The weekly “little of this, little of that” feature here at Like Mother, Like Daughter!
We got home (exhausted) last Saturday from a visit with John's family and, as you know, Advent began on Sunday. I had to try and change gears fast. Although I did manage to have candles lined up for the advent wreath, I'm afraid that's as far as I've gotten. I haven't had a chance yet to get out and scrounge around for some nice greenery. City problems/Apartment life problems.
I did come across this thrifted candle… and though I've never been really into the “central candle” notion nor have I ever considered buying a candle second-hand, it seemed to work. Now I have something to warm up my rather sparse “wreath” — and it serves the added purpose of keeping a flame burning before and after it's time to have the purple one lit. I may or may not have a 1.5 year old around who is, these days, living for the moment when we can light the “canel!” “canel!” So it helps to have a slower-burning option to rely upon.
One of these days I'm going to dress my ring properly, I promise!
On to this week's links!
You know me and how I feel about this:
- A piece from the WaPo that is just chock-full of common sense on the topic of children and play, and particularly how it relates to education and children's health.
From the article: “As we age, if we don’t stay active, we become more prone to falls. The problem? We are seeing this already in little children! Children are spending less time outdoors than ever before, and this is changing the development of their muscles and senses. They are becoming a generation of “unsafe” children — reports of clumsiness and falls are on the rise in schools…. Lets face it, keeping children sedentary for most of their waking hours is causing harm.”
Miscellaneous nuggets for the nerds among us:
- The other night, as I was driving home from meeting with the lovely ladies in my local St. Gregory's Pocket to determine our reading list for our “PocketBook Club” in the coming months, I heard a radio program about this hundreds-of-years-old map being recently discovered and restored in Scotland. It was fun to see the video giving a closer look at the restoration process.
- Along similar lines, it seems that there's a new glimpse a the old tricks used by English Catholics to hide such priests as St. Edmund Campion during the persecution. (Sidenote: the Artist and I are big fans of the name “Throckmorton” since learning about that family in Edmund Campion by Evelyn Waugh)
- As long as we're talking about venerable Brits, here's a short essay in which G. K. Chesterton waxes eloquent about cheese.
Short reads on freedom and conscience that are truly edifying:
- I am sure you will appreciate this transcript of a short speech by Armando Valladares, 2016 recipient of the Canterbury Medal, the award given by the Becket Fund. Valladares' experiences, which he only references, as a tortured prisoner under Castro's regime, are relevant in light of the dictator's recent death. An object lesson in the power of words.
- A short and fascinating look at the life of Daniel Rudd, a slave who was Baptized Catholic and grew up to be an apologist for the Faith as well as an abolitionist and a leader among African-American Catholics. I had no idea!
For a little intellectual workout:
- A good little primer on the three “givens” of rational thought, with the fallacy of the third way highlighted. There is nothing in between something being wrong and something being right: No Third Way: the Fundamentals of Rationality.
- From the Art of Manliness: a podcast discussion with Fr. James Schall which Auntie Leila says is like listening to the wisest old grandfather… with a special little love note to moms thrown in. On the Joys and Travails of Thinking.
In the liturgical year:
- Today we celebrate St. Francis Xavier!
- We are about to enter the second week of Advent. Have you gotten your wreath going, your nativity scenes out (we hope you're waiting until Christmas to put Jesus in the manger!), trimmed up the house a bit? As you've seen, I'm a little behind on some of these things. I appreciate that mom's efforts can “grow” as the season continues… I'm choosing to play my slow-moving progress simply as a means of building the family's anticipation towards Christmas. By week four things should actually look very advent-y around here!
- Don't forget about the St. Andrew's Novena, ongoing up through Christmas!
~We’d like to be clear that, when we direct you to a site via one of our links, we’re not necessarily endorsing the whole site, but rather just referring you to the individual post in question (unless we state otherwise).~
Dixie says
Love the links this week! I like the white candle. Somehow it makes the wreath look more settled. It looks lovely even without the greens!
