My Vocation

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Educating Bella is my job.

It took me a long time to realise that.  I had a different job, once upon a time, and then I fell pregnant and took a year’s maternity leave.  And then I had the big decision to make, and I made it: to stay at home with Bella.  That was how I said it. But it wasn’t right.  What really happened was that I left my old job for a new one.  I went from being a finance professional to being an educator.

Some of the books we’re currently reading

I treat this job like I have any other.  I learnt my craft.  I learnt by reading books, by exploring various pedagogies and disciplines and choosing a mix of philosophies that best fit my establishment.  I learnt (and obviously am still learning) through experience, through the day to day of life with Bella. I continue to polish my craft, experimenting with different techniques day in and day out.

I’m learning so many things so that I can be the best teacher possible for my daughter.  I’m learning to speak Bengali, learning about music and arts and how perfect pitch is obtained, and how to become better friends with nature.  I’m learning how the human race learns and how best to teach our little ones.

I love raising my daughter.  I believe that I am the best person possible for this job.  I do not believe that a nursery worker, or a childminder, or even my family members can do as good a job as I can.  They don’t know my daughter as well, and they don’t have the interest that I do in doing this job.  Just in the same way that I am not the best person for most other jobs on the face of the planet, this is the one job where I am the best.

Does anyone else feel like that, or is it just me?

So it won’t surprise you that home educating is something that we’re seriously considering.  I never thought about it before.  It’s not part of my strict, narrow-minded Asian culture and heritage.  My husband doesn’t have the same background, but he is a secondary school teacher.  But now, I just think of all the things that I’ve learnt, and how well I know my daughter, and I want to be the person to put all this together to create wonderful years where her curiosity is never sated and she gets to learn about anything and everything she wants.  I want to help her learn to follow her passions, love life, be confident and chase her dreams.  I didn’t have a child so I could hand her over to someone else.

At the moment, my husband and I have agreed to flexi-school Bella: 3 days a week in school and 2 days at home, until she enters Reception (age 4.5).  From that point, her Montessori school requires at least 4 days a week in school, but it’s a private school and I suspect we could get away with 3.5 if we paid for the full 4 (!)  I’m fully aware that we’re extremely lucky to be looking at the situation like that, but I spent my whole pre-baby career working hard to earn lots of money, and this is what that money was for.

The only problem is that the more I think about it, the more I just want to keep her home altogether.  I’m struggling a lot with the idea of sending her to someone else for education.  But school is good – I loved school.  Independence from me is good.  Time for me to recharge is good.  And the Montessori school she’ll be going to is wonderful.  My husband (the aforementioned secondary school teacher), my mother-in-law (a former primary school teacher) and I all fell in love with it when we visited with Bella a few months ago, and I think it’ll be a great place for her to flourish.  So that’s the plan.

Nature and the Outdoors

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I am not an outdoors person.  I have never been an outdoors person.  No, I was a bookworm, the girl who hated bugs and dirt and always wore socks.  But now, I have a child and I want something better for her.  I don’t want her to be scared of the outdoors.  I want her to understand how the world works, through first hand experience of the world.

So how do we do this?

Meeting a horse at the Ada Cole horse rescue sanctuary

The first step is to get outside.  It’s much easier said than done, but it’s all about the baby steps.  This week, we went to the village green on Monday, the park on Tuesday, the back garden on Wednesday, a walk to the shops on Thursday and today, Friday, we went to a horse sanctuary!  Next week, we’re meeting friends in the forest on Monday, and the rest of the week is yet to be determined.

The second step is to have a couple drivers to keep us going when we aren’t feeling motivated.  I bought a copy of Exploring Nature with Children, which gives a year long ‘curriculum’ to guide you through a year of nature study, based on Charlotte Mason’s vision of home education.  This is great for simple activities and doesn’t make me feel bad for not being that nature-loving parent you often see.

