Teaching a child to ride a bike the very, very slow way.

I get asked a lot about teaching kids to cycle, which isn't something I've really felt qualified to comment upon as my children are very young.

(I actually wrote the vast majority of the Girl's Guide to Life on Two Wheels before I had Cherry, and the remainder while Cherry was very young and before I became pregnant with V, so the book itself doesn't cover cycling with kiddies. Expect the follow up The Mum's Guide to Kids on Two Wheels imminently!)

I now have a bit more of an idea around how to go about getting your children on bikes. Here's my advice.

Get them a bike, ride your bike lots - and do nothing else.

Trust me, they will do the rest when they are ready.

About a year and a half ago we were sent an adorable little Frog balance bike. After the initial novelty, which lasted about half an hour, it has been largely ignored by Cherry.

If there's one thing I know about my daughter it's the more I push something onto her, the more emphatically she will dig in and refuse to entertain it. So I have done nothing, just left the Frog conveniently situated, and I have waited.

And waited…..

Cherry isn't the most physical of children, she's quite reticent and it took her ages to become more physically outgoing. This in itself used to concern me as I watched far younger children throwing themselves around playgrounds while Cherry screamed to stay on the swing and seemed visibly terrified of any kind of physical challenge.

But I tend to opt to trust my children rather than try and train them out of what I perceive as undesirable characteristics, like fearfulness.

Sure enough she's become much bolder in the last year, wanting to climb and jump and 'run run run!' and generally exert herself much more.

All I've done to 'encourage' her to take an interest in the bike is to ride MY bike. She's also watched Noel ride off on his bike to work every morning and seen him return home on it.

She used to ride on my bike a lot when I was pregnant with Violet and on the odd occasion I've managed to spend one-on-one time with Cherry, we've gone out on the bike together with her in her seat. She spent quite a lot of time asking to 'ride on Mummy's bicycle' and this naturally slid into 'I want to ride MY bicycle.'

For a while she just wanted to shunt it up and down the garden and would usually call me to help her turn it around. I found this a bit tedious and was tempted to just run her through the basics of bike handling, but I'm not a huge fan of explicitly 'teaching' children something they can, with time, learn themselves. So I'd turn her bike round for her, and off she'd shunt again.

She seemed to find the agonisingly slow, unsteady process quite mesmerising after a while. Watching her was certainly mesmerising, in the same way watching paint dry is compelling. I could easily have nodded off to it.

Somehow in the last few weeks, probably while I was sleeping, she's learned to turn it herself. At her request the bicycle has become a regular feature in our daily routine. If we go out for walks, the bike comes. V naps mid-morning so this is the perfect time to pop her in the sling and take Cherry for a 'bike ride' up and down our cul-de-sac.

We don't get very far. Particularly when she insists on hopping off every ten seconds to sit on a wall 'like Humpty Dumpty' or talk to snails.

It's a long game with Cherry - with cycling, with everything. There are children out there who would undoubtedly have graduated onto a 'big boy/girl bike' with pedals by this age, and be happily whizzing about. Her younger cousin, not yet two, can already hurtle about on the Frog at high speed. Perhaps if I'd made more of an effort to 'teach' her she too would be an aficionado by now.

But that's not our way and I have time. I'm a full-time mum, what else am I going to do with my day? So we continue with our slow, stately progress. One day very soon - ages away, but very soon - she'll be hurtling ahead with me panting and puffing on my own bike, struggling to keep up. I won't have taught her to do it. She'll have learned it herself and that's something she'll have in common with no less than Sir Chris Hoy.

What could be more empowering than that?

Gingerbread and self-esteem

Yesterday Cherry wandered over to me brandishing a small rolling pin. 'Look Mummy! Look what I got.'

Without thinking I said 'We need to bake some cookies.' Her eyes lit up. When Cherry wants to do something, she really wants to do it and Cherry likes cookies. 'Bake cookies! Shall we bake cookies, Mummy? Shall we bake cookies?'

