How To Encourage Children To Read

How To Encourage Children To Read

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Recently my nine year got into reading Harry Potter and my inner bookworm has been glowing with pride ever since. I love reading and I love that all three of my kids enjoy reading too. This isn’t the story for all children though and it can be a real worry for parents when their child has no interest in learning how to read. If you have a reluctant reader on your hands, today’s guest post is a must read. Keep reading for some top tips on how to encourage children to read.

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How You Can Build Childhood Strength of Character

How You Can Build Childhood Strength of Character

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Today’s guest post is all about building your child’s strength of character. Parenting isn’t easy and none of us our perfect, I know I’m not! Remember, there are many different ways to be a parent and it’s up to you to choose what advice you want to follow.  This guest post is full of advice on how to help your child develop into a confident and happy human.

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Building Your Child’s Confidence: 6 Steps To Raising Happy, Successful Kids

Building Your Child’s Confidence: 6 Steps To Raising Happy, Successful Kids

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Building up confidence in your kids isn’t something that just happens, you need to put in the hard parenting work! I was an anxious child (and still am an anxious adult) so I am hyper aware of my children’s confidence. I don’t wat them to grow up scared of the world and people and challenging situations. If need some tips on how to boost your child’s confidence, this is the guest post for you! View Post

Why School Trips Abroad Are Beneficial For Your Child

Why School Trips Abroad Are Beneficial For Your Child

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Did you ever go abroad on a school trip when you were younger? I went on the French exchange when I was twelve and on an art trip to Barcelona the following year. I loved both of those school trips and I made lots of amazing memories. If your child is asking to go on a school trip abroad and you are not sure what to do, today’s guest post has lots of advice. It can be hard to send your child away on a school trip to a different country, but they will learn a lot from the experience – I promise! View Post

5 Must-Haves For Your Next Kids Birthday Party

5 Must-Haves For Your Next Kids Birthday Party

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I love organising my kids birthday parties! I love baking the cake, getting all the decorations and doing all I can to make sure they have a wonderful day. We have done low key tea parties at home in the garden and big soft play parties with all of the class invited. I will admit though, party planning can sometimes be a bit stressful! Today’s guest post is full of advice if you are about to start planning your child’s next birthday party.

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6 Vital Supplies That Will Keep You Going (Even When Parenting Feels Exhausting)

6 Vital Supplies That Will Keep You Going (Even When Parenting Feels Exhausting)

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Being a parent is an enjoyable experience, but it’s also a time in your life when you’re willing to take all the help you can get. Even small things can make a massive difference. 

In this post, we take a look at some essential parenting supplies you’ll want to keep at home if you have a house full of babies and children.  View Post

Useful Life Skills To Teach Your Kids

Useful Life Skills To Teach Your Kids

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I love teaching my kids new things. I love seeing them learn and grow. Nothing makes me feel more proud than seeing my children do something new for the very first time. When Tilly had her first ballet show a few months ago, I no joke nearly burst into tears as I sat on the stage watching her! All life lessons are important and can help our children navigate life as they grow up. Today’s guest post, shares 3 important life lessons all parents should try to teach their children.  View Post

How to Help Your Child Catch Up at School When They’ve Fallen Behind

How to Help Your Child Catch Up at School When They’ve Fallen Behind

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Hands up if lockdown massively impacted your child’s education? I am sure every single one of you have your hand firmly in the air right now. My eldest has really struggled in school since returning ‘back to normal’ in September. Homes schooling didn’t go well for us and my eight year old is now having to relearn his times tables and basic spellings. He’s fallen behind like many of his classmates but I know in time he will be back on track. If you your child has fallen behind at school, today’s guest post is full of advice on how you can help them to catch up.

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5 signs you’re burnt out from pandemic parenting

5 signs you’re burnt out from pandemic parenting

Does anyone else feel like they have a hangover? Not a hangover from drinking too much gin last night but a sort of jet lagged and jaded feeling from parenting through this pandemic? The last year has completely wiped me out. Lockdown 1.0 was hell, wasn’t it? Attempting homeschool for the first time, only leaving the house once a day for a walk around the block and trying to keep all three kids happy and entertained whilst confined to our house that felt like it was shrinking by the hour. It was a lot. And don’t get me started on the stress and anxiety that we were all drowning in every day.

