Posts made in February, 2010
Personality Types and Parenting
Ever so often you come across a book that changes your life. Well, I do anyway.
They catapult you down new roads of interests and discoveries, or they bring new insight into something you have been struggling with, or they just leave you feeling lighter and more at peace with yourself and the world.
‘Women Who Run With the Wolves’ was probably one of them. ‘Sophie’s World’ almost certainly another.
Right now I’m reading ‘Raising Your Spirited Child’ by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka and it is blowing my fricking mind.
I’m only a few chapters in but already it is really making me think and do a whole internal shift around. About Kai (who I SWEAR Mary had in mind when she was writing it, 16 years before he was born!) and what his behaviour and ‘needs’ might be telling me, and about myself as a parent – why it is I struggle so much with him and what I might be able to do to make our life together more manageable.
I will no doubt end up blogging more about the ideas and challenges it presents. I’m not naive enough to think it holds all the answers to my problems and that somehow after reading it Kai will morph into a super easy and compliant child, or that I will morph into a super patient and wise parent, but it does feel like a little glimmer of hope in the dark and I am holding on to that.
One of the first concepts the book talks about is the idea of Introversion and Extroversion, not just our children, but in terms of ourselves as well.
The idea springs from my friend Mr Jung again, who suggests that if we take Introverted and Extroverted behaviour as a spectrum, all of us will slot in more towards one or the other. In other words, even if we all show some characteristics of both, we will, fundamentally be either an introvert or an extrovert in that we will fall more naturally towards one tendency or the other.
Raising Your Spirited Child works through a series of questions that help you to identify both where your child and yourself fall along that spectrum. By working out which tendency we take, it helps us to work out the motivations behind both our child’s behaviours and our own reactions to them as well as the things we need to do, for our children and for ourselves to help us feel happy and energised . It’s quite fascinating!
I won’t go into it in huge detail, especially in terms of children’s Introverted or Extroverted natures which is a whole other post, but I am curious to know: which are you? As a person and/or as a parent? An Introvert or an Extrovert?
Here’s some prompts to help you decide. Like I say, you’ll probably find you agree with statements from both but see which one you’re more drawn towards:
If you are an Extrovert, you probably:
- After a hard day, you need to talk to someone, either in person or on the phone
- Are quite gregarious and outgoing
- Enjoy being around people and feel energized by company
- Think quickly and need to talk-out your ideas, thoughts and experiences
- Need and like to hear that others love you and like your work
- Solve problems by talking them through with someone else
- Feel comfortable initiating conversations
- Sometimes feel guilty for talking too much and not listening enough
- Feel exhausted if you have spend too much time on your own or without adult company
- Enjoy sharing your experiences and revealing things about yourself.
If you are an Introvert, you probably:
- Retreat with a book or newspaper or zone out in front of the TV when you’ve had a hard day
- Will do anything to avoid having to talk to someone on the phone
- Find being in large groups exhausting and overwhelming
- Prefer company with small groups or individuals, especially those you know well
- Find it difficult to talk about yourself and your personal feelings
- Find yourself hiding sometimes to escape company or confrontation
- Solve problems by thinking them though before talking about them to anyone else
- Prefer to watch and listen before joining in
- Feel restored by peace and quiet and time on your own.
Which are you?
Society has always tended to favour Extroverts – they’re the movers and the shakers, the people we tend to admire and be drawn to. Introverts are usually more at the fringes of ‘popular’ society. They’re the quiet ones at school, the dreamers, the artists.
Now I know I’ve always had Introverted tendencies but until I’d really thought about it I hadn’t realised just how strong that Introverted instinct was. And what came as a real revelation is that THAT is why I struggle being a mum so much.
As an Introvert I need time alone, space to think and work on my own projects, like I need food and water. It’s what gives me strength and keeps me feeling sane and full of energy. However, my problem is that as a mother and a wife I very, very rarely get these things any more. More often than not, in fact, I am pushed more and more into an Extrovert’s world – one of constant company, activity, needing to talk and communicate. As a mother there is an expectation that I will be sociable, outgoing, spending time with other mums and children and taking part in lots of activities. Time alone is an almost non-existent commodity.
Is it any wonder that I’m exhausted?!
How about you? How does your life as a parent ‘fit’ with your needs as an Extrovert or an Introvert?
