Suggestions for computer using children

I recently re-encountered this post that I made on a homeschooling mailing list (November 14, 2010)

I'm a gamer. My gaming was pretty self moderated as a kid and it worked fairly well for me, but I'm naturally pretty motivated. I consider myself a digital native. We got our first computer back in 1978. The first word my younger brother learned how to spell at age 2 was "Run; R, U, N, enter!".

As I remember it, when I was about 7 I decided that the computer was taking up too much time so I took a year off. I don't remember being encouraged to do this by anyone, or even discussing it with anyone either.

I think it's really important for parents to give kids other options. As a kid I was quite isolated ("gifted", poor social skills etc.) which meant that for a lot of the time I had a social group of 2; me and my younger brother. We lived close to a park so I did a lot of tree climbing and things. We had a lot of books, both fiction and reference and I will forever thank my Mum for answering questions with a chipper "I don't know! Look it up and tell me about it!"

Growing up I remember spending a LOT of time bored. "Muuuuuum, I'm booored. What can I do?".... "Well if you have nothing to do you could clean your room?...." is NOT the answer I needed to hear. I think that kids don't always know the scope of their options unless they have been exposed to a lot of ideas. My brother and I wrote stories, made music, drew pictures, performed plays etc, but in my opinion, my brother would never have come into his own as a social being had my uncle not introduced us to dice-based role-playing games.

Not interfering in your child's learning process is one thing, but I agree that offering other things to do is a great plan. I look at it like food - fatty food is not evil, but it does taste good and is habit forming. If you don't give your kids the option of eating fruit and other healthy snacks then they will fall back on the nommy stuff. This can displace important nutrients. If you don't overtly offer kids enriching opportunities they are unlikely to find them for themselves if they are distracted by time sinks like video gaming. This can impact on a child developing social/interpersonal skills, gross motor skills, spacial awareness and other such things.

Humans are made to move.

Sensationalist rubbish taken with a grain of salt; if you are sitting around rather than climbing trees, mucking about with friends, building huts, kneading bread, riding bikes, threading beads, walking the dog or kicking a ball then you are at higher risk of all the illnesses of a solitary, sedentary lifestyle.

Trust yourself. Think about things that you "have a problem with" and if you think it's important, let kids know. Parents are there to guide and influence their kids as a more knowledgeable other, just don't expect their decisions to be based on anything other than their own experiences.

My feeling on this sort of thing is that it's important to be honest and up-front about your feelings, otherwise you end up with your family members getting the impression that you disapprove of something but no actual idea of what that thing is and they have to fill in the blanks themselves.

Hypothetical example: Shared computer, and Dad is miffed that daughter is spending so much time on computer because he wants to wind down (browse TradeMe and check emails). Dad grumbles around the house. Daughter senses it's her fault and assumes that Dad doesn't like her using Facebook. Knowing Dad likes building things, she decides to log off Facebook and look up how to make a bird-house instead. Dad is still grumpy and daughter feels put out. No solution in sight. If you are clear about your needs everyone can work together to find solutions.

Seems I have rambled enough. Hope that was a helpful perspective :)

Letting Children Choose

It's something that I've heard time and time again:

How do you find the balance?

It seems that parents who are raising children in a more child-centred model come under fire from their critics for "letting their children run wild". I have heard Unschooling described as parent educators "letting the children do what they want". I agree with them that if this is actually the case then they are doomed to failure. So should children be allowed their own self-definition?

I would say yes, but my opinions may be tempered by my habit of listening to thinkers like Alfie Kohn and what he says on the trouble with pure freedom but we have to remember that our children look to the people around them for guidance, and parents are their first template for what is, and is NOT, socially acceptable.

For me to be a really effective parent, I must identify what my values and goals are for my kids. Even if we are doing things in a child centred/initiated way my partner and I still influence what our children get exposed to, and how they understand what they interact with.

