Word of the Week 02.05.14

LearnerMother

TRIGGER

Before I had kids, I wouldn’t have said I was particularly prone to losing my temper. I don’t mean the snapping and saying something stupid sort of temper – I’m as guilty of that as the next person after the right combination of alcohol and provocation.

I mean the real red mist temper, where you suddenly find yourself yelling REALLY LOUDLY so that your temples throb and your throat hurts for the rest of the day. This isn’t a frequent occurrence,  and it’s over as soon as it’s begun, but when it happens, I hate myself, the kids look gutted (though often not quite gutted enough to stop doing whatever it was that preceded the yelling, heh) and however lovely the rest of the day turns out to be, I can’t escape the feeling that I have failed as a parent yet again.

In an attempt to tackle this, I have been trying to identify the trigger factors which cause the fuse to finally blow, in the hope that being more mindful of these will help me head off the red mist and be one of those amazing calm parents that never lose the plot, ever. Nothing like aiming high!!

So…First off and absolutely the biggest badass trigger, is sleep, or lack of it. Less than seven hours for a few days in a row, and I’m in the danger zone. Chuck in a couple of broken nights for whatever reason, and you’ve got a superbitch on your hands. Weirdly, back in the days when the kids were babies and six hours broken sleep was the norm, I seemed to lose my temper less – probably some sort of systems shutdown. But now that I’m used to proper sleep again, it turns out that I need it, in a BIG way!

Next up…anxiety. I’m lucky in that I have never suffered the crippling kind of anxiety that means I can’t function, but there is always and without fail a higher or lower level of anxiety providing the soundtrack to my life. Before I had kids it was usually based around social situations and a conviction that I was actually too much of a muppet to have any real friends. Now I’ve got kids I don’t have time for worrying about all the reasons people don’t like me, because I am far too busy worrying that I’m a crap mother. And so it turns put that the more I worry about being a crap mother, the more likely I am to actually be one. Hmmm.

Then there’s lack of exercise. When I’m running even just for half an hour couple of times a week, I do feel more balanced – my temper is more even and I am less anxious. A combination of fresh air, endomorphins and feeling generally healthier, I guess. However there is a trade off with running and sleep…the only time I can run is early morning, and as I get up at 6.30am that would mean I’d need to be up at 5.45am to get even a half hour run in. I’ve learnt enough to know that in the trigger hierarchy, sleep beats everything else hands down, so the running is something I can’t manage as much as I’d like.

And the last real trigger is hearing my voice repeating the same words, over and over again. This alone will never cause me to yell, but combine with another factor and we’re on dangerous ground. One real danger point is the walk to and from school – the route is entirely main roads, mostly with very narrow pavements and also there’s a particularly nasty corner where any large vehicles turning have their chassis taking up most of the pavement (thanks transport planners at Cardiff Council for that genius bit of road safety forethought when considering the routes to the newly built school). So naturally I try and encourage the kids to walk away from the kerb, especially given the fact that they are liable to break into dance moves or random scuffles over who is walking in front of who. I swear, if I say ‘please walk way from the kerb’ once on the way home, I have to say is like a Million. Fricking. Times. And by the time we get in from school, my head is buzz buzz buzzing buzzing away…Realistically, I’m not sure what I can do about this one. Kids are always going to need things repeating a million times over, so I guess I need to just deal with it…

So. Perhaps thinking about and writing down my triggers will help me be more aware of them, and perhaps by being more aware I can head off that red mist before it descends. Here’s hoping!

The Reading Residence
I’m linking up with Word of the Week at The Reading Residence – why not blog about a word that sums up your week and go and link up too?

Heroes of the City Review and Giveaway

Reviews, ,

My four year old knows a lot more about electronic games than I would like him too – he sees his big brother and sister playing Minecraft on the iPad, or Skylanders on the Wii, and naturally he wants to join in. It’s quite difficult to stop this happening, but it does make me laugh to think back to how we agonised over whether our eldest was too young for a Wii when Santa brought us one when he was seven and a half!

But I have been researching more age appropriate apps for him to play with on the iPad, stuff that I’m happy to let him sit and play without me, and equally that he doesn’t need help from one of the older ones to enjoy. So it was a stroke of good luck that I was asked to review the Heroes of the City app from Swedish company Ruta Ett – and as an extra bonus they also sent a book, a DVD and some Hero cars!

