Not satisfied with recklessly endangering my own children, I am planning to put all of Ingrid’s friends in mortal danger on Sunday during Ingrid’s birthday party. I will be giving them all whistle blowers (gasp!) – thereby totally violating important safety rules, I’ve now learned from The Telegraph.

The EU toy safety directive [...] states that balloons must not be blown up by unsupervised children under the age of eight, in case they accidentally swallow them and choke.
[...]
Whistle blowers, that scroll out into a a long coloured paper tongue when sounded – a party favourite at family Christmas meals – are now classed as unsafe for all children under 14.

Any parents who object better not bring their kids here.

Raised surface! Near stove! Knives! Power outlet! Glass items!

Smarties: the prettiest kind of candy

I see other kids eat cinnamon swirls for their mid-afternoon snack and eat candy off and on throughout the day. And they still don’t gain weight or have trouble with their teeth.

With Ingrid we need to worry about both weight and teeth. Eric keeps an eye on his weight, and I have weak teeth, so I guess Ingrid inherited the worst from each of us. Se’s definitely got the Bergheden body type, broad and strong and tending towards overweight if you don’t pay attention. Adrian looks like he’ll be following in Ingrid’s footsteps.

The standard Swedish solution for keeping kids’ teeth healthy is lördagsgodis, “Saturday’s candy”, i.e. sweets on Saturdays only. And then they get lots, lots and lots and lots. Many of them really get to gorge themselves on sweets. The argument is that if you eat your sweets all in one go then your teeth get to rest from sugar in between Saturdays. (The whole idea was introduced by the worried public health authorities in 1957, according to an unverified source.)

It’s also supposed to instil in kids an understanding and a habit that sweets are a treat, to be limited, not everyday fare. If a Swede sees kids eat sweets on another day then s/he will probably comment on it, whether in his head or out loud.

But while mid-week candy turns heads, many Swedish parents exclude cakes, fika, ice cream and other such stuff from their definition of sweets, so those are OK on other days, too. And pancakes for dinner are not “sweets” either. Judging from the kids’ menus at restaurants, for many Swedish families pancakes is not a treat but a normal meal. And then there are all the other lingonberry-jam-accompanied kid-friendly everyday meals such as potato griddle cakes and black pudding and meatballs and so on. So the whole Saturday candy thing suffers from serious cognitive dissonance issues.

I also think it leads to an unhealthy attitude towards sweets, and eating in general. Many adult Swedes I know tell me that when they are offered sweets, they are unable to eat just a little, they feel compelled to eat lots. This is not an issue I’ve noticed among my Estonian friends. So instead of teaching kids to limit their intake of sweets, the Saturday candy thing teaches them to obsess about sweets all week long and then gorge themselves. (Pretty much the same problem that adults in many countries have with alcohol – but not in countries where there is a tradition of having wine with your dinner.)

So we don’t “do” Saturday candy in our home. We do “everything in moderation” instead. As a result Ingrid is limited to one small-sized treat per day on weekdays, and two on weekends, when she can have a sweeter breakfast (toast with marmalade, or a sweeter kind of cereal) as well as ice cream after dinner. And pancakes with jam most certainly count as a treat in our home. It seems to work; the long-term results remain to be seen.

Continuing to ponder yesterday’s theme of parenting goals, here’s another angle: what things are NOT on my list?

For example, there is nothing on my list about things I want my children to do or to like. There are things I would like them to do, but these things are not important enough to make it onto the list. Their own choices are more important. I would not agree with their choices, I would be puzzled perhaps, but I would not feel like I’ve failed them as a parent.

Enjoying learning new things, or reading, or writing. Being creative. Being successful. Getting a higher education. Good things, all of them, each in their own way, and the Internet has lots of people who want these and similar things for their children.

But if my children consciously choose to not go in that direction, that is OK. If they decide to live a quiet life on a small farm in the middle of the forest, cut off from society, not learning anything new, that’s fine. If they decide to skip higher education and instead focus on some personal project, that’s fine. As long as they do this because they really want to, and have thought through the long-term implications.

