The art of Toilet Training

Toilet training - SIT!

Babies and toddlers are things of wonder and delight but hidden within the unremitting joy lies a biological imperative that cannot be denied; what goes in, must come out. 

Sadly, regardless of how besotted with your offspring that you may be, what comes out is never cute, never cuddly and, whilst it might cause your face to form all sorts of odd expressions, a wistful smile is unlikely to be amongst them.

Early questions tend to be “Oh my God! Is it supposed to be that colour?” Followed by multiple variations on the theme “You don’t seriously expect me to deal with that do you?” All in all, I think it’s safe to say that most parents are fairly anxious for their little one to master the art of the toilet as soon as possible.

Of course, there are other reasons behind this desire; disposable nappies are pretty expensive at the best of times and cause untold damage to the environment, whilst the traditional towelling nappies leave your washing machine running at maximum and the entire house smelling of stuff you’d much rather it didn’t smell of. 

There are alternatives. If you can afford them they do disposable nappies that don’t have a half life akin to Plutonium and, if you are really hard-core, you can go for a pot of moss and quick reactions!

Apparently this was the option taken by a friend-of-a-friend. By all accounts, it relies on an almost zealous regard for the environment, a good watch and a very keen eye on your child’s facial expressions. I have great admiration for this approach but I strongly suspect I’d have needed waders and a nose clip before entering the family home if we’d ever attempted it.

Of course what this method really relies on is toilet timing, whereby you get your child into a routine and take them to the loo just before they need to go – with luck. This approach used to be very popular when nappies needed to be washed by hand but went into decline upon the arrival of disposable nappies – why would that be I wonder? As a result of this relatively recent change you get a huge variation in advice these days; some say you should get your child using a potty almost from the word go, others say that you should let them lead the way and avoid putting them under any undue pressure to ‘perform’.

Part of the reason why the advice differs so much is because they are often addressing two different phenomena. Toilet timing is just getting your child sat on a potty at the right time of the day and really just needs attentive parents, a settled routine, a good watch and a lot of luck. However, toilet training relies on your child recognising when the 'urge' is upon them so they know when to go to the toilet themselves. You could start 'timing' from an early age, if the desire takes you, but genuine toilet training requires your child to develop sufficiently to be able to recognise when a 'movement' is about to happen and it's pretty pointless starting this before the age of two simply because most children don't have the prerequisite neural development in place till then.

In the end we opted for quiet encouragement, whilst remaining as relaxed and sanguine about it as we could, mainly because putting our child under pressure seemed a bit pointless but also because I have never, ever, met an able bodied adult who failed to learn how to go to the loo - so I couldn’t see much point in making a huge issue out of it. 

Alas, the UK tabloids see things differently and have been beating the toilet training drum lately because some children are turning up to school, aged 4, and still not toilet trained. I grant you that this seems to be taking 'sanguine' a little too far but I still believe that you have to let the child take the lead on this and that being 'pushy' is only going to back fire farther down the line.

As it was Marty seemed more than happy to maintain the status quo, ominously so. We started trying to persuade him on the joys of sitting on a toilet at about the age of about eighteen months. We even bought him his own little loo, complete with a flush button that sang dubious faecal and urinary related songs along the lines of “We’re all going to the loo tomorrow, loo tomorrow, loo tomorrow....” Sadly he wasn’t impressed.

I wouldn’t go as far as to say that Marty ‘enjoyed’ pooing in his pants, but I got the impression that there was a certain element of satisfaction, after all he didn’t have to stop playing; he could just pause, do the business and get right back to his toys.

Whilst dealing with the aftermath was less than amusing there was actually a lot of fun to be had just watching him ‘go through the motions’ - so to speak. He’d stop what he was doing, take on a misty eyed expression as he looked off into the middle distance, slowly turn red in the face and then, suddenly, out of the blue, he became an absolute dead ringer for Martin Clunes! I should have taken a video of it!

Anyway, amusement aside, by the time he reached two I must confess that I was starting to get a little worried. Potty training appeared to revolve around the adage “You can lead a horse to water but you cannot make it drink”; try as we might Marty just wasn’t the least bit interested in sitting on the loo to do his business. Six months later and nothing had changed, then one day the conversation turned to Nursery.

One of his friends had started nursery already and Marty had been invited to a party held there. Boy was he impressed! Not only was the place filled with little boys and girls but they served up cake on demand and it was crammed to the rafters with toys the likes of which he had barely dreamed of. Would he shut up about this place? He would not.

