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By Little Mummy, November 19, 2007 12:32 pm

Who comes first in your house? Your kids, your husband, the dog or….choke….you?

More celeb news fodder from Raising Kids reports that Seal and Heidi (is it just me or is that an odd coupling?) put their own relationship above their kids. They say this is the secret to a happy family life.

Is it selfishness to put your relationship before the kids, or are Heidi and Seal spot on?

I’ve been pondering this a lot over the past week or so…and…I think their spot on. As Seal pointed out family life began with two people in love, and all going well will end with two people in love. It’s important that the relationship is given the attention it needs because without it the whole family unit falls apart.

In many homes I think it’s the children who definitely come first. Attention, energy and money(!) is poured towards them leaving parents feeling frazzled, poor and undervalued. Often parents, and I’m going to stick my neck on the line and say especially mums side with children in discussions over everything from pocket money to bedtimes to chores, leaving one parent (usually Dad) feeling disempowered. This kind of control and level of power can’t be good for kids. Surely the family home needs a hierarchy to make it run smoothly and both parents need to take their rightful place at the head of that hierarchy, backing each other, supporting each other, and making time for each other, ensuring that together they can raise their children to the best of their joint abilities.

My own conclusion is that by putting our relationship first is indirectly placing your children first too, after all its in their interest that mum and dad stay together too.

Who comes first in your house?

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By Little Mummy, November 12, 2007 10:51 am

I’ve been reviewing the littlemummy archives, I re-read an article that I wrote in the first month after reading a book called Authentic.

The Happy Formula

Almost eighteen months on I still believe that the formula has some substance, but to get the best from it you need to be re-evaluating about once every three months.

So much changes as a parent, everyday the factors involved in true happiness change, our childrens dependancy on us, our need as people -not just as parents- to pursue something other than parenting, and financial issues too. Our income since having our daughter has likened a rollercoaster, there have been many ups and downs. For a while my husband was on a training wage, sometimes I was working part-time, sometimes not, at times we have received tax credits, at other times nothing.

Not constantly re-evaluating is what leads people, especially parents with their ever changing roles and responsibilities to get stuck in a rut. At least thats my take on it.

Are you managing to stay out of the rut?

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By Little Mummy, November 8, 2007 11:48 am

Last christmas we suggested experience vouchers for Erin as a good alternative to toys. We were lucky enough to receive vouchers for a ceramic experience, which was great, and vouchers for Edinburgh Zoo. Erin gets into Edinburgh Zoo for free so we spent the vouchers in the shop, we bought pyjamas, a noah’s ark and animals (which she loves), a book and some sweeties.

Alex and I paid around £10 ($20) each for entry to the zoo. I’m still undecided as to how much I really enjoyed it. Erin was pretty miserable due to teething, so it’s difficult to know how much she enjoyed it.

My first issue was the price, although not extortionate, I felt it was certainly on the expensive side. There were two ticket prices – one which included a ‘donation’ to the zoo and its endeavours and one without. These multiple streams of income appeared around the park, certain areas were sponsored like the lion enclosure which was sponsored by a national newspaper, an education centre that could be privately hired, individual animals sponsored by generous members of the public, not to mention the several gift shops and refreshment areas. Oh…and £2.50 ($5) for parking.

The seemingly constant need to raise funds from here there and everywhere got me to thinking about the business model behind these animal attractions (we were at Deep Sea World where we witnessed some of the same issues). The attraction has to purchase or at least transport the animals to the enclosure, many times from aboad, continually feed and house the animals for the duration of their lives, not to mention medicinal costs too. That’s a lot of food, vet and staff, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, whether visitors come or not. Think about it. It’s not surprising that we hear of zoo closures semi-regularly.

The result of these obvious cash restraints is that several areas of the park appeared tired and outdated, in need of upgrading. The animals looked as well looked after as wild animals can, many of which displayed symptoms of their incarceration. Pacing, lack of energy and rocking back and forth made for uncomfortable viewing. I’m pretty indifferent about animals, I don’t exactly love them but I certainly wish them no harm, but for the first time I really questioned whether these ‘attractions’ are really ethical. In today’s society with all the entertainment on offer are these type of attractions really necessary, I witnessed flash photography in a dark house where you could view monkeys sleeping, banging on the glass to a clearly agitated panther and lots of screeching and goading in other areas too. All of this to attract the attention of the animals who quite honestly would probably rather we all p***ed off.

What are your thoughts on modern day animal attractions?

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By Little Mummy, November 7, 2007 9:40 am

Raising kids website has reported on a BBC survey that has released some interesting data on average families in Britain. Here are some of the stats;

Average Family Size = 2 Adults and 1.8 Children

I don’t really understand how they arrived at 2 adults, we’re always being told about the rise in one parent families, so unless there are thousands of three adult/parent families then those averages don’t add up.

Anyway we fall below this average as we have ‘only’ one child

Average Income £32,799

Once again, we fall below this average

Average Weekly Spend £601.20 (includes mortgage)

Utilising my newly acquired maths skills, I conclude that average savings are therefore £1536.60 per year, or £29.55 per week. I’m not sure if this includes retirement funds etc… even if it doesn’t that’s quite a low percentage – approx 4.7% of the annual wage is saved.

Our weekly spend is about half of this figure!

The most popular family car is the Ford Focus

Our car is both smaller and cheaper than the Focus.

To summarize, we earn less, we spend less, we have less children, and we have a smaller car. If only there were a metric for happiness, I think we might be above average for once.

Comments (14)

By Little Mummy, November 4, 2007 2:16 am

I’ve been sent a few copies of Harper Collins The Brilliant Book of Baby Names. At £6.99 this book is choc full of name suggestions, no less than 592 pages of them!

The introduction includes a ten tip guide to choosing your baby’s name and a simple ‘how to use this book section. It is nicely laid out in alphabetical order, girls names first followed by boys. Each name includes a brief meaning along will several derivative names, everyone likes to be original these days so that part is particularly helpful.

For ease of browsing there also seperated lists of names that appear on the outer edge of pages, these seperated sections include ‘high-energy names’, ‘names that are trendier than you’d guess’, ‘Margaret’s international variations’ and so on.

I love this book and would have loved to receive a copy when I was pregnant, it would make a lovely gift, mother to daughter, husband to pregnant wife, for a baby shower or even a christmas gift.

The good news is that I have three brand new copies to giveaway. The first of which I’m giving away right now. All you need to do is tell me of the most unusual baby naming you ever heard of in the comments!

One lucky winner will be chosen at random on Wednesday 7th November.