Then there are the things that I don’t agree with, that I specifically do NOT want for them.

I don’t want obedience. I don’t want faith.

I don’t want self-sufficiency. Independent thinking and decision-making, yes. Being able to take care of themselves, yes. But I do not want the kind of self-sufficiency that seems prevalent in some parts of Western society, where the ideal is that you shouldn’t really need anybody. I think it is perfectly OK to need other people in your life, to want intimacy, to ask for help.

I happened to talk to a fellow mum this weekend about how we make different choices in our parenting. I thought I should think (and write) a little bit about what lies behind my choices.

The parenting principles that I wrote about four years ago still apply. But they’re not all there is, of course. My day-to-day parenting choices are also influenced by my values (which I could also write about at some point) and my general preferences (ranging from my enjoyment of reading to my dislike of wasting food, for example) and probably more stuff on top of that.

One angle for thinking about this is what I want to achieve. What would success look like? If I look at my children when they’re grown, what would I want them and their lives to be like?

• I want them to feel loved, valued and respected, and to be able to love, value, respect and trust other people around them. They should never need to doubt that they are loved.
• I want them to approach life with joy and enthusiasm.
• I want them to be honest and non-violent. (This is almost too obvious, almost like saying I want them to be human, but still.)
• I want them to have a sense of confidence and competence, to want to try things out, to not fear failure. “I can do it!”
• I want them to be responsible, to think about the consequences of their actions, and to be able to make sensible decisions. To decide rather than to give in to whims. To have self-control.
• I want them to think for themselves and to take charge of their lives. To be active rather than passive.
• I want them to make their choices not for somebody else’s approval (especially mine) but because they want it. This goes for their choice of hobbies, of music, clothes, career and more.
• I want them to have a healthy lifestyle and also a healthy relationship to health. I want them to enjoy good healthy food and exercise – not just to do it but to enjoy it.
• I want them to be able to cope with the practicalities of life. They should be able to manage their own lives and later also their households: personal finance, cooking, and so on.
• I want us to have a good and close relationship, to trust each other, to talk to each other, and to enjoy each other’s company. I want us to be willing to spend time together even when they are grown and no longer obliged to be with me.

I wonder what I’ve forgotten – what might so obvious to me that I don’t even think about it.

One of my fundamental principles of parenting is that violence is not OK. Hitting, spanking, slapping, “disciplining”, whatever you call it and whatever spin you put on it – it is not OK.

Non-violence towards children is the norm in Sweden, unlike some other countries where I understand that there are people who publicly hold the opposite view. Here, if you spoke for spanking (and not in joking) you’d be viewed as seriously misguided at the very least. If you’re a parent and you told someone you hit your kids, I suspect that you’d find the social services at your door soon, or the police.

My views on this is not what I want to discuss here. Perhaps another time.

I’ve been reminded of this cultural difference by several books I’ve read for Ingrid. Occasionally we come across mentions of adults hitting kids. In some books it is talked about very openly, while in others it’s a more oblique reference. I often struggle with how to treat such collisions between our reality and the story. Do I let it pass? Do I explain?

In Pätu the father mentions getting his belt. In Sleeping Beauty the cook reaches out to slap the kitchen boy. Even Pippi Longstocking, when telling about how she sends herself to bed, says she threatens herself with a good hiding if she doesn’t obey.

Many of the briefer and more passing references probably don’t make any sense for Ingrid at all, and pass more or less unnoticed. “Ett kok stryk” or “keretäis” (“a good hiding”, in Swedish and Estonian respectively). She isn’t even familiar with these words, it is nothing we ever feel the need to talk about in this household. And fathers reaching for their belts or for birch rods? What for? These I explain when she asks, which she rarely does with things she doesn’t understand in a book.

