Guest Post - Ryan Jarrett

Welcome to the second guest post of the week and the first man to write on New Mummy!!


Ryan Jarrett, is a lead writer of children's television website, My Kids TV

Screen Time - A Parental Balancing Act

Technology pervades every inch of our modern, appliance filled homes.  If Convenience is King, then Entertainment is Queen.  The average family house is now home to numerous televisions, DVD players, games consoles, laptops and set-top boxes, not to mention their hand-held cousins - mobiles phones, netbooks and Nintendo DSs in Tooty Frooty colours.  These items are a part of our lives.  Our generation have grown to accept them; our children's generation are born to expect them.

As a parent I feel I have a duty to let my children be exposed to this gadgetry which has become intrinsic to us.  It would not be fair to shy them away completely, denying them the pleasure they can bring or the education they can provide.  The PC and the smartphone are the tools with which people work nowadays and by shielding our children from these could we be hindering their later progress in the big wide world?  It's hard to say.

I do appreciate the view that there can be too much exposure to media and technology.  I am a firm believer in family time, in talking to your children, in shared mealtimes round a dinner table and other more traditional customs.  Children can provide some of the most insightful comments and the most amusing conversation - it would be a crime to have their opinions and views homogenised by advertising and peer pressure.

My son, who is nearly 5, is a happy, healthy, intelligent and unique individual.  His first exposure to modern media was to the television.  As he got older he started showing an interest in the noisy, glowing box in the corner, so we slowly let him watch a couple of minutes of a children's programme.  After a while he started to show some preferences to certain shows, but we never forced him to watch one things or another.  We limited screen time and we watched the TV with him as he got older, making it a shared bonding experience, rather than a passive experience.

He enjoys music with a real passion.  However, whereas when I was younger I would listen to cassette tapes and even records, we don't even own a CD player any more (apart from in the car).  All of our music is digital, either stored on our computer or MP3 players, or streamed over the Internet.  My son uses Spotify (a fantastic music streaming application) - could he possibly be the youngest user in the world?  He listens to Lady Gaga, Snow Patrol, Cheryl Cole and even The Beatles, as well as kids TV theme tunes and more traditional childrens music.  He dances and jumps along to these tracks happily, and to him this is the norm.

He owns a DS and he plays on the Wii, but he is not overweight, he has lots of friends and he still plays with his toys.  The games he plays are age appropriate and access to these is limited.  He has a good imagination and his reading is excellent.  The press, both in the UK and globally, present this dichotomy - they want everyone, including our children, to consume media (which, obviously, is in their interests) but we are made to feel bad about over-exposure.

It's not easy being a parent, and we don't ask for medals.  We do our best but we have to pick and choose what to believe.  Is technology and modern media good or bad?  There is no answer - take each experience as it comes, watch your children and decide for yourself.  Just don't feel bad or guilty about having to choose, to restrict or to censor.

Thank you Ryan for your great post. 

Guest Post Day - Becky from Baby Budgeting

This is the second Guest Post Day organised by Erica at Little Mummy, basically we all swap blogs for the day. Our blog swap is a little different as its a three way swap I’m writing for Single Mummy, Single Mummy is writing for Baby Budgeting and Baby Budgeting is writing for me.

This is Becky from Baby Budgeting fantastic Guest Post 

My love is perfect even though my parenting isn’t

I very rarely get to write about my wonderful children as I focus my blog around budgeting for parents but they are the reason for the budgeting you see. They are the reason for pretty much everything I do. Carol writes so beautifully about her gorgeous daughter I often feel jealous. So please indulge me as I indulge myself and tell you a little about them.

My son is 5 and daughter is 2 and they are chalk and cheese. Frankie is smart, extremely lively, cheeky and serious and easily frustrated. He also has a huge sense of justice and ethics. He loves animals and knows way more than me about many things. Did you know a chow is a dog with a blue tongue?

Annalise is calm, happy, chilled out and loves people. She’s not really sure how to have a tantrum. She believes her true name should be Princess Dora Chipstick Ooo. She is mildly obsessed with ponies and doggie and is a big fan of fancy fairy cakes. She finds life very easy he finds it a bit tough but always, always exciting.

Lisi is nearly 3 and will go to school next year too.   Times are a changing and I feel a sense of countdown beginning already. It has been so wonderful. How precious our children and our time with them. I know indeed I have been very, very lucky being able to spend so much time with them.