Of course, for the parents, the approach of nursery is a real worry when your child is stubbornly refusing to engage in toilet training. Fortunately, nursery was also the solution. One day, with no expectation of success, I told Marty that they wouldn’t let him into nursery if he couldn’t go to the toilet ‘like a big boy’. At the time this news seemed to barely register but about an hour later he asked to go to the toilet for a wee and by the next day he was perched on the loo doing a number two!

And that was that! He’s been pretty much perfect ever since! Yes, there have been occasions when we’ve had to isolate a corner of the house and wheel out the pressure hose but they have been very few and far between.

Of course a little boy cannot just sit down and have a wee for any length of time. Within a week I had my own quiet moment disturbed by a little voice behind me whispering “Oooh daddy! That’s a clever wee!” and since then he has insisted on standing up to the toilet to do his business. Sadly, he's not satisfied with this and we have been anxiously attempting to convince him that his dream of the 'standing-poo' is just that, an unattainable dream.

Within a few short weeks he was so confident in his new found ability that he started giving little kids a hard time every time we saw one; “Daddy, I wee in the toilet!” He proclaimed, pointing in the direction of the smaller child, “But babies, babies wee everywhere!” To which I could but nod sagely in agreement.

One thing I have learnt during this process is how wholly unaware women are to the art form that is urination! To females the wee seems to be a mundane bodily function, whereas for us males it is an ever evolving art. How high, how far and how long are competitions that boys engage in until well into their dotage.

A typical example of this is the “The Butchers Shop” in Johannesburg. Ask a woman and she’ll just tell you that they do the best steaks this side of Pluto, and right they are. However, if you ask a bloke, whilst they might mention in passing that the food is pretty darn good, what they will really focus on are the gents urinals; they fill them with crushed ice and leave it to their male patrons to produce whatever work of urinary art they are capable of. Marvellous stuff!

The Wonderful Two's

The invisible man

There are a number of childhood misnomers and I'm glad to report that “The terrible two’s” is one of them. Yes, Marty has had his moments; he has been known to collapse gracefully to the floor in a fit of inconsolable tears, he has been known to scream. He can be a bit of a bossy little bugger when the feeling takes him and it has to be said that he can barely look at an envelope these days without wanting to push it.

I had rather hoped to follow all these idiosyncrasies as they occurred but I was struck down with  2 slipped discs last March and they rather took the fun out of sitting down to do anything other than immediately standing back up again. So now that I am approaching full fitness again I thought I’d do a summary of the last year, a year that was far from terrible.

Of course I’d heard of the terrible two’s - most parents of older children can’t wait to tell you all about them and do so with a rather worrying degree of relish. In my mind’s eye I’d built up a picture of a more diminutive version of the teen years; we'd awake one morning to discover our bundle of joy had turned into a mumbling rebel who hated us and insisted on wearing his Thomas-the-Tank-Engine hat back to front and his nappy half way down his arse. Fortunately this was not the case.

In truth this last year has been lovely. Ok, Marty is considerably more likely to break down in tears than he was a year ago but, on the other hand, in between the bawling he’s much more likely to have his parents in tears of laughter.

One of the most fascinating facts that I learnt about a child becoming two was that they finally attain an intellect that exceeds that of the family dog! In truth the word “fact” might be open to question here. Yes I read it and yes the author claimed knowledge on the subject but it’s also very, very, obvious that said author had never, ever, met our dog. I don’t wish to do her down but we have a female Boxer and I swear we have moss growing in the garden that could run intellectual rings around her. I suspect Marty became officially smarter than our dog when he learnt to fart.

That said, during the ‘two’s’ the intelligence of the child grows at an astonishing rate. Barely a day goes by without Marty exhibiting something new, whether it be a new word or a new physical skill. Alongside this, and probably the most impressive change, is that he has started to develop empathy and altruism.

I suspect this is one of the hardest things as a parent to grasp and I have my wife and Dr Chris Green’s book “Toddler Taming” to thank for what little insight I have gathered.

The mistake that is very easy to make is believing that your two year old is just a mini version of you, and the fact that it’s now possible to have a conversation with your child, albeit not a very coherent one, only adds to this erroneous belief. You hear parents berating their child for snatching something off another kid, or for refusing to share and they act as if the kid ought to be aware of the social transgression. In reality you might as well rebuke them for failing to understand quantum mechanics.