But when we recently read Kipling’s story about how the elephant got his trunk (in an old Estonian translation) and the poor elephant child was beaten again and again by his family and relatives, and he didn’t react with anything but sadness, I felt I had to explain. That many many years ago people thought it was OK to hit kids, but not any more. That parents mustn’t hit their kids. That no one should hit anyone.

If you are a non-violent parent, how do you deal with such stories?

This is a book about ethnopediatrics – child care from the point of view of an anthropologist. The question Meredith Small tries to elucidate is, To what extent is parenting based on biological imperatives and to what extent is it based on culture? She shows how differently children are cared for in different cultures, and how convinced all of these parents are that theirs is the right way and the others are crazy/wrong/weird. Parenting practices rest on parents’ assumptions about the world and on their values – they are as much a product of culture as what we eat, what we wear, or how we dance.

First, Small presents an overview of relevant aspects of human evolution – about how our upright posture and large brains lead to babies being born “unfinished”, and about the parent-child bond that is essential for babies’ survival.

Then she takes on a world tour highlighting cultural differences in parenting. The !Kung San train their babies’ motor skills so that the babies can cope with their nomadic life; the Ache carry their kids until the age of 5 to keep them safe in a dangerous forest environment; Gusii mothers don’t talk to their baby because children are viewed as low-status family members and expected to watch and learn rather than talk; Japanese mothers encourage dependence and a close bond between mother and child; American parents expect babies to cry a lot and don’t think it is necessary to respond to all crying.

Next there are more in-depth looks at three central elements of baby care: first a chapter on sleep across cultures, then a similar chapter about crying, and finally about breastfeeding – all from both an evolutionary and cross-cultural point of view.

It’s a slim book and a quick read. It could be slimmer still with some editing: at times it felt repetitive and padded with more words than it needs (perhaps in an attempt to make it feel more substantial). Disappointingly for me as a reader 60 of the 300 pages are filled with references, footnotes, an index etc. It does, however, set the book apart from all the books about babies that are really opinions served as fact, “do this because I say so”. This is, instead, “this is what other people do and here’s why”.

Throughout the book, the author remains an anthropologist, an observer standing to one side, and never quite expresses any firm opinions about what she describes. But if I were to summarize the book in just a paragraph, both what is said and what is repeatedly hinted at by leading questions, I would say this:

Babies evolved to be close to the parent, since they cannot survive on their own. They evolved to be carried rather than transported in plastic seats, to sleep with the parent rather than alone, to breastfeed frequently throughout the day and for years rather than months. Western child-rearing is to a great extent fighting against millions of years of evolution. If you work with your baby’s nature rather than against it, you will make life both easier and more pleasant for both yourself and your baby.

Amazon US, Amazon UK, Adlibris.

One evening in Gran Canaria, I noticed a book lying abandoned on a deck chair, next to a pretty pink scarf. It was still there the evening after. The third evening someone had moved both items from the deck chair (probably they wanted to use it!) onto a ledge. The scarf looked nice but not my colour. The book I picked up because it had a smiling baby on the front cover. If no one had claimed it during three evenings, I figured I could adopt it.

From the back cover of Why Love Matters – How Affection Shapes a Baby’s Brain:

Why Love Matters explains why love is essential to brain development in the early years of life, and how early interactions between babies and their parents have lasting and serious consequences.

Sue Gerhart goes through all the various ways in which human contact and human relationships affect brain development, and how experiences during the first months and years of life can leave marks for life.

The main thesis is that a baby cannot regulate its own needs, physical or emotional. It needs the help of a caring adult. If that relationship is dysfunctional, if the adult is unable or unwilling to fulfil the baby’s needs, the baby suffers not just immediate discomfort but also longer-term effects. Brain chemistry becomes subtly imbalanced, some parts of the brain do not develop properly, inappropriate emotional habits are founded. In the long run, all kinds of mental and emotional troubles can arise, and Sue Gerhart shows how the former can lead to the latter. Babies of depressed mothers get used to a lack of positive emotions; babies of angry, resentful mothers learn to suppress their feelings. Babies who get no help with soothing negative emotions do not learn how to keep on an even keel.