One of my dearest hopes for my children is that they be able to meet their needs in the modern world, so I give them access to Information Technology. I know that, like lollies and fatty or salty foods, kids can find playing games difficult to moderate, because they meet so many of our instinctive needs - for challenge, stimulation, seeking, matching, self-efficacy etc. We value our kids having skill-sets like typing and using a mouse, using a search engine, or writing emails, but not at the exclusion of outdoor activity, creativity and having real social and multi-sensory experiences.

We value learning so we have guidelines like "it's okay to watch something on the computer when the weather is horrible, but it's better if it's something that we are learning from". Like "sometimes foods" it's okay to play games now and then but it becomes problematic if it stops you from making friends, contributing to the household (personally hate the word "chores) or engaging in real world experiences.

If what your children are getting into is undermining things that you have as core values to your family, then it's a good time for the parents to intervene - it's either that, or re-assess what you value and why. You can have a talk with your kids and figure out what they are getting out of their interests or activities. You may be able to suggest, or get them to come up with, different things that fill the same function for them. It's only by having open lines of communication and trust that parents can know when to let go, and let the children do what they want, and when they still need to have a guiding hand in their children's lives.

Good Guys vs. Bad Guys

This evening my oldest was watching an episode of Thomas the Tank Engine where Thomas meets another engine who is "even more fun" than him. The rest of the episode shows him trying desperately to prove himself. It reminds me how much the labels that are put on people affect their self-image.

When I was a kid I liked singing and playing musical instruments, which meant I earned the label "the musical one". My brother liked music too (still does) but having a go at it for fun was sort of like treading in someone else's patch, so it took till he was an adult for him to finally get around to really making his own music. Faber and Mazlish describe this sort of thing in the book Siblings Without Rivalry. Labels have a painful level of permanence to them. Once a child is the "bad kid", "weird kid" or "loud kid" they have an image to live up to (or down to). They know that others have an opinion of them and they may even gain a level of power from their infamy. Bart Simpson would never see the point to trading in his image for his mother's respect.

It's not just negative labels. Once a kid is the "smart kid" they get a lot of status from that. It seems that they tend to become less likely to put themselves in the position of losing that esteem. Kids who are labelled "smart" or "intelligent" like to keep doing stuff that they know are good at so they can convince others (and themselves) that they are worthy. They are less likely to try new things or persist at things that are challenging because it puts them, and their self-image, at risk.

Carol Dweck talks about this in her book Mindset: The new psychology of Success (which I have reviewed). She calls this kind of thinking the "Fixed Mindset". The cure to this sort of thinking, she proposes, is to use a "Growth Mindset". The plan is to cultivate a way of thinking that acknowledges that, all things are perpetually changing, everything you try is only a reflection of where you are at now, and that even if you have a wonderful success today you don't stay capable unless you keep working at it. As a parent, how do I convince my children that this is the case?

"He's a good guy... he's a bad guy... Oh no! Run away! I'm going to get you!"

I roll my eyes. Where did my three-year-old son get THAT from? Well okay, my son doesn't live in a bubble. He has influences other than his parents and that's awesome and the way it should be. We have tried to avoid them, but these labels are useful to him. They help him have some power in his world. They help him make sense of things. There is something comfortable in a good old fashioned battle of good versus evil.

I told my son that I don't really believe there are "good guys" and "bad guys", just good decisions and bad decisions. He told me in no uncertain terms that he didn't care what I thought because he was busy playing his game. I would never have butted-into his game to tell him that dragons don't really exist, or sharks can't swim out of water, or birds don't fly upside down... so I don't know why I thought it was important to tell him that his use of labels was imprecise.

At one point in my parenting journey I fancied that I could shelter my children from the idea of pigeon-holing people, but my kids can't see the difference between calling a triangle "red" and calling a person "bad". How could I possibly avoid the tools of our culture? All our stories, literature, media and language are peppered with "good guys" and "bad guys", "evil dragons", "naughty boys", "greedy emperors", "lazy rabbits" and "steady tortoises". My boy likes to watch his father play video games, and we have been careful with the language we use. Daddy doesn't go up against the "bad guys", he competes against "opponents", "adversaries", "the other team", "the [red/green/blue] ones". Only recently has my boy's play started to incorporate battling "good guys" and "bad guys".

