by Philippa Cross, a mother of two boys and a bulldog called Oscar. Having adjusted her approach to being an award winning author somewhat, she now just

Every time I attend a baby shower (or a kitchen tea for that matter) I ponder these bizarre rites of passage ceremonies of the western world because that’s exactly what they are.

What else explains this strange behaviour of a group of otherwise quite normal women? Once, at a kitchen tea, (or bachelorette’s party, or whatever these things are called these days), the bride-to-be was stripped naked and wrapped up in cling film in front of the whole room. An experience I’ll never forget, but that’s a story for another day.

Anthropologists study the universal phenomenon of rites of passage ceremonies in order to better understand the society itself. These rituals are supposed to demonstrate what values and beliefs are important in that society. Oi! We’re in trouble then.

We start by sitting around and talking nonsense. There’s usually a bit about dieting. A bit more about how no-one is ready for their first child. We swap birth stories. We laugh conspiratorially at those who haven’t had children yet. We agree that we were all totally unprepared for our children. We breathe a sigh of relief when the obligatory small talk phase draws to a close, and the fat chick with swollen feet (who we either know very well, or not at all) starts opening presents.

Depending on what kind of present opener she is, this signals the end of the ordeal is in sight. If she’s a quick opener, it’s just a matter of oohing and aahing through a few 100 gifts bags filled with baby vests, socks and Elizabeth Anne’s products, and you’ll be out of here. But, there are always those women who save wrapping paper for another day, God bless ‘em. Then you’re in it for the long hall I’m afraid. \

But, like I say, it’s a trusty rite of passage ceremony,  I have had two children and my dear friends and family have sat through two of these obligatory gatherings for me. They have kindly brought me gifts and supported me through the quite unique experience of bringing children into the world. And I really did appreciate it. Really. I never thought I’d say that, but when you’re the fat swollen person, it really does mean an awful lot.

So, I never turn one down, and you shouldn’t either. Just like those unfortunate Xhosa boys living in huts in circumcision villages wearing nothing but a lamb cloak, covered in white paint, you and I have a responsibility to our society.

If you say no to baby showers, the very fabric of our evolved western civilisation could disintegrate. Anthropologists in 2204 will have nothing to write about us. Just suck it up and be grateful you’re not a virgin Zulu maiden who, once a year,  has to take your designer YDE top off, go to the river, collect reed and bring them back to the village where you have to dance for a pervy old king.

Kerry Haggard works in corporate communications by day and desperately tries to sleep at night, despite the best efforts of her sons, dogs and her conscience to prevent her from doing so. Thankfully, her husband has learned the hard way to let sleeping Kerrys lie… Follow her on Twitter @KerryHaggard

 Daniel (aged four and a half) and I were chatting over breakfast yesterday morning. “Where does meat come from, Mommy?” he asked. “From animals,” I said, hoping that that would be the end of that train of thought. Not so. “But how do the animals make meat?” he persisted? “Do cows make chicken?”

 “No – chickens make chicken, and cows make beef,” I said. “What about horses?” was the next question – and after confirming that we definitely don’t eat horse, I quickly changed the subject, desperate to postpone the moment when I have to tell my animal-loving little boy that we kill animals to eat them … that the kind animals don’t just donate chunks of their flesh for us to consume, before they move on to the next pasture.

But it got me thinking (and I know there are vegetarians and vegans out there who will snort and say “It took you THIS long?). As a South African brought up in a braaing culture, where meat has been my primary source of protein since I can remember, the whole notion of where it actually comes from has kind of been absorbed into my psyche. I make good decisions about the meat that I buy – grass-fed beef and free range chicken, for example, but the fact remains that living creatures have to die for me and my family to eat them. How do I explain this to my little boy, without him thinking that I’m a complete monster for sanctioning the mass slaughter of cows, sheep, pigs and chickens?

 Law of the jungle perhaps – our teeth classify us as omnivores, so we are just following what nature has set us up to do, surely? Or is it time to convince my whole household (we are seven now, including Thandi, my domestic goddess and my father-in-law whose given name is Johannes), that it’s time to ditch their meat-loving heritage and become vegetarian?

By Laura-kim

I was never one of those parents who played games with my kids. Admittedly they were too small for anything more than snap and memory up until a few years ago.

Kiara’s play therapist recently suggested we start playing games together. There were a few reasons she suggested this

So off I went and borrowed a variety of games from a friend and every night for the past 6 weeks we have played games after dinner. It really does make a difference. It has cut down on the amount of TV that Cameron watches which is great and seems to be teaching Kiara the desired lessons.