The final step is not to let the weather thwart you.  You know the drill.  There’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing.  So get the right clothes.  Today, it was pretty cold out at the horse sanctuary, but Bella was dressed in wool leggings, fleece trousers, wellies, a long-sleeved top, cardigan, coat and a balaclava-style hat.  She didn’t seem fussed at all.  I’ll be honest, I don’t tend to go outside if it’s really pouring it down, but I know that a light drizzle is fun for the little ones, and we’ll often go into the back garden then.  At least it’s easy to get warm and dry on a moment’s notice if we change our minds!

No more nappies

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Well, I said we were calling it a day on the nappies, and we did.  Friday was our first full day nappy-free, and we haven’t touched another one since.  Bella’s been absolutely amazing.  She can sleep through the night, 11 hours (or even 12 hours in last night’s case) and stay dry.  No issues with naps.  No problems in the car.  I’m incredibly, incredibly proud of her.

Our bathroom setup

I’m also pretty proud of me.  It sounds wrong to say that, but it’s true.  I’m proud that I was watching her, observing what she was telling me, and I’m proud that I didn’t let my own fears mean that she wasn’t allowed to take this step that she has been clearly ready for.  Toilet learning is an emotive topic, and I couldn’t even begin to count the number of times that I’ve heard a parent say “I don’t want to rush them.”

I know that people think that I’m “rushing” Bella.  Their opinions aren’t relevant to how I raise my child, but it doesn’t mean that I don’t hear the words.  It doesn’t mean that there wasn’t a seed of doubt in the back of my head – what if she isn’t ready, what if I’m trying to make her grow up too fast?

But you know what?  You can’t rush it.  You can’t force a child to be ready for this.  They either are or they aren’t.  I sincerely believe that a lot of parents wait too long, because they aren’t ready, because they don’t want their child to grow up.  I never, ever want to be that parent.  I will support my girl to be who she is, when she makes that decision.  And I know that I’ll do it at the right time, because I’m observing her – which is the first and most important lesson of Montessori.

Night time toilet learning

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Six months has passed since we day trained Bella.  Six months.  Where did that time go? But they said that eventually, you wouldn’t think about the potty all day long and you know what, they’re right.  I haven’t thought about the potty for awhile.  It just happens when it needs to.

That’s all going to change tomorrow.  Tomorrow, I’m going to jump out of bed the second that Bella wanders into my room in the morning, and I’m going to take her to the bathroom.  I’m going to take off her nappy and tell her that we don’t wear nappies anymore, make her throw it in the bin, and we’re going to use the toilet for the rest of the day.  And the next day, and the one after that.

There are a few tests ahead for me.

The first is going in the car.  We struggled with car travel when we day trained.  Bella likes weeing in the carseat.  I have no idea why.  She’d go in the potty and five minutes later she somehow found some more wee for the car.  So I made my own life easier and introduced “travel undies” i.e. pull-ups.  It’s time to get rid of those.  We’re going to the toddler gym tomorrow, it’s a 15 minute drive, and she’s going in real undies.

I’m going to pack a lot of spare clothes.

Then, after we get home from the toddler gym, we’re going to race through lunch, have an hour of no liquids, use the potty and go down for a nap.  Again, in undies.  Bella’s frequently been dry during naptime so I’m hoping that that is fairly pain-free.  Her bed is loaded up with sheets on top of sheets and training pad protectors.

And then.  Then, she’ll wake up and oh my goodness I am going to give her water.  After a morning of setting her up for success in her undies, I intend to let the girl drink.  They say you want to build the bladder up, so she can learn to hold a reasonable amount of liquid.  So she will have her water, and then we’ll have dinner a touch earlier than usual, give her 1-1.5 hours without drinks, a good potty, and then to bed.

That’ll be the real test.  I’ve chosen to start this whole malarkey on a Friday night for a reason – so I’m not doing it alone.  We haven’t decided yet whether to wake her up for a wee when we go to bed, or whether to leave her alone with instructions to wake us up if she needs a wee.  I suspect we’ll go for the latter (especially if the day went well) and see what happens.

