Helpful little hands

I know that I'm not the only one who gets frustrated about this.

My children, lovely though they are, are content to allow me to wait on them hand and foot.  If I want them to do something, even something which to me is obvious and which I know they are perfectly capable of completing, then I need to specifically ask:
e.g. 
It's dinner time.  They know its dinner time.  We got in from school and, while they dropped their bags in the hall and slumped with their tablets, I got straight on with making the dinner.  Now I have to ask them to please lay the table.  At the end of dinner, they go off immediately and play, or watch TV.  I guess they assume that the fairies will clear the table and carry everything back through to the kitchen.  So I have to ask them to carry some things through.  It always seems to come as a surprise!

Don't get me wrong, they are willing to do it.  It just doesn't occur to them that they should, unless I ask.

I decided that the best way to clarify our expectations of them, was to write them down.  Our children are aged nearly nine, and ten and a half.  Here's what I expect them to do:

I'm printing and laminating this list.  One copy in the kitchen and one in each of their bedrooms.

I'm doing this for two reasons really.  One is that I think children who feel useful are happier.  The other is that I will feel more supported.  And I don't like nagging, so making the expectations clear will hopefully lead to less of that!

How much do your children help out around the house?

The Idle Parent - THE MYTH OF TOYS

I’m writing a series of blog posts exploring the books “How to be Free” and “The Idle Parent” written by Tom Hodgkinson.  I enjoyed a lot of the ideas expressed in these books, and think that exploring them further will help me to explore the principles behind my own way of living and parenting.

Chapter 7 – The Myth of Toys

All toys should be banned.  That's how Tom starts this chapter.  Small plastic pieces that get spread around the house only make more work for us - cleaning them up.  Children don't actually need toys.  They WANT toys, they tell us they NEED toys, but actually, they often have many toys that rarely get played with, and the real fun games where you get joy and laughter are usually the ones involving a few improvised props, rather than proper toys!  Tom also talks about the joys of making toys.  As a parent of a youngster, what could be better than seeing your baby chewing on the sock puppet that you've lovingly made, or as your child gets bigger, you can teach them to sew or do woodwork and make toys together.

We're not talking about rejecting play.  Rejecting bought toys is different.

It doesn't help that kids TV sells stuff.  Commercial TV stations do it in an obvious way, with lots of adverts for plastic toys, but CBeebies does it in a sneaky way, just by selling lots of merchandise branded with Night Garden, or Andy's Wild Adventures, Mr Maker or whatever show your little darling adores.  Avoid advertising, and also, if possible, trips to toy shops!  If you do face a trip into town, and a possibly demanding child, apart from being the demon who just says "no", if you really feel compelled to buy them something, get them sweets.  They'll be just as delighted, but the sweets will be consumed without leaving you with some plastic trash taking up space in your house.

He does concede that a wooden train set is a great toy.  Adults have fun putting it together too, and as the child grows, relatives and friends can be encouraged to add to it for Christmas and birthday gifts, so that it becomes more and more complicated and elaborate, thus keeping it interesting to play with. 

How does this match up to the ink-spots-and-grass-stains life?

I've been sucked into toys gradually.  When C was a baby, nearly all his toys were home made, but as they've got older, and seen other children's toys, it's hard not to.  For a start, they need something for their Birthday and Christmas!  I do try to operate a one-in-one-out system, for example by having a clear out before birthdays and Christmas.  Bug is very reluctant to get rid of anything - I was trying to reduce the number of jigsaw puzzles and that wasn't at all popular.  But most of the toys they have I'm quite happy with.  They have:

• the model railway - not really a toy at all, but a long-term family project
• the wooden railway - see Tom's comments above, a great toy with many hours of pleasure still regularly had.  In the Summer I like to see it winding around the patio.
• Lego - I know, lots of tiny pieces.  I love Lego.  I love building with it, I love seeing Cs creativity and engineering develop as he is beginning to build things which actually look like things, and also his ability (now that I've sorted all the pieces into tupperware boxes based on colour and brick type) to find the pieces he wants and follow instructions.  Bug is still just placing random bricks together and deciding what it is afterwards.
• Wooden castle - we don't have enough medieval folk to live in it yet, and when constructed it takes up a lot of space, so this doesn't get played with all that much, but I think it'll be erected in the garden during the holiday, and we'll add a few more characters too.
• Playmobil - Nearly all our Playmobil has been bought second hand on e-bay or has been gifts.  At the moment the individual components are played with separately, rather than in a big townscape scenario, but I know that these will be played with more as C and Bug grow.  All the stuff is quite BIG, and I've seen from my nephew's bedroom how it can easily mount up and then you don't know where to start, so I'm reluctant to add too much more to the collection, though people and animals from e-bay make great rewards.
• Farm - this tends to need setting up, so hasn't been played with all that much lately, but again, it's something that I can see being laid out and played with a bit more during the holidays.
• Dolls House - I love a dolls house.  This one is well furnished, though I think could do with some interior decor.  C plays with it more than Bug.
• Dressing-up box - you can't go wrong.  This stuff is played with all the time.  I turn around and Bug is dressed in a cloak, a blanket, a cowboy hat and a pair of sunglasses or a mask.  Other role-play items include bags, makeshift tents, chairs being arranged as trains, planes or boats and cushions as beds.
• Kitchens - they both have an array of plates, pans and tea-pots, as well as toy food and real packaging, and at least once a week will bring me a meal they've prepared in their kitchen.
• Dolls, doll clothes, pushchairs, highchairs and cots - They both play with these, but Bug is besotted with her baby (teddy), and will change his clothes and feed him breakfast before she can be persuaded to do anything else in the morning.
• Cars - C has always loved his cars and lorries.  On the rare occasion when he retreats into his bedroom to play on his own, you can guarantee that when you put your head around the door he'll have a story CD on, and be playing with his cars.
• Outdoors - scooters and bikes, a tent, a trolley, a swing
• Other bits and pieces include Mr and Mrs Potato Head, some K'Nex, some Meccano, model animals and dinosaurs, magnadoodles, aquadoodles, fuzzy felt, jigsaw puzzles etc.

