For the love of ...

I want to live in a world in which people are motivated by love. A world in which the reason we grow food or make money is in order to feed our families or improve the lives of our neighbours. Where we invent things for the greatest possible good, and destroy the ill-conceived fruits of our labour in order to protect others. A world in which the study of happiness is given the level of investment that the study of weaponry has been enjoying lately. It might be pie-in-the-sky, but it is no wonder that I love my job.

Family Learning is all about love.

The reason there is Government funding into a programme which effectively promotes happiness is because of the figures. Studies have been made which show the link between parents’ involvement with their children’s learning and children’s attainment.

If we get the adults back into school and show them what a creative and scientific place it has become – far from the desperate battleground it was in their day – they will be much happier about sending their offspring into the soft melee. If we help to teach them the basic skills they couldn’t learn when they were young and vulnerable, they will be confident and able to help their own children with their homework in the future. And if we gently teach them a few parenting skills along the way, they will be better at coping with the demands of fraught modern life without collapsing and becoming a drain on resources in so many other ways.

So goes the theory. And for once, the theory is very close to the truth.

For the past year, I have had the privilege of spending Government money on love. I have helped to set up courses for parents who don’t speak any English, but who have to negotiate the eccentricities of the English system for themselves and their children. I’ve set up confidence building courses for parents whose children have such demanding needs that they can’t bring themselves to hold a conversation in a playground with parents of ‘normal’ children, for fear of mental collapse under the strain of their misunderstanding and judgement. I’ve helped to develop courses to teach basic ICT skills to parents who have been frankly frightened of their children’s knowledge of the cyberspace they haven’t dared enter.

I’ve been lucky enough to teach parents, too. To take them through the bewildering world of graphemes, phonemes and split-vowel digraphs; to reassure them that if their offspring refused to read their school books in the conventional manner at age 5, it did not mean they were going to fail to read anything for the rest of their lives; and to introduce them to poetry that both made sense and touched their own experience of the world.

This is what I leave my daughter at home for. Someone else would do it if I couldn’t. But – but. Oh, the aching pain of that decision. Is my spreading a little love around for a minor-league salary worth the anxiety? Every day, I’m a little less sure.

Motherhood Rocks (and Hard Places)

There's nothing like your daughter having to keep a food diary to make a mother conscious of her parenting skills (or deficiency thereof).

This is the situation in our household. The twelve year old is baffling the experts with her inability to recover from CFS/ME. They make us record her every activity, from the time she goes to bed to the amount of outdoor time she gets a day. We have to balance rest time with activity time, create opportunities for her to socialise without wearing her out and keep her from being overrun by small, boisterous and adoring cousins. We keep records of how much she sleeps, how much time she spends on the computer and how much time she spends wearing herself to near collapse just by breathing in and out at school.

This time the OT came to visit, she couldn't fault our regime; and yet the small one was across the table from her, propping her slumped form up by sheer politeness, mumbling her replies because opening her mouth too wide was exhausting. We must be doing something wrong, but what?

Then the idea struck - perhaps she isn't getting the nutrition she needs? She is a twelve year old vegetarian who won't eat vegetables, after all. So to find out, guess what? Write down every thing she eats in a day. For three weeks. Sure. Why not?

I happened to be working from home today, so I could keep a close eye on what she ate. But that also meant I was responsible for proving that I do feed her a balanced diet, and while I know I offer her a range of foodstuffs, as I may have mentioned before, she will only eat three.

Breakfast was easy, because the only thing I had to feed her was eggs and bread. So eggy bread, and because They were watching, half a banana. She loved this combination, so that was a good start. I didn't mention the icing sugar she smothered her eggy feast with - was that wrong? Oh well, there's only so much humiliation I'm prepared to take.

Lunch was a bit of a challenge, as there really wasn't much left to feed her. I settled on Quorn for protein, noodles with soy sauce and sea weed for carbs and minerals and half a frozen corn on the cob for vitamins (well, they contain some) and fibre. She ate the Quorn. And the seaweed. And one third of half a corn on the cob. Do the maths.

So by the middle of the afternoon, she's starving, and manages to persuade me that because her throat hurts so much she must have ice cream. Look, I was trying to get some work done, OK? And then she had 3 pieces of chocolate. Down it went on the list, in her own handwriting - proof of my incompetence in black and white in a Hello Kitty notebook. Sigh.

So, supper time. Determined to get something right, I turn Mother Earth and raid the kitchen cupboards for the ingredients for lentil soup. I was really proud of my creation, I thought it was delicious:

Take an onion and a bunch of left over broccoli (stems and all) and soften them in some olive oil. Add some garlic crushed in sea salt, then throw in a can of tomatoes and a cup of red lentils. Splash in a good dollop of red wine - for the antioxidants, of course - some tomato puree, your favourite stock and a pinch of Italian herbs. A little brown sugar will round out and soften the flavours. Simmer until the lentils are done, and whizz in a blender. Yum.

'What's that Mum? It looks like puree.' Not good - even the 15 year old thinks I'm trying too hard. I enthuse about how absolutely delicious my soup is (it really is). I serve it to the young one with sliced white, which is the only way she will eat soup, somehow spoons and hot wet stuff do not equate in her mind. And to entice her to bulk up her diet, a breaded Camembert, as cheese is one of the 3 things she'll eat. Sometimes.

This is what I've written in her food diary:

• Homemade lentil soup - 4 mouthfuls (and this took all my powers of persuasion, which obviously are not strong)
• two thirds of half a slice of bread (they can do the maths)
• the breadcrumbs and one fifth of a breaded Camembert
• two chewy multi-vitamins

Maybe it is her diet. It sounds bad, doesn't it? And this is only day one. By the time I get to week three, and I'm back to feeding her egg fried rice every day of the week, I'm going to die of shame and embarrassment. But somehow she keeps growing, and I've had to buy her a new wardrobe twice in the last year. She is slim, but perfectly proportioned, and her hair and nails grow so quickly and ferociously they could have a wardrobe of their own. And if I make her anxious about what she eats, her CFS/ME will get worse.

Rock over here, hard place over there.

That's motherhood for you.