Tania Ramos Childminding

“A four-year-old will be a four-year-old only once. Concentrate on meeting his present needs. Don't foist future academics on him. If he's allowed to truly play now — spontaneous play with room for running, leaping, ka-powing, crying, dancing, painting, spilling and creative problem-solving, then he will be ready for academics later. When children gain social and emotional skills and confidence in the preschool years, academic learning naturally follows."

—Heather Shumake (author and advocate for play based learning)

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Just love this!

He’s the kid who never listens the first time.

Or the second.

Or even the tenth.

You can pick him up out of the line up in the school hallways.

He’s the one who doesn’t walk in an orderly fashion. He runs or spins or stops in his tracks if something catches his eye.

He has a hard time keeping his hands to himself.

His handwriting and spelling don’t betray his intelligence...you might be fooled into thinking it’s all a struggle if you’re not paying attention.

He’s the one making all the noises with his mouth, only stopping when his siblings finally yell at him.

His heart sometimes breaks a little because he’s not always sure why what he’s doing is so wrong.

His ideas come out in a jumble and you have to slow way down and look in his eyes to listen.

His ideas are just too big and too fast for his head it seems and so they come out in any old order.

But he needs you to hear him.

His energy cannot be contained by walls and he seems to take up so much more space than his size.

He tries every ounce of your patience if you’re trying to get somewhere.

You might send him to put on his boots and he’ll come back with a new LEGO creation.

Time has no meaning when a new plan strikes.

He can understand stories on a level well beyond his years and will floor you with his insights.

He is smart as a whip yet school isn’t always his jam. He’d rather talk about why Sally is giving away 24 of her apples instead of solving the story problems in math.

He loves fiercely and deeply and without reservation.

He will tuck a blanket around you if you look cold and will always share a bite of his cookie.

He can read your emotions on your face and will always know who is lonely on the playground.

He runs to open your car door and will insist on carrying your bag in the house for you.

He loves to climb into your lap and wants to hold your hand as he falls asleep.

His greatest joy is making you laugh from deep in your belly.

His body is eight but his soul is much older.

He is so many things...sometimes the world wants to label him with letters and words and numbers...and sometimes these help us understand him better.

But the letters and words and scores are not what he is. They cannot capture his essence.

There is no data taken anywhere on big hearts, but if there were this kid would be the shining star.

Like all our kids he is just himself. The sum of gifts and struggles all bound together with love.

And my hope for him, and all kids really, is that we can see these clearly. We can look beyond the definitions and categories to what’s shining in their eyes and hiding behind their smiles.

And we can love them just the way they are.

Amy❤️

One of the mysteries of life for me is why we have designed school in such a way that it requires children to do so many things which are very hard for them - and which become much easier in adulthood.

We require them to sit still when they are desperate to move. To stay in their seats when they want to crawl under the table. To keep quiet and listen when their body wants to play and shout.

We tell them to walk not run, when every part of their body longs to move fast. We put them into nylon trousers when they’d prefer soft leggings. We make a big deal out of things they can’t do yet, but which almost everyone learns as they grow up. Shapes, colours, telling the time. We teach them to read before they have the desire for themselves, and make them do maths which they find incomprehensibly difficult, but that a few years later will feel so simple as to be trivial. No matter whether you go to school or not.

We’ve designed school so that it’s hard for immature brains and bodies, and then we blame children and parents when they can’t follow the rules. We tell them they aren’t school-ready, or they need to try harder. We point out all the many ways in which they fall short. Too noisy, too active, too impulsive, too….childish.

By the time those children reach adolescence, the urge to roll on the floor or hang off the chair is fading, but the years of being told they have to sit still and listen have taken their toll. They’ve lost the raw energy of childhood, but it’s more than that. They’ve lost their joy in learning, because school wasn’t built for the child they were, any more than it is for the teenager they’ve become.

And then again, it’s them who are blamed. Disruptive, rude, bad attitudes. It would be so much better if they simply did what they were told.

But what we’re telling them to do in school is squashing our children. Children aren’t built to sit still and absorb information. They are built to keep moving and playing. To hang upside down and climb on the roof. To dream and shout and talk all the time.

But when our children tell us so, we’re not listening. We tell them that the problem is them.
Who are the slow learners? Not them.

Love this x

“I still stutter when the receptionist asks me your date of birth. The day and the month seem to scramble around in my head.

And I've no idea why. Because that date, once a day like any other, is now the only date. It screams out at me from the calendar now. A separator of lifetimes. There is only Before Casey and After Casey.

You've taken to calling me by my actual name lately. "Karen!!" you shout up the stairs, which sounds so funny from you. Your dad goes to correct you, but I wish he wouldn't. I like it. It feels like the before and the after, the old and the new are getting acquainted. Like I can be both.