I have just started reading a book by Gerard Jones called Killing Monsters: Why children need fantasy, super heroes, and make-believe violence and right near the start of the book he brings up a point that helped me understand a lot more about outside influences on our children. Basically paraphrased, he says that many parents blame the influence of comics, TV, music, video games, peers etc. for adversely affecting their children. He points out that to do so denies that the child is an active participant in the meaning-making in their world, and that they had a need or appetite for that stimulation in the first place. Right now my child needs labels as tools to simplify his world and to play with ideas of moral value. His view is simplistic. All labels are a simplistic interpretation; one viewpoint of what is real. For me to expect for him to comprehend the world in adult levels of complexity at the age of three, would be like asking a beginning artist to draw a photo-realistic picture from the get-go.

So I honour his needs, but I don't have to use these labels myself. I shy from describing my kids as "clever", "cheeky", "monsters", "good", "naughty", "wilful", "a handful", "little [expletive deleted]"; my focus is instead on describing the action, rather than the person. If my son pulls the cat's tail that was "an unkind thing to do" not "a mean boy". If my son collects the dishes and takes them to the kitchen that was "a helpful thing to do" not "a wonderful boy". Things that we do are done and gone and could be different next time around, but the things that we are are a different matter.

The language we use lets kids know what we think of them, and what we value, but hang on - what happens when a child doesn't agree with our assessment or observation? What happens when we start praising a child for painting a beautiful picture when the she thinks it's ugly? Over time children learn whether or not a person's opinion is worthwhile, which is why I think it's really important for me to be compassionate but above all honest with my children. They are not always successful, socially appropriate, or considerate of others. I'll tend to focus on the positive observations and offer strategies for my children to take realistic next steps, but I'm not going to tell them that I think something is awesome, when it's not. If I only label or judge my child's actions, at least I only run the risk of being at odds with his assessment of how he has acted, rather than who he is as a person.

As time goes on I am learning how my kids react to my judgements, and I attempt to only offer my opinions when they are asked for or needed, which involves a heck of a lot of self-discipline for me, with my tendency to be opinionated!! If my son wants to know what I like about something I will tell him about the best bits, but if he is just asking me to look at his efforts I will just look. I may let him know I am interested and ask him to tell me what HE thinks about it, what he likes, what he doesn't like, and what he might change if he did it next time. This approach validates his efforts, gets him used to self assessment, and encourages him to think of it as one step along a learning journey (and it's probably one of the most practical tools I have got from reading the works of Alfie Kohn, who sometimes seems to fall so in love with ideas that he forgets the practicalities).

I'll probably be able to share my ideas about this sort of thing with my kids when they are a bit older. They will be able to decide for themselves if it's important to them then, but for now moral labels are just another descriptive tool, like size or colour. My children are young and impressionable but they are capable people, so I have confidence that by listening to them, and being there for them, they will keep me close enough to help them make sense of their world and overcome the labels, preconceptions and pigeon-holes they find themselves bumbling into.

Stop Picking on my Baby

"Ewww! You smell gross! Stop doing such yucky, stinky poos!!"

Today I asked someone to stop picking on my child. "How would you feel if you were sneered at and hassled because you had done a poo in your clothes, and you couldn't help it?"

Somewhere along the way people seem to have forgotten that when they are talking to a pre-verbal child, they are talking to a person. My 16-month-old child is not oblivious to derision. He understands when someone wrinkles up their nose in sneers of disgust, and he is powerless to do anything about it. But I'm not.

If there's one thing that has influenced my choice of preferred authors on parenting, it's my preconception that babies are people too. Authors such as Barbara Coloroso, Louise Porter, Alfie Kohn, Thomas Gordon... they are all quick to point out that relationships we form with our children are the real persuasive power that we have in their lives. They want to do as those around them do, and the only way they are going to learn how to treat others is by our example.