A few months ago her tantrums were frequent when she did not get her own way as a result of something she had done/not done but this morning when she asked me if she gets her treat and I replied no because you did not do what I asked she said “So it’s a no” and walked away calmly. I am not attributing this solely to the playing of UNO every night but I do believe it is a contributing factor.

We also now play games in the car like “I spy” which makes for much laughter and is making us all aware of what is going on around us.

While I will admit that some evenings the last thing I want to do is look for matching pairs of fairies it has made a difference in the way my family functions.

So get some games, have some fun and teach some lessons!

This morning I attended a Pilates class. As usual, I was running late, so I hurriedly grabbed my empty 2 litre Valpre water bottle, filled it with water, and rushed out of the house.

My water bottle was next to my mat, and while doing the downward facing dog (it’s a yoga position), I glanced at my water bottle, which was eye level.

There was a tampon floating in it. It had puffed up to full capacity, as only a tampon can.

My son had obviously been on one of his ferreting missions in my bathroom cupboard that morning, and found my box of tampons. He has displayed a fondness for them before, and who can blame him?

They are neatly shaped, the see-through plastic wrapping comes off in a neat twist way, and after spinning them around your finger by the cool little string thingy, you can drop them down the toilet, at which point they puff up before your very eyes.

He has done this over and over again.

My approach to such behaviour has been to ignore it. I find that when I make a big deal about something, he does it more often, and when I ignore something, he gets bored on his own, and stops doing it. I am a mom of 2 toddlers. I pick my battles.

In retrospect, I guess I should have picked this one to fight.

As I breathed deeply, in and out, along with my class, I chose to ignore the tampon in my clear water bottle entirely. The oxygen and exercise endorphins had clearly gone to my head.

If anyone asked, I reasoned, I would tell them it was a trick of mine to keep water fresh, like putting rice grains in ones salt cellar.

by Gina Jacobson,

Aaron is a pretty well adjusted 2 year old.  He moved from his cot to a big boy bed without a hitch.  He started school with very few tantrums or clingy moments.

What he is not adjusting well to is the fact that daddy has moved out of the home office and into a new office.  He is teary and clingy, he makes me call daddy each morning so he can speak to him and then sobs and begs daddy to come home.

He is suddenly very clingy with me, he cries and wails when I leave him at school in the morning, which he really wasn’t doing that often before and he gets very upset when I leave to go back to work after lunch.

He has also been sick the last few weeks and Im sure that he is still feeling out of sorts from that as well.

It  just breaks my heart to see him sob when daddy goes off to work and when I go back to work after lunch.

What has your experience been with separation anxiety and with anxiety caused by big changes in your little ones life?  Do you have any tips to help us ease through this transition?

Your child is born amidst teddies, new clothes, bouquets of flowers and many visits from excited family and friends…when the hustle and bustle dies down and your happy family returns home from hospital, you are left hoping, praying, and wishing that this child will be an easy one.  That your child will cruise through the journey of life without a hitch or a problem.  That your child will be different from all the ones that you hear about in the media that make bad choices or are exposed to negative circumstances.  That your child will be the one where homework is always done, suitable friends are chosen, manners are good and model behaviour is displayed.

As baby grows steadily and the developmental stages are ticked off one by one, you shower the little soul with so much love and affection that there is no doubt that they will grow up into anything other than your special and gifted child with so much good to offer the world.  Then school starts, and so the uphill battle of homework, bullying, pressures of tests, strict teachers and reduced playtime steps in.  Your once precious little soul that adored being with mommy and daddy and loved hugs, kisses and piggy back rides now pulls a face at the thought of mom dropping them off at the classroom door.  Fights and arguments are reduced to having the latest gadgets and toys and which clothing labels are the best to wear alongside why fast food is way better than vegetables.

Before you know it, your once adorable 6-year old with two front teeth missing turns into a revolting teenager adorned in black clothing and enough piercings to resemble a Christmas tree. Your beautiful daughter insists on wearing skimpy, provocative clothing that relays the message that she is no longer a child.  The cheekiness and sullen behaviour steps in and nothing you do is good enough and so the endless cycle of habitual arguing in the household begins.

So what are we debating here? Are the swift changes in technology to blame for a value shift and decline in positive behaviour in our children, or is it the lack of distinct traditional parenting, perhaps we need to look to the media to find a scape goat, or is it the overwhelming toxic influence of alchohol, sex and drugs that are impacting on our children’s precious lives along with not enough exercise, poor diet, role models in the form of singers and scandalous movie stars and crime statistics on the upswing?

