This day I love.......: parenting

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My youngest daughter found a teddy at the back of my wardrobe. It was a black elephant. This raised a lot of questions from her about why I had this teddy. My Grandad won it for me at a school fayre when I was very little, around 6 I think. Seeing the elephant made me remember that night, having pie and peas and then him winning it for me.

Some of the items from the girls childhood I have also kept. They each have a special memory box where we keep things. Things they have won or created. The one thing we have a lot of, and I am not complaining, is artwork. The girls seem to create lots and come home with many from school. I came across a great way to preserve your kids’ childhoods from a fairly unlikely source, Geoffrey Ricardo, an Australian artist He came up with a charming way of printing the image of a soft toy onto craft paper. Click here to see how he does it.

As you can tell from my other posts on parenting, my blog is a way of capturing my precious moments as Mummy to my girls. I love to capture their moments not only online but off screen too. They capture their memories by drawing and my eldest writes stories. Thanks to the Internet, there’s now a cool way to preserve these masterpieces indefinitely. Etsy user Formiadesign runs a business where you can have your child’s drawings made into key rings. Although a bit pricey, they’ll be worth decades of smiles, and more unique than a lot of other mementos.

With the blog I also take lots of photos of the girls and whilst I store them to look at on the computer, nothing quite beats holding a photo and looking at it away from the computer screen. Keeping all those photos together and safe can sometimes be difficult, but there are some lovely handmade photo albums to be found online. When you have one of these, your irreplaceable pictures will be stored in a unique and aesthetically beautiful way.

As my children grow up I seem to find myself looking more at the things in the memory box and reading more posts on the blog. Trying to remember all those little things. I cannot believe we will soon be welcoming another addition to our family and creating even more precious moments.

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Becoming a parent is hard work. Kids don't come with a manual and as a parent we come with no training only drawing upon our own experiences. My husband and my parenting styles differ and we do disagree on several points with our children, although our goal is the same our path to achieve it varies.

Parenting becomes a balancing act and I often wonder if we are doing the best. I don't think I am alone and think that most parents at some point feel like 'a bad parent' or the 'worst parent in the world'. I do sometimes think we shout too much as parents, and worry about the judgement from others particularly when we are out and about.

Most parents will know the situation all too well, everything can be going perfectly fine and then you turn your back for a split second and this happens

The pressure we feel as parents to be able to work and look after the children is also immense. Financial needs means we often work longer hours and as a result the 'electronic babysitter' appears, just so we can finish off this last little bit, I hate doing this but feel I have no other choice.

We worry about everything, are they watching too much TV?

Are they not getting enough exercise?

How do I handle the 'Can I have a horse/dog/cat/plane/boat/shoes ?' question without it turning into a full melt down?

Are they eating enough? Eating too much? Eating the right things or the wrong things?

Then comes the next stages in their development. Which you no doubt compare to all your friends babies. You start to feel inadequate because baby A walked at 9 months, baby B at 10, and yours hasn't started crawling yet. Then comes potty training, baby A took 1 day, baby B took 2 weeks and yours just wants to stand in it

Don't even get me started on sleep training. Baby A slept though from 2 weeks, and Baby B slept through at 6 months and yours at 4 years old is still getting up several times and won't fall asleep until 10pm. You get offered the usual advise and just nod your head in a sleep deprived state, before the whole stressful night time routine comes around all too quick

As children become older they start to develop the selective deafness, 'Don't jump in that puddle' which they promptly ignore and jump in. The whole atmosphere changes and often tantrums erupt or tempers fray. How do you stop this? Keep children calm, open to listen and diffuse a toddler tantrum?

Should you reward the good behaviour and punish the bad? Let children help with what you are doing? Ignore the bad behaviour and reinforce the good? There are so many options available as parents.

I don't think any parent wants their children to loose that spark of imagination and for them to grow up too quickly, but likewise we want them to be well behaved and well mannered. It is this fine balancing act I think most parents struggle with.

How then can we ensure we remain good parents whilst looking after our little Prince and Princess?

Kids don't come with a manual that is for certain but there are certainly many out there to help. One which seems to understand all of the above and a lot more is the rather cleverly named 'Kids Don't come with a manual' by Carole and Nadim Saad.

Kids don't come with a manual takes a fresh approach to parenting, giving an eye opening account of a particular situation from a child's perspective. Each situation is then followed by the point of view from two parents, one with an empathetic parenting style and the other more strict. Finally this is followed by a real life example.

This helpful guide gives us parents options without being told what to do. Real life examples help to illustrate the point and the different parenting perspectives allows you to see things clearly from another point of view. In most instances there are a number of different options so you can choose what is most suitable for you and your parenting style. The key things I like are the age appropriateness of the solutions and the time needed to solve the situation.

Kids don't come with a manual is a helpful book which you can dip in and out of to find a solution to a particular problem. Kids don't come with a manual has a common goal with my parenting aims and that is to have happy, healthy and well behaved children

I was sent the book Kids Don't come with a manual in exchange for a post.

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