I once heard, anecdotally, that Japanese parents treat their baby as though they are a guest. Whether this is true or not is neither here nor there, but I liked the idea. A guest is assumed to be ignorant of local custom, is provided for, and is gently instructed how best to get on with others. They are treated with respect. Somewhere along the way someone forgot to pass this memo on to parents who talk over their children's heads, or say mean things to their little ones assuming that the child doesn't know what it means. Just because your baby can't speak doesn't mean they can't comprehend what you are saying, or what your body language is conveying.

Okay, so nobody is going to say it's bad parenting to pick up a child and say "you smell bad, darling... time for a change"... then again, if they are anti-nappies/diapers they might, but I digress... my point is that some parents and family members are not sharing a joke with their kids, they are making a joke at the child's expense. They seem to have forgotten one of the cardinal rules of play;

"It's not a good game unless everyone is enjoying it."

We teach this to 4-year-olds but somewhere along the way some people fail to engage empathy when dealing with kids. They lie to children to play tricks on them, they mock them in front of others, they laugh at them for not knowing or not being able to do things that they have no experience at. In schools this is called bullying, but it's the normal way to parent in many families.

A boy I once knew, aged about 7, was brought by his father to meet up with some people. They were all going to have PIZZA! He was overjoyed at being invited along to such a special dinner, and with his father's friends too! He walked in the door and was told "Sorry. You have to go home. You are too late. We already had the pizza without you." I remember the look of shock, disappointment, confusion and hurt in a child's face when others said "no no no....". He was feeling completely lost in an adult social situation with grown ups laughing at him ("you should have seen his face!! *haw haw haw*).

I have been criticised for being thin skinned. I don't like to use sarcasm or mean humour because I find it distasteful. I know that some parents jibe their children because they see it as important life learning. They think it is important for children to learn that this sort of thing is inconsequential. Learn to get over yourself. Man up. I'm okay with parents making decisions like this consciously, but in my perfect world, carers for our next generation ought to be reflective and thoughtful about the decisions they make, and too many people bully their kids not because they are making a mindful choice, but because they can, and it makes them feel powerful.

For now, the goal that I have decided on is that I will be truthful with my children. I will be kind and empathic with my children. I will be reliable and I will be fair and I will not beat them down with words. I will not always succeed in this. Everyone gets tired, or angry, or exasperated at times, but our aspirations are what keeps us improving, and in those quiet moments? My children are not "icky"... they just need my care.

The Dinosaur in my Kitchen

One of my memories from my mother’s photo album was of my Mum at about my age carrying my little brother in a back pack. I never thought this was weird but my mother tells me that she never actually owned a pram. The majority of mothers in New Zealand in the 1970s were told by their health experts to put the baby in a pram and leave it outside in the sun and fresh air for their morning nap. Oh, how times have changed. Here we have very little ozone layer so we have very harsh UV. My midwife even suggested that I not take my baby outside for photo-therapy when he had jaundice, because sunburn was a much higher risk.

When my boy was still in utero we had many care packages and hand-me-downs from family. I guess it helped that my husband was the first of his generation in his family, and that his family is quite young, because we have doting great-grandparents in the mix. My boy is so lucky. One of the things that we were gifted was a baby stroller. When my son was about 6 weeks old, my husband and I clipped him into the stroller and we wandered down to the local café or perhaps the library with my boy in what felt like his own personal SUV. The contraption was so large and he was so small that we had to put a cushion under his bum so he would fit properly into the restraint… in 20/20 hindsight he was probably far to young.

I remember with shame the night that my husband took the boy out for a walk in the stroller to calm his nerves (the boy would normally fall fast asleep in transit) and I welcomed, in from the cold, a frazzled Daddy and a howling baby. My darling son had started crying again about 10 minutes walk from home and was inconsolable, so Daddy had taken him out of the stroller to carry him. Struggling in vain to steer the stroller and carry and soothe the baby all at once, while hurrying desperately home to me, the boy had come unwrapped from his blankets and he had become quite chilly. I felt so sorry for both of them! If only we had known another way.

