying through the storm of his tears. Because he is in distress, his ability to comprehend what I’m saying decreases dramatically.

One afternoon, when he woke up from his nap, I brought him downstairs like I normally did. On this occasion I was carrying him because he wanted to be carried. When I put him down onto the floor so he could play with his toys, he immediately dissolved into howls of frustration.

Surprised, I picked him back up and asked him what he wanted. For a while, all he could do was cry so I kept repeating, “Tell me what you want.” Finally, the crying subsided somewhat and he pointed in a vague direction. When he’s distressed, even his sense of direction is skewed because he would point to the kitchen when he meant to point to the front door.

I said repeatedly, “Go to the kitchen?” No answer so I started walking to the kitchen. The crying started again, so I quickly walked back and said, “No kitchen! No kitchen!”

When I finally figured out he was pointing to the front door, I said, “Gavin want to go out? Gavin go outside?”

When he nodded, I said, “Okay, we go outside.”

Once he knew he was going out, he gradually calmed down again and that was when I told him, “Gavin when you want something, tell me – use your words. If you want to go out to the garden, you say, ‘Mummy walk walk!’”

Yesterday, he wanted to go out to the garden and I heard him say, “Ah Mi, walk walk!”

I find that giving him words to express things he might want or need is very useful. Although I have to remind him a few times, he learns pretty quickly to tell me or any other member of the family.

Recently, I’ve been attempting to potty train him, so whenever I put on his training pants, I tell him that if he wants to go to the toilet, he should tell me, “Mummy wee wee” or “Mummy mm mm.” We had a hit and a couple of misses, but usually I had to ask him and check whether his pants were wet.

Yesterday, I was upstairs talking on the phone while Gavin was playing downstairs with my SIL2 and the maid. Apparently, he went to the maid and said, “Kakak mm mm.” Then he squatted down and grabbed his diaper. Although he had already pooped in his diaper by the time my SIL2 and the maid attempted to remove his diaper, I thought it was a giant leap forward in terms of his communication.

2. Hold Him

When I can’t figure out what Gavin wants during a distress tantrum, I usually just hold him and let the storm ride its course.

I’ve been trying to tune into his tantrums to distinguish between the distress tantrums from the Little Nero tantrums and I think I’m getting better at picking them. I still find he launches into distress tantrums more than the Little Nero ones at this age.

Reducing Confrontations

After reading so much about attachment parenting (also known as responsive parenting), I’ve been trying to put to practice more of the concepts in my interactions with Gavin.

One of the practices of attachment parenting is to know your child and his hot buttons so that you can minimise the number of occasions that you have to press them – especially when it is completely unnecessary.

There are times when it is completely unavoidable, such as when you have to tell him not to touch the power point for his own safety, but there are plenty of times when you can head off a tantrum before it begins.

For example, bath time is one of my biggest problems with Gavin – especially when it comes to getting him out. When I’m in a rush, I’ll usually skip the bath (if I don’t think he’s that dirty) or give him a wipe down with a wet cloth if I think he really needs it, so I don’t have to cramp his style by demanding that he get out of the bath before he’s ready.

That means that when he does have a bath, I have the time to wait until he’s ready to get out if I can’t convince him to come out through other means. And while I wait, I can do all those things I normally have to rush through, like floss my teeth, moisturise and any of those beauty routines I never have time for otherwise. That way I can also keep an eye on him to make sure he’s okay in the bath.

Know Your Child

Practicing responsive parenting has taught me a lot more about being able to understand Gavin. They say that some parents just instinctively know what their child wants or needs and I used to think that I was totally useless. Now I realise that a lot of that instinct has to do with knowing your child and how he ticks.

Sometime back, my MIL, Gavin and I went to the Parenthood Magazine publishing office to pick up his prize from winning one of the baby contests I entered him into. When we got home, my MIL announced, “Okay, we’re home!” Immediately, Gavin dissolved into tears of frustration.

Alarmed, my MIL exclaimed, “What’s wrong now?”

Instinctively (never thought I would be using this word about my son since I’ve always believed I had zero instincts when it came to understanding children), I knew that Gavin was upset because he thought he was going out to a shopping mall to walk, instead what he got was a quick trip to an office where all we did was pick up a parcel and come back home.

I told my MIL what I thought and she said, “Okay, okay, we go kai kai.”

We took Gavin for a brief shopping excursion to The Alpha Angle and after that he was quite content to come home.

These aren’t exactly an exhaustive list of managing toddlers with tantrums but I found they have significantly reduced the tantrums I have been experiencing with Gavin.

Popularity: 8% [?]

