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The parenting world seems pretty divided on gentle parenting, with some hailing it as the best way to raise our children and others criticising it for being too permissive. But despite it being a very popular way to parent right now, a top parenting expert has explained why she doesn’t promote it.
‘If you feel scared, if you’re feeling anxious, if you’re sad, if you’re angry, and show your child your coping strategy that is incredibly powerful.’ ‘Gentle Parenting is a way of being, it is a mindset,’ says Sarah Ockwell-Smith, author of The Gentle Parenting Book. Emma says that when you look at what gentle parenting is, at its core, they’re all things she approves of.
‘When a pregnancy ends in loss, a doll like a ‘reborn baby’ might provide a helpful focus for our grief,’ counsellor Georgina Sturmer told MailOnline. ‘A tangible, physical object for us to hold onto and to connect with in our sadness.’ One ‘reborn mum’ Lisa Robertson from Aberdeen told Today.com that her dolls – or ‘babies’ as she calls them – have changed her life for the better.
While another said: ‘I got my daughter this one off Amazon. She has a soft body is weighted and looks like a real baby. She loves her and we always get comments about how real she looks. But this is probably the low end budget compared to some of the more professional ones.’ Are there any risks of reborn dolls? Psychoanalyst Bethany Marshall tells TODAY.com that while some coping mechanisms can help us heal, others can be counterproductive.
‘Excessive dependence on a reborn baby may inhibit individuals from seeking support from other sources and hinder the development of effective coping strategies.’ ‘I just wanted to raise awareness that there are websites with fake reborns which look amazing because they steal photos of real reborns and even other people’s own photos!’ she posted.
Related stories Over half of women who’ve had a miscarriage feel ‘scared’ when they get pregnant againIt might sound too good to be true but Aldi is recruiting shoppers to try its wine – for free. The budget supermarket is known for selling quality wine at bargain prices, with a number of its tipples gaining gold, silver and bronze medals at prestigious wine awards.
All they need to do in exchange is post an honest review of the wine on their social media channels using the hashtag #AldiWineClub. Entries are open now and you have until 4 March to apply. Winners will be contacted within seven days after this date. 1. See: ‘The colour will give an indication of the style of wine says Sam. ‘A deep red will suggest youth and a full-bodied wine, while a pale colour will propose it is lighter and juicier.’
5. Savour: This tip is probably our favourite. ‘Now relax, savour those deep flavours that are developing in your mouth and enjoy!’CHAT: With other parents in our forumRaising kids can be hard. Throw in a cost of living crisis, relationship problems and school issues and it’s even tougher. But did you know we’ve got an incredible team of experts who are just waiting to answer your questions and share their advice? And they’re on hand around the clock to help you, 365 days a year.
That’s why we created the Netmums Parent Supporter Service in 2008. Since then, our amazing team has been answering questions from thousands of parents each month. Tracey Stone, who heads up our PSS Team, says: ‘It’s quite unique what we offer. For example, you can have out of hours access to a health visitor and you don’t even need to leave your sofa.
Loraine Thrower, safeguarding and relationships expert Loraine has been a Netmums Parent Supporter since 2017. Emma is a strong all rounder and shares guidance on a wide range of emotional and psychological problems. Catherine McConnell, social worker Catherine currently works within a therapeutic service in a Health and Social Care Trust for young people with a diagnosis of severe learning disability.
Throughout all of the Drop-In clinic boards, Lauren helps adults and children make sense of difficult and sometimes complex issues.Emma Moriarty, registered children’s nurse and health visitor Emma has all the skills and knowledge you’d expect from a reliable and friendly health visitor, and questions are never too big or too small.
‘There are many good tips in there that I’m going to try, I’m hopeful one of them is going to be useful with my situation. It’s nice to have access to a society of caring and nice mothers.’ Dani will also be sharing her advice on Netmums Instagram and TikTok so give us a follow – you don’t want to miss what she has to say!‘Help! Since I’ve had my baby and stopped working, I feel like I’ve lost my identity’ Dani says: ‘I one million percent can relate to you. It’s crazy how much becoming a mum can change you. Especially the way you think and act. We basically go through nine months of growing a baby, trying to do all the right things.