A two year old is only just getting to grips with a sense of self, let alone with how that self interacts with others and one of the joys of the two years is watching that change take place. Marty now recognises when people are happy or sad, he’ll share his dinner with me, although usually just after he’s taken a bite out of one end and slobbered all over the other, and whilst he’s still not entirely comfortable with the idea of sharing, he is at least willing to occasionally give it a go.

On the other side of the coin he still firmly believes that the world revolves around him. There’s nothing you can do as a parent to change this belief, it’s just a developmental stage and he or she will eventually work through it – this can often take 60-70 years. The other thing you have to get your head around as a parent is that this “the world revolves around me” attitude isn’t a flight of fancy or a sign of a selfish, spoilt child. It is a genuine belief; it is only during the two’s that a child starts to come to terms with the idea that they are not everything; that mummy and daddy are not actually apart of them, that they have finite boundaries and that they cannot control everything in the world around them. As adults we take our sense of self and identify so much for granted that it’s hard to imagine that we actually had to learn these things.

Marty also knows what he likes and what he doesn’t like. Sadly this is usually not what his mum and dad like and don’t like. To navigate this shoal of potential friction requires negotiation skills, the ability to know when to make a stand and when not to, and the ability to quickly distract.

The later is surprisingly easy as young kids are astonishingly gullible. Marty can be just about to go off on one and I’ll suddenly shout “Look! Train!” Instantly the bawling stops and he’s looking around eagerly for the train Just in case he picks up on the fact that we're 5 miles away from the nearest railway line I quickly follow up with, “Oh Marty, did you miss it?”

“Yes!” He announces with barely a hint of suspicion.

“Oh, what a shame, it was a steam train just like Spencer...” And off we go, the argument forgotten, the amateur dramatics over for another day.

The only down side to this use of the fictitious train is that we all now shout out “Train!!” the moment we see one, which wouldn’t be a problem except that it happens to me when Marty is nowhere in sight, which seems to worry my work colleagues.

Of course all this negotiation, distraction and deciding when to make an issue of something has to come from the parents, and most importantly both parents have to approach it in pretty much an identical fashion if it’s going to work. This was quite easy for us as Leanne decided what she was going to do and then told me what I was going to do. 

To be honest, she so patently knew what she was talking about that I didn't have a problem with playing the accompanying fiddle, and it must be said that it seems to have paid dividends in that Marty has quickly come to learn that bawling and tantrums get him nowhere and ignoring his parents counting “One... Two... Three” is never a good idea... although that still doesn't stop him occasionally giving it another try... just to be sure.

I guess the other thing to try to remember in all of this is not to take it personally. Marty is not acting-up because he wants to wind me up, he’s barely capable of even understanding that concept, he’s doing it to prove or disprove this growing idea that he might not be everything. Can you imagine how distressing that must be to a little kid? To have spent all your life so far with the utter conviction that there is only you in the world and that everything you see, hear, smell and touch are merely different facets of yourself. Then suddenly you start to suspect that this might all be wrong and that you might actually just be a tiny, fragile, powerless being set in a world that is almost totally outside of your control. No wonder they break down in tears all the time!

That said, I do still have to remind myself that Marty isn’t an adult , that he isn’t an evil, calculating mastermind, twisting me about his little finger just for the sheer fun of it but that he is in fact just being two.

So on the whole we seem to have managed to avoid most of the tantrums...but if I ever need reminding that an emotional explosion is just a heartbeat away all I need do is change his routine, just a little bit. I have learnt the hard way that two year olds love routine and, far more importantly, will fight tooth and nail if they even suspect that there’s the merest possibility that it might in any way be disrupted.

Bedtime is the most obvious routine and following the now established ‘rules’ of bedtime results in a happy, relaxed, process that see’s Marty fast asleep within minutes. However, change one single aspect of that bedtime routine and the house is going to sound like a cross between an explosion in a fireworks factory and the collapse of the Hoover Dam – his mother once added an extra verse into ‘Bar-Bar Black Sheep’ and you’d have thought the sky had fallen in.

I guess if you live a busy and frenetic life delivering this calm routine might be a bit of an issue, however we are now blissfully dull so it’s rarely a problem... and it does have its up sides – Marty must be greeted in the morning by his mum, if I try all hell breaks loose! Sadly, this means I have to have the lie in’s. Isn’t life terrible!