While we’re talking decor, may I recommend an Advent decorating “fix” that has worked really well for us? Plain, wide purple ribbon. It’s so simple and cheap and it adds purple everywhere with no fuss!
Just buy a couple of spools at the fabric store (even Walmart) and string in various places in the kitchen/dining/living area (use scotch tape even). Somehow the simplicity of this feels so Advent-y. That and the wreath are basically all we do for Advent decoration but it really changes the feel of the whole house, and not just the kitchen table where we keep the wreath. I really like it.
I guess what I’m saying is, don’t let Pinterest get you down, ladies! Just put purple things in places and voila, Advent.
Anitra says
I want to get my children moving more, but I can’t always get outside with them. And if I don’t, then their activity is “limited” because we have nosy neighbors who would call the police on unattended children. 🙁
We don’t want them swinging and running and jumping inside, because someone WILL get hurt and we’re trying to teach them appropriate behavior (ie. couches are not for jumping off – that’s better as an outdoor activity).
Leila says
Have you thought of talking to the police yourself? I don’t know where you live, but where I live and have lived a person could speak to the police chief and just say, all conversational-like, my children play outside. I realize you have to answer every call, so feel free to come by and reassure our neighbors that all is well. You can then cite the relevant laws that allow your children to be outside (just google or look up Lenore Skanazey’s “free range children” site).
Liz says
Do you have any thoughts about what age is appropriate to be outside in the yard alone? Our neighborhood is quiet, and our immediate neighbors are very friendly (all have adult kids around my age and raised their kids here), so I’m actually more concerned about nosy passers-by causing us trouble. My kids are great about staying in the backyard, but I have a lot of self-doubt about whether they are really old enough yet, so I waffle on whether to let them go out alone. I would feel so much more confident with a nice big fence so no one could see them, but that is so costly (and maybe kind of unneighborly). Neither my mom nor my mother in law wants to answer me about the right age, and both seem vaguely disapproving that I would even be considering it or that I don’t want to spend hours sitting in the yard watching the kids play. I just need some objective assurance about the appropriate age, since neither my elders nor my peers want to admit to or encourage any “irresponsibility” on this subject.
Dixie says
Liz — you are NOT being irresponsible. Your children NEED this for their bodies and imaginations. They really do.
The tricky part is that the age does vary by child, I think. My guess would be between 3 and 5 if they are alone (perhaps 2 if with a slightly-older sibling) in an unfenced yard, depending on the kid and the yard? (I would say older for the front yard, but that’s just me). Mine is fenced, so for me it was more like 2.5/3, with Mama keeping a sharp eye and ear out.
In terms of your own kids and whether or not they are really ready, how about if you work your way up to it? Watch them carefully out the window for 15-30 minutes, — watch their behaviors when you’re not there with them. Do this for a couple of weeks. Then see how well they do for longer. I found I needed to sort of ease my younger child into it with supervision from inside to make sure he really could be trusted not to put stones in his mouth, etc.
If you are Catholic, entrust them to their guardian angels and Mary every time they go out!
Dixie says
(Of course, you also need to do a good periodic sweep of the yard yourself: no buckets of rainwater, the shed door where the Roundup is is locked, etc.)
Leila says
Liz, I completely agree with Dixie. Send your kids outside! Pray for the intercession of their guardian angels! Check on them, get a feel for it, go for it. I would send even a baby outside with older siblings. If you only have very littles, then even if the older one is 3, they should be able to play outside in the backyard for 20 minutes or so. Before you know it, they’ll be out there happily playing for hours.
Make a fence a priority. It’s not unneighborly at all — in fact, the old adage is, “fences make good neighbors”! Check your codes and then go for it. To save money, put the nice part out in front — a nice picket fence or a split-rail fence (you can always back it with mesh if you need to, but it sounds like your kids respect the boundaries and you just need a visual signal to them and to the world that you are in control. Thinking ahead to a dog, you might want it to be impenetrable, though.