I was a bit worried that he would not be interested in anything that his big brother and sister hadn’t stamped as ‘cool’. but in actual fact he was thrilled to receive something ‘just for me, Mummy’. So thrilled that I might have secretly felt a little bit guilty about my non-negotiable hand-me-down policy, oops. I thought he’d go straight for the DVD but he was immediately drawn to the story book ‘The Hot Air Balloon’ – it’s bright, colourful and the pictures are engaging, even without an adult to read the story. To be really picky, it’s clear from the language patterns that the story has been translated – but I can’t see this bothering any children looking at it.

The book and the DVD share the same positive outlook on life – there’s a strong emphasis on friendship and the importance helping each other out of tight spots, and there’s a fun ‘where’s wally’  balloon spotting game throughout the book, which was a nice touch.

Being the smart cookie that he is, it wasn’t long before he spotted the Heroes of the City app on the iPad. ‘Mum! It’s my book! But it’s a GAME!’ Cue a lovely peaceful cup of tea for me while he explored the app, which is free to download but packed with nine games and nine ‘movies’ – mostly around 15 minutes each, so just right for an after lunch treat. The games are fun – there were some very simple ones (pairs, jigsaws, etc) that would be ideal for younger children, and some which required some more concentration –  and one – a railway track puzzle – that I quite enjoy myself, on the quiet! There are also in-app purchases available but thankfully they are located in a separate ‘shop’ area, and don’t pop up during games.

I really like the Heroes of the City app, but more importantly so does my four year old. It’s well worth downloading either from the App Store or Google Play – and if you like the look of the goodies below, you can enter a draw to have a similar bundle delivered to you! Just leave a comment and enter via the Rafflecopter widget, and you can unlock bonus entries by following LearnerMother on Twitter and/or Facebook. Good Luck!

Heroes of the City

**Disclosure – my four year old was provided with the Heroes of the City bundle seen above in exchange for reviewing the iPad app; as always, this post is an accurate reflection of my thoughts**

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Right here, right now – my littlest boy

Family, LearnerMother,

Back in September last year I wrote a post called ‘What I love about my kids right now’, trying to capture them as they were at that moment in time, so that I’d have something to look back on on my fast approaching dotage. It’s a theme I was planning to revisit every six months or so, and it’s a measure of how fast their childhood is slipping away that I’m pretty much a month late…but over the next three weeks I’ll be doing a ‘right here, right now’ post for each of them in turn.

Staring with the youngest – my baby. My lovely, happy, bonus baby, now a very opinionated 4 year old. I can’t get away with calling him a baby within earshot any more, because ‘4 is actually nearly grownup you know, Mummy’. But I can still, just, get away with pretending he’s still a baby when he crawls in for early morning cuddles with me. He still carries the chubby cwtchiness of a toddler for a few moments before he is fully awake, and I cling on to those moments with all my heart. Until he prises open my eyes and asks me for the millionth time why I won’t download Minecraft on my phone, or or if it is a weekend day (this to establish if the high sugar cereals are coming out for breakfast) or why I won’t get up RIGHT NOW to play jigsaws, or make pancakes, or tell the rain to stop.

Once up, he’s on the go non-stop, grabbing life with both hands. Everything is a race or a competition – the people of Canton are no doubt used to my apologetic smile as he whizzes past them on his scooter, yelling ‘Lo-SER’. Sorry about that. He loves playing board games of any sort, and holds his own pretty well with his big brother and sister – he’s not yet a graceful loser himself, but we’re working on that…

He sings away unselfconsciously until he realises someone is listening, then he’ll turn on what he thinks is the charm and start substituting various key words for other, more scatalogical ones…I try not to laugh at this but sometimes it’s tricky! He is absolutely delighted with his ability to burp on cue (thank his big brother and sister for this) and he’s also a great fan of ‘pardon me for being so rude, it was not me it was my food, it came up here to say hello, and now it’s gone back down below’ – several months after someone taught him this, the charm has apparently not worn off. For him, anyway…

Something lovely that’s happening at the moment is that he’s really grateful for totally random things. Yesterday he said ‘I’m so pleased I’ve got knees, Mummy, because they help me run fast’. Today it was ‘We’re really lucky towels were invented Mummy, because they get me warm and dry super-quickly after my bath’. It is a joy (and sometimes a lesson well taught) to share my life with someone who seems programmed to see the best in everything, and to be thankful for it.

My lovely, beautiful bonus baby. It’s my turn to be grateful for you, for bringing so much joy into our lives.

LearnerMother 

I’m linking up with Magic Moments over at The Olivers Madhouse – there’s a bunch of posts over there full of happiness and joy, pop over and have a look!