Doomscrolling was at its peak during the first lockdown and every day we watched the death toll rise on the news like the victors seeing their dead rivals faces flash in the sky each night in The Hunger Games. Oh, and of course many of us were also trying to work from home whilst being a full time teacher, kids entertainer and snack bitch 24/7.

Then life went a bit back to normal, then we locked down again, then things started opening back up before we were thrust into the most depressing lockdown of them all over the bleak winter months. And now everything is opening up again, apparently for good this time and fuck, I am exhausted! The stress of the last year has left me feeling like I might never recover from parenting through this pandemic. I feel like parental burnout is a pandemic with a life of its own, we’re all dog tired and frazzled, right?

Do you feel like you’re permanently hungover from the events of the last year? Here are 5 signs you might be burnt out from parenting during the COVID-19 pandemic.

5 signs you’re burnt out from pandemic parenting.

1 You’ve dropped your parenting standards and you don’t have the energy to care – Your kids are still clean and fed and loved but you exhausted all your energy doing PE with Joe and daily crafting and impromptu living room dance parties during lockdown. Pre Covid you may have had strict screen time rules in place but now? Well now the kids electronic devices may as well be permanently super glued to their hands because they never put them down anyway. You baked so much banana bread during lockdown you can’t bear the sight of a mixing bowl and wooden spoon and the glitter and paints now live on the top shelf in the tallest cupboard because the daily craft sessions have left you feeling like you never want to see a single speck of glitter ever again. After months of intense parenting at home you no longer have the energy to be fun CBeebies mum anymore and will happily let the TV babysit for longer than is probably acceptable.

2 You’re always tired – Whether you get five hours ls broken sleep or a solid eight hour stretch, it doesn’t make any difference because you’re always tired. If the kids would allow it you would take a nap after breakfast, another after lunch and another while Peppa Pig takes over for half an hour and it still wouldn’t be enough sleep. The stress and uncertainty of the last year has left you both physically and mentally wiped out and you feel like the only cure for this intense fatigue is to sleep for a whole year. Being a parent is tiring anyway, that’s not a secret, but parenting through a pandemic is a whole other level of exhausting and I could be caffeinated up to my eyeballs and still feel like I could fall asleep at any given moment throughout the day.

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3 You’re touched out – Cuddles from your kids are the absolute best thing ever, agreed? Before the pandemic my answer the this would be yes and whilst I still do love cuddles with my little ones I do find myself craving personal space a lot more these days. After a year of being used as a human climbing frame, having family meetings in the bathroom while I try to use the toilet and just having kids under my feet constantly, I now sort of want to look myself away for a week where no one come anywhere near me. I want my own mama style quarantine, I want to hide up in my bedroom with all the snacks and coffee and books and Netflix all to myself where no child can find me and try to climb up my legs like a little hyperactive monkey. I am craving peace and quiet so much I feel like an eighty year old librarian. Do you feel the same? Like you have been fully accessible to your kids for so long and now you need a little staycation in your bedroom to recover from it all? Kids please give me all the cuddles but also please understand that when I ask you not to hang off me and clamber all over me it’s not because I don’t love you, it’s because I’m exhausted from you all using me a piece of play apparatus for the last year.

4 You’re patience is wearing thin – My patience is running so thin lately it is almost invisible. I have patience in abundance when it comes to my kids and it’s one of the areas of motherhood I always feel like I cope really well with. Calm voice, deep breaths, get down to their level and be kind and understanding, I have always had it down. However parenting through all the lockdowns and dealing with the shit show that was homeschooling, I can feel my patience starting to ebb away. Shouty mummy has started to show up more often than I’d like and sometime all the yoga breathing in the world isn’t enough to stop the mama rage from starting to bubble beneath the surface. I am just so tired and the strain and pressure of the past year as started to chip away at my and big chunks of patience are starting to fall away.

5 You need a holiday, like yesterday – I need a holiday sooo bad! I want a lovely family holiday, of course I do, but before that I want to go away by myself. It doesn’t even need to be a fancy five star all inclusive holiday. Give me a caravan on top of a cliff or a single bed in a budget hotel or even an air b&b somewhere just an hour away. I need to spend time alone to decompress after the pandemic and a hot bubble bath in the evenings just isn’t enough to cut it anymore. I need some real me time where no one needs me and the only persons wants I have to answer to are my own. Of course Mother Nature will undoubtedly be cruel and make me miss the kids within an hour, but I don’t think I’ve ever needed a holiday more in my whole life. I guess Oli could come for a few days too as our relationship has been seriously neglected over the last 12 months. Mostly though I want a week to myself, ideally somewhere with room service but I will settle for a tent in a deserted field if that’s my only option.