So that’s why the two’s are not so terrible, but what has made it so wonderful?

Well the fact that you can now actually have a conversation with him is a real joy. Ok, the conversation is a bit limited – mainly to trains, food, dinosaurs and dragons but that doesn’t limit the joy. It’s the pat little phrases and off the cuff remarks that really make you smile.

We were in ASDA when he had a ‘moment’. 

“Marty! Look at all the fruit!” I said in a feeble attempt to distract him. With tears running down his face he looked up at me and said, “I can’t see the fruit! I’m too busy crying!”

Currently his most popular phrase is “Daddy I need the toilet! Help please!” Then, if I’m still sat in my seat a tenth of a second later, he cries “Quick! Quick, daddy! Before the wee comes!”

Many of the conversations are just surreal. We were quietly eating lunch one day.

“I’m not a chip.” Marty casually announced.

“Are you not?” I replied, wondering if he’d somehow managed to break into the drinks cabinet.

“Nooo.” He stopped and stared off into the middle distance, obviously giving it some thought.... “I’m a fish-finger!”

I could go on all day about his language skills - and one day I probably will - but the other activity that really stands out is his love of hiding, or ‘oydin’ as he prefers to call it.

The moment I walk into the house he stops whatever he's doing, clasps his hands over his eyes and announces loudly, “Can’t find meeeee!”

Does he truly believes that the simple act of putting his hands over his eyes renders him invisible? I’ve no idea... but he certainly acts as if he does.

Since he’s obviously so good at hiding he usually feels the need to help out a bit. “Daddy! I’m oydin in the tent!... Can’t find meeee!”

Maybe it’s just me but I do find it all a genuine joy to come home to.

King of the Railway

In training

It’s been quite some time since I wrote anything on this blog, not because Marty has suddenly become dull – far from it - but because I did my back in earlier this year and have been unable to sit down and type ever since.

It eventually dawned on me that my back was not going to miraculously improve so I moved the computer into the bedroom. It’s not ideal but at least I can now lie down on the bed in relative comfort and once more relate the trials and wonders of parenthood.

So what’s been the biggest change this year, aside from my inability to sit down and pick things up? Well I guess the ditching of Tigger and the embracing of all things “Thomas” has been one of the more obvious changes.

Tigger had been Marty’s most beloved toy since he was about 6 months old. I suspect most of the attraction was based on the fact that Tigger could bounce around the room with wild abandon whilst Marty could barely drag himself across the floor. Certainly the love seemed to grow, right up until the moment Marty rose unsteadily to his feet and, mere moments later, bounced high into the air.

The fact that bouncing was now easily accomplished and relatively commonplace seemed to lower Tigger in Marty’s eyes. ‘So what else can you do?’ appeared to be his attitude and, sadly, the reply was ‘not a lot.’ Leanne and I both found this a bit of a worry, partly because we actually quite enjoyed watching and singing along to the Tigger movies every night before bedtime, but mainly because we’d spent weeks painting an 8ft high mural across Marty’s bedroom wall, a mural dedicated solely to Tigger, Pooh and the rest of the gang. However, Marty could not be brought around and, as Tigger sat more neglected with each passing day, Marty’s eye went a roving.

Quite how he settled on Thomas is still up for debate, was it a toy Leanne purchased at a car boot sale? Was it me encouraging him to watch an episode of “Thomas and Friends” on the TV? These were out and out accusations at the time as we both took great exception to this fascination with a train that did nothing but let off steam and roll his eyes whilst an aged Scouser droned on about tracks, buffers and the fat controller. Where were the songs? Where was the adult humour within the kiddies program? What had happened to all the bouncy, bouncy, fun, fun, fun?

Fortunately, over time, we've both come to appreciate Thomas and his enormous retinue, which is just as well as Marty barely talks about anything else.

In fairness we didn't have the greatest of introductions! The early episodes of Thomas & friends do take a bit of getting used to; the controller is unashamedly fat, nothing moves other than the trains themselves and Ringo Starr narrates the unfolding drama in a dull, monotone, drone. In truth, considering just how basic it is, I suppose it’s actually quite well done but it was a bit of a let-down after the Technicolor wonders of Walt Disney.

