The Challenge of Quality Time

It’s been too long! Shameful!
I want to write about spending quality time with your children. We are all trying to accomplish this one way or another, some have it easier than others but at the end of the day, it’s about juggling, no matter who you are or where you come from.
I have an interesting way achieving this and it doesn’t involve parks, ice creams, paints or even leaving the house.
As some of you may already know, Jack spends every Thursday night at his Granny and Grandad’s house. This is all well and good, it’s wonderful for him and great for us but what I have failed to mention up until now is how delightful it is, not feel guilty about lavishing all your attention on one of your children and how fulfilling and satisfying it is for them to have both of you all to themselves. On Thursdays its just Chris and me with Lucy in between us. She gets away with a little more than usual, she has a long bath with her mum and plays rough with her Dad, she cuddles us on the couch in front of the TV and lands up going to bed a bit later than usual. She has tea in bed with her mum on a Friday morning whilst gently waking up her dad so they can have a shower together before getting ready for school, all the while, chit-chattering like a little bird eith a very captive audience. Basically, she gets to have all the advantages of being a single child and none of the disadvantages because its only one night. Since realizing this, we have started encouraging Lucy to spend Tuesday nights with her Ganna (my mum) so we can have Jack all to ourselves for a Thursday night/ Wednesday morning. I really think this is such a great idea, especially for families where both parents are busy during the day and evening time is family time. It reduces the amount of sibling rivalry and competition for attention and I genuinely believe it make for a more content household. They miss each other, you can tell by the way they greet each other the next day after school, it is too dear for words. It is eye-wateringly gratifying when your children show affection for each other openly like that.
If you have more than one child, please try this, the benefits are listed longer than my arm. If you have only the one child, the benefits to your marriage/relationship list longer still.
Happy cuddling!

Homeopathic remedies vs conventional medicine

I think this is perhaps a question that a lot of of mums who were brought up on conventional medicine grapple with.

I decided to try out homeopathic remedies when, at age two, jack was prescribed his fourth course of antibiotics. Although my doctor assured me this was ok… It just didn’t sit right with me. Of course, my main objective is to get my child well again but i felt it was at the expense of his overall well-being, so we went to see a homeopath who was also a GP. I was comforted by the fact that, should we not get any results with homeopathic remedies, that she wouldn’t hesitate to prescribe a conventional medicine. Not so. My experience has left me to believe that your doctor is either one or the other, they cannot be both. It’s kind of like saying, He’s a vegetarian and an occasional meat-eater. At the end of the day, you as the parent need to judge the reesults yourself and decide which route to take. I have to say that I did not get results from homeopathic medicine for the first three years of trying it. Partly because the dosing can be quite a hack (you can dose up to 8 times a day and you need to change the frequency of the dose according to how symptoms have improved or not). So it’s more time consuming and more complicated than conventional medicine.

It was only until recently that I started getting the results I wanted from homeopathic medicine. In a recent post entitled “Dealing with Sickness” I outlined the importance of rather taking the time out to properly focus on getting your child better. Rather than dosing them with codeine or ibuprofen, sending them off to school in the hope that you can keep the wolves at the door until the weekend when you will have more time to get them better? No. Put your life on hold for even just one day to nurture them, reassure them, make them comfortable and cosy, feed them, hydrate them, medicate them. This approach fits in very well with homeopathic treatment because its a holistic view on the child’s well being rather than just a symptomatic view. I tell you it works, it really does.
It is so satisfying to know that you have defeated a cold or flu or whatever, using no harmful ingredients, with no side effects and much quicker than in the past.

One very important message I want to put across is that, yes, the going is good at the moment and the change of season into winter, which is usually the worst time for us as a family in terms of health has gone very well. But I always have my stash of painkillers, cough and cold muti etc. at the ready. If I wasn’t getting results from homeopathy, I wouldn’t hesitate to turn to conventional medicine, I have nothing against it, it has saved me and my family from many a torrid time in the past. As the parent, I am am, thankfully, quite able to switch from one to the other quite easily whereas I do not think its that easy to remain so objective as the practitioner.

In closing, I am happy to announce that I have finally discovered the benefits of homeopathic medicine for my family. I discovered that its not just about the symptoms and the remedies, it’s about the whole well-being of the person. It’s really reassuring to have a milder and less intrusive way of treating illness in my family whilst knowing, comfortingly, that I have a power-house of help stashed in the cupboard just incase. The less I use it, the more powerful it gets.