Perhaps as an Extrovert you feel isolated without enough opportunities for adult company and people to talk to? Perhaps this has influenced the way you structure your day or decisions you’ve made about returning to work? Perhaps this has meant ‘salvation’ in the form of baby and toddler groups?
Or perhaps, like me, you find parenting seemingly at odds with your Introverted nature? How do you find ways of managing this conflict? Or are you still struggling?
I would love, as ever, to hear your thoughts.
Read MoreWriting Workshop: Lost Words
Welcome back to the Writing Workshop link-up! At the bottom of this post you’ll find the widget to post the link to your workshop posts.
First of all it’s my turn. I’ve chosen prompt number four: a childhood passion that got left behind…
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For those of you that haven’t been following this blog from the beginning, or there abouts, it may surprise you to know that the childhood passion I ‘lost’ only to rediscover again recently was, well, it was writing.
Before starting this blog last year I hadn’t written anything for a very long time. I would half-heartedly start journals only to discard them a few weeks, or even days later. I would get the odd day when some urge would take me and I would write pages and pages to offload something but inevitably end up tearing out the pages, dissatisfied with what I would read back, even though I didn’t even know what I was ‘supposed’ to be writing in the first place.
But when I was a child it was different. I wrote freely and without censorship. Writing was about ‘letting out’ all the things that went on my little head, which seemed full to bursting of strange imaginings and senses; things I struggled to find words for but I tried anyway. I remember stories I would write and illustrate. I remember a notebook I had with a cat on the front that I named ‘Charlotte’ and who I would write to, after being so moved by reading Anne Frank’s diary at what, in hindsight, was quite a young age. I was a bit of a bibliophile – I had read everything I could lay my hands on by the time I was 11 or 12. Books like the Narnia Chronicles, The Lord of the Rings, The Little White Horse, and the Faraway Tree – they transformed my inner world. I longed to create worlds like these and I remember long nights spent unable to sleep as the characters that inhabited them marched across my imagination.
But then, I don’t know, I lost it somewhere.
My teen years were tough, very tough, and did a good job of pouring very cold water on a lot of my creative aspirations. I was robbed of a lot of ‘me’ in that time, parts of myself I feel like I’m still trying to reclaim. I spent a long time feeling very lost and searching for I don’t know what. And the things I discovered a long the way are a whole other story but I guess all that really matters is that all the ups and downs, all the false starts and doubt and wondering what on earth I am supposed to do with my life, led me right here.
One day I started a blog on a whim. And once I started I just couldn’t stop. Words poured out, seemingly from no where, and the more I wrote the more I wanted to write, gradually finding a confidence and a ‘voice’ that I didn’t know I had.
In August last year (is that all it was? It feels like a lifetime ago!) I spent a month in crisis. I was being pulled, deeper and deeper, into a need to write and express myself. I felt quite overwhelmed by it all, almost consumed by this new part of myself. I wrote this post about my all-consuming new love affair, and about my confusion and doubt about it all.
And then I decided. I had to do it. I had to take a leap in the dark and follow where this was taking me. I pulled out of a Science degree I had enrolled with and signed up to a Creative Writing course instead.
I haven’t look back.
Writing is as much a part of me as breathing now (as pretentious as that sounds). I’m still not entirely sure what I’m going to do with it all but I’m hoping if I can just keep pouring the words out they’ll lead me somewhere, someday.
I have a long way to go. A very long way. But since re-discovering writing I feel whole in a way I don’t think I have felt since I was nine years old, hunched under the duvet trying to fool my mum I was asleep and scribbling down my thoughts and dreams.
Thank you for listening to them now.
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So now it’s your turn!
1. What is your personal motto? Or if you haven’t got one, then it’s time to make one up!
- Inspired by my friend Rosie Scribble with her post “Keep Calm and Carry On”
2. Go on a fantasy shopping spree. I’m giving you a virtual £1000 – go nuts! What will you buy?!
- Inspired by Life Slighty Used’s “On the topic of clothing…”
3. Write a letter to something that you own, that you love, or maybe that you hate.
- Inspired by Victoria from It’s a Small World Afterall’s letter to her bed.
4. Tell me about a childhood passion that somehow got left behind as you moved into your adult life.
- Inspired by Dad Who Write’s rediscovery of ‘Riding’.