To compound our unease Leanne bought the film “Thomas and The Magic Railroad”, a star studded extravaganza featuring - amongst others - Thomas, Alec Baldwin and Peter Fonda. Alas, it turned out to be the worst film I have seen since I attended a late night showing of “The Wild Women of Wongo” - the only difference being that ‘Wonga’ was billed as being the worst film ever made, whereas ‘The Magic Railroad’ just quietly sidled in and grabbed this accolade whilst my brains dripped slowly out of my ears.

If you ever meet Alex or Pete out-and-about one day and they are being a tad annoying, a little ‘lovey’ and possibly more than a bit full of themselves, just whisper “Thomas And The Magic Railroad” into their collective ears and watch as they shrivel before your eyes and quickly shuffle off into the darkness, heads bowed low, eyes filled with shame.

It so incredibly bloody awful that’s its only redeeming feature is that Madonna and Eddie Murphy weren't in it. I was so upset by this film that I spent the next week desperately trying to rekindle a love for Tigger in Marty’s heart... all to no avail.

Fortunately, things have since improved. Thomas has modernised! He now talks, he’s CGI, he has lots more friends, the films are actually entertaining and Ringo has been cast aside in favour of a narrator that can be understood by people from as far afield as the Wirral - I must admit that I was a little miffed by this last change as Ringo is actually a distant relative of Marty’s. I'm not sure that Ringo is aware of this claim to fame but I’d like to think that, if he is, it offers him some comfort in his dotage.

The latest Thomas film is “Thomas & Friends: King of the Railway” and I'm glad to report that it is light years ahead of the ‘Magic Railroad’ – mind you so is ‘Battlefield Earth’. I won’t go into details but suffice to say that it’s that age old story of multi-millionaire rebuilds castle with the help of umpteen steam trains – we've all been there!

Films aside, it’s as an educational tool that Thomas and the gang have most impressed me. I was lying on the sofa a few weeks ago, quietly moaning in pain as my heat mat tried valiantly to ease the suffering in my lower back, when Marty came up and started playing with the controls.

“Ooh! That’s a little like Edward!” He muttered pushing the buttons. ”Ooh! That’s a little like Henry!”

“Ooh! What the bloody hell are you going on about?” Was my silent reply and it was quite some time before I realised that Marty was looking at the numbers that lit up as he played with the dial. A ‘little like Edward’ was the number 2 painted on the side of the train Edward, a ‘little like Henry’ was the number 3 writ large upon on that train! I was well impressed!

Sadly, my amazement has been slightly tarnished by the fact that, if you write down any of the numbers from 1 to 6, all you get as an answer is the corresponding train, so despite holding out for, say, “It’s six, Daddy!”, all I actually get is a triumphant “It’s Percy, Daddy!” I have a sneaky suspicion that he’s more than aware of what the number is called but just prefers the train name.

The other more obvious, but none the less impressive, knowledge that he’s picked up from Thomas are colours. I did try teaching him colours when he was very young by telling him that the balloon he was holding was in fact a blue balloon. This somewhat back fired on me when he started calling every balloon he came across a ‘blue balloon’ and it took almost six months to get him back to the idea that it was actually just a ‘balloon’.

Leanne told me off for this so I stayed well away from colour until one day Marty waved a blue car in my face and announced, “Daddy! It’s a little like Gordon” I might have been a bit slow on the uptake with his move into numbers but even I could see what he was driving at here – although it might aid the narrative somewhat if I tell you that Gordon is a large and popular train within the Thomas sagas who’s hue is distinctly blue.

So what else have we learnt from Thomas? Well I've learnt that Facebook can actually be useful - Yup, I never thought I’d write that either. My wife discovered one of those local ‘to buy and sell’ Facebook groups and has since been buying Thomas related merchandise like there’s no tomorrow – for the grand sum of £15 we bought enough Trackmaster rail to go around the entire house, complete with umpteen trains and carriages. From this Marty has amassed an amazing degree of dexterity and learnt that battery powered toys do not mix with either sand or water.

I've also discovered a use for YouTube – how many unexpected phrases can I come out with today? Marty and I now spend the last 10 minutes before bedtime watching various steam train video clips on YouTube. From this Marty has discovered ‘real’ Thomas trains and I've discovered just how many sad bastards there are out there wasting their brief time upon this earth freezing their arses off on God forsaken platforms around the country just to take poor quality videos of steam trains.

We've also discovered an enormous amount about trains – far too much if the truth be known – which has infected Marty’s entire vocabulary. He no longer has a bath or a shower; he “goes to the wash-down”. He doesn't push things; he “shunts” them. We no longer park the car; we “pull into a siding”. Everyone else walks around the village, we "puff". Why hold hands, when you can “couple-up”? It’s all very entertaining.