There’s a stomach flu bug going around and it struck me again, although I think I had a milder reaction to it this time.  Although I felt really crook, I didn’t have any fever (despite the fact that the doctor registered a mild elevation in body temperature).  I had a headache and muscular aches all over again - symptomatic of viral infections, meaning no antibiotics required, and I felt general malaise (that-out-of-sorts feeling you get when you’re getting ill) and fatigue.  I had stomach upset and a lack of appetite, an increased need to defecate, although no diarrhoea, and I was nauseous.

As usual, I was reluctant to go to the doctor because I knew what was wrong, what diagnosis the doctor would pronounce and what treatment he would recommend.  My MIL was concerned, so I agreed in the end to go.  Also because hubby and MIL have been wondering if I’m pregnant since my symptoms seem so mild so I wanted to get that score settled once and for all. It took me nearly an hour to see the doctor - this is exactly why I don’t like to see doctors when it feels so unnecessary.  I already feel crummy, all I want to do is sleep and I have to sit in a waiting room with sick people to see a doctor who’s going to tell me what I already know.

Well, I know better next time.  My poor MIL was forced to entertain Gavin for that entire hour while I waited so it can’t have been much fun for her either.

The doctor’s diagnosis? A viral infection originating from the stomach - apparently seems there’s a lot of this going around lately.  No kidding.  I just had it about two or three weeks ago.  He did ask about my period but since I only had it about a couple of weeks ago, he immediately ruled out a possible pregnancy.  It’s definitely way too early for any pregnancy symptoms to show.

The treatment? Stay away from oily and spicy foods.  Milk is still okay, unless I start getting diarrhoea.  100Plus or Excel will be good for the nausea (something I usually drink when I’m dehydrated, feeling nauseous or when I’ve had diarrhoea because it replaces lost electrolytes and because my body seems to naturally crave for it).  Paracetamol for the fever and aches, some anti-nausea pills and anti-diarrhoea pills (which I think were of a similar nature to lomotil).

Well, I could have told myself that…

Anyway, the thing that I’ve been wondering is whether Gavin’s been having the bug, too, and feeling crabby because of it?  It might also explain his two episodes of vomiting recently.  Although I know that crying hard can cause babies to throw up but I always thought that was only with really young babies - don’t quote me on this, I haven’t researched it. 

While it is still possible that he threw up because he was upset, I did notice that on the first night he was nursing quietly for a while and then suddenly, it was as if something upset him and he sat bolt upright and starting howling until he threw up (despite all my best efforts to pacify him).

Regardless, I have found a way around the night-time crying before bedtime (or at least minimising it).  I’ve discovered it isn’t so much to do with whether he had one nap or two naps during the day (although, clearly, having that morning nap does improve his disposition somewhat).  It’s got to do with how I put him to sleep.

Sometime back when I had the first episode of the stomach flu, I was so achy, I just couldn’t bear the thought of rocking him and carrying him up and down the room for half an hour to an hour.  Praying that Gavin would be kind to a sick Mummy, I just popped him on my breast and lay down beside him to sleep.  Although I had to go through a routine of switching breasts everytime he came off before he had fallen asleep, I found it infinitely better than having to rock him.  The great thing was that Gavin eventually fell asleep (and so did I).

It worked so well, that even after I got better, I decided to continue this method of putting Gavin to bed.  And it continued to work, at least, up until the day he threw up.  After he threw up the second night, I decided to switch his naptime routine back to its original timing - morning nap when he started to get tired, and an afternoon nap if I could get him to sleep.  That night, I started his bedtime routine by nursing him.  It seemed like he was almost about to fall asleep, then suddenly, as if someone pressed a magic button, he was up and about and ready to explore again. 

Without missing a beat, I scooped him up and started to rock him as I paced around the room.  Clearly he was tired because I noticed his head dropping onto my shoulder shortly after I started pacing.  When he was almost asleep, I brought him back to the bed and nursed him to sleep again.

Although it’s more tedious this way, and definitely more exhausting for me, I feel better about it because it stems off the crying.  Indeed, when I reviewed The Science of Parenting, Sunderland writes that “if your under-five child is hyperaroused and out-of-control, pick her up and hold her.  With high levels of physical arousal, she won’t be able to focus on what you are saying, however simply it is expressed”.  When you hold your child, make sure you’re calm, not angry.  Your child needs to feel that you are in control because their out-of-control state can be very terrifying for them.  It helps them to know that there is some big and calm who can help them manage their intense emotions.