We can point fingers, we can allocate blame, we can raise our hands in the air in frustration, but as parents we need to realise that it is reasonable to assume that a generation shaped by this new fast paced world of ours will be different from those who have gone before it.

Albert Einstein said that “Setting an example is not the main means of influencing others; it is the only means.” Let us acknowledge that times are changing and that we need to move with the times rather than stay stuck in the rigid confines of parenting with blinkers on that can sometimes exacerbate problems in our children.

Make no mistake- I think most teachers are superheroes- but they can make bad calls when it comes to treating ADHDers!  Here’s an example of a mistake a lot of teachers make.

At the end of the last school year, one of the ADHDer moms I “mentor” (lets call her Jane) gave me a call. Jane’s son’s teacher had asked her if she could please return the unused Ritalin that Jane had sent to school.

Jane’s son (lets call him John) takes a Ritalin tablet in the morning and then another one later in the morning, which the teacher had agreed to give to him. All through the year Jane had been asking the teacher if she was giving John his second dose, because there were days when he came home more hyper than usual, and would then battle to get his homework done or get ready for bed and so on. The teacher swore that she was giving him his meds, even though John told his mom that some days she didn’t.  The poor ADHDer almost always gets the short end of the stick  because they have a tendency to tell stories the teacher is usually the one believed!

In this case, come year end, the teacher sent home almost  5 weeks’ worth of Ritalin tablets!

Jane was furious. When she confronted the teacher about all the extra medication, the teacher admitted that there had been days she felt he didn’t need it “that much” and decided not to give it to him.

Jane made an appointment with the school principal to discuss it with him and to ask him to follow up with John’s teachers in future, but it was the end of the school year so not much was going to come of Jane’s measures.

The implications of an ADHDer not having his correct medication dosage is huge- and it doesn’t only affect the school day. John’s teacher had no idea.

In the new school year, Jane was sure to give the teacher more information and explain why John needed his correct and complete dose every day- but the fact remains that South African schools do not have advanced ADHD “care” programs like the IEPs in the USA, and we have to rely on our children’s teachers’ willingness and good will to help in our ADHDers care, rather than be assured that their schools will follow up on a properly formalised plan.

Follow up with your ADHDers’ teachers and with the headmaster and division heads on a regular basis. Provide them with reading material and books as and when you can.

Talk to her every time you take new meds to school and remind her why your ADHDer has meds.

With a class full of children, she will forget!

And good luck to you.

Nikki Bush, a self-confessed parenting adventurer.  Married with two strapping sons aged 14 and 10.  Nikki’s clients call her a creative parenting expert.  She is an inspirational speaker and author of bestselling parenting book, Future-proof Your Child (Penguin, 2008).

Have you ever realised that you are always trying to market to, or sell your child/ren something – an idea, a value, a point of view, an action to be taken etc:

With this generation, authority does work (sometimes), particularly in the early years when “because I am your parent and I said so” still has some magical power to it, or if you have actively positioned yourself as a hero in your child’s life story.  But, as children get older there is a tendency for them to either think or, even worse, verbalise “Says Who?” or “Who cares anyway?”. Living in a reward-based culture as we do, where it’s so commonplace for us to be rewarded for swiping our credit cards, being loyal to the same airline, store or restaurant, visiting the gym etc, our children could be forgiven for thinking:  “If they want me to do this, what’s in it for me, what do I get?”

This is a very real challenge for 21st century parents.  Of course the desired end result after years of parenting is for our children to be self-motivated rather than relying on some form of external bribe etc.  But, from time-to-time, it may be necessary to utilise various “marketing tactics” to get the message across to your child in a fun and playful way, or to get their buy-in until it becomes an adopted habit, value, thought or behaviour pattern.

Star charts, treats, promises and bribes are all in a parent’s marketing arsenal – to be used wisely, of course.  And do watch what the marketers are doing – you could pick up an idea or two to add to your toolkit.  Try these “promotions” for size, my kids loved them:

With almost 8 years between my two children, it was beginning to feel as though I had been at school forever, so you can imagine my elation when my son passed Matric last year and I left school forever!!

My son had decided many years ago that he wanted to be a chef when he left school.  So, not withstanding the fact that he had never cooked anything other than 2-minute noodles and scrambled eggs, hated washing dishes and didn’t know the meaning of hard work, I filled in the 10 page application form for the Hotel School, signed the 21 page contract, paid the obscene fees, bought the R7000-00 worth of books (I always thought you could buy an entire library for R7000!),  paid for the hideously expensive uniforms (1 x suit and 2 times chef uniforms plus accessories),  bought the set of knives that look as though they came out of a serial killer’s boot (I watch the Crime & Investigation Channel a lot!), and paid for all the other incidentals!  You will notice that the words “bought” and “paid for” feature quite prominently in this paragraph.