So as Christmas looms Thomas emblazoned clothing is being purchased, Thomas DVD’s are being amassed and relatives across the country are buying various engines to run on the 7 miles of track we seem to have quietly acquired. And what is Marty doing as the big day approaches? He’s only starting to show an ominous penchant for Bob the Bloody Builder!

Typical!

The Age of Do

Marty is now deeply ensconced in one of the most memorable eras of childhood development, the age of “Do!” This is where he insists on ‘Doing’ anything and everything; from taking off his shoes and putting on his socks, through to rewiring the DVD player, driving the car and pretty much anything and everything in between.

This would be a wonderful, carefree, period of household harmony if it wasn’t for one little issue; his desire to do in no way matches his ability to do. He’s like the homeowner who insists on undertaking DIY despite not knowing one end of a nail from the other. Fortunately the consequences are not quite as dire; rather than finding himself standing amidst the rubble of a once fine home Marty finds himself caught up in a life that seamlessly flits between cries of joy when he succeeds and floods of frustrated tears when he fails.

In fairness to the little lad it’s actually quite an enjoyable mindset most of the time, providing you give yourself plenty of time. Marty’s favourite “do” is to climb up into the car by himself and then arrange himself majestically in his seat. If you give him three or four minutes he can do this perfectly well and we can then all join together in a round of applause, whilst Marty cries “Did it! Did it!” However, if you don’t have 4 minutes just to get a small child into a car then you’d best buy a bumper pack of industrial strength ear plugs because it’s going to be loud and tearful and I doubt very much if it will be worth the gain of 90 seconds.

One of the most surprising aspects of all this to me is that, despite suddenly being compelled to try his hand at absolutely everything, he can still be reasoned with. A classic example is getting him upstairs to bed.

At the moment he is into ‘Thomas the Tank Engine’ and is rarely more than a few inches away from his favourite toys; Thomas and Percy. He is also into cars of any shape or form. This is all well and good but it creates a logistical problem for him at bed time. He’s happy to sleep but isn’t going to do so unless all of his toys are sat at the foot of his bed so he can lie back on his pillow and stare boggle-eyed at them until slumber over takes him. But how to get these toys upstairs? Well, in the age of ‘do’ this means spending the next half hour trying to pick up all of his toys at the same time, which turns out to be impossible.

If you offer to help at the beginning he’ll just cry “No, No. Marty Do!” and start to bawl. However, if you ask again after 20 minutes he’ll actually pause to consider the offer and then hand you one or more of his toys and say “Daggy ‘elp now.”

Of course reason doesn’t work all the time, in fact it fails dismally most of the time, but as luck would have it there are a few other tricks. 

The simplest just works by doing the task in hand for him and then crying "Marty did it!" and giving him a round of applause. If he was in some way involved with the task he'll usually just give you a bit of a hard stare, verify that the task has now been completed and then graciously accept the paudits.

If this fails - and it isn't always possible - I then go for the 'distraction'. This works on the fact that small children are astonishingly gullible. Marty can be clinging onto the side of a shopping trolley, screaming like a banshee, turning odd shades of scarlet and puce and crying out “Marty do! Marty do!” as if the devil himself resided within. The west wing of ASDA turns to stare. Now what do you do? Do you fight it? Do you hide until it’s all over? No! You just calmly point over his shoulder and say “Look! Train!” 

It’s as if someone has just flicked a switch; the tears stop, the cries echo down the aisle and are no more and within seconds he’s back to a more acceptable colour.

This works brilliantly if there actually is a train in sight but to be honest it’s not a necessity, “Look! Plane!”, or “Look! Lion!” all work just as well. To be honest I think “Look! Nigel Farage!” would work... and if said it in a pronounced Scottish accent you might get to enjoy an even more comical reaction from Farage himself.

More Baby Led Weaning

Cute AND Clever? Must take after his mum!

One of the best things we ever did with Marty was “baby led weaning”, whereby you feed your little one proper food and let them manage the process themselves. 

