by Roma | Oct 13, 2016 | parenting
I just took my kids on a slightly wild adventure to see Amma (the ‘hugging saint’) in London. They managed to hold it together throughout the 5 hour car journey, despite being sprung straight from school without any Special Time to top up connection levels. We scraped them through a quick dinner in a cafe, where they were pretty on the edge. They ADORED the Amma program; running about Alexandra Palace, making friends, playing, eating cake, sitting on the stage near Amma. And this went on for many hours. Until one passed out under a table of blessed water at 3.30am and the other was still going strong. I wondered how much more they could hold the crowds, the excitement, the lack of sleep. At 5.30am our tokens were called for ‘darshan’ (our chance to hug Amma). We moved through the queue before deciding to wake Arte up so that she had some time to acclimatise. Having only slept a couple of hours after staying up so late, she was understandably hysterical when I tried to scoop her sleeping body into my lap. And here it came, the tidal outpouring of emotion I had suspected might be on the cards. She threw herself off my lap, onto the ground and I sat by her as she screamed “I’m NOT going!” “You don’t want to go up” I validated and let her know she didn’t need to do anything she didn’t want to. Only she was still upset. “Get away from me! Leave me alone! Go AWAY!” screamed my fiesty 5 year old over and over again. I stayed close,...
by Roma | Aug 30, 2016 | neurofeedback, parenting, relationships
Healing is messy. Sometimes it looks like chocolate coconut water on a plate, having snorted it out of your mouth and nose. I’ve not been OK at all recently, (which probably signifies being more OK than I’ve ever been). Ive lost my drive, run aground. In short I’m having a disproportionate reaction to a heartbreak, which is triggering the early trauma of not being met. Coincidentally, trauma they are working on my brain to release daily with the neurofeedback this month. Last weekend I wept and laughed hysterically for four hours. Thankfully two of my best women were with me and knew exactly how to keep me crying; one of the benefits of having trained everyone around me to listen really well. At one point I started speaking nonsense that I really believed at the time. “I shouldn’t be allowed to live in this house, they should keep me in one of those ‘safe houses’ for special people. I should have a warning sign on me” “What would that say” urged my sister “Keep upright. Handle with care.” I wailed. And then I pissed myself laughing and remembered all the times where being horizontal with a certain person recently has got me into this mess. The relevance of being kept upright on loving skin as a baby rather than horizontal in an incubator was not lost on me either. It was an epic release. Snotty tissues piled up. My tearstained tshirt became a beautiful piece of art that my friend Alice dubbed ‘Rainfall on heartache’. We continued with our ritual Sunday pancakes until someone said the words ‘fragile friends’...
by Roma | Jun 15, 2016 | parenting, school
We’re really lucky that our daughter is getting the opportunity to start processing her feelings about starting Reception in September each time we drop her brother off at the school. Last week she started crying as we were leaving his classroom under the pretext of wanting me to pick her up. I was unhurried and relaxed in the warm sun and felt able to Staylisten. “I’m not going to pick you up Sweetheart, you can walk just fine.” She wailed that she couldn’t walk, her feet were cold, she needed me to carry her. I gave her my full focus and warmth and said simple things like “You wanted me to carry you.” I was worried the noise might disturb the classroom, so I scooped her into a corner of the playground and sat by her as she flailed and screamed on the ground. She was still crying about her feet being cold. Then she said quietly “Anyway, the teachers in my class aren’t nice.” I love that she was able to now work on the real upset. I responded that it is a big school with lots of new children and teachers and every time I said that it allowed her to sob heartily. She has been really excited and positive about starting this school so I know that these were feelings of fear moving through. She was able to offload all her doubt about not knowing where to go and not knowing the other kids. Then as the feelings died down she needed another pretext to keep offloading about. She became fixated with the play equipment that...
by Roma | Jun 4, 2016 | parenting
Here’s my daughter getting the Embercombe after party started. Rock N Roll kiddo. We just got back from an inspirational family camp there called ‘Grow the Grownups.’ I returned my kids to their dad filthy, covered in bites, scratches, blisters and bruises, itching, exhausted, sun-kissed and with matted hair, but with their hearts and imaginations swollen by an epic tsunami of love, friendship and connection. Sign of a good week I say. I realise I wasn’t quite prepared for what transpired, having naively anticipated a relaxing, gentle week of play and connection with my kids. I blogged here about the last time I took my kids away for a week and they delivered a textbook version of what we call ‘Spoiled Outing Syndrome.’ This is where you have a special outing or trip with children, lavish them with attention and they respond by screaming the place down. What is really happening is that when you have time to really be present and unhurried with your child, their brain senses the extra emotional safety available and makes use of it to offload feelings about times in their life where things have been harder. The body is a clever self-mending organism, which likes to dump out old hurts and recover its optimal ability to function. Except this time it was me who had the Spoiled Outing Syndrome. I totally melted down for the first couple of days. Finally after holding so much together in my family and for others week after week, I had reached a community of willing supporters, many of whom were highly skilled in listening. At first I...
by Roma | Feb 3, 2016 | parenting
Hi from the beautiful sun drenched Algarve, where I have made an impromptu winter escape with my two kids. They are having a delightful time, splashing in rock pools, running about my aunt’s gorgeous villa, loving each other and… crying a LOT! This afternoon after a sweet morning of Special Time we set out for another adventure at the much adored local beach. Except my daughter did not set out; she stood naked outside the front door refusing to wear clothes, get into her buggy or walk with us. “I’m cold, I’m cold, I won’t go to the beach” she wailed on repeat. I listened “I hear you, I’m sorry you don’t like our plan right now.” And I listened. And about 40 minutes went by, by which point her brother was running out of patience. Now she was howling “I want a different Tshirt” and I was reminding her that the one on offer was just fine. “I’m dying of boredom, I don’t even want to go anymore” now my son was sobbing too. I was fairly under-resourced and getting fed up by this point and vented to no-one in particular “I’m just trying to take you guys for a picnic on the beach, nothing horrible ya know!” And then the penny dropped. Spoiled Outing Syndrome. That is the technical term at Hand in Hand Parenting for this kind of phenomenon where you are having a lovely time and your kid loses it for no apparent reason. And sure enough, the wailing about the Tshirt progressed into a quiet “If Daddy were here, you could take Zephyr to...
by Roma | Aug 16, 2015 | breastfeeding, parenting
*******This is a response to a previous article by a Kenyan author. I appreciate that Africa is a vast and diverse continent and that it is not appropriate to generalise. By using the term ‘African babies’ I am referencing and responding to Claire Niala’s description of parenting practices in Kenya.******* I read the original article ‘Why African Babies Don’t Cry’ some years ago and loved it. I even told folks about this article as a Breastfeeding Counsellor and had it linked on my website for some time. Yes! I thought, all babies need is for us to respond to them. And they do undoubtedly need that. There is still a very predominant cultural throwback to the Victorian era when it comes to parenting, which does not encourage responding to babies’ needs for fear of making them too dependent. This has thankfully been debunked by developments in recent neuroscience, however the paradigm shift will take some time. So I’m glad that someone is fighting the corner for babies. And, what I’ve discovered more recently is that quite likely, our babies DO need to cry sometimes. Now just to be clear, let me define exactly what I mean by this. Ideally, just like ‘African babies’, babies from anywhere else would get fed and held and their toileting needs responded to before they even need to cry. However, ONLY when these needs are all met it may be totally justified and even beneficial if they still cry. *** Edited to add – some babies may be crying due to undiagnosed medical conditions and these of course need to be addressed. *** Crying...