5. Talk about a time where you found something magical in the mundane.
- Inspired by ME! and my ‘Falling Snow’
Leave your name and the URL to your post in the MckLinky below (the URL should be to your post not just to your blog) andleave me a comment to let me know you’ve taken part. If you have the time it would be great if you could try and read and comment on at least two other entries. And be kind! It’s supposed to be a bit of fun – we’re not looking for the next Booker Prize winner here!
If you haven’t had chance to respond yet, then you’ve still got today! Or just wait till next week, when there’ll be five brand new prompts to get you thinking.
This Writing Workshop is brought to you in association with Mama Kat’s Losin’ It – who’s lovely author came up with the concept and runs her own workshop over in the U.S.
Read MoreIs anybody out there?
I should probably warn you: this post has distinctly spiritual mutterings.
Now there is probably an unwritten rule somewhere that a good Mummy Blogger should avoid dangerous topics like religion and politics and stick to safer subjects (like poo) but oh well…
Because I had a bit of a strange experience the night before last and I’m curious to see what you thought about it.
I’d had a really awful day. Up before 5am after being up and down almost hourly, I had spent the day beyond exhausted juggling a strangely hyper-active Kai, considering how sick he was, desperately trying to persuade him to eat and drink in between changing relentless runny nappies. It had ended with me giving Kai his bath and crying as I saw how horribly thin he has become, literally skin and bone, and such a world away from my huge, chunky toddler. His cheeks are sunken, his ribs stand out from his chest, his arms are like little sticks.
Ant wasn’t home and I felt so afraid. If the diarrhoea and the inevitable weight loss didn’t stop soon there was a very real chance Kai was going to end up back in hospital, and I was beginning to despair that it ever would stop. I was so tired, it was one of the moments where you really are at the end of your strength.
So I prayed.
I cried and I prayed. I don’t know who to, I don’t believe in a Christian God that’s for sure. I’m not sure I believe in any God. But pray I did. For the diarrhoea to finally stop and for Kai to start eating again. I’m sure many of us have been there, especially as parents. Times when we are so desperate for something to change, when our need is so raw, that all we can do is offer up our selves to something outside of ourselves.
It’s just that the strange thing, in this instance, is, well, it worked.
Since that time Kai has only had one dirty nappy and his appetite has rapidly been returning to normal.
And I’m left wondering, was it a coincidence? Or did my prayer actually change something?
I’m talked about my spiritual confusion before, and experiences like this do nothing to alleviate that. I am a rational person generally, and how ever hard I try I can’t believe in an omnipotent being with the power to grant or deny prayer, a deity separate from His/Her creation that for what ever reason has decided to allow humanity to suffer unspeakable loss, cruelty, devastation and genocide while watching from a far. Apologies to anyone that offends but I just can’t.
But I’m also not closed minded enough to rule out any possibility of ANY spiritual element to existence.
I just wonder, if it exists, what form it takes?
Is our understanding of what’s spiritual and meaningful merely a product of human conciousness? Do we MAKE meaning though our need to make sense of the world around us rather than have that meaning given to us by a higher power? I think we do. It seems to be ingrained in our human nature itself to try and ascribe meaning to things, to find answers for those things that are bigger than us and that we do not understand. And it seems to be a natural instinct to share and integrate those beliefs into our cultures and society. The amazing discovery of the beyond-ancient temple in Turkey suggests that shared belief and rudimentary religion may even have been the shaping force of society itself.
But, at the same time, I don’t think that devalues the ‘beliefs’ we hold, that we have created. Our shared myths and stories, across very different nations and cultures suggest that we are tapping into ‘something’, perhaps some kind of collective unconscious as Jung suggested. And that ‘something’ has huge power over our daily lives, the way we view the world, even the way in which we write our laws and organise our society.
Even if this ‘something’ is entirely human-made, does that mean it does not have power? Has the combined ‘force’ of our belief and need to ascribe meaning to things actually created something that DOES affect us on a spiritual level? Even science, for centuries the antithesis to religion, is beginning to overlap a little here as forays in to Quantum Physics, explore how thought could, theoretically, actually shape matter. New Age movements tap into this idea with their ideas of positive thinking, goal setting, even cosmic ordering. But do they hold any weight?
Does the power of our prayer, our NEED, actually change our reality?