It’s scary, potty training.  I don’t know why it’s so scary, other than the mess, but perhaps it’s because our children are growing up and this is actually all on us to do right.  My baby won’t need nappies anymore.  What a crazy thought.  I want to do right by her, I want to keep things calm and easy and not upset her.  I hope it all goes well.

Looking Ahead

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What’s coming next?

The main thing that I’ve put on hold due to not being home is night time potty training.  Bella’s had a good amount of dry nappies during naps and sleep lately, so I think she’s about ready and I really don’t want to miss the opportunity.  I hope that our lives will calm down so we can tackle this neatly in February, before I start freelancing again March.

I’m also looking forward to the weather perking up a bit.  I know that I’m a bit of a homebody, the outdoors is not my natural environment.  I’ve tried really hard not to make it obvious to Bella, and she certainly seemed to thrive outdoors over the summer.  But now that it’s colder, she seems to have turned into a bit of an inside person like me, and we’re struggling to get out.  I’ve bought Exploring Nature With Children and really hope to be able to work through it.  I love that not all the activities actually require going outside (e.g. having a week where you view the moon every night and discuss it, or making a rain gauge) so I think there’s lots to help us reconnect with the outdoors while still being the homebodies that we are.

We’re also continuing to work on music.  I haven’t quite managed to figure out what my strategy is, but Bella has a set of C major deskbells which she loves.  I try to play at least a couple songs on it every day (just the normal favourites that she likes – The Wheels on the Bus, It’s Raining It’s Pouring, etc) so she can keep on developing her sense of pitch.  Soon I’ll introduce clapping exercises and start playing more classical music on the iPod.  It’s all stuff I keep meaning to do but haven’t quite managed to put together into a coherent structure.

A quick recap of the past few months

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Things change quickly with a little one.  They change frequently, too.  We’re coming out of a tough few months, where we were called to help a close family member and had to give up a lot of our own structure and routine.  We just had seven consecutive days in our own home, which hasn’t happened since the beginning of November, and soon I think we might even just get a couple weeks in their entirety.  I can’t wait.

What’s been going on with us during that time?

Bella’s gotten free access to water.  We set up a water dispenser which drips onto an ice cream tub with holes punctured into it.  This has worked remarkably well for us.  She loves washing her hands, getting a glass of water, washing her toys, etc.  It’s lovely.  Yes, there’s some extra water on the floor these days, but that’s life.

After the water success, I decided to go the full Montessori and moved some of her art supplies in reach as well.  This did backfire on me, when I walked into my kitchen to find crayon on the walls, but you learn.  Particularly, you learn that WD-40 removes crayons from painted walls.  I hope that Bella has learnt that we draw on paper, not walls.  We’ll see how well that lesson has sunk in.  However, I’ve been delighted at how often she reaches for her watercolour paints now that they’re in sight.  She loves to dip her brush in the water in between each colour.  She also received an easel for Christmas, so she can draw with chalks on the chalkboard whenever she fancies.

We’ve massively stepped up our efforts to be bilingual.  I have been trying incredibly hard to speak more and more Bengali to Bella.  Bengali is my parent’s language.  I understand it fluently, but unfortunately my parents always prioritised English and so I never spoke it beyond the age of 3.  I never learnt to read or write it.  Bella and I have had a few great mornings where I think I’m hitting 95% of my speech being in Bengali (the 5% being words I don’t know).  I’ve got a tutor that I see once a week, and I’m learning to read it too.  Every morning, Bella hops into my bed and I read her some Bengali nursery rhymes before we get up.  It’s a lovely way to start the day.  We also watch occasional Bengali YouTube videos.  We’re generally screen-free, but this is my one exception.  I think it’s really important that Bella understands that Bengali isn’t just about me, but all these other people that speak it too.  I’m still working on getting the grandparents to speak it more to her!

