Will Dig Life

Proud faces after being brave for jabs Recently, both my kids have worked on the concept of being brave. Leading up to our trip to Kenya, we've all had to have a number of vaccinations - and jabs are no child's favourite thing. After the first lot, they knew what was going to happen as soon as we walked into the clinic. They were scared. There were tears. I didn't tell them not to cry - their fear was justified, they were going to get hurt! Instead I explained that being brave is when we're very afraid to do something we need to do, but we still do it. I never tell my kids they shouldn't cry, shouldn't be angry, shouldn't be disappointed... I find it makes more sense to teach them how to handle these feelings, and I tell them that they'll be ok in the end. The most beautiful thing to me is seeing them support each other when one is scared. Here, of bees in the bush. I tried to tell D to be brave when it came to going to nursery. A few...

Second time round, even more fun... Followed by a visit to friends who kindly gifted the boy a knitted beard!

So the boy has now reached the age of free nursery hours. I had kept N going for a year but took her out last December (story here ), whereas D only just started this month - it's his third week. Normally such a happy boy I'm already pretty sure I'll take him out again. He is very articulate, and he knows his own mind. As I've grown in my parenting I'm much more willing to listen and truly hear, and I'm putting much more importance on taking heed of what they're saying. I think as a society we so often just talk over or dismiss our kids, we easily out-argue them in a discussion or we think we know what's best. Well D has been very clear, he doesn't enjoy nursery. Asked further, he says he likes all the grownups there but not the other children. Now I know he isn't as social by nature as N is (very few people are!) but he normally gets along with other kids very well... So I can only think it's how interactions there are (or perha...

There's a home ed forest school every week, now we're free to find new interests we've decided to take a look. It was fantastic. Definitely a fixture from now on!

Not starting school this week I posted something about N not starting school this week on Facebook yesterday. Very quickly, a friend called me out on the tone of the post (which I hadn't written myself) saying it highlighted the privilege N has of being born into a family that could afford to have a parent stay at home to educate her. Point taken, and post taken down because he was right - but I do have a few thoughts about privilege. There are two contexts of it, global and national / local. Globally, we are the privileged few. We are a well educated couple living in a developed country where health care is free, food is assured, our income is reliable; we have no major disasters, war or famine to fear. This means we are, along with most people in the Western world, among the most privileged people in the world. In this context, we cannot boast of any of our choices because globally, few people even have the choices we do. We eat vegan to avoid harming fellow creatur...