Or am I wrong. IS there a separate deity of some sort, or ‘spirit’, that existed before us and will exist long after we have all killed each other.
I don’t know. I’m never going to know. But it does interest me, it makes me think and wonder.
So, I’m interested.
Do you pray? Who to? I’m especially interested if , like me, you don’t really know. Have you ever had a prayer answered? How have you made sense of that?
What do you think happens when we pray?
I should make clear now, this is not meant as a criticism of anyone’s spiritual or religious beliefs and I will delete any comments that in any way are disrespectful or derogatory of people’s beliefs. We are allowed to disagree with each other, but it needs to remain objective and polite and not get personal. We’re all intelligent adults so I’m expecting that you can manage that.
P.S What do you know, this post mentioned religion AND poo! Score!!
Young At Heart Photo Album
The cake mix on my face was the giveaway huh?
According to the very lovely Bumbling Along who kindly tagged me in Tara from Sticky Finger’s Young at Heart Photo Album meme, this blog mentions cake around 94 times. That’s an impressive cake-to-post ratio don’t you reckon?
Looking through my old photos to find one for this meme I was struck by this one. Because in a weird sort of way it sums up everything about my childhood, and, inadvertently, everything I learnt about being a mother.
I feel like I was incredibly blessed growing up.
My parents marriage wasn’t a particularly happy one but all I remember is feeling loved and safe. And I remember time, endless time. Time spent together, especially with my mum who postponed her social work career until me and my brother were in school, and then only worked part-time till we started high school.
I remember baking, crafting, making huge dens out of cardboard boxes, trains made out of chairs that stretched from one end of the house to the other. I remember reading to my parents at bedtime, doing ‘paperwork’ in my dad’s office, the dressing up box in my wardrobe, and the excitement of being given my own ‘patch’ in the vegetable garden you can see out the window there.
We never had much money. We didn’t go on fancy foreign holidays. Our clothes came from friends and church rummage sales (not that you’d ever tell from this photo!). Life was mostly about ‘making do’ on my Dad’s small income, saving up for those things we really wanted and being grateful for what we had.
I am grateful for everything we had.
I am grateful for space to play, and parents that listened, a dad that taught me about ‘funny’ and a bookcases full of old books.
Memories like this and many others are what made me to decide to try and stay at home with Kai as long as I could.
Memoires like this make me try to prioritise time over money, to try not to worry that Kai is growing up in a similar ‘make do’ household.
I know that not everyone can afford to have a parent at home but we can, just. There’s nothing left over and we have to live very frugally but we do make ends meet. Sometimes that’s a tough choice to live with, we have a lot less in material terms than most of our peers, and I have to watch other women leap frog over me in terms of ‘success’ but I believe we made the right choice for Kai.
I wish I could be the mother my own mum was – she made a far better stay-at-home mum than I do, but the memories she’s created for me make me want to try to be better. Mum went on, after her career break, to have a very successful career, just like her mother did before her, and even though I struggle with letting go of my ambition for a while this is gives me the hope that my own time will come, and that the time I’m giving to Kai is worth sacrificing a bit of fame and fortune for in the meantime.
I guess the funny thing is that even though I’m a mother now, I’m still the girl in that photo too. I don’t think I’ve changed that much at all actually.
I’m still kind of small and freckly. I either talk too much or not at all. I still spend most of the day with bits of food around my gob… and I still am filled with dreams of being ‘something’ even though now I am already something very important.
A memory-maker myself.
A mother.
Now. It’s time to pass on the Young at Heart baton to the next victim worthy recipient.
My tagee is sat in the front row there, third from the right, looking very stern and not AT ALL like she’s having a lovely time as she sits (and I quote) “looking like a swot in those horrible shoes”. I can’t imagine anyone less swotty actually. Although she is rather an expert in her professional field, she’s just as likely to be making you giggle with her funny stories and silly videos then be found doing lots of serious stuff. She also happens to be someone I am honoured to call a friend and one of the nicest people you could ever hope to come across in this blogosphere of ours.
Can you guess who it is? Leave me your ideas and then click on the photo to find your way to her blog where she’ll be posting her own post, and naming her own tagee soon! All she has to do is include the meme name “Young at Heart Photo Album” in her post so Tara can follow it as it winds its way through all the lovely blogs out there…
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