Then you can use chain-link around the rest of your yard — black is actually quite presentable. Or maybe you don’t need it. Get what you need for your peace of mind, because kids outside = the highest priority!!
A friend of mine with a big yard solved the issue by making a little “door yard” – she put in a low picket fence around the area defined by her backdoor area. It was like a large playpen — room for a grassy area, a little picnic table, a sandbox, and the concrete apron for ride-on toys. That way her big kids could easily hop the fence to run in the beyond, but her littles were confined. Also her waddly dog (it wouldn’t have stopped my dog for a second).
Have confidence that YOU know what your kids are capable of, that even if something goes wrong it’s okay, things go wrong, that’s life, and that you aren’t answerable to any random passer-by.
When you know something is right, you just do it! If it makes you feel better, my kids played outside all the time — we lived on a busy road but the backyard was really secluded and there was lots of scope for playing back there, as the neighbors’ yards backed up as well.
Well, one day, during a party, of course my #6 toddler wandered out and a perfect stranger appeared, carrying him, all “Is this your child, he was in the middle of the road.”
Yes, yes, that is my child, sigh. But it’s all good. It’s not the end of the world. This is life!!
Please, parents, get your children outside!
Anamaria says
We have a fenced yard but I send my almost three-year-old out by herself all the time- and I have for a year. We don’t have too much to do back there currently, but with her toy stroller and balance bike (yup, on the grass!), she’s happy for a little while. We do have quite a small house, and the kitchen window gives good visibility for the yard. She’s had a couple of scrapes but nothing big- our biggest disaster thus far was when there was a dead squirrel back there!
All this is to say, yes, do it! They need to be outside! You need to do the dishes/make dinner/put the baby to her nap/etc! One thing I am very excited for about Christmas is a grandparent gift for my girls- a playhouse so she/they (hopefully baby will be big enough to go soon!) can be more entertained back there.
Also
Liz says
Thank you, everyone! I am so glad to have my feelings confirmed on this!
My oldest is a naturally cautious 6 year old boy, and I have daughters ages 3 and 1. This summer, when I was feeling bolder, I would let him play alone in the yard, and I would let the 3-year-old go out if he was also there – not that he was officially watching her, but that the two together would probably get into less mischief than her alone because they would be engaged in their many activities. We homeschool, so they had plenty of time to run around in the yard together, and they never got hurt, tried to leave the yard, nor went into the front yard. But then I read yet another story (or several) of a perfectly innocent family being harassed by the child protective services due to a report from a stranger, and having to undergo an extremely intrusive investigation, complete with isolated interviews of even the small children, and I lost my nerve. I didn’t tell the kids of my change of heart, of course, but just started going out with them – the housework suffered, and they don’t play as nicely together when I’m right there with them. My husband doesn’t like the cost of the fence (and he insists on a nice one all around for the sake of the neighbors in the back), and he thinks it’s fine to let the two olders go out alone, but I’m not sure that he’s not just saying that to make my life easier! Besides, he never sees these terrifying stories of the havoc and risk that just one busybody can create (I had to stop following Lenore Skenazy because I just couldn’t take the constant angst about it).
There’s so much to say about this topic, of course, but for me it seems to boil down to the idea that we stay-at-home mothers are meant to be interacting with our children at every moment – we can’t let them just be sometimes. We “chose to” have them and “chose to” stay home with them, so now we must prove the worth of those “choices” by spending every waking moment actively “enriching” our children’s lives by leading them in safe educational activities outside (preferably at parks and nature centers). It never seems to occur to anyone that kids actually are developing in hugely important ways when they are freely playing alone, unencumbered by an adult’s ideas of what to do and how to play, and that a mother might choose to allow this because it’s beneficial, not because she’s lazy.