As a new mother I had never heard of “baby wearing”. When I first heard the term my son was about 5 weeks old. It seemed like really good sense but I had no idea how it was done. There seemed like a lot of things to learn, and gear to make or buy. My Mum was brought up in Fiji and she said that the women there just tie their baby up in a sulu (like a lava-lava from Samoa; the cloth sheet/skirt-like a sarong wrap that both men and women wear in Fiji). I had no idea how to do this. Wearing my boy in a cradled position in an unpadded sling was quite hard on my back and shoulders, and I was recovering from a C-section.

We decided to go to a baby store that specialised in carriers and cloth nappies, and ask the people there what they thought. My husband didn’t like the idea of getting a ring-sling because it didn’t look manly enough for him, so we decided that a meitai asian-style carrier was the way to go, because it was versatile and could be worn easily by different people.

After getting my carrier things got so much easier! I could do hands-free laundry, fix a snack, go to the library, carry my boy with the weight across my back rather than on one shoulder, and possibly most importantly, when my baby wouldn’t settle I could tie him to me and he would be snuggled up to me and asleep in minutes. I started to be able to go out for walks. I was getting fit again after my hell pregnancy, and at the same time I could get out of the house with my husband and we could just have quiet time, away from the TV and computers and house work that we seemed to be inextricable from.

When I think back to our “convenience” device, the stroller, that we found so useful for Christmas shopping in the mall, I think about what was wrong with that picture. I remember spending ages trying to lengthen and shorten straps, I remember parking and waiting with the baby while my husband went into a store that had isles too narrow to navigate with all the Christmas foot traffic, and I remember waiting and waiting for a gap big enough to push the stroller through to get through an electronics store… but these were only my inconveniences. I was continually popping around the front of the stroller to see if my little darling was asleep or awake, and if he was happy, or just annoyed by the seatbelt strapping.

I remember walking to a parenting class on a mild summer day and having to find a “park” in the yard of the health centre, amongst various other buggies, strollers and pram-alikes. Recently my husband and I went to a musical activity hour for babies, to which about 30 other parents showed up, and my husband commented smugly that we no longer have to find a park just to get in the door. Add to the convenience that travelling on the bus is made so much easier when you don’t have to muscle a little old lady out of the front seat so you can park a baby there.

When I am walking with my son I am stopped by smiling grandmothers who all say how “contented” he looks. He grins at them with security from the comfort of Mum’s chest. When it rains I wrap an extra-large, comfy jacket around the both of us and we can brave the elements together, keeping each other warm. Some mothers ask, “Where do I get a carrier like that?”… and I’ve been told that eventually people will ask, “Isn’t he getting a bit heavy for that?” Another mother I have spoken to said her answer to the nay-sayers was: “I will consider stopping carrying my baby when our combined weight gets back to my weight before he was born.” Now, I was overweight before my pregnancy and I was very sick during it so I have lost a LOT of weight. I keep getting fitter and healthier, so at this rate, assuming I stop carrying my boy when I reach my pre-pregnancy weight, I will still be carrying my son when he’s 4!

But what of my parking issues at home? What IS that dinosaur living in my kitchen? The stroller that seemed like such a good idea in the mall at Christmas time is now parked in my kitchen covered in unfolded laundry, like some disused piece of exercise equipment you bought off an infomercial when it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Getting the Guilts

“You can’t be a good mother if you’re not racked with guilt at least half the time…”

When I heard this I realised how far I had come both as a person and as a mother. In my journey to overcome depression I had to do a lot of remodeling inside my head. I had to identify the things that I was saying to myself and the things that others said to me and about me and critically analyse the worth of these thoughts to figure out if they were worthwhile. If it were not for the skills I had developed I might have taken this statement as truth.

The poor mother who blurted this out tries so hard for her little one. He has allergies and can be quite a handful, and she has all the love in the world for him. I think that where a lot of our infant/mother relationship stresses are caused by the fact that we are gentle with our little ones, but we often forget to be gentle with ourselves. If a mother is stressed, it can stress out her kids. Babies can’t tell what “there there, it’s okay…” means, but they know what the tone of voice means and it’s saying “oh no! this is really stressful!”… so is it any wonder that the baby keeps crying?