So we baked gingerbread. Only the recipe we used called for golden syrup and I didn't have any, so we used honey instead. And we used wholemeal flour instead of white. As we mixed I opened my mouth to warn Cherry that our gingerbread might not be as nice as the gingerbread men we get from the bakery.

Then I thought better of it and closed my mouth again.

I think often about the things I do with my children and how it affects their self esteem. Apparently I'm incapable of even baking out-of-season sweet treats without pondering the impact upon their emotional development.

It occurred to me I bite my tongue a lot these days rather than surrender to my natural impulse which is to apologise in advance for the perceived inadequacy of what I am producing.

Cherry asks me to draw with her a lot. I'm really, really bad at drawing. Whenever she asks me to draw for her - usually a helicopter - I want to warn her that it won't be any good. I want to say 'this won't look much like a helicopter I'm afraid'. Or, 'I'm sure Daddy could draw you a much better helicopter than this. Mummy's not very good at drawing.'

But I don't.

SHE thinks my helicopters look great. But more importantly she thinks HER helicopters look great too. I can see the pride in her as she shows me them. She takes pride in many things, my girl. The size of her poos (seriously, she's entitled to. That child can SHIT.) The songs she sings, fudging the words as she goes. 'Playing' her piano as Violet drones into the accompanying microphone, creating a cacophony that only a mother could love.

The more I observe my children the more convinced I am that self-esteem comes from the process of doing, regardless of the quality of the outcome or the praise received. Traditionally praise was thought to raise self-esteem. Tell your children how brilliant they are, frequently. Concentrate on something they are good at and lavish them with praise when they do something 'well'.

Except I tend to believe that children find praise insincere and creepy, and rather self-serving, because it often is. Instead I use the classic 'say what you see'. Tell me about your picture. You've drawn a helicopter! It's green! You look like you really enjoyed that! Are you happy with it? And so on.

I want her to take joy in doing, just for herself.

If I begin every one of our creative sessions by apologising, it will only be a matter of time before she does too. Modelling is one of the most powerful parenting 'methods' there is.

If I apologise and draw attention to my perceived failings, and point out the flaws in everything, she will learn to do the same.

Instead I want her to learn that it doesn't matter if she doesn't have all the ingredients in her cupboard. If she thinks about it and she wants to badly enough, she can still make gingerbread men.

And when they're fresh out of the oven and in lovely shapes dusted with icing sugar, all tempting on a plate, they will still taste just as nice and nobody will know she used honey instead of golden syrup.

#greensmoothieclub

The concept of 'me-time' is one of the many, many things around which I have had to change my perceptions since having a second child.

I found 'me-time' fairly easy with one child, from about nine months onwards. Noel and I are committed to co-parenting, a fancy way of saying we split parenting duties wherever possible and Cherry settled just as happily for him as she did for me.

With a second child strangely 'me-time' wasn't an issue until later on. In the first three months I didn't expect any. In the middle four or five months I curiously had a bit more than I anticipated, here and there. It wasn't reliable, but it did happen. The girls frequently napped in unison for two hours or so. They settled quite well at night at 7-7.30pm. Some weeks were good, others were bad, but there was time.

I don't really know what's happened in the last two or three months but it has been utterly relentless, with both children going through huge amounts of development, being unsettled at varying times and to varying degrees, and often at exactly the same time. Me time? Does the twenty minutes in between going to bed straight after my children, and falling asleep before being woken by V an hour later count?

There is one thing I have continued to eke out the time to do for myself though, and that's make green smoothies for breakfast every morning.

Quite how blending a heap of fruit and veg together into a remotely appetising-looking mulch then pounding it down in place of a couple of slices of toast with chocolate spread and peanut butter counts as 'me-time' wasn't immediately apparent, I have to confess. But thanks to the interest and support of some lovely friends who have joined me along the way, #greensmoothieclub is now a THING. It's stuck.