Day one eventually arrived!

The first two days were taken up by a Wine Course (At an additional cost of R1200-00), and I am proud to say that I am now very knowledgeable when it comes to useless wine, port, sherry, brandy and sparkling wine facts. (If all else fails, I think I am fully equipped to apply for a job as a Sommelier)”

The second two days were dedicated to a Level 1 First Aid Course.  Apparently, by law, you have to do at least Level 1 before you are permitted to work in a hotel kitchen. My son is not a light boy and after spending two days on his knees practicing CPR on a dummy, he was almost crippled.  After taking truckloads of Voltaren and Myprodol, he was finally able to walk again (but only just!!).

Ryan is doing the 3 yr Diploma in Professional Cookery and Kitchen Management, which is divided into academic and practical sections, on a block release basis.  Ryan has been allocated to do part of the practical section first, and has been assigned to a 5-Star Rosebank Hotel.

Horror of horrors!  He is currently doing the 6:00 am (as in getting up in the middle of the night) – 2:00 pm shift.  As you can imagine, after doing this for almost 3 weeks, we are all floating around like Zombies!  But, despite the fact that Ryan has almost cut his finger off twice, and he finally knows the meaning of HARD work, after being on his feet for 8 hours straight, on a daily basis he is learning what it means to take your place in the “working world” and he is actually enjoying his course and savouring the experience of learning something new every day!

Me?  I am spending hours boiling, bleaching, soaking, washing and scrubbing an entire gourmet menu out of his WHITE chef uniform, on a daily basis, rushing to fetch him at 2-00pm, helping my hubby out with the morning lifts (I didn’t know it was possible to “sleep drive”) and fervently hoping that he will get his driver’s license soon and I will, at the very least, be served a Cordon Bleu meal, in the very near future!

by Fiona Ingram, a  South African writer who loves books, travel, animals, antiques, and adventures of all kinds! Read Fiona’s

Reading with your child is a wonderful pastime with so many benefits. Not only does this special ‘together time’ strengthen the bond between you and your child, there are other positive results. You’ll see the growth of your child’s vocabulary, awareness of the world, social behavior skills, listening skills, confidence, and many other developmental aspects. However, in a busy day filled with work, chores, ferrying to and from school, where does the frazzled parent find time to capture those few precious moments called ‘free time?’ Here are a few ideas on how to incorporate reading together for the family with not much time to spare.

Reading doesn’t always have to involve books. Our world is full of text. Use it! A busy parent can create a fun game in the car where the child reads road signs, billboards, helps with a road map, or spots registration number plates and creates words with the letters.

Shopping? The supermarket is a great place for looking for labels, reading labels, helping with the shopping list, and checking the listed ingredients on a tin or packet.

Have fun while you cook. If you’re busy, have your child read something to you while you’re preparing dinner. This time it can be a book they are currently enjoying, something from the newspaper or their choice of magazine. Encourage your child to express an opinion about what they are reading to you. This will draw your child closer to you because your interest will cement the bond between you. Children love being the focus of their parents’ attention, and especially when they are doing something special with the parent.

Kids love baking! Make cookies and candy even more fun by getting your child to read the recipe to you first while you collect all the ingredients required. Then they can continue reading the instructions while you perform the task. Later (while the family is eating the cookies) you can say how much help they were. Praise is vital to your child’s performance. It boosts their confidence and makes them want to do this again.

Dining out? Your child can have fun reading the menu and deciding what they want to eat. Having friends over for dinner? Ask your child to create a beautiful illustrated menu to show your guests. Most kids love the opportunity to get out those crayons and coloring pencils.

Audio books are a wonderful way of helping your child concentrate and develop listening skills while you’re driving. After a few minutes, stop the tape and ask your child questions about what they just heard. Make it interesting by asking what they think will happen next, or what they would do in a certain situation. This will help your child engage in the literary process in a fun way.

Find time in tiny bites. Don’t think that reading to or with your child involves 60-minute marathons. Just before bed is a special time between parent and child. Just 10-15 minutes every evening is possible, and will reap marvellous rewards.

Whatever you do and however much time you manage to squeeze out of your day for reading with your child will all be beneficial. It’s not the daily amount of time that is so important; it’s the quality of your word time together that counts. Don’t forget to have fun because that’s what it’s all about!