While some other author on the back cover says “I would recommend it to all new parents” it really isn’t written so as to be accessible by most parents. I would guess it really wasn’t written for the general public but for politicians, social workers, those in charge of childcare facilities, psychologists etc. In particular the book is unlikely to be read by those who need its message the most: those depressed mothers, or the parents who meet their babies’ demands with anger.

A reviewer in The Guardian expresses resounding support and provides a thorough summary.

If there is one thing to take with you from this book, it’s this excerpt (p. 91):

Good timing is a critical aspect of parenting, as well as in comedy. The ability to judge when a baby or child has the capacity to manage a little more self-control, thoughtfulness or independence is not something that books on child development can provide: the timing of moves in a living relationship is an art, not a science. Parents’ sensitivity to the child’s unfolding capacities can often be hampered by an intolerance of dependency. This is partly cultural and partly the result of one’s own early experience. Dependency can evoke powerful reactions. It is often regarded with disgust and repulsion, not as a delightful but fleeting part of experience. It may even be that dependence has a magnetic pull and adults themselves fear getting seduced by it; or that it is just intolerable to give to someone else what you are furious you didn’t gt yourself. [...] Often, parents are in such a hurry to make their child independent that they expose their babies to long periods of waiting for food or comfort, or long absences from the mother, in order to achieve this aim. Grandparents only too often reinforce the message that you mustn’t “spoil” the baby by giving in to him.

Unfortunately, leaving a baby to cry or to cope by himself for more than a very short period usually has the reverse effect: it undermines the baby’s confidence in the parent and in the world, leaving him more dependent not less. In the absence of the regulatory partner, a baby can do very little to regulate himself or herself other than to cry louder or to withdraw mentally. But the pain of being dependent like this and being powerless to help yourself leads to primitive psychological defences based on these two options.

[...] The dual nature of the defensive system seems to be built into our genetic programme: it’s either fight or flight. Cry loudly or withdraw. Exaggerate feelings or minimise feelings. Be hyper-aroused or suppress arousal. [...] Whichever way the individual turns to find a solution (and these strategies may be used consistently or inconsistently), he or she will not have mastered the basic process of self-regulation and will remain prone to being overdemanding of others or underdemanding.

Adlibris, Amazon US, Amazon UK.

Super-Helen is my secret mummy identity. She is just like me, except that she has a lot more patience. She doesn’t get annoyed and frustrated as easily as I do, and can keep calm and behave in a kind and friendly manner even when the kids around her are definitely not.

When things get too much, when Adrian is screaming right next to my head while Ingrid is dragging her feet on the way home, when both are crying for food RIGHT NOW, when I feel like either hitting them or locking them both in the house while I go for a walk… I think to myself, What would Super-Helen do? And usually Super-Helen’s solution works for me, too. The hard part is keeping myself together enough to remember to ask Super-Helen.

This has been a month full of whining, complaining, yelling, and general contrariness. Ingrid finds fault with everything we say or do. It’s like having a teenager in the house, I imagine.

It appears that she has, for some reason, decided to be unpleasant and unfriendly towards us. She can be perfectly polite to others, but when she addresses me, it’s often by shouting or screaming. When she wants me to pour milk, it’s no longer “Can I have some milk please” but “MIIILLK!”. Once she even started with “Can I…” but then interrupted herself and shouted “MIIILLK!” instead.

When she wants me to help her get her boots on, she refuses to come stand where I am sitting. (I refuse to crouch on the floor when I’ve got Adrian in the sling, because it is very uncomfortable for both of us.) Sometimes she even yells when she wants me to play with her or read to her. “Du ska läsa för mig du ska läsa för mig du ska läsa för mig!” (“You must read for me”) she screams, and of course I must do nothing of the sort, I must leave the room instead in order to keep my temper.

