This is the way we raise our kids...

As a parent, you need information but you don't want to be bombarded. The solution is to understand the concept, then pick out the bits that are appropriate to you and your family's circumstances.

This month is the turn of Goldie Hawn to tell us all how to do it, and she has managed to get an audience with Michael Gobe to enhance her credibility, so maybe in a few years my teacher friends will be moaning about having to teach meditation to kids who spend most of their time gazing out of the window anyway.

My problem with "This is the way you should do it" books is that they are usually written after having success with one family - usually their own - or maybe just one child in that family. even the Tiger Mum, Amy Chua, had to backtrack when her second daughter rebelled against being told her drawings were rubbish and Ms Chua had to modify her methods, which to me flawed the whole concept.

I had decided to follow traditional methods soon after we brought our first baby home from hospital. Instead of carrying her around the house, introducing her to each room and whispering to her what it was, as per the book I'd read before she was born, I slumped on the sofa and cried for tea and lots of it.

My own theories bout child-rearing are that kids should be outside with their mates as much as possible having a good time, without computers, televisions or having to think, "My mum's gonna kill me if I get my trainers dirty." When they come home, they eat piles of whatever slop I've put in front of them and sleep like logs: most problems solved.

Goldie Hawn is very welcome to come to my house and teach my children how to meditate mindfully, but she has to agree to do it whilst cooking spag bol for tea amongst piles of washing, with a pipe leaking over the carpet and a potty-training baby weeing freely into her wellies.



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Living the rural dream? Get a life...

I seem to be reading more and more about living the rural dream - people who apparently exist like manic fools in the city suddenly thinking everything will be different if they have a werp living a field away from them. They suddenly think that they will start talking to their neighbours if they move - be it to Spain or to a quaint Cornish fishing village.

Can I just mention a few things:
1. you don't need to live in rural Spain to shop every day with a basket and buy fruit.
2. You can wear a thick jumper anywhere you like.
3. Lots of urban people talk to their neighbours, lots of people in the countryside think their neighbours are tossers.
4. If you spend your time watching East Enders whilst living in the city rather than going for walks, it's likely that you might after a few weeks in the countryside too.
5. chopping logs hurts your hands and risks you taking a toe off.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/mar/04/country-living-is-better


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International Woman's Day

Today is International Women's Day and being a woman, I am delighted that we are celebrating. To me, it should be about enjoying the fact that we women are great, and doing things that highlight achievements, empowering and helping women to have all the rights they should be having around the world to allow theme to reach their potential.

I therefore was very sad to see that our local International WOmen's Day celebrations were named "overcoming domestic abuse". Now I know that domestic abuse is very real and a huge problem for those that suffer from it, and I think that the women (and men, as men sufer from it to, albeit in smaller numbers) should be offered loads and loads more support to help it stop, and for the women to be able to extricate themselves and start to rebuild their lives. BUT I don't think it should be the main focus for IWD; I don't think it's focusing on the positive aspects of being a woman at all, I think instead, it would only make any person who went to the celebrations feel very sad.

I had a piece accepted for a IWD anthology a few years ago, on the theme of celebrating being a woman. I did a piece on turning forty, and being now a woman and forty-two, I can't remember a thing of what it was about, but I remember thinking it was good and positive and funny. I was looking forward to going to the launch party, but then found out it was in a women's refuge.

I didn't go to the launch because it made me so sad to think that that was thought to be best place to celebrate the achievement of something that was supposed to be positive about being female, whereas having to be in a refuge is probably one of the sadest aspects that some women have to endure. Of course it would have been wonderful to have had a bus collect the women from the refuge and take them to the launch, whilst having some lovely person look after their kids, as a break from the sadness of why they were living at the refuge, but for that to be the "celebratory venue" was too grim.

Trouble is, when you criticise something, you have to put forward your own, better, suggestion.

Therefore, I would like to propose that in future, on International Women's Day, we women celebrate the good things we do, the great situations we find ourselves in - the women who have climbed Everest, stopped wars, swum the Channel, written books (ahem) or cured disease, and maybe then we'll be so inspired and energised, that we can help make a dent in the rest of the problems.





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The Laggard Surges Forth

When I first heard what the word 'Laggard' meant, I knew it was about me. Someone who doesn't embrace innovations - basically the person who was the last one to get a mobile phone. Yep, me.

I wasn't just the last person to own a mobile phone, I was the person who thought they were nonesense, unnecessary, unsocial things. That was of course until I was given one and then I thought they were gr8.

Therefore it'll be no surprise to anyone to know that I thought e-books were unnecessary - a solution to a non-problem. "How tiring!" I would proclaim. "And how can I read an e-book in the bath?" But then I had a look at one, and found myself saying, "Oooh, that's good isn't it.." Of course, I haven't bought one, as they aren't free, but I fully intend to one day, unless anyone has a spare that they can lend...

But that is why I've been pushing for my publisher to make my books electronic, and now it's happened! I feel like I'm finally near the front in terms of technology. I now not only have a mobile phone, but have pushed for an e-book, and that surely means that I can leave my Laggard tag behind.

That is, until I realised that everyone else has had them for years; most people have cleared their bookshelves and put Raspberry Pies on them instead. I, however, think Raspberry Pies are nonesense. Completely unnecessary; kids should be playing with stones rather than programming simple little computers that have the intention of revolutionising the world.

Go on: it could be the best £4.11 you've ever spent...

Cold Enough to Freeze Cows now available on e-book...
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Cold-Enough-Freeze-Cows-ebook/dp/B007EYB37E/ref=sr_1_sc_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1330982909&sr=8-3-spell



If you liked this blog, why not buy the books!
Visit http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lorraine-Jenkin/e/B0034PL5LG/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Cold-Enough-Freeze-Cows-ebook/dp/B007EYB37E/ref=sr_1_sc_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1330982909&sr=8-3-spell

"Miss, your drawings are rubbish!" said the four year old girl.

Today was St David 's day and also World Book Day, and to help celebrate both, I'd been invited along to the local school to do a turn as Local Author. I'd decided that the thing to do was to invent a story with each class with a Welsh theme.

I got there and was hoping to see a flip chart and a selection of colour pens. Instead I was presented with a load of four and five year olds sitting on a carpet watching me look stupid as i did battle with the white board that they mastered on day one.
I thought we'd "story board" it and was glad when they decided their first character was a teddy: I can draw teddies. But then they wanted sheep, an owl and a dragon.

"What's that, Miss?" they asked.
"It's a dragon."
"No it isn't..."

They were right of course. There was no way it was a dragon.

The next class had me drawing dragons being hit with loaves of bread. The next had dragons fighting with lions (in a Welsh v England rugby match that mutated into the Lions getting their throats ripped out by the brave Welsh dragon - not too easy to stomach when you're English, even on St David's Day)

The final class had packs of beavors doing battle with mutant rats underwater. I gave up. By that time everything was a splodge, and a pretty crap one at that; the children didn't hold back.

They foolishly asked me back at the end of the day to hear the remains of the stories. The worst part of the day was to enter the hall and see 80 kids holding pieces of paper with my rubbish drawings printed out on them. Seeing your work "improved" by a six year old is humbling...






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Visit http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lorraine-Jenkin/e/B0034PL5LG/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1
Available on e-book soon!