In his poem Perfection, Walt Whitman wrote

Only themselves can understand themselves and the likes of themselves as only a soul can understand a soul

The feeling I have of love for my children is exactly this: it is perfect; undamaged, unconditional and absolute.

I could say I love them perfectly but obviously I don’t. i get it very wrong in lots of ways much of the time (Jam sandwiches when he wanted  cheese, favourite Peppa nightie still in the wash, mummy in a grumpy mood etc) . But I do feel perfect love for them. And that is the most amazing treasure and that’s why as parents I think we feel connected, we all l know about this glorious treasure this gift of loving our children.

Wishing you happy baby days

Becky x

Thank you so much for that great post Becky!

Don't forget to check out the other guest posts

NM X 

Guest Post Day - BumblingAlong

Today is guest post day, this is the fantastic brainchild of Erica at Littlemummy.com. You will alot of bloggers have swapped blogs for the day, this is a great way to find new blogs.

I have the great fortune to be twined with BumblingAlong, I was lucky enough to have found her blog a while back but have been really slack at going over and having a read (sorry Bumbling) I will be making sure I pop over more often.

Without further ado here is her excellent post.....

Hi, all NewMummy readers! I’m Bumbling, and over at BumblingAlong, I blog about Moo, my little one, who is also 15 months old.  I’m a new blogger, and so I was very pleased to have the opportunity to swap posts with the lovely Carol, the gracious host of my guest post here. My blog is still pretty bare, but I’m working on it, and I’d love for you to come over and say hi.  In fact, NewMummy herself is helping to boost my post numbers with a post about how her little one is learning to talk - please go along and have a read.

Whilst Moo is keen to make a lot of noise, I’m not sure that I could class it as talking. I'm never sure whether other people would recognise her noises as being the words I believe them to be. She clearly says “hiya”, “yeah” and “no”, but other words, yeah, that might just be wishful thinking on my part!

That being said, the fabulous Josie over at Sleep is for the Weak I'm sure recognised Moo's "quack quack" when we saw some ducks during a walk in the park. But if I hadn't been sure what she meant, I could just have looked at her hands.  Whilst saying "quack quack", she was also opening and closing her hand in a manner very similar to a duck's beak opening and closing.

That's right - we use baby signing!

Not as consistently as we should to make it really useful, but slowly and surely, Moo has been learning the signs to go with her sounds, and at 15 months, it is starting to make a real difference in our communication

We haven't been to any classes, just used information available online. We haven't been as consistent as recommended, but signing has definitely helped Moo let me know what she wants, although the point and grunt/"dat" remains an effective form of communication!

"Duck" has always been one of our most used signs, probably because the first song and sign that really caught Moo's fancy was "5 little ducks", and she loves playing on Peekaboo Barn on my iPhone...  But "milk" was the first sign we tried to learn.  The version we learnt was holding your fist vertically, with your thumb pointing up, open and close the fist - a simplified sign for milking a cow!

Moo uses this sign a lot, and it is signed vehemently every morning when she gets up, and also when she gets out of her bath in the evening.  And then it very definitely means milk.  But unfortunately she also uses it a lot during the day, and she hasn't had daytime milk for ages! So is she really asking for milk? Or is she looking for food or water, or something else entirely?  It's hard to know, but at least we're making a start.

So we have "duck" and "milk".  What else?  She knows and uses "bath" - not just for when she is having one, but also when she needs her nappy changed! We have inconsistent use of her version of the sign for "more" (index fingers tapped together), although she's more likely to point and shout "agg" (again!).

But the one that got me was her very appropriate use of the sign for "bed" on Wednesday night. We'd had a fractious evening. Daddy had come home from work, given Moo her bath and then rushed out to a chess match. Moo and I were sitting brushing her teeth in the living room, a good half an hour or more before her usual bedtime. And she pointed to the door.

I thought she wanted something from the table, so offered her everything appropriate, only to be greeted by a strong shake of the head. She sat on my knee, looked me in the eye, put her hand up to her cheek and tilted her head. A simplified version of the sign for bed.  She was tired. Bed it was.

And she fell fast asleep.

(And as I was on my own, I got straight on the phone to Nanny and straight on Twitter to announce my amazement!)

Baby signing rocks!

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Thank you so much for that amazing post Bumbling, I have two books on singing and still haven't done it with her yet, I think its time to give it a go its clearly working really well for you!

Don't forget to check out my guest post over at BumblingAlong  and if you want to see who else have swapped blogs for the day, pop over to Littlemummy.com and see the guest post draw.

NM X