Anything I suggest is rejected. Anything I mention in a positive tone, she decides to dislike. “Look, there’s one piece of apple left!” she gladly says. “Yes, I thought you might want one more so I left it for you” I say. “I don’t want it” she responds sulkily.

And she wants help with everything. She can even ask for help moving a plate to the side of the table, and complain that she doesn’t have the strength to move it, and demonstrate by poking at it with a limp hand and an exhausted face. When Eric and I can’t help but laugh out loud at that, she gets very upset and cries that we mustn’t laugh at her.

My guess is that this is a reaction to Adrian’s arrival. A bit delayed, you might think, but then again Adrian was much easier to take care of during his first month. Now he requires more of our time and attention, and even though I do my best to spend time with Ingrid, she cannot have all the attention she wants. Is she testing us, perhaps? “Do they really love me? Do they love me if I do this, this and this?” Or perhaps she is simply mentally tired and stressed by the change and by the new order.

Tellingly she really only behaves that way with me and Eric. When, for example, another parent at preschool notices that we are having trouble (read: Ingrid is yelling at me without pause and asking for help while refusing my way of helping her) and asks if s/he can help, Ingrid explains reasonably politely what she needs help with and gladly accepts it.

During all of this I try to remind myself that:

• I cannot control her behaviour but I can control how I react to it (and that covers both my internal and external reactions).
• If we are to break the spiral of negative emotions and negative behaviour, it’s up to me to do it.
• I can choose to treat her the way she “deserves” to be treated, or the way that is likely to break the spiral.

When she yells for help doing something ridiculously easy, I may think that that kind of request really deserves to be ignored until she addresses me in a more polite manner, or refused because she can do it herself perfectly well. But all that achieves is an escalation of the spiral. Instead I can interpret her shouting as a way of saying “I feel ignored and tired and unloved and I hate it and I want company”, gently remind her that I would prefer if she asked me kindly instead of shouting, and help her.

But there are times when she has decided to not cooperate at all, and then it can be physically difficult for me to help her. I cannot lift her when I am carrying Adrian; I cannot put her mitten on if she keeps her hand all limp. And there are times when my patience runs out and I just cannot take her yelling any more, and I walk away from the room or the situation.

It is bloody exhausting to have two cranky kids. I don’t tolerate loud noise well, and when two children are screaming right next to me, it leaves me tired and with frazzled nerves, even less willing to indulge in Ingrid’s whims or to get engaged in her activities.

Another reaction to having Adrian in the house: Ingrid has started telling us that she has a stomach ache, when she clearly has no such thing (and forgets it as soon as she gets distracted), most likely because we have explained to her that Adrian cries so much because his stomach hurts. If it works for him, and gets him lots of attention, why not for her, too?

Ingrid’s favourite “toy” is our iPad. She watches movies on it, plays games, draws, plays dress-up and so on – together with me or Eric if possible. We also read (a good activity to combine with breastfeeding Adrian), do crafts, and play games (board games, card games and such).

She likes to pretend she’s a wizard or a fairy or an angel, and do magic. (Fairies and angels seem pretty much the same to her – pretty girls with wings – and since I don’t see much actual difference myself, I haven’t bothered trying to explain the very different cultural backgrounds of the two.) There have been magicians and fairies in many of the movies we’ve seen recently, as well as in fairy tales, ranging from the story of Sleeping Beauty, via Disney’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, to Shrek and Aladdin.

She will ask me what magic she should do, wave her wand and say some magic words, and present me with the result. Sometimes she clarifies that “it’s just pretend”, that I shouldn’t expect real wings or that she cannot really magically bring daddy home early. I’ve begun using magic as a distraction when she’s in a bad mood: “wouldn’t it be nice if we could magically grow wings, then you wouldn’t have to walk home on your tired legs”. It sometimes works.

