112 posts tagged “kids”

Spotted in a backyard only a few streets away from us (I didn't want to get too close in case I scared it away):

Wallaby sighting

Here is my son on another of our jaunts around the neighbourhood:

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I have been trying to find a Joey Scouts group nearby so we can get more involved in outdoor activities such as hiking and camping.  We did find a good one a few suburbs away but it is just too far to go on a weeknight.  It is a pity as the leader there is a scientist who organises a lot of science based activities for the kids (right up my son's alley).  I have one more closer group to check out this week or next week so I am hoping that will be just as good. 

My husband wasn't able to take any leave this school holidays so I again took the kids away on my own.  This time we went to a little beach place a few hours south of Sydney.  The kids chose the accommodation.  The main appeal of the place they chose (a beachside holiday park) was that they could stay in something called a 'safari tent' which was like a big old tent raised up on a wooden platform.  The platform was longer than the tent itself so was able to accommodate a covered porch at the front and a bathroom/kitchenette area at the rear.  The tent itself was very cosy but big enough for a queen sized bed, some bunks and a little table and chairs.  It had a small oil heater which kept it quite warm at night. 

Safari tent

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The weather was actually pretty amazing for winter, ie, quite warm and sunny during the day and only a bit chilly at night.     We only had one full day there as we were quite late setting off on the Thursday we left and had to rush back for a children's birthday party on Saturday.  On our full day, we met up with an old schoolfriend of mine and her children who had moved to the area earlier in the year.  We had a great day with them and the children became firm friends.  Here are a few photos I took on my mobile phone. 

Beach kids 2

Jumping pillow

I keep tossing the kids outside to get them out taking advantage of the beautiful fresh air and space in our new home/neighbourhood.  This morning they decided to set up an outdoor cafe and have their lunch there.  My daughter made the milkshakes for the cafe (loaded with icecream, sprinkles and green food colouring!). 

Cheers

Wow, it is almost two months since I have posted here!  Apologies to all my neighbours and friends. 

The main reason for my silence is that Vox has been blocked at work and I just don't have the time to get on the computer at home much these days (or if I do, the kids immediately start pestering for their turn).  I have also started a new job (same office, different team and project) which has been keeping me very busy.  Consequently, I just found myself getting out of the blogging groove. 

At the moment though, I am enjoying a week off as it is Winter school holidays in New South Wales.  My husband doesn't have any leave as he has been using all of his on the house renovations so it is just the kids and me at home.  I am thinking of taking them away for a few days later in the week.  They have their heart set on going to a particular coastal caravan park that has safari tents (like the ones at Western Plains zoo).  It is quite a long drive but I have been to the library and stocked up on audio books so at least we can keep ourselves entertained on the way.  I also have a school friend (recently reunited through facebook) who has moved down that way so hoping to catch up with her and her children on the way. 

Fortunately the rainy weather we have been having most of the year seems to have dried up lately.  Here are a few recent photos from our backyard.  Hard to tell it is Winter from these.

Couldn’t Have Said It Better Myself! « FreeRangeKids

http://freerangekids.wordpress.com/20...

“There has been a concurrent rise in concerns about automobile crash survival (read: airbags and SUV’s), and municipal water (bottled water being sold in places where what comes out of the tap is not only safer than the bottled stuff, but tastes fine as well) . “We, as a society, have decided to embrace all fears, and protect against them equally. The issue is twofold: the inability to do reasonable risk assessment on one hand, and the ability to pay for increased levels of vigilance on the other. Where they meet is our current society: people who pay for stuff they don’t need to avoid doing risk assessment, and to avoid upsetting peer standards. The question is, ‘Who benefits?’ “With SUV’s and bottled water, the answer is obvious: corporate interests (with SUV’s, selling high profit, inefficient vehicles; with bottled water, selling something that 10 years ago was essentially free). “I think Free-ranging your kids is also a feminist issue(and I say this as a man who was a stay at home parent until my son was in grade one). Every one of these articles (that I have seen) has been about a MOTHER allowing her child to do something which someone else decided could put the child at risk. It is about increasing the burden on women: of denying their right, and fitness, to make judgments about their children’s abilities; making supervision of children an onerous full-time occupation(or at least a MORE onerous one). It is about creating artificially high standards as a salve to couples who have two careers and have to pay for care. “This is a political issue, and it’s about much more than the security of children. It’s about how our society allocates it’s resources, and about how corporations encourage fears and capitalize on them. It is all the more interesting as we move from a period of unmatched prosperity and uncontrolled consumption to the era of financial uncertainty, peak oil, and global warming. “In the 1940’s our parents went through World War 2...

This is from a comment that Lenore Skenazy (nicknamed "America's worst mom" for letting her 9 year old son catch the subway on his own) re-published on her wonderful blog Free Range Kids (thanks to Happy Mutant for recommending this blog).  I am really interested in the idea that all the scare campaigns and guilt trips directed at parents these days may be simply a way of keeping parents, and particularly mothers, in their place.  Skenazy cites a lot of statistics on her blog showing that crimes directed at children haven't risen at all, and have perhaps even fallen, over the past few decades, yet over this same period, parents have become terrified of letting their kids go outside and have the freedoms that they themselves enjoyed as children.  Apart from the effect of parents (having to be 100% available for their children and consumed with guilt if they are not), it is easy to see that this kind of obsessive parenting can lead to negative effects on children, ie, preventing them from developing qualities such as initiative and judgement and possibly contributing to physical health problems such as obesity and myopia. 