 

Whew!  So there’s been a lot going on, despite not being at home!  In my next blog I’ll talk about what’s coming up next for us.

Practical life and heritage sites

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Today’s Highlight

People in my Montessori group seem obsessed with the sink that has real running water.  They almost got their hooks into me too, before I reminded myself that we already had a perfectly good set-up, and what’s more, we can use ours for washing hands and dishes.  (The other sink says not to use soap because of the pump.)  So I took the opportunity to focus on practical life a bit, and get things set up so that Bella could really start washing dishes.

The water bowl is filled up by us in the main sink.  When Bella’s older, she’ll be able to fill it up herself using the water dispenser.  The drying rack is our latest addition, a recommendation from someone else in the Montessori group who uses their kitchen for real-life activities like us, and it’s perfect.  It’s the right size, and more importantly, it’s easy to use.  You don’t have to put things in at the right angle, just stick it in and it holds.  Bella loved ‘cleaning’ in the water and then pushing the dishes into the tray.  A couple hours later when I saw her wander over and start playing with the plate, I asked her to put them away into the cupboard below, which she did happily.

It’s a lovely little set-up.  Obviously, it takes longer, because I have to wash the dishes with Bella after a meal, before moving on to the rest of them at the main sink, but it’s still a beautifully independent way for her to learn about this element of practical life.

The Low Point

Bella would not nap today.  She woke up late, really late, so I delayed her nap to account for that.  She still did not go to sleep.  We got her up, ate some food, played for an hour, tried again.  It took awhile but she eventually got there.  All these antics meant that we ended up missing out on a tour of a local heritage site that I’d booked tickets for ages ago.  Thankfully the tickets were free, so we aren’t out of pocket, but the site is only open to the generic public with tours one day a year, so I’m really sad to have missed out.  I struggle sometimes, to figure out whether it’s better to give her a new experience and see and do things, or whether it’s all about the routine and nap etc.  I know she won’t remember any of this in years to come, so the routine usually wins, but I hope we can still keep on fitting in more and more of the experiences.

Berries and walking

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Today’s Low

We left home at 9am and Bella was sick in the car, which I attributed to travel sickness, and then again after arriving at the venue.  It wasn’t until the evening, when chatting to my husband, that I remembered the berry that she’d picked up from somewhere in the garden and placed in her mouth.  It turns out it was a poisonous berry, and that explained it all.  Not a good start to the day.  (She’s fine, thankfully.)

The Highlight

I don’t know if this is Montessori as such, but I try to allow Bella to walk as much as possible when out and about.  These days, if we drive somewhere, she will almost always walk from the car park into the building.  If we’re on foot, then she’ll get to walk as much as she can before going into the sling or pram, and then she’ll walk again when she’s ready.

This does not seem to be the norm with my friends.  They’re either carrying their children from the car to the building (children perfectly capable of walking) or more likely exclusively using a pushchair.  The consensus seems to be that pushing a pushchair and dealing with a toddler is more effort than it’s worth.  I’ll agree, It’s not easy, but it’s totally worth it.

I get a lot of looks from other parents for going slow, and sometimes we get left behind, but I can’t think of a better way for Bella to get the gross motor practice she clearly craves, and also this amazing exposure of the real world.  Stop going to soft play and Tumble Tots and all those organised activities.  Just walk.

(Interestingly, people that don’t have young children love it.  Young children themselves think it’s adorable.  Elderly people in particular love it.  The number of them that stop and coo and wave and encourage her on is fantastic.)

I’m so proud of her slow but steady steps, the way she’s learning when we hold hands and when we don’t need to, her muddy fingers as she explores interesting things on the way.  I love walking with her.  Anytime I want to rush, I ask myself why.  Because really, there’s nothing that urgent going on in our lives.  And if there is, then the onus is on me to plan better and allow extra time so I can protect this time.  Toddler walks are beautiful.