Often she or one of her soft toys is a kitten, walks on all fours and miaows pitifully. The kitten has lost its parents while picking berries in the forest, is sad and wants company. (We’ve read an Estonian fairy tale about a girl who gets lost in the forest while picking berries.) Now most recently the kitten has actually been abandoned in the forest by its father (since we’ve read about Hansel and Gretel).

Whenever I ask what she did with her friends at preschool, she tells me they played mummy daddy baby. She usually gets to be the baby, being among the smallest and youngest kids in their huge group. At home she plays she’s the mummy, and various toys and dolls get to be babies. She breastfeeds them, picks them up when they cry, and puts them to sleep. Sometimes she wants to be a mom for me, and I get to be big sister. She asks me how my day was, what I learned at school, and I am supposed to act the way she usually does. When she borrows my camera, for example, I am supposed to badger her “let me see, let me see [the photos]”.

There is also a fair amount of talk about being in love, and marrying. Contagion from all the older girls at preschool. She is in love with me and with Elin (a friend) she says, and will marry us both. Being in love means you like someone a lot, she says, and getting married means you live together.

When she draws or paints, it is only girls and princesses. Just plain girls more often than princesses, nowadays. They all follow the same template: head like this, dress like that, long hair on both sides. Very boring for me.

She has effectively learnt to write. Often she still wants one of us to tell her the letters, but when I instead say the word again, or just ask her what letter she thinks should come next, she gets it right 9 times out of 10. The most common mistake she makes is skipping a letter in the word. For example when she wante to write PIRN (for “pear” in Estonian) and had done P and I, she said that N should come next. But when I said that that would make PIN, she thought a bit and figured out on her own that R should be there too.

It’s like when she learned to stand and walk: she wouldn’t actually let go and do it until she was 100% able to do it. Back then it was some sort of subconscious or instinctive behaviour, but now it’s more conscious. She simply has a strong aversion to failure.

Speaking of walking, Ingrid is still not fond of walking so she cycles to preschool every day, if at all feasible, and most other places too. We had to walk when the streets were full of snowy slush. But when there are just some icy patches here and there, we take the bike. Slipping and falling a few times causes less fuss and complaining than having to walk all the way, especially on the way home in the afternoon. Even better than cycling is having a cycle race, meaning that she sets a goal (“first one to that brick house wins”) and races ahead on her bike, and I walk after her as fast as I can (cannot run with Adrian in the sling, he either throws up or wakes up) while shouting “this time I will surely win” or “now it really is my turn to win” and she laughs at me.

She can now hop on one foot (her right one) for a good 12 to 15 jumps, all the way across the kitchen. On her left she manages just a few.

Likes: painting my face (they do face painting at preschool on Fridays). Making silly faces and waving her arms around when I try to take a photo of her. Winning. Ice cream. Sundays, because then she gets ice cream. (Sometimes she starts counting down to Sunday already on a Tuesday.) Selecting clothes for Adrian. Torches. Balancing on pavement edges, ledges, and power cords on the floor. Playing rock paper scissors during train rides. Also during train rides, playing shop and selling me the houses, cars, boats and towers on the seat fabric. (Can’t find any official pictures; a slightly fuzzy photo can be seen here.) Plates, cups and cutlery with pictures or patterns.

Does not like: our tasteful green china. The colour black, or brown or grey. Waiting. Missing a train – even when I tell her the next one will be there in 2 minutes, she is upset.

Parental leave is called föräldraledighet in Swedish. The first part, förälder, means parent. The second, ledighet, generally means leisure or holiday. It has overtones of freedom, of time off. Of course reality is nothing like that. Eric likes to refer to it as “parental service” instead.

I don’t know where the time is going, but it definitely feels like two children take more than twice the time as one. There is more to be done, and less time to do it. I seem to recall a certain amount of leisure when I was at home with Ingrid as a baby. Now there are nursery hours to keep, errands to run, and busy evenings trying to juggle the needs of two children at the same time. I am glad that Ingrid is as old as she is, and as sensible as she is – this would be a lot harder otherwise.