I myself have been meeting with disapproval and/or resistance as I try and allow my 10 year old daughter more freedom.  A neighbour was most astonished that I would allow her to walk on her own to play at their place (three doors and just around the corner from ours) and suggested we instead erect ladders to enable the girls to climb over the fence to visit each other rather than walking on the street.  My husband and mother in law also both objected to my proposal to allow our daughter to walk three blocks to the local milk bar to buy something for a cake we were making.  Instead we are allowing her smaller freedoms such as walking from the car to school and crossing the road on her own while we watch from the car and sending her into various shops at the shopping centre on her own to make purchases (I am eventually hoping we will be able to reduce the shopping time by sharing the shopping in this way).  I also leave her at home on her own sometimes if I need to run a short errand (ie, say for half an hour).  She seems to relish these small freedoms and I really wish I could offer her more.  When I was her age, I had plenty of freedom and spent most of my free time out riding my bike and visiting friends.  I caught a bus to school from the age of 5 (and at 6 told my mum that she could stop meeting me at the bus stop as I was quite capable of walking home on my own (and besides that it was embarrassing!)) and started walking or cycling to high school when I was 12.  Plenty of other kids walked or rode to primary school.  It was just a bit too far for my brothers and me to do this.   

In less than two years, my daughter will be going to high school and will have to start catching public transport to and from school on her own.  There will also be no after school care available so she will need to either come to one of our offices or go home on her own and wait for us there (and hopefully get dinner started in the meantime).  She will be not quite 12 at the time.  I think the more we can do to prepare her for this now, the better.   I'm sure I/we will be met with plenty of disapproval along the way though.   

I had to take yesterday off work as teachers (and noone else) had a holiday in lieu of Anzac Day.  It was a nice day.  I got loads done, including re-arranging my son's bedroom (he can now see his sister's bed from his bed which should hopefully avoid the need for him to go and camp out on her bedroom floor during the night).  We stopped in at this cafe after going to the post office.  The kids were most impressed with the smiling babycinos.

Cafe kids

Babycino

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We also had a visit later in the day from the kids' nan, great aunt, nan's friend and cousin.  I cracked open the green cordial and got out the orange cake I had made the previous day in honour of the occasion - so a very good day for all concerned. 

my son (who is very unenthusiastic about Kung Fu and only goes because his sister does) finally managed to go up a grading.  His sister, who is now in adult gradings, helped out with the testing.  He was moderately proud of himself but still can't manage to get too enthusiastic about Kung Fu. 

Kung fu grading

I am thinking he might become less enthusiastic now as he will no longer be in the class with the fun instructor who I have posted about previously (and is shown here at my son's last grading last year).

Kung Fu block and punch testing

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I don't think the new instructor is going to be quite so tolerant of my son wandering off during class and failing to pay attention.  Most of the other kids, once they get to this level, are really super enthusiastic and try really hard.  I can see lots of push ups in my son's future! 

Had a great time.  The weather was great even when it was cold (which it only was towards the end). Highlights for the kids were meeting my brother's dog, Bobby, for the first time, spending their birthday money and, for my son, meeting up with my best friend and her to boys.  We also had a few bike riding lessons (mostly unsuccessful), went down and visited my 94 year old nana and watched way too much tv (as Mum has foxtel).  Here are some photos. 

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Sandi Toksvig: how to travel with kids -Times Online

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/trav...

I recall Nick and I being given a packet of biscuits to share in the back of a very small Fiat in the African bush. We were told not to eat them all while my parents went into an office to do the paperwork with which Africa ever abounded. While we were sitting there an ostrich put its head through the window and took the entire packet. The feathered felon was long gone by the time my parents returned and I think I was about 30 before my parents believed me.

This piece is all about car travel, the old fashioned way.  My husband and I had a similar philosophy but finally succumbed to the temptation of the portable DVD players about two Christmases ago when facing a return drive from Sydney to Melbourne (about 12 to 14 hours) in hot conditions and along the notoriously boring Hume Highway. 

My own childhood car memories involve lots of 'I Spy' and squabbling with my brothers in the back seat of the Holden over who got to sit next to the window (we ended up rotating seats every hour) and over whether it was okay to sing along with the radio or whether this was 'spoiling it for everyone else because you can't sing'.  I also remember one brother driving us all mad by singing the Taubmans Paint Commercial (set to the tune of 'My Way') all the way on one car trip to visit relatives in the country (I still can't listen to anyone singing 'My Way' without thinking of this).  This was all pre-airconditioning so we tended to have the windows open a lot of the time in an effort to keep cool and stop ourselves from sticking to the vinyl bench seats.

Seat belts in back seats came in at some stage during my childhood but weren't mandatory.  My parents decided at one stage, however, to install some newfangled children's harnesses in the back seat of one car and the constriction these imposed was utter hell until we worked out how to loosen them and gradually managed to escape from them altogether.  After that, the harnesses became an excellent piece of equipment for 'back seat waterskiing' which was one (probably highly dangerous) game we devised to keep ourselves entertained on long trips.

We tended to travel pretty slowly as Mum suffered from car sickness and also because the traffic just didn't move as fast in those days.  Any trips used to involve lots of stop offs at small country towns that are now bypassed by the highways.  There was also a lot more to see out of the car window than there is now and, of course, a lot more thrill seeking fun to be had in the back seat.  No wonder modern kids need technology.

Oh and in relation to the ostrich story, I remember a similar thing happening to us once.  We were sitting in the car at the site of dormant volcano (Tower Hill) in Western Victoria and Mum was turning around to talk to us or tell us off about something and an emu came and stuck its head into her window and put its beak right up next to her ear and made a loud kind of burping sound.  Mum nearly went through the roof with shock and we kids thought it was the funniest thing ever.  It probaby partly inspired me to choose an emu for my original avatar when I first set up this blog.

emuface.jpg

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