Tag Archives: reading

A Mother’s Worrying is Never Done

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Laura with Grandma on the day she was born

"Sorry, Grandma, no eyes!"

The day my daughter was born, I was briefly convinced that she had no eyes. As the obstetric nurse placed her gently in my arms, I took my first look at Laura’s tiny screwed-up face and fell instantly and deeply in love.

“Oh well, we’ll get by without eyes,” I thought to myself, groggy from the drugs that facilitated my Caesarean.

As the days passed and the drugs wore off, it became apparent that not only did Laura have two fully functioning eyes, but that they were two of the most beautiful blue eyes with the longest, darkest lashes that I am ever likely to see.

This was my introduction to maternal hyper-anxiety.

Baby Laura before she had hair

If I cuddle her close enough, maybe some of my hair will creep across to her head

Next on my worry list was her hair – or rather, her lack of it.  As Laura neared her first birthday party, I despaired of her ever growing any.  Peach fuzz is all very well if you’re  a peach, but there comes a time when a girl really needs a ponytail.

But I needn’t have worried. By the time she started school, she had an ever-thickening crop of long, lustrous hair.  We even had to buy a special brush to penetrate it.

Then came the worries about her education.  I tried every trick imaginable to encourage her to read – phonics books, word games, flash cards, reward charts (and yes, I admit it, bribery).  But would she volunteer to pick up a book and read? Oh no.  The more I cajoled, the more resistant she became. Then came a visit from the Rainbow Magic Fairies (thank you, Daisy Meadows), who cast their own special spell on her, and suddenly she couldn’t put books down.  Before I knew it, she was in the top group of readers in her class. At last I achieved my ambition: to have to tell her to get her nose out of a book.

Number bonds – who needs them?  Laura was convinced that she didn’t and she resisted my attempts to teach her.  I began to despair that she’d ever get the hang of them.  At times I wished I could graft my Maths O Level on to her, as a loving mother might donate a kidney to her ailing child.  Then just the other day she startled me by correctly adding four double-digit numbers in her head faster than I could and I realised she’d got it at last.  Tick, star, VG, house point.

Now the wretched times tables loom.  Games cards, charts, pictures books and yes, once again the bribery, are all being ignored by my wilful child.  Psychology follows: “You only have to learn them once and then you’ll know them for ever.  Just do this thing!” Tonight I add threats to my dubious repertoire of persuasive techniques: “If you don’t learn your tables, you’ll have to do a really boring job when you’re a grown-up, like picking up litter on the streets all day.” Is this bad parenting?  Mental cruelty? Probably.

Laura - with eyes and hair

"Look Mum, eyes AND hair!" (We got there in the end.)

But the biggest challenge of all is: when will I ever learn to stop worrying about her? Never, I suppose, is the answer.  Because no matter how old she is, she will always be my baby.  My father told me recently that he still thinks of me as being about 6.  No wonder he often calls Laura Debbie.  I think of him as being about 33 – the age he was when I first became aware of grown-ups’ ages.  I’m now way beyond the sum of those ages, and I know that he (and my mum) still worry about me.

But at least I know my times tables.

 

If you enjoyed this post, you might like these earlier posts about a mother’s worries:

The Perils of the Supermarket

How Do Larger Families Get to School on Time?

 

The Joy of Sets (of Books, that is)

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Cover of "Abigail: The Breeze Fairy (Rain...

Cover via Amazon

This evening, everyone in our house has been immersed in a book. There’s not much to beat a good book, beyond the thrill of discovering that the one you are currently enjoying is part of a set.  Once you’ve finished, there’s another one, just as good, lined up to take its place.

My husband is gripped by Lustrum, the latest Robert Harris thriller to be set in Ancient Rome.  He’d been unable to put down its predecessors, Pompeii and Imperium, written about three years apart.

I’m lapping up The Perfect Paragon, the sixteenth Agatha Raisin detective story.  M C Beaton can be relied on to churn out another one or two each year, in between new Hamish Macbeths, but I must slow down now so as not to overtake her.

My small daughter Laura need not hold back on her current passion: the Rainbow Magic books by the sweetly named Daisy Meadows.   Once she’s finished Amy the Amethyst Fairy, fifth of the seven Jewel Fairies, she can progress to the Weather Fairies: Crystal the Snow Fairy, Abigail the Breeze Fairy – you get the idea.  Then there’s a set for the colours in the Rainbow – Ruby the Red Fairy, Amber the Orange Fairy.  Plus a handful on a party theme – Cherry(Cake), Melodie(Music). I’m sure she’ll love the Funday Fairies – there’ one of those for every day of the week. Plus there are fairies rolled out for special events. Laura doesn’t know it yet, but the Easter Fairy will accompany her Easter eggs. Kate the Royal Wedding Fairy is probably best read before April 29th.