A group of women share a morning tea together. They are involved in what I think of as “The Baby Competition“. Each mother brags about how far her baby has progressed developmentally, or how much she has grown, or how cute his clothes are, or the new “trick” that she has learned. Each casts her critical eyes on the oblivious youngsters, sizing them up. The mothers’ internal monologue scream their insecurities “Why can’t my baby do that yet? Am I doing something wrong?” It is as though each baby’s stage of development is some sort of yard stick with which to verify parenting success… and why not use such a yard stick? It’s not like we are in a culture that deals with babies and small children all the time. Parents in modern Western society are, for the most part, dealing with alien life forms.

Modern parents are extremely vulnerable. They are burning with the desire to do the best that they can for their children, while being at an information deficit. Most of them didn’t know a fart from a fontanelle before they had their own little bundle of joy. As a result they will believe anything you tell them… anything a friend, family member, health professional, childcare expert, book, magazine or TV advertisement says. Before they know it they are up to their eyeballs in seas of information, mis-information, counter-information and lies… tilling the soil of stress with the seeds of guilt.

As parents we are profoundly affected by what we say to ourselves, and what others say to (or about) us. So how do we gain the confidence to know that the parenting decisions we make are the right ones? In my opinion that is the wrong question to be asking. If we focus so hard on being right to give us confidence we will drive ourselves nuts. There will always be fault to find in some of your decisions with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight and the most we can ever hope for is learning the grace to try our best and weather the consequences. As childcare expert (and Attachment Parenting guru) Dr William Sears says: “Do the best you can with the resources you have – that’s all your child will ever expect of you.”

If we keep striving for (unattainable) perfection it stresses us out and distorts our priorities. Our children learn how to deal with stress from our example… and we don’t really want to be raising a generation of children who, as dinner hosts, are so busy fussing about the entrée being perfect, that they forget to help their guests feel at ease. So what are these “resources” that Sears speaks of? They are things like time, love, skills, things and information. With money stresses these days it is impossible for some parents to spend as much time with their children as they would like. Parents fear that they don’t know enough to stimulate a child academically and so they must relinquish time with their offspring to professional educators. Some parents get lost in the seas of information and expert opinions. Ultimately, I think the important thing is learning that it’s alright to be good enough rather than perfect.

The other day I received a flier from my local supermarket with 4 whole pages of baby care specials. This didn’t seem so odd to me before I had my child but now I realise just how many of these “necessities” are just merchandising traps. I don’t buy any of the things advertised by my local supermarket for my baby! We live in a commoditised world. Every labour saving contraption in the world exists to make our parenting lot easier, but I found that listening to my instincts sent me down another path. So many of these devices caused me more anxiety than joy!

I don’t use pacifiers, bottles, safety cups, disposable nappies, cots, strollers, highchairs, baby wipes, sterilising sprays, or even designer baby gear. My little man is just fine and dandy wearing a cotton singlet on warm days when everyone else’s bubba seems to be double wrapped in designer gear, trying to emulate the latest fashion for 14 year olds. But where do I get the confidence to present my baby to the world, at the ripe old age of 6 months, wearing comfortable clothes rather than disposable nappies and jaunty outfits? I know why.

By that, I mean that instead of taking all the advice of well meaning “experts”, I have done a little research of my own and I have made conscious decisions about how I parent, based on my own feelings, my understanding of my baby’s feelings and some well reasoned research. If I were to listen to the popular media (such as the ABC article I heard on the local news this evening) I would never rock or nurse my son to sleep, never let him sleep in my room and I would learn to let him cry until he gives up and goes to sleep, alone and scared, in his own room. The other day my husband commented: “Things have become so much easier since we started parenting your way rather than listening to what everyone else was telling us.. that was a nightmare!”… and yet he has also been known to ask - “Why do you read all these books that are just telling you to do what you are already doing?” My research has given me the confidence and information to be able to explain myself to those who wish to influence me.