There were a number of reasons why we thought this approach would be a good idea. Firstly it was cheaper and easier than buying or making your own mush. Secondly, who in their right minds would voluntarily eat said mush? Surely, if you want your child to have a sound and sensible approach to food, it makes sense to feed them something that you’d at least consider eating yourself? Thirdly, letting them feed themselves rather than subjecting them to a ‘force feeding’ regime seemed eminently sensible, not only would it increase manual dexterity at an early age but it would also let them decide how much they wanted to eat by listening to their own bodies rather than demolishing a jar of pureed ‘God-knows-what’ because ‘mummy bought it, so you’d better eat it’. Finally, letting Marty sit at the table and join us for dinner was just a hell of a lot easier and more pleasant for all concerned.

We got a surprising amount of negativity when we decided on this route. The health visitor felt that Marty might not get enough to eat if he just fed himself and stopped when he liked. We suggested she take a look at the herds of obese people waddling through town and ask herself if the current approach to food seemed to be working.

Other people took exactly the opposite stance and warned us that they’d seen this approach in action and that our child would get fat and eat rubbish. Bearing in mind that we weren’t giving Marty a debit card and freedom to roam around the local supermarket it seemed unlikely that he’d eat rubbish unless we actually gave it to him, but yes maybe you do need to state the obvious caveats to a life of ‘baby led weaning’, namely that you eat a healthy and balanced diet yourself – and no that does not mean a burger in one hand and a coke in the other – and that it is only ‘baby led’, you’re still the adult, so you don’t have to follow; I dare say that – if left to his own devices - Marty would love to gorge himself on chocolate coated poppadoms, smothered in strawberry jelly and topped with treacle sponge cake... but that doesn’t mean he’s going to.

The final warning came from my mum and I suspect it’s impossible to embark on a life of baby led weaning without these words of ancient wisdom ringing in your ears, “He can’t eat proper food! He’ll choke on something and die!” I’ve no idea where this wisdom arose from. Yes, babies might look a bit awkward when feeding themselves and they may well occasionally choke but this is natural, so much so that the gag reflex in a six month old baby is highly developed and very close to the front of the mouth. You still need to make sure they’re sat upright and never left on their own when they’re eating, but that aside it seems perfectly safe – we didn’t have a single problem.

Marty has now turned two and we seem to be seeing a number of huge advantages from BLW that we’d never been told about, all revolving around his dexterity.

He can now eat yoghurt and jelly from a pot, with a spoon, then turn and have a drink from an ordinary cup.. and barely spill a drop! Ok, you wouldn’t want to hug him afterwards whilst wearing your best Armani suit but there was a time when he just looked like a small, animated, mound of yoghurt by the time he’d finished eating. Those days are definitely behind us and the advanced dexterity seems to have affected things you wouldn’t generally associate with eating; he learnt to jump off the ground – clear off the ground – within a few weeks of his 1^st birthday. He already skips down the road. He’s a demon on a scooter. He can put bottle lids back on and take them off. He’s just starting to brush his teeth in a fashion that might actually prevent tooth decay – he was just sucking off the toothpaste.

Ok, it might all just be a coincidence that he’s quite advanced in all these areas but they all share a link in that they require, brain, eye and body coordination and that’s exactly what Baby Led Weaning promotes. All in all I'd very much recommend it.

The Changing Face of Childrens Toys

It’s very easy to overlook those slow changes that occur throughout your life. Then suddenly something happens to throw them into stark relief.

A classic example of this was the TV drama “Life on Mars”, which brought back to life those decades that you had somehow managed to muddle through without constant access to a mobile phone. The days when you left your home and, once out of ear shot, became ‘uncontactable’. And yet we still managed to function. We even managed to meet people! How did we do it? I seriously can't remember and I certainly don't know how I'd manage today.

Another example of this phenomenon was this Christmas and birthday with Marty. 

He’s now two and even though he’d be just as happy with an empty cardboard box we felt obliged to fill said boxes with gifts. When I was two this would have meant a cowboy hat, a little holster, possibly a loud checked top with leather tassels and definitely a very shiny handgun. The kid down the street would then acquire an American Indian outfit and we would happily spend the summer months acting out those genocidal events of yesteryear.

Now I must admit that the idea of giving Marty a fake gun doesn’t sit very well with me these days but I had absolutely no problems with it whatsoever when I was a kid. All the TV shows seemed to be Westerns and it made perfect sense to a kid of my age that you should spend the day pretending to ride around on a horse shooting the indigenous folk - who would then wholly overreact by shooting back.

So I was not expecting Leanne to arrive back from the shops with a six-shooter. However, what I also wasn’t expecting was the tiny shopping trolley, the baby ‘Henry’ vacuum cleaner and the little plastic cooker, complete with pans, and polyethylene fried egg and bacon set!