I’ve been reading one of the parenting forums about toddlers and sleep and it seems parents feel pressured to get their toddler to sleep in their own room after the age of one.  They do so even if it means crying spells and vomiting, although the latter seems to cause a certain amount of distress to some parents.  Somehow they can take the crying, but they can’t take the vomiting.  What I found particularly alarming is when parents write that they feel their child is vomiting on purpose.  I mean, we’re talking about a child under two, who is in a hysterical state - the child is highly unlikely to be in any frame of mind to manipulate his parents into feeling guilt by forcing himself to vomit.

Even adults have difficulty thinking straight when they’re upset.  Imagine how much more difficult it would be for a toddler…

While we’re on the topic of manipulation, yes, I don’t doubt that children are often testing the boundaries with their parents and seeing how far they can push them to get a reaction.  They are learning how to push our buttons through observation and they also quickly discern who the weakest link is.  At the same time, you can also learn a lot about your child as you watch him grow.

For instance, when Gavin throws a fake cry, I know instantly it isn’t real.  He makes a few coughing sounds that appears as if he’s trying to cry but not succeeding.  It’s also easy to get him to forget about his pretend state by engaging him in other activities.  Whereas when he’s really upset, it’s almost as if nothing you say appears to penetrate the howls.  It takes time to calm him down.

I guess that’s the challenge of being a parent - being able to distinguish when your child is playing up and when they’re crying for you to save them from their emotions.  As your child grows older and becomes more adept, it gets harder, but at this age (Gavin’s age now), I think it’s still quite straightforward.

Popularity: 14% [?]

When I told a friend that I had decided that I was going to avoid using smacking as a form of discipline, she gave me the following advice:

She thought I should avoid the pitfall of becoming a textbook Mum and follow my own instincts, citing her case study of her friend, because she felt that smacking was an essential tool to discipline. According to her, her friend’s parents were paediatricians who took the textbook route to looking after her friend when she was a baby and never once smacked her friend while she was growing up. Her friend eventually grew up to be as messed-up a person as there ever could be. When her friend’s parents raised her friend’s sister, they decided to use their own instincts instead and her friend’s sister turned out to be well-balanced and as normal a person as there ever could be.

Naturally, I scoffed at her.  Firstly, there are many textbooks and many different parenting philosophies around. Since she’s talking about her friend who would be about my age, I would say that the textbook philosophies that her friend’s parents followed date back to my parents era and is most likely obsolete by now or at least superceded by new philosophies based on longer term studies and a better understanding of the brain. Secondly, I doubt she has ever read any books on parenting herself since she’s not even a mother, so I think it is a little rich to be criticising something you don’t really understand and stereotyping it as a whole that they are all one and the same.

I, too, have had my share of misconceived ideas on how a child should be raised and I, too, once thought smacking was okay, but that was before I became a mother and started educating myself in the various philosophies of parenting.  I believe that until you become a mother yourself, you will never really know what you will do or which method works best for you.  Though I read books about parenting and follow their advice for guidance, the manner in which I raise Gavin is still the sum of that which I have read and my instincts on how best to apply what I’ve read to the real life situation. 

Although there is a belief that the way we parent our children will largely be derived from the way we were raised as children, I think my last post on the topic says enough of what I thought of my parents’ parenting methods.  I don’t believe that we should follow tradition or the methods our parents employed just because they are supposedly more experienced than we are having raised x number of children who have turned out the way we have and since there is nothing overtly wrong with her, it therefore proves that their methods are the best way to raise a child.  Given the fact that we have access to far more parenting resources than our parents ever did, we owe it to our children to examine those resources and choose the methods of parenting that make the most sense to us.

While some parents may have philosophies that differ from mine, and even if some of those philosophies alarm me because of the harm I believe they can cause to a child, I don’t believe that any parent in their right mind would do anything to deliberately harm their own child.  If such methods are employed, I believe they are done so because of a lack of awareness of the potential damage they can inflict upon that child.  All I can hope is that their children are sufficiently robust on an emotional level not to be affected by CIO or that their parents wisen up to the inadequacies of such parenting methods.

Popularity: 16% [?]

Whenever I hear about “CIO” (cry-it-out) and mothers using this method to train their babies to sleep on their own, I often get alarmed.  Even though these mothers may be able to boast children that appear to be better behaved and more “independent”, I fear the CIO method of rearing a child can be so emotionally scarring that the effects of it will last even as your child enters adulthood.  That is because CIO teaches a child that when they cry (when they hurt, when they need help), no one will respond to them.  This then translates to a lack of trust or willingness to open up to others because they have learned from an early age that the world cannot be depended upon and everything must be dealt with on their own. 