When my health nurse asked me where my baby sleeps I quite proudly explained “in my bed!” and I regaled her with the efforts I have gone to, to make our co-sleeping safer (having a side rail on the bed, having a firm bed, using no pillows for the baby etc.). When the local child health organisation ran talks on “First Foods” for babies I noticed that they were sponsored by a baby food company and the local meat board, so I took the things that were said with a grain of salt (no pun intended) and did my own research on the topic, which confirmed my doubts about a lot of the messages I was given at the talk.

We have to learn to forgive ourselves. We can’t do everything right all the time and we shouldn’t even try. If we try to stop our children from falling they will be perpetually relying on us to stop them from hurting themselves. To quote the film Batman Begins: “And why do we fall, Bruce? So we can learn to pick ourselves up.” We can try our best to make their world a safe place to be, but the inevitable will happen and they will have minds of their own. I’m not blaming myself for my little one’s bangs and scrapes… I’ll just be here to kiss it better when he needs reassurance that it will all be alright, and I will revel in the joy that my young man is becoming an independent person.

Acronymity

I had a really horrible pregnancy. Little did I know that this would be my foray into the world of parenting that would leave me buried in letters!

First came the LMC or Lead Maternity Carer. In my case that was my midwife (if that was her profession) who admitted to me once that she “just didn’t get women because they [had] so many layers”. Then came the HEG or hyperemesis gravidarum.. which is just Latin for “throwing up too much while you’re pregnant” but it makes it sound spectacularly important. Seeing as it left me bed-ridden and unable to hold down any food or water, I guess it was important. Then came UTI or urinary tract infection.. in my case I had two kidney infections, probably because I couldn’t hold down enough liquids. After the worst of the vomiting subsided came the SPD which stood for symphysis pubis disorder which is a loosening of the joints in the pelvis meaning it hurt to stand up or walk.

So I endured the pregnancy in a very inactive way, not able to concentrate on much, so I had done practically no research about birth or motherhood. I was too sick to get to antenatal classes, even if they hadn’t been already full up when I went to enroll. I had no birth plan and my midwife wasn’t terribly supportive. The smell of human breath made me feel ill so I saw very few people during my pregnancy. I even had 2 of my email accounts go void because I couldn’t touch the computer. My husband was at his wits’ end and very lonely because I had become completely dependent. I was nagging and throwing up.. I was.. like a cat! - only less furry and not as much fun!

I was 38 weeks along when I found my next acronym - HELLP or “Hemolysis, Elevated Liver enzyme levels and a Low Platelet count”. Try saying that 3 times fast. They were about to induce me and then it turned out that I had no platelets so if I had bled I wouldn’t have stopped. I got puffy and really sick and went into toxic shock, got the shakes and got carted off for a C-section under general anaesthetic.

My child was born but he wouldn’t latch on to my nipple to breastfeed. It soon became all about the struggle to breastfeed. In washed another pile of letters LC, IBCLC, BM, EBM, FF. Then I joined the LLL (La Leche League) to get some help and support with breastfeeding because I was pumping milk for 6 weeks before I could get Alexander to feed right. I turned to the internet… if there ever was a primordial soup from which life evolved, its parallel is found in this digital soup where acronyms evolve.

Soon I was translating different terms like DS, DD, DH, LO… letters tend to have very sharp corners so you have to be careful using them in every day conversation. They can be kind of hard to palate or use lots of in one mouthful - kind of like those nacho chips with the pointy edges that stab you in the roof of the mouth.

I soon found out that every parenting decision I made for my boy had a “movement” or an acronym. I wanted to sleep with my boy in my bed, or wear him around in a mae-tai carrier, breast feed, and be responsive to my baby’s attempts to communicate his needs to me. From my dawdling around the internet I realised there was a secret code I needed to be using. I was now a CD, BW, CS, EBF, AP SAHM.

LOL.