Discovering eight more Rainbow Magic titles are due to be published  in July 2011, I suspect there may be more than one pen behind the Daisy Meadows name. But can you ever have too many fairies?  Not if you’re a seven year old girl.  And I’m sure there will be plenty more where these came from.

In fact, now I think about it, there are fairies everywhere I look.  Putting out the dustbins, I dream up the Recycling Fairies: Polly the Plastics Fairy, Bella (Bottle), Coco (Cardboard), Nina (Newspaper), Rita (Rags).  The Housework Fairies are always welcome to visit us – come on down,  Deirdre the Dusting Fairy, and bring your friend Ida to do the Ironing.

Did I say there’s nothing better than a set of books? But there is, as a glance up at my bookshelf reminds me: the boxed set.  Taking pride of place is a special edition boxed set of P G Wodehouse, which hastened my recovery from pneumonia a few years ago, and one of Sherlock Holmes, bought just because it was so lovely.  Of classic boxed sets I will never tire.  And you could get an awful lot of fairies in a box.

How to Get to the Bottom of the Ironing Basket

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Ironing Board as a Bookshelf - Powder Coat it!

Image by ninahale via Flickr

The ironing board is on the landing.  This may seem an odd place to keep it, but it’s solving a long-standing problem: the apparently bottomless ironing basket.

It’s not that I dislike ironing: in the right frame of mind, it’s very soothing.  Research shows that repetitive tasks provide similar benefits to meditation.  Knitting and jogging also qualify.  But lately the view from my utility room of a dreary, browning, post-snow garden has deterred me from taking up my post at the ironing board.  And the distinctive aroma of over-wintering guinea pig, which decamped to the adjacent worktop during the cold snap, is a further disincentive.

As I hovered in the utility room the day before spring term began, trying to summon up the energy to tackle a week’s worth of school uniforms, an inspiration flashed into my head.  For this I must thank the author Susan Hill. At Tetbury’s Yellow-Lighted Bookshop’s wonderful Book Festival last summer, she talked about her latest book Howard’s End is on the Landing which describes the year she spent rereading books stashed around her house.

Like her, I have many books on my landing, which my husband recently redecorated.  I took the opportunity to reorganise the bookshelves, showing the contents off to best advantage.  Now at the top are decades of diaries, the earliest dating from when I was 8.  Below are displayed precious and obscure books from my childhood (anyone else remember Torchy the Battery Boy?), through to the bittersweet teenage comforters such as Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle.  Next come the dog-eared favourites from my university days.  Well, some are less dog-eared than others: one day I really will read all four volumes of Richardson’s Clarissa, bought at vast expense in a wild moment of undergraduate optimism.  Then there’s the vast collection of hobby-related guides acquired in my leisure-rich child-free days.  These haven’t seen much action since I acquired a child, whose own bedroom is now bursting at the seams with books.

I never tire of looking at my bookshelves.  The display on the landing will be a lovely backdrop to my ironing.    The location offers other conveniences: a thick, warm Indian rug under foot; the adjoining bathroom where I can easily top up the iron’s water chamber; nearby wardrobes for immediately hanging up the ironed clothes (far better than turning the kitchen into a holding bay).  I’m convinced that on the landing, I’ll make great headway through the ironing basket – at least as long as I can ignore the comfy rocking chair in the corner, an ideal place to curl up with a book.

But for now I’m determined that this refreshing change of scene will restore momentum to the task in hand.  What’s more, I’m thinking of applying the same principle to other stalled proceedings.  So once I’ve finished typing this, I’m off to do my tax return in the bath.  Must press on….

(This post originally appeared in The Tetbury Advertiser, February 2011)

Write On

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What new-fangled technology most irked the ancient Greek philosopher Plato?  Apparently it was the written word.  He feared that the spread of literacy would make people less reliant on their memory, causing their brains to atrophy.

Now that just about all of us can read and write, any discussion of memory is more likely to relate to computers rather than brains.  IT is certainly making us less reliant than our forefathers on the information we carry in our heads.