Why do I feel so strongly about CIO?  Because I was a CIO baby.  I was weaned from birth and spent a large part of my childhood in the care of people other than my parents.  I was looked after by two different aunts, then I went to a home where I only got to see my parents when they visited me on the weekend.  Although my parents met all of my physical needs growing up - they provided food, shelter, and clothing - I was emotionally dry.  I endured the three worst periods of my life alone when I should have gone to them for support and yet I didn’t because I had never asked for their help with anything that really mattered in my life.  Despite how difficult it had been, I couldn’t bring myself to get help from them.  No doubt I would might made different decisions if I had had their support. 

In every essence, I was extremely obedient all the way through school and into University until I finally plucked up the courage to rebel in my final year (though not without enduring a lot of unnecessary emotional turmoil and anguish).  My aunt even told me once that she used to envy my parents for having such “well-behaved” children and wonder why her children weren’t like us.  That was, until she realised how much both my brother and I had kept to ourselves.

In fact, I can’t even take credit for being a good kid.  I believe I never got into any real trouble because I was lucky to be among the right crowds at school (read: I hung out with the goody-two-shoes-nerds).  I never had to face the peer pressure of doing drugs or alcohol and my few encounters with alcohol abuse were among responsible, trustworthy friends who made sure I got home safely.

I don’t blame my parents for the way I was raised - I put it down to the fact that they didn’t know better.  After all, my mother was from an era where even the doctors were encouraging them to wean their babies.  She was encouraged to let us cry it out so we wouldn’t become spoilt.  I was cared for by other people because my mother had to work and couldn’t manage both my brother and me.  I know they regret the parenting decisions they made - there were a few times when my Dad tried to apologise for sending me to that home.  In fact, becoming a parent myself, has been quite therapeutic in its own way because I have learned to put the past behind me and strengthened the relationship I have with my parents.

The one good thing that came out of my childhood was that it made me more determined to get it right with my children.  When I was a teenager, I promised myself that unless I could devote the time necessary to ensure I could be the best mother possible, I would not have children.  This promise is the only thing keeping me from taking up job offers from the headhunters that call me, because I won’t deny that the ambitious part of me would love to take on a regional role and be a corporate high flier.

I know my story is just a study of one - but it is the personal factor that has strongly motivated me to look further into the parenting philosophies available and pick the one that made the most sense to me.  It was Sears, with his years of experience in paediatrics, sharing the experiences of his patients’ parents, learning from them and his own personal experience of having eight children, who seemed to me to be one of the more credible personalities to be handing out parenting advice.  And it is Sears’ view of differing parenting methodologies that explained best my childhood experience and how it affected my later life as an adult.

Though it may be quite draining sometimes to have to handle Gavin all the time on the days where he only wants me, I think it’s worth it.  What’s a few years of his life taken to set up the foundation for a bond in our relationship that will last a lifetime?

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At 1 year and 2 months, Gavin has developed a renewed fondness for Mummy and an apprehensiveness of anyone else that has led a number of comments.  From the tone of their voices, I can pretty much guess that they don’t think this is very healthy, especially when the children of people they know don’t seem to exhibit such clinginess. 

Since I’m one of the few they know who has continued nursing my son past one year, they believe that Gavin’s clinginess is due, in part, to the breastfeeding and possibly because Gavin spends too much time around me.  Perhaps this is the reason why they keep hinting that I should wean him.  I’ve also had some suggestions that I should pan off some responsibility of looking after Gavin to others so that he can get used to being in the company of others.

The question that pops in my mind is: “Why are they so eager for my baby to become independent before he’s even learned how to walk properly?”  Firstly, there’s nothing wrong with extended breastfeeding, in fact it’s beneficial!  Secondly, there’s also nothing wrong with a little bit of clinginess considering Gavin is only just over a year old!  Childhood recapitulates evolution and a healthy instinct is to cling to Mummy because she represents safety from predators.  Our babies don’t know that we have evolved such that predators are no longer other animals that want to eat them, but they are other things that could harm them, like cars.

I really don’t understand this concept of training a baby to be independent because it doesn’t make sense to me.  A baby is born dependent and relies on Mum and Dad to take care of his needs (both physical and emotional) until such time that he is able to fulfil those needs on his own.  The relationship babies have with their Mums and Dads in these early years form the foundation upon which they will base their future relationships.  If parents try too hard to force their babies into a premature independence, they are likely to raise children who become adults that are unable to form close relationships with others. 

In fact, according to Dr Sears, we shouldn’t be trying to teach our children independence.  We should be teaching them about interdependence.  There is a fine balance between dependence and independence and a healthy person should be somewhere in the middle.  Our children need to learn to do things on their own - true - but they also need to know how to turn back and ask for help when life gets tough.  Forcing them prematurely into independence teaches them that they can’t trust anyone and they won’t know how to come back to Mum and Dad for help when they really need it.  I think that old proverb, “No man is an island”, says it best.

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