Make sure you do the hobbies you loved doing before and have date nights and see your friends because that I find so important when it comes to your mental health and having that sense of normality.’ Parenthood comes with so many “what ifs” and constant questioning but one thing I have taken on board is to just do what works for us.’
The first sign something wasn’t right with 11-year-old Henry was when he became obsessive with exercise. What his family at first thought was a passion for being healthy, actually emerged as an eating disorder which eventually saw him hospitalised.According to experts, eating disorders are on the rise among pre-teen boys, and it’s something that can often be missed.
At first we encouraged it. We had the Joe Wicks daily workouts on, and it was a really hot summer so I was exercising myself in the garden. I thought it was a good thing he was exercising and preferred that to him being stuck in his room gaming. It was this friend of mine who basically told me, “I think he’s got anorexia”. I was shocked at how blunt she was and told her that although he had an issue, it wasn’t anything as serious as anorexia.
‘He heard voices in his head telling him not to eat’ The first step was talking to Henry. It was only when we started talking to him about food avoidance – for example not getting an ice cream when his brothers did – that we realised how negatively he thought about food. He would say they were “bad for you” and he knew about calories and knew things we didn’t even realise.
It fully took over him at one point. He said he heard voices in his head telling him not to eat, but he couldn’t explain why. He stopped seeing his friends outside of school, and we got the impression he was spending a lot of time at school on his own. Whenever we spoke to him about it, he just cried and cried. He would open up and at his worst he did say he wished he was dead which was incredibly difficult to deal with and really scary. He lost all self worth, he was just so down and so low and it was hard to imagine we would ever get him back.
They said the food needed to be sorted first, and that would naturally bring him to a better place. As the months went by we very slowly saw that happening. He’s confident and in some ways you would never know what he’s been through. I don’t know if it will ever go away though. In some ways, I think maybe if there’s another trigger he could regress, but we talk about it, we talk about how he feels and we keep an eye on exactly what he is eating. ‘It’s affected our family’ It had a huge effect on our family and nearly caused my husband and I to split up. I think partly because we dealt with it very differently.
It was only when I started talking about it in that way, saying the illness – not Henry – was lying that he got onboard with it. To anyone who has never suffered with an eating disorder, you just can’t understand it, you think “how can you not want to eat?” . You think if they just ate, everything would be OK. But it’s really important to remember it’s a mental illness that’s about much more than just not eating.Across the country it’s no secret CAMHS is over-stretched, but I pushed for the help because I was determined my son wasn’t going to be left to suffer.
‘If children are purging, they might be going the loo very frequently after meals so that’s also something to look out for.’ ‘If they’re withdrawing from those and it’s not clear that they’re finding other friendship groups, that could be a sign.’ ‘We’d also recommend starting off by talking about they’re doing. Focus the conversation about their emotions and how they’re feeling rather than saying, “I’ve seen you’re not eating very much.”
For Louise, the six-month exhaustion of having a sleep-resistant baby was made worse by the fact that she was living in London, far away from her mum, sister and circle of friends. In the daytime, she felt lonely and at night, Pete was sleeping in the spare room so that he could still function in his job as a civil servant.
This was the case for Louise and Pete who eventually sought help from a couples counsellor to help them break the deadlock and restore some kindness to their daily interactions. ‘We were stuck in a toxic pattern,’ says Louise. ‘It’s taken two years but we’ve gone from having zero empathy for each other to a much better place.’
‘Felt like we were just bickering about tiredness’ ‘By the time my son was seven months old, I felt like I was going insane,’ says Keri, 35. ‘And I was just so angry with my husband all the time. He was out of the house from 7am to 7pm and he often complained about his tiredness levels, which just made me see red!
‘One thing that can help you stop being in constant competition is having a visual prompt that stops you in your tracks. So when I went through this in my own family, we had a whiteboard with the question: “Have I been kind today?” It can be a way of making you think yes, this season of life is hard, but are we navigating it with kindness?’
Kat explains: ‘For a long time, it was very easy for resentment to build over who was the most tired, and why. Those rows continued for a few years but now, since life has settled down and we’ve realised everyone with kids is exhausted, we don’t argue about it as much.
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