I’m old enough to remember the advent of the pocket calculator.  In 1973, my father bought, at vast expense, the revolutionary Sinclair Cambridge.  It was a very basic calculator by modern standards, but how we marvelled at it.

Photo taken by me of a Sinclair Cambridge pock...
Image via Wikipedia

We preferred not to believe that it would dull our powers of mental arithmetic, but now that such things are commonplace, there must be few modern accountants capable of what my grandfather, working in the 1960s, could do: add a whole page of figures in his head.

To my mind, dimming the ability to memorise facts and add figures is not the main problem caused by our dependence on computers.  What worries me most is that future generations will lose out on archive material.  Paper may biodegrade in time, but it outlasts most computer chips and disks and is a lot more solid than ether.   Whose computer can still access the 5¼” floppy disks that were industry standard just 30 years ago?  Even the fact that we measured them in inches must seem laughably old-fashioned to the latest entrants to the workplace.   We set aside paper and pen at our peril.

So in your understandable enthusiasm to fill your recycling box every other Tuesday for our commendable village kerbside collection, think twice about throwing away every bit of paper.  At least hang on the 125th Hawkesbury Show Schedule for posterity; guard safely this issue of the parish mag, especially if it mentions you by name.  In time, your grandchildren will thank you for it.

(Oh no, Debbie Young’s blog can only be accessed online!)

This post was originally published in the September 2010 issue of the Hawkesbury Parish News.

Offa’s Dyke Path, Laura’s Way

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When my daughter Laura had just turned two years old, we decided we’d walk the Offa’s Dyke Path – the national trail that runs along the ancient English-Welsh border.

From the start, on the banks of the River Severn near Chepstow, we agreed we’d be realistic about our ambition. Accordingly, each year, we’ve done just two or three short segments of the 177 mile long Path. At first she would tire easily and we’d have to carry her, but lately the problem has not been her energy – she literally skips up some steep slopes – but her willingness. With the squeamishness of most seven year olds, she has developed an aversion to cross country routes due to the presence of animal poo. So we’re developed some handy diversionary strategies to keep her marching on.

Our first tactic was to let her play with my mobile phone. As it was loaded with the Mamma Mia soundtrack, Laura positively danced past the sheep that day. On her sixth birthday, this was replaced with a pink iPod shuffle, featuring all her favourite songs and stories, and providing the important benefit of earphones. (The sheep had a whip-round.)

Second, we now always load our pockets with snacks, preferably the kind that can be made to last a long time. As Laura’s diabetic, I always have a packet of LoveHearts to hand in case of hypos. Not only are these handy for instant inflight refuelling, they also provide entertainment as we read and discuss the slogan printed on each one. These have moved with the times since I was a child, now saying things like “Text Me” and most recently (and bizarrely) “Me Julie”.

Thirdly, we allow a couple of lightweight toys to stow away in our rucksacks. These are useful for impromptu games along the way. This week, the sight of Ken helping Barbie courteously over stiles provided excellent entertainment for us all.

Community singing is a great standby, especially songs that can be adapted to suit our walks. “The Wheels on the Bus” easily accomodates “sheep on the bus”, “cows on the bus” and so on, though I wouldn’t like to be a passenger on that particular double-decker. “One Man Went to Mow” proved popular during our Easter walks, with the dog-mad Laura enthusiastically providing the “Woof-woofs” for up to 27 men going to mow before the game started to pall (and Mummy to run out of puff). I’m keeping “10 Green Bottles” up my sleeve.

But best of all is my latest ploy: to read books as we walk along. “Multi-tasking at its finest,” as a friend described it when I told her about our Easter trip.

For some reason, Roald Dahl has become a natural companion on Offa’s Dyke. Maybe it’s his Welsh upbringing coming into play. “The Fantastic Mr Fox” saw us out of Hay-on-Wye and will be forever associated in my mind with the sublime views from Hergest Ridge. (Though I did manage to finish it in time to catch Mike Oldfield’s glorious eponymous album on my own iPod before we descended.) “The Giraffe, The Pelly and Me” took us up the steep rise out of Kington, and “Danny the Champion of the World” saw us down the other side.

I think I may have discovered a whole new pastime here. I’m keen to find further books that will take us on appropriate walks. Some are blindingly obvious: “Three Men in a Boat” along the Thames towpath, “Cider with Rosie” for the Cotswold Way. But contrasts would be fun too: the alpine story of “Heidi” in Holland, “Born Free” on a city break. There’ll be a packet of LoveHearts for the sender of the best suggestion.