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It was Daughters fifth birthday party at the weekend.  We did the invite a few friends around home and have a party.  We don’t do the invite the whole class, just half a dozen or so which usually grows to a dozen by the time there are a few siblings thrown in.

I have to admit I am fairly strongly against the concept of inviting the whole class, especially when your child is in a class of around twenty.  There seems to be a lot of stuff done in school to include everyone, make sure you don’t ‘fail’ anything and that sort of stuff.  Sometimes I think it goes too far.  I remember reading about a case somewhere in the world where someone was taking action against someone else for not inviting their child to the birthday party of the other child.  My feeling is that the child has to learn a bit about life and why leave it until they are an adult.

After all as an adult you don’t get invited to every party, get all the jobs you apply for or all the promotions, get all the boyfriends/girlfriends you want and so on.  If your children can learn, understand and deal with this concept at an early age by dealing with the fact that they don’t get invited to every party then I believe it puts them in a great place to deal with the harder knocks that life can deliver as they get older.

It also can teach your kid to think about their feelings for the other children in their class, who they like and why.  It was quite fascinating trying to get Daughter to decide on who to invite to her party.  We asked her several times over a period of a couple of weeks.  Several kids were always on the list, there were a few others that were sometimes there and sometimes not.  This appeared to match her style of play where there are some kids she plays with more often and others that appeared after she had done some activity with them or played with them that day.  There were also a couple of boys and I had to laugh at the comments about them for one it was , Chris loves me so I’ll invite him and about Brett it was “I’m going to marry him”.  Of course at the actual party a lot of time was spent with the girls doing girly play and boys getting to play boy games with Son’s recent bonanza of guns, swords and so on that he got at the Easter Show.

Later in the day after cleaning up and so on I sat down with Son and Daughter and we played a game of Mouse Trap.  Unfortunately it didn’t end too happily with two tired children and no one wanting to lose and of course there can only be one winner.  Yet another good lesson in life, you can’t win all the time, help them learn how to deal with it.

I think kids need to start learning about life from the simple things early on to build up their reslilience.  If they can deal with the little things like losing a game or not going  to a party it helps with the big things later on, so look on the positive side next time you kid doesn’t get invited to a party and make sure you win your next game with them!

Do you sometimes get the feeling that having babies and parenting is more about the mother?  You look around and all the books and information are geared towards the woman, what she is going through, feeling and can expect.  I sometimes feel sorry for the Dad's, they can get caught up in all this information and focus on the woman and end up wondering what they can do, how should they be feeling, can they help.

Dad's All Purpose Guide to Parenting is a great guide to help Dad's out.  As the book says 'parenting is the most difficult job in the world'.  It isn't like putting together the flat pak furniture you just bought, which comes with instructions and there is only one way to do it and you know what you should end up with.  With parenting there is no one right way that suits all and the book touches on this and introduces some of the different ideas on some of the issues so you can decide what works for you.

The earlier sections on the new born are particularly geared towards Dad and dealing with the baby and Mum and what he can do to help.  Later sections giving advice for children as they get older are more general and provide some useful tips and information for all parents.  I just love the following statement: (more…)

When you can't work out which day your kid should start school then maybe home schooling is a good option! Yes we gave Son a first day to remember, didn't find out till half way through the morning that our local school was different to most others around and the little ones started a day earlier than everywhere else. Well that took care of nerves, it was all hands on deck to get him and everything else ready and rush him off to school to somewhat belatedly join his class.

As you look at costs of uniforms, hassles of getting kids to and from school, rushing to get everyone ready on time in the mornings you can see some of the attraction of home schooling. You get to choose how and when, you can design programs to suit the interests of your child and go at the pace that suits them and so on.

I have to admit I hadn't realised until I started reviewing our book on Home Schooling and looked on the Web, how much information is out there to help you including all the resources from the relevant education authorities in your country.

So what are the realities of home schooling… (more…)

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