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Do you feel like you haven’t recovered from parenting during the pandemic? Do you feel more exhausted from ever and think you might be burnt out too? What are your plans for testing and recovering this difficult year?

How to encourage your child’s creativity

How to encourage your child’s creativity

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Were you creative as a child? I have always a had a little creative spark I think, I can remember exploring my imagination often when I was a little girl. I was always drawing and colouring, I loved to create complex storylines and games with my Barbie dolls and I was forever scribbling in fluffy covered diaries with scented gel pens (do you remember those?). Now I am a mum and I try my best to encourage my kids to be creative too. We do crafts, we draw and play dress up and make believe. Of course sometimes I let the TV parent for a while but for the most part I try to help develop my children’s imaginations and creative sides. Do you want to learn how to encourage your child’s creativity? Today’s guest post is full of ideas to get you started.  View Post

5 tips for entertaining kids at a wedding

5 tips for entertaining kids at a wedding

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Confession time, I have only taken my kids to a wedding once. And when I say kids, I mean kid. And when I say kid I mean a 9 month old baby. It was fine, it was my sisters wedding and Leo was still small so could easily be distracted by a quick stroll in the pram or a feed. If I got invited to a wedding now I would be way too terrified to take all three kids along. Sometimes you can’t get childcare though and other times you want your kids to join in the fun, but how do you keep kids entertained at a wedding? If you have a wedding coming up and the kids are tagging along for the nuptials then today’s guest post shares 5 top tips for entertaining kids at a wedding. View Post

How to sleep better as a parent – the frazzled mum’s guide

How to sleep better as a parent – the frazzled mum’s guide

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Before I became a parent I took sleep for granted. I mean, I really just didn’t appreciate at all how lucky I was to just go to sleep for as long as I wanted (and needed). As soon as you have kids sleep completely changes and a good night’s sleep is no longer a sure thing. There is lots of advice and guidance on how to get your baby to sleep better, but what can you do as a parent to get a more restful sleep? This guest post has some sleep tips that you may not have tried before. I hope the advice here helps you on your mission to sleep better and feel more rested.  View Post

Normalising screen time – you don’t need to feel guilty if your kid loves screens.

Normalising screen time – you don’t need to feel guilty if your kid loves screens.

I used to be the perfect parent. This was back before I actually had any kids of my own, of course. When I eventually decided to have them, my kids were going to be great sleepers, they were not going to be let within a mile of a dummy and all their food would be fresh and homemade. I wouldn’t shout, I would have a bottomless well of patience to draw from and there would be no need for tantrums as my kids would just happily go along with everything I said. Also, no one would ever judge me for letting my child have screen time because their precious little eyes would not be allowed to look at any kind of electronic device until they were at least five and they would be 100% onboard with this rule. View Post

Finding a babysitter with childcare.co.uk

Finding a babysitter with childcare.co.uk

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Having children is amazing and I love being a mum. You know what though, sometimes I need a break. We all do, don’t we? We spent a few years living away from all our friends and family and during that time we had zero childcare. Let me tell you something, having two kids and not having anyone to look after them every once in a while was hard. I wish back then I had known about childcare.co.uk , a website that helps you easily find hundreds of babysitters and childminders in your local area. Now we live in Swansea and pre-pandemic my parents would look after the three kids in the evenings for us sometimes so Oli and I could have a date night or they would be there if we needed some last minute childcare. Not everyone is lucky enough to live close to family though and may not know anyone who can recommend a babysitter, this is where childcare.co.uk comes in. I recently reviewed the childcare.co.uk website, read on to find out just how easy it is to find a babysitter near you by using their website.  View Post

Covid testing school aged children – is it just a cough or is it coronavirus?

Covid testing school aged children – is it just a cough or is it coronavirus?

Can we talk about Covid testing and school for a minute? My eldest started back at school on the 3rd of September and Alex, my middle one, started back on the 14th. It is now the 24th and today I have had to pick them both up because Alex has a cough. The school gave us a home testing kit and when we got home I held my breath and swabbed the back of my three year olds throat, trying not to make him sick when the bud touched his tonsils. He gagged, eyes bulging and I nearly cried. It was not a pleasant experience for either of us. View Post