I will resume letting them go out on their own, and may pick up the fence effort with my husband again so that toddlers can go out, too. I love the idea of the giant playpen fence of just the part near the door, though, so maybe we could work on that as a compromise.
Leila says
Liz, I made a board on my Pinterest account for what look like frugal fences: https://www.pinterest.com/_leila/
I suggest keeping an eye out for what people do who have similar homes and yards. Keep looking and studying. You will find that even very elegant homes have different styles of fencing for front and back. And people even have fences just for the front of their houses, going around from the edge of the yard to where their house begins. It may be that this would give you a sense of seclusion without necessitating doing the entire property.
In any case, we all need to trust more. You are always going to hear stories of bad things happening, but when you just go ahead and do what you know is best, you find that you can stop worrying. Put the guardian angels on the case.
If your husband thinks it is fine, just go with that! These hypotheticals are stealing our children’s lives away from them.
Dixie says
Liz, the reports of CPS investigations are scary. I hear you there. But it’s like the early homeschooling movement: very few people were actually investigated (and almost always allowed to keep their kids/keep homeschooling — in other words, as traumatic as an investigation can be for a family, it was all okay in the end), but the prospect terrorized everyone for years and years.
Don’t be terrorized! It is unlikely there will be a problem with CPS, but it is very likely there will be a problem with your kids’ development if they can’t play in this way.
I really appreciate your thoughts on this!
DeirdreLMLD says
I love this thread! Just a few little thoughts to add:
– I would totally kick my two toddlers (3 and 1.5) outside all the time if we weren’t on a street that people barrel down at breakneck speeds (the rest of the time it is silent, presenting a deceptive sense of peace and safety) and no ability to fence in (I’m a renter on the second floor). Even with these conditions, I’ll let my 3yo play out back and keep an ear on her through my windows/2nd floor porch, occasionally calling to her just to say, “how ya doing?” and reassure myself she hasn’t wandered away into the city street.
– In the times that I feel I do have to be at least in the background in order for them to get outdoor playtime, I try to bring a book along (MY book) so that it’s clear to them that I’m not really involved; I’m doing my thing, kids – go do yours. They should just play as if I weren’t there. Of course, this isn’t ideal. But again, I’m working with the limitations listed above.
– Just to nitpick on you, Mom — *good* fences make good neighbors. 😉 The well-tended borders and all that… 🙂
Mrs. B. says
For those desiring a fence, it’s good to keep in mind that if you live in a neighborhood with an HOA, it’s likely to have rules about that, and it may require prior approval. For instance, we can’t have a fence for the front yard, and we can’t have chain-link fencing (we do have it in the back, but we are an exception because there is a wooded hill there, and no neighbors, otherwise the rule is enforced.)
We just replaced our wood fence, because it was about to come crashing down – it’s expensive all right! But if regularly sealed, it will last a long time.
Katie says
Opened this tab this weekend but just now reading through the links . . .
Yes, the “door yard” concept has been a helpful one for me! We have a carport connected to what is essentially a second-story deck (above a walkout basement which is not finished living space), so if we go out, we always go out from “upstairs” i.e. the main level . . . similar maybe to Deirdre’s second-floor home. I’m all for appropriate independence in children, but 10-foot drops and wobbly steps and no sight lines all make for a supervision-required situation for my little ones. BUT, back to the dooryard, I’ve essentially converted the carport into a space for play, work, and storage (no vehicle in there, alas, but in the temperate South we don’t miss it much, and we’ve got a huge magnolia tree to park under for shelter =). I can open the kitchen window and the 3yo can play alone at the sand table, toy kitchen, or the big free-from-a-neighbor table doing whatever she pleases. I can keep tabs by sound if not by sight, but SHE feels completely on her own. And I can bring the baby’s high chair and work of my own out from the kitchen without throwing things off. We go together to the yard for the big movements and running and whatnot. All that to say, I concur, there are ways to be outdoors/alone without easy access to a fenced back yard!