Okay, okay, when it comes to toys I guess we don't fit Tom's ideal.  But I'm okay with what we have.  I see it being played with, we don't have TOO much plastic tat, and I'm comfortable that we're not inundated or over indulgent.  I see plenty of creativity and self-directed play.  I rarely get involved in their play, apart from occasionally to set something up to spark their interest or to make a suggestion, "maybe you could use a sheet across the top of your cave, it'll stay in place better than your dressing gown?"

The Idle Parent - THE MORE, THE MERRIER

I’m writing a series of blog posts exploring the books “How to be Free” and “The Idle Parent” written by Tom Hodgkinson.  I enjoyed a lot of the ideas expressed in these books, and think that exploring them further will help me to explore the principles behind my own way of living and parenting.

Chapter 5 – The More, the Merrier

In this chapter Tom talks about how things are much easier when we have company and when children can do things together in larger groups.  It's only in the last few centuries that we've gone down the isolation route, and this has got much worse in the last couple of decades, when we fear for the safety of our children and keep them cooped up safe in their bedrooms with a screen for company. 

How does this match up to the ink-spots-and-grass-stains life?

Again in this chapter I completely agree with Tom.  I know that I am required less than some of my friends, because my two children play happily together.  Even more so when there are more children together, they take themselves off and organise a game of some description and the adults are only required occasionally to mediate some disagreement or tend a grazed knee.

It's good for the adults too to get a chance of some conviviality instead of staring at that pile of ironing or messing around on Facebook, or doing yet another jigsaw puzzle.

In real life though it's not always so easy.  The other mums at pre-school are always keen to arrange a play-date, which is great.  Even better though would be when the children can just run in a pack, pop around to one another's houses (not so easy in rural areas where we are all so widely spread), and go off to play in the meadow together and build dens (until you find that somebody has called in the police because there were children playing in the woods - I kid you not, it's been in the newspaper just this week!).  They are a bit little to be going off without an adult yet, though I'm building up to it... C will happily go down to the end of the road to buy eggs from a neighbour on his own (he's 4 and a half), or he and Bug will go together.  Maybe over the summer we'll build up to going to the cafe around the corner to buy milk (still no roads to cross, but that's on a main road).  I'd like for them both to be confident to go and play with their friends as they get older, with the obvious "stranger danger" talk ringing in their ears, and the "Who are you with? Where are you going? When will you be back?" questions answered.  I just don't know whether other parents would be willing to let their children out to play in the same way anymore?  And if they could fit "playing out" around all the organised dance, swimming, and football classes that seem to be part of life once you start school.

THE IDLE PARENT - THE IMPORTANCE OF NATURE

he hasn't pushed her over, they are taking it in turns to roll down a hill!

I’m writing a series of blog posts exploring the books “How to be Free” and “The Idle Parent” written by Tom Hodgkinson.  I enjoyed a lot of the ideas expressed in these books, and think that exploring them further will help me to explore the principles behind my own way of living and parenting.

Chapter 4 – The Importance of Nature

Nature is a great resource for an idle parent.  In nature the children are learning, they play with few arguments, no whining and plenty of resources to go around, they aren't making a mess indoors which they expect you to clear up, and it's free!  Go to the wildest and most shop-free places that you can find.  The way we have our holidays - near the sea, the woods, the mountains, car and computer free, shows us that we yearn for nature, but we seem to have commodified it into "Holidays" which need to be paid for.  We need to try to get it back into our everyday lives.  Sometimes it takes a bit of effort to break the tether to the screen and get outdoors, but once there, we generally love it.  Tom suggests short trips, days out, freedom.  Camping trips, but not the ones to campsites where everybody spends the evening in their caravan watching TV - ones where a few families go together, and you can sit around the fire and drink coffee or beer while the children play.  At home opt for as much out-doors and as little intervention as possible.  As with low-input gardening, this doesn't mean abandoning the plot to the brambles, you still have to provide quality soil, and pull out the pernicious weeds, and add a bit of water here and there.  So it is with child-rearing, you need to provide the fundamentals, and tend here and there, but where things are doing okay, leave well enough alone.

How does this match up to the ink-spots-and-grass-stains life?

I completely agree with Tom on this one.  Just this afternoon the children were bouncing around the sitting room, so I asked, "What are your plans for this afternoon, you two?" No response.  "Are you going to play outside?"  They've been out for over an hour now, in the drizzle.  I'm not sure what they're playing, but there's a house in the bush down the side of the house, there's a pop-up tent up in the garage, I've seen a rugby ball with a three-year-old attached... Hubby is pottering around getting the caravan ready for next week's holiday and I'm up here writing.  Very easy parenting!

Next week we're off to Arisaig on the west coast of Scotland.  Yes, its a commercial campsite, but it's about as wild as you can get.  Even if fire's aren't allowed on the site (I think they might be), they are allowed on the beach which surrounds the site.  There's a small play area I think, but mostly there's a beach, and rocks, and the sea, and otters, and eagles, porpoise, sheep...