Because, even three years in, I still feel like I'm playing mum when I ring your nursery school with a forced authority: "Hi. This is Casey's Mum".

And it seems more unfathomable the older you get. Walking past the playground and hearing the murmur of children, knowing that YOU are amongst them. Out there in the world. That one of those little yells belongs to me. A dizzying mix of pride, disbelief and terror.

How am I somebody's mum? But equally, how did I ever not know you?”

Art by:

Words taken from "Warm Like Summer: Little Stories of Early Motherhood".

❤️🎄 Love this! Haha When a meme matches your theme! 😆🌟

People will try to tell you about that first moment.
Where you fall in love.
And you’ll nod, you’ll sit there in awe trying to make sense of a feeling that could never be put into words.

Because how do you explain about knowing love but not like this, how it runs through your veins.
How with each inhale you’ll consume it forever from this moment forward.
That your new home is wherever they are, and theirs is simply you.

How do you explain this pain with a purpose, the one that pulls every ounce of strength from your body. One you never knew you had, one that waited for you.

How do you explain wanting the world to know about this perfect little person you’re staring down at, and in the same breath, wanting to protect them from it. That you’ve never felt so fierce and so vulnerable, that your arms have never felt so important.

How do you explain that months of growing them, would be the beginning of them growing you. How you can be born again, still you and someone new.

How do you explain how it feels as if you’ve known them forever. How they find your eyes like it’s all they’ve been searching for.

How do you explain how time will stand still, but never still enough to catch it.
How your legs will wobble in this new role but you’ll never stand so tall.
And how heartbeats have their own language.

That this love has a sense of melancholy, you’ll feel everything, it’s so big it hurts.
It’s peaceful and it’s terrifying.

A journey where your destination travels alongside you.
A detached piece of yourself that makes you feel whole.
A colour before the bloom.

A type of magic handmade just for us.

Maybe that’s why no words could ever do it just.

Jess Urlichs poem from hardback of ‘From One Mom to a Mother’ 📖 www.jessicaurlichs.com/shop
Art:

SPACES! Available on Fridays.

DANDELION PUFF JAR- When a child is sad or needs some encouragement, take one out, make a wish and blow it into the wind! Such a great idea! ❤️

Oh, how I'd love to go back to those first weeks and months. I was ever-present, yet never really there at all.

My head was elsewhere, caught up in all the shoulds, in the baby books, the apps, the impossible schedules; all the perceived perfections of motherhood that felt so at odds with what you were telling me you needed.

I followed my heart every single time. But never with conviction. Always apologetically as though I were somehow giving in. Not doing it right.

I fought it. Like a quiet war. It was exhausting.

I'd love to go back and mother that version of you, but as this version of me; the mum I am today.

More relaxed, more rested, more sure, no longer seeking approval, embracing the fact that I will be happily rocking my boy to sleep until he doesn't need it anymore.

It's not just our babies that grow.

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Art by: Amanda Greavette Fine Art

Words by: Mother Truths

Taken from "Lessons: Reflections on Early Motherhood"
Available to buy worldwide: https://linktr.ee/mother_truths

“Parenting has nothing to do with perfection. Perfection isn’t even the goal, not for us, not for our children. Learning together to live well in an imperfect world, loving each other despite or even because of our imperfections, and growing as humans while we grow our little humans, those are the goals of gentle parenting. So don’t ask yourself at the end of the day if you did everything right. Ask yourself what you learned and how well you loved, then grow from your answer.”
L.R. Knost -The Gentle Parent.

Albert Wainwright - A Picnic, 1923.

Nature Easter Eggs 🌸🥚🌼🥚🌷

Childcare sector concerned about Government expansion pledge Chancellor made announcement in Wednesday’s Spring Budget speech but sector is ‘on its knees’

"All too often in the UK, early years provision is seen almost entirely as “childcare”, and early years settings merely as places for young children to go to be “looked after” or “watched” until pick-up time.

But early educators do so much more than this. They are education professionals who support learning during the single most critical period of brain development. They are responsible for everything from identifying when a young child has additional needs and knowing what steps to take to support them, to spotting and acting on signs of abuse or neglect and knowing which agencies to liaise with to ensure families get the help they need.

Is it any wonder that year upon year of being dismissed by those in power is starting to take its toll?"

Our communications and external affairs director Shannon Pite has written an essay for the latest edition of from the Global Institute for Women's Leadership.

The collection focuses on the gendered politics of childcare and is packed full of great contributions from researchers, policymakers, activists & political leaders from around the world.

Read the collection here: http://bit.ly/3E4Vt9j