Seriously! This is what we bought him... Actually, no, this is what my wife bought him! AND no one else blinked an eye! I was standing there a gasp, as everyone else crooned over how cute he looked dragging his little vacuum cleaner around the house, shouting “Oover! Oover! Did it”

I attempted to explain to my wife that these all seemed to be slightly effeminate toys and that maybe a Scaletrics would be a good idea, or failing that a train set , which I could no doubt look after for him until he had ‘come-of-age’. From the look she gave me I might as well have been talking to her in Swahili.

Apparently he loved playing with the house Hoover so – ergo - a toy Hoover was the perfect present. I pointed out to her that he also loved playing with his willy, so how come she hadn’t bought him a plastic one of them? But it was all to no avail.

That said, yes he does seem to enjoy dragging a plastic Hoover around the house and, yes, he loves playing with his plastic ‘Eggy’, he even enjoys pushing his little trolly around the house. I’m just hoping he’ll grow out of it, but apparently that’s a sign of my age.

Amazing things toddlers can't do.

The ancient and venerable art of walking

The amount a child picks up in their first few years is frankly astonishing, but what they completely fail to get the hang of is also pretty amazing.

Bear in mind that when I say ‘amazing’ I’m talking as a fairly uninformed parent. I dare say the experts are wholly unmoved by many of the talents displayed by the under two’s but I, at least, find them astonishing. 

Most of this astonishment probably derives from the fact that until I actually became a parent I didn’t really give kids much thought, to me a baby was just a smaller version of Justin Beiber; I’d heard of them, from what I could gather they were fairly popular, but I had no real interest in them and, to be perfectly honest, I actually found them a little bit irritating. I can’t say my opinion of Justin has changed over the last few years but when it comes to kids I can now see what all the fuss was about.

As a result of this relative indifference, when Marty was born I didn’t have much of a clue what to expect. A quick once over revealed that his initial talents were limited to farting, burping and opening and closing his eyes. So he was already over qualified for a career in politics but was going to have to start climbing a pretty steep learning curve if he ever wished to venture away from Westminster.

Learning to walk and run is probably his most notable achievement to date. As someone who generally took bipedalism for granted I had expected Marty to pick this up pretty quickly but, when you think about it, spending your life balanced on just two feet is really quite an achievement. At the grand old age of two Marty can now race around the house like a demon, yet he will still collide with a door, a wall or the floor at least three times a day. So, whilst you could call it ‘running’ you could also call it ‘a prolonged and inevitable fall’ and still be spot on for accuracy - I fear that it’s no coincidence that he can say the word ‘bruise’.

More startling still, at least to me, is his imagination. I don’t know why but I assumed that abstract thought and rampant imagination would be a long time coming, yet, at the age of about 15 months, he suddenly started racing potato wedges around the plate, whilst murmuring ‘Brum, Brum.’

When he realised how gobsmacked I was by this he then started waving runner beans above his head and screaming ‘Bane!’ – which, in toddler speak, is a plane. I have no idea if this makes him a genius, a normal child, or a potential train spotter but I for one am impressed.

So now we’ve ‘bigged’ him up let’s have a look at what he can’t do and the most amazing one of these is his complete and utter inability to blow his own nose! I mean, come on! How difficult can it be?

It actually took him the best part of 18 months to learn to blow! He was trying from the age of about 8 months but not a lot was happening. Even by 18 months he couldn’t have blown the skin off a rice pudding if his very life had depended upon it. By his second birthday he had finally summoned enough wind to blow out his birthday candles but he hasn’t even begun to speculate upon the merest possibility of nose-blowing and all it entails.

I still can’t understand what on earth he finds so difficult about something so mundane but apparently he’s not alone, in fact all children take an age to learn to blow and even longer to learn to apply the art to their nose. I had always assumed that walking the streets with green slime running down your face was just something kids did for effect but it turns out that they have little choice in the matter as wiping their nose also seems to take an age to fathom.

I came across another surprise recently; apparently babies can’t jump! They start going through all the motions of jumping at a very early age but they generally remain stubbornly affixed to terra firma until they approach their second birthday. The reason this was such a surprise to me is that Marty has been leaping into the air for as long as he’s been able to walk, in fact it’s hard to keep him on the ground. 

There, I knew he was a genius!