Book of love

G- and I are both bookworms, and so I thought it might be useful/interesting/not completely dull to list some of our recommended books on parenting.

Then I remembered that one of the things we had to do way back when we went to our adoption panel to be approved for a child was to provide a reading list.

Don’t ask me why [perhaps it was just to show what swots we are]. The panel certainly didn’t – ask us about our reading, I mean. [Perhaps they could tell - that we were swots, I mean.]

So was it a complete waste of time? Well, almost but not quite, because I can now save myself a bit of effort and cut and paste the list.

• Archer C. First steps in parenting the child who hurts. Jessica Kingsley Publishers 1999.
• Campbell N. Blue-eyed son. Pan 2005.
• Cleese J, Skynner R. Families and how to survive them. Vermillion 1993
• Fahlberg V. A child’s journey through placement. BAAF 1994
• Ford G. The contented toddler years. Vermillion 2006
• Faber A, Mazlish E. How to talk so kids will listen and listen so kids will talk. Piccadilly Press, 2001
• Gerhardt S. Why love matters. Routledge, 2004.
• Hirst M. Loving and living with traumatised children. Reflections by adoptive parents. BAAF 2006
• Layard R. Happiness. Allen Lane 2006.
• The adopter’s handbook. BAAF 2006
• Stoppard M. Complete baby and childcare. Dorland Kindersley 2006
• Verrier N. The primal wound. Gateway 1999.

The one that our social workers were keen on was The Primal Wound by Nancy Verrier. This helped introduce us to social work thinking on adoption and to theories on the damaging effects of childhood trauma, abandonment and loss. But it is a bit of a slog, and any reader should bear in mind that it’s based almost exclusively on research with adopted adults who were relinquished as babies. Here in the UK at least, that’s an increasingly rare phenomenon, and there was always a question in my mind as to how up-to-date the book is.

So which ones did we really like? Well, Sue Gerhardt’s Why Love Matters, which does a fantastic job of explaining early child development, and the one with a long title about talking by Faber and Mazlish. This one’s brilliant at encouraging a healthy relationship with your kids.

Nicky Campbell, who’s a TV presenter in the UK, was adopted and his book is an interesting insight into how it feels to have both birth and adoptive parents [as well as a large extended family]. He’s particularly eloquent on the subject of identity and how adoption affects the jigsaw of your personality.

Richard Layard’s Happiness is nothing less than a prescription for a healthier society and a better environment for us to bring our kids up in. That to me is worth at least a look – which you can do from here.

The other author I should mention is Gina Ford. We found that S- really benefited from routine and stability, especially in the early days and some of Ford’s ideas were helpful. The single most useful advice we had on daytime sleep came from The Contented Baby, and this was to manage things in terms not so much of how long your children stay down but how long they are awake before their naps. That to me was a revelation.

Oh, just one more – ok, two. Murkoff, Eisenberg and Hathaway’s What to expect books are useful aide memoires, and surprisingly amusing, too. But we wouldn’t be without Penelope Leach. Baby and Child [Penguin 1989] might be a bit old now, but to me Leach is the guru. I hang on her every word.

Relax, DON’T do it

On D-day [her first day back at work] G- left the house before S- awoke. I was up not long after her and showered and tidied the house and did a load of little houswork jobs.

These were highly important jobs that really needed doing first thing in the morning, such as emptying out that little drainy thing that stops all the food in the washing up water going down into the plumbing.

No, I’m not really sure what I was thinking, either.

I paced around for 10 minutes. Why? Because I was too early. I’d worked out a routine that involved getting S- up at the same time every day, and by God I was going to stick to it: this childcare thing was going to be done properly!

I’d like to say the pacing helped. It didn’t. Nor did the three cups of coffee I swallowed one after the other. I could feel the tension winding itself tighter and tighter around my chest.

Eventually the time was up. Into the bedroom I went. The next thing that happened was that the blackout blind fell off the window with a huge crash when I pulled on the roller.

It turned out to be one of those days. Things just kept going wrong.

S- likes to give B-, our black labrador bitch, her food in the morning. Today, of course, she spilt the dog biscuits all over the floor.

Later, on the way out of the house I realised I hadn’t folded up the pram, which we keep on the porch. So now it was soaked from the downpour overnight.

We took B- for a walk, and a large dog ran up to S- and licked her all over the face.

When G- came into the lounge that evening she found me crashed out on the sofa, moaning and groaning fitfully. I hadn’t had any rest all day. Rather than lying down when I’d had the chance, I’d spent all of S-’s afternoon sleep time doing more housework.

I just hadn’t been able to get out of the mindset that I’d started the day with earlier: that I was going to be a perfect stay-at-home dad, come what may.

Actually, when G – and I talked it over I realised it hadn’t been totally rubbish. S- and I managed to go to a kid’s party at one of her friends without too much going wrong – unless you count two of the smelliest nappy fills of all time, within 10 minutes of each other.

She also ate nearly all her food at all 3 of the day’s meals, and she went to sleep at the right time like an angel: just took the bottle out of her mouth, gestured for the dummy and then waved ‘bye bye’.

As she often does in the evening, she chuckled to herself as I put her down. Perhaps she was laughing at me and my ludicrous ambition to treat the day as though it was work, with objectives and goals and such like.

I should have realised: it’s much harder than that.