Deirdre, I first saw that WaPo article on the Nutritious Movement FB page, and this point in particular– “All of these rapid and changing movements shift the fluid around in the inner ear to develop a strong vestibular (balance) sense. A unifying sense, the vestibular system supports good body awareness, attention and emotional regulation.”– along with the cover photo, I’m realizing– has helped solidify our choice to spring for one “big” surprise Christmas present for the family . . . a climbing dome. Hoping to have lots of upside-down and spinning, clambering kiddos in the backyard come January and beyond!
Katie says
Speaking of Nutritious Movement, and pertinent to this theme and thread, I enjoy following Katy Bowman for (among other things) motivation and practical, frugal ideas to get oneself and one’s kids, friends, and neighbors outdoors. Tags like #vitaminnature #vitamincommunity #gooutside #letthemmovetheirdna might be particularly good for turning up family- and child-related ideas.
Also, Deidre, I love the trick of taking MY book outside for the running-around time. I had never thought of that. Will try!
Deirdre says
Katie, that’s so interesting about the Katy Bowman connection! I definitely was struck by that fascinating physical explanation of why kids who move less fall more, as well as why adults are more prone to fall (how pathetic that we’re basically turning our little ones into miniature elderly??). I told The Artist that we should go roll down hills and do somersaults more often! 🙂
And a climbing dome sounds pretty cool! I’m grateful that we at least have nearby parks that we can walk to, since we’re a bit “trapped” in our Chesternest. 🙂
Katie says
Isn’t it interesting that we instinctively play with babies and small children (and they themselves enjoy and initiate playing) in ways that are all about spinning, flipping, tossing, bouncing, inverting . . . especially the rambunctious “daddy” sorts of play that (rightly) push the (rightful) caution that we mothers often feel. Nourishing both to parent-child bonds and to inner-ear physiology!
And not to go too fan-girl, but coincidentally, I just yesterday was listening to KB’s latest KatySays podcast which is titled “Nature School” and is all about ways to engender in children a love for nature and a comfort and skill level outdoors, whether through play or hikes or family outings or school or homeschool or skills classes. Definitely worth a listen!
Deirdre says
And YES about the book: I think a lot of women end up limiting their kids’ playing time simply because THEY (the moms) are bored! “I don’t want to stand around here forever watching you; time to wrap up.” Well… how about you just read a book, mom, and then your kids are more free to take their time and enjoy. Furthermore, it makes you less likely to nervously interfere/helicopter!
DeirdreLMLD says
Anitra, maybe you’ve already thought about this, but one of my main motivations for getting to know and be on friendly terms with my neighbors is this very concern. I decided when we moved here to Manchester that I wanted to know everyone on my block, in part so that I they would understand me and I would have familiar people to vouch for me, should I ever get into “trouble” for wanting a less hands-on approach with my kids. I think that folks will naturally be nervous and uppity, but if they know you, see you interact lovingly with your kids, know that you’re always near by, etc., they can relax a little if/when your kids are being independent…
Catherine says
We had a fence put in around our back yard this summer and it wasn’t cheap but we love it!! Due to code, it’s 4ft high with 4 inch gaps between the wooden slats, so it really doesn’t look like a barrier with the neighbors. I discovered that my almost two-year-old has a much better time playing around when I’m not out there with him. I just do chores indoors where I can see him out the window. I think it helps both of us to get a little break from each other, too. I’ve never had anyone comment on it, though it helps that it’s the back yard and we know our near neighbors.
Victoria says
We have our wreath out and are working on making a little salt dough Jesus and crib to put paper “straw” in when the kids do something loving. There was a time when I would have been upset that we hadn’t finished making and painting Jesus BEFORE Advent started. But something about having an ongoing Advent craft is kind of nice and knowing that next year it will all be ready and waiting is a good feeling too. I’m really enjoying the idea of slowly growing Advent traditions with my young family.