Leather and phones

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Today’s Highlight

My husband bought me a beautiful leather box for our third wedding anniversary.  Bella has discovered it this morning, after much straining to reach it on my dressing table.  We have a busy morning ahead, so I intended to get both Bella and I washed and dressed after waking up, rather than getting ready after breakfast.  However, when I am just about ready to descend down the stairs, I see her immersed in this box.

She opens it, takes out the leather bracelet within, puts the bracelet on her wrist, closes the box, opens the box, takes the bracelet off, puts it on her head, closes the box, opens, puts the bracelet in… you get the picture.  After five minutes of this, she starts to really take the box in.  She touches the non-leather surfaces and says “soft” in response to the suede material.  She sniffs it curiously a few times.

I am itching to go downstairs, but I let her go on for as long as she needs.  And eventually, she puts the bracelet in the box, shuts the box, and puts it down.  I ask her to put it back to its place on the dressing table, and she does.

I often spend hours immersed in the wonderful world of Montessori blogs, reading about all the lovely pieces of work that you can DIY at home.  But at times like this, I wonder if they’re more for the parent rather than the child.  Surely the home environment is enough in itself?

The Low Point

We’re a screen free household.  This has been incredibly easy to maintain with Bella.  I literally don’t put the TV on all day long with her and it’s not a problem.  There is a problem though, and it’s me.  I struggle with my own screen time.  I struggle to put down my phone, to not check it over and over again.  The way I planned to deal with it was simple: leave it in my bedroom.  If it’s not with me, I can’t use it and problem solved.  It worked yesterday.  But today, I had a meeting and the person ran late.  I grabbed my phone at 9.20am and it stayed with me all day.  I don’t think it was the end of the world, I was hardly staring at it non-stop, but there were definitely moments here and there where I was looking at it instead of being with Bella and that’s what I want to stop.  So tomorrow, it stays in the bedroom.

Day One

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It’s the first day of school.  I have a 16 month old, so it’s not really back to school for us, but I also have a husband who’s a teacher, so it sort of is.  It’s my first day alone with Bella in over a month.  It’s time to get back into our usual routines and do all of the exciting Montessori things that I’ve been researching.

Today’s Highlight

Every morning, I go into Bella’s room and pick her out of her cot.  I take her to the other side of the room, sign “open” and then draw the curtains.  Today, things are a tiny bit different.  I’ve laminated a weather chart to accompany our morning chats, which allow me to introduce the various weather symbols and also the concept of the day of the week.  Unsurprisingly, her interest is in the velcro.

She soon asks to be put down, and goes immediately for her lockbox.  My instinct is always to move to the next activity, but rather than head to the potty, I instead let her fiddle with the box.  The repetitive motion can’t help but make me smile, as she retrieves her prize when she opens the box, pops it back in and then promptly goes through the whole thing over and over again.

Follow the child, indeed.

The Low Point

My Monday ‘activity’ is always baking.  It’s for a simple reason: whatever we bake will be snacks for the week.  I also happened to be responsible for making dinner today, which is homemade pizza.  I’ve planned to do both at the same time, excitedly planning for all the parts that Bella can join in with.  Pouring, stirring, kneading.  There are countless Montessori blogs showing all these lovely practical life kitchen activities.

That was not our reality.  I discovered that in my haste, I had bought gluten free flour, which doesn’t make pizza dough as I know it.  It seemed like I didn’t have enough yeast to make a second batch of gluten-filled dough.  Bella ate raw dough.  I found 2 sachets of yeast which I’m sure materialised out of my sheer desperation. Bella decided to empty out her kitchen cupboard and dropped her ceramic bowl.  I did not handle it well, although I did order her her own cleaning supplies that evening.  Bella ate yet more raw dough.  Her only interest in the dough was to poke it, and then pick it up and eat it.  I fed her two snacks.  It did not abate her thirst for the dough.

By the time my husband came home, I had been standing in the kitchen for three hours.  Bella clapped and squealed while I nearly burst into tears.  We will need to think about how to improve our kitchen time.  I suspect making only one thing will help.