Here are some of the things I have noticed as a result:

My skin. OH MAMA. My skin is perfect, and I mean that in the literal sense. I have quested for skin like this my whole life. I've tried All The Products. I've tried the expensive products. I've tried a strict skincare regime. Turns out all I needed was a daily dose of fresh fruit n veg, blended for my delectation.

My energy levels. In the context of the above utter relentlessness, I have not fallen apart. Some nights V still wakes every 45 minutes. I have got up every day and done what I gotta do. I've had the energy for both of my children. Nothing else, mind. But I have had the energy for them.

My odour. Well, start the way you mean to carry on, this blog will be well-peppered with TMI. I don't know what's happened to my digestion since having a second child but let's just say I can only eat lasagne if I take it with a side-order of gas mask. Refined sugar and red meat are particular 'no-go zones' if I want to retain any sense of dignity. Which I do. Somehow the daily green goodness has made me less unfragrant and generally repulsive.

My state of mind and sense of wellbeing. Even if I have the worst day ever and inhale nothing but chocolate biscuits, chocolate ice cream and chocolate all day long, I've still had my five a day, still nourished myself (and through that, V) and still done something healthy for myself.

My shape. I can't really pinpoint the smoothies here as this is dependent on a range of factors, including me having the time and energy to work out. But I don't look dreadful in a bikini. See?

Even on the greyest day, the most relentless grind, when the sheer intensity of my two incredible, beautiful children has utterly overwhelmed me, I've made my green smoothie every morning, and it's just a little thing that has made me happy.

(If you're reading this thinking 'that's all very well but don't you need one of those fancy pricey superblender things?' can I just say now you ABSOLUTELY DO NOT. Until quite recently, of which more another day, I made my green smoothies with a stick blender. I can't say they were velvety smooth, green bitties would be a more accurate description. But they were FINE, entirely drinkable as long as you don't mind chewing and stirring with a fork as you go.)

Why Chasing my Village?

It takes a village to raise a child, so the old saying goes.

With my first child I thought this was complete nonsense. My husband and I had chosen to have a baby, why should we expect anybody else to help or support us?

For 20 months I combined a very successful career as a freelance copywriter, creative, journalist and author with raising our little girl Cherry full-time, slapping myself on the back as I did so largely without any childcare, help or support other than from my husband.

Then along came baby V, 8lb4oz of straw that broke the camel's back.

I largely missed the shock and awe of becoming a parent first time around. I was determined not to let new motherhood overwhelm me - and through sheer force of will, not to mention falling hook, line and sinker for modern parenting and all the associated scaremongering about IF YOU CUDDLE YOUR CHILD TO SLEEP THEY WILL DEPEND ON IT UNTIL THEY ARE 95, it didn't.

But as it turns out it got me all the same. It was waiting for me, lurking in the wings. A hippy, green, earth-mother outlook, a principled mentality, an attachment-based approach, a longing for a community, an awareness that in my current state I was mentally and emotionally incapable of being the kind of parent I deeply wanted to be.

An abrupt realisation that it does indeed take a village to raise a child, and here's why.

We are all responsible for the shape of our future. Children embody that future. Our own children and other people's children.

If we don't nurture it - every single one of us - then we have no future as a species.

My two children opened my eyes to the possibility that if I didn't do something about it, I would be unable to give them the childhood I so wanted for them.

We aren't made to parent alone or in couples. We do it, because we do a great deal of things we aren't made to do. But it's hard, and as Robin Grille so astutely identified in his amazing work Parenting for a Peaceful World, Westernised society is one of the only societies that considers parenting stressful, exhausting and disappointing.

If we raise our children stressed, exhausted and disappointed then we will end up with stressed, exhausted and disappointed children. If we raise our children joyfully, we will end up with joyful children.

We need support, so our own needs are met, so we can meet the needs of our children joyfully, not resentfully. We need each other. We need a village.