What?!!!! you say! How could I love them even more? I adore them?!!

That goes without saying! And at the same time, attachment theory gives us another 6 ways to deepen that connection. And not only to deepen connection with our children but with anyone else that we have a relationship with too.

It all begins with the fact that we are creatures of attachment. We don’t like separation. Attachment is fundamental to our children’s development but for some reason we don’t hear a lot about it. We hear more about independence and self-sufficiency. But in order to become independent, we must first learn to depend and it must feel safe for our children to depend on us. We need to nurture our children’s attachment to us because this actually gives them the energy they need to thrive, mature, and learn. According to the insightful, compassionate Dr. Gordon Neufeld, facing separation is our pre-eminent threat. The separation can be experienced or simply anticipated. For example being on the phone in our child’s presence can be perceived by them as separation and it impacts on their behaviour. I’m sure we’ve all experienced the pulling at you while you are on the phone or talking to someone else in person- they are feeling the threat of separation and acting to restore proximity with you to stop the separation. It’s not logical, it’s emotional…..

There are 6 ways of attaching, roughly fitting in with the first 6 years of life. But it’s never too late to for attachment potential to be realised. The right conditions are important.

Attachment is like a plant: a living thing. Plants attach via their roots and the roots are multiple. The most important part of the plant is something that we don’t see. What meets our eye is the outcome of the rooted-ness of the plant. At least half the energy in a plant is devoted to the root system- in humans even more than that.

So what are the 6 ways of attaching?

# 1 is attachment via the senses. You know how babies love the smell of their parents? Proximity is how babies first begin their attachment journey; through closeness, touch, physical contact. How to harness this way of attaching in later years? Asking the child to be in your company; going on a date with them, just the two of you. Or even simpler just snuggling on the sofa watching a movie. Our children need to know that we find pleasure in their company. If your child has trouble going to sleep (which is a separation) you could try giving them something of yours to wear which will help lessen the separation. Susan Stiffelman (Parenting without Power Struggles) makes the very good point that as children get older and want to spend more time with their peers, it is important that we don’t let our proximity fade- attachment is hierarchical and peer attachments are not where it’s at!

# 2: Sameness. When our children begins to toddle there is more separation and their brain goes- ‘We have to solve this problem!’ And it does so in an ingenious way. When we can’t be with, we can be like. This is where you hear your child using expressions that you use- including swearing! When I’ve asked  my little girl what she wants to be when she grows up, she’s said ‘a mama’ or ‘you’…attaching through sameness- so cute! For older children this means having things in common for example, liking the same flavour ice-cream or supoprting the same football team. Have you ever noticed when you meet someone new, how good it feels when you discover you have something in common: you’re both from the same place or you like the same kind of music- that’s attaching through sameness at work.

# 3 Belonging & Loyalty. At about 3 years children begin to be aware of differences and now it occurs to the child that to be close means to be a part of – belonging becomes essential. So they like it when you call them ‘my girl’ as this is to belong. This means being your child’s champion and on his side; standing up for them maybe to a teacher, not taking the teacher’s side. Susan Stiffelman of Parenting without Power Struggles has another lovely analogy  of the parents being the child’s North Star; consistent, steady, and loving.

# 4 Significance. Now it occurs to the child that they can’t possess mama- there’s a sibling, a spouse, and they can’t always be the same as or close to their mother for example. It becomes so important to them to know that they are important to us, that they matter to us. They love stories of how you couldn’t wait until they were born or how you felt when they arrived and how much you loved them. This is how they feel close to you in this attachment phase.  It has occurred to them that mama and daddy hold close to them that which is important to them. They may start using endearments to you, they loved being called by endearments themselves- anything that communicates specialness, mattering & that’s their way of being close. Pet names that only you use for them for example. In this phase, children will feel held by their parents even when they aren’t physically nearby.

#5 Love. This is where the child gives her heart to whomever she is attached to maybe even starting to draw hearts everywhere! My little girl has started drawing a love heart over her letter ‘I’ when she’s writing- so cute! And frequently declares that she loves me and wants to marry me! At this level of attachment things like walking through a room and just tousling their hair without telling them to tidy up or enquiring about the homework fuels their attachment to you.

#6: Being Known.

This is the final and deepest stage of attachment where the child wants to share all that is within her heart with those to whom she is attached- she wants to be seen from the inside out. If attachment has successfully developed up to this point, then your children is open to you and wants you to know his inner world; to tell you his secrets. It doesn’t mean that your teenager will tell you every last detail about a girl that he likes. It’s more that he will still consider your input as worthwhile.

Children will spontaneously fall into attachment if the conditions are conducive (warm & safe) and the heart is soft (all emotions can be felt). This happens spontaneously.

In my next post, I’ll cover the conducive conditions bit and I’ll cover feeling your emotions in the post after that. Here is an earlier post I wrote about helping children bridge the gap that separation poses: http://talknua.com/bridging-the-gap/

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Let’s get talking!

MP

You’re a parent who is a minority language speaker while your partner is the majority language speaker. Your child has been identified as possibly having speech and/or language problems and you agree that there is a problem. Your child has been assessed by an educational psychologist and the school teacher is also concerned. Both the educational psychologist and the teacher have told you to stop speaking the minority language to your child. You’re waiting for speech and language assessment or you’re in the assessment process. This post is for you. This post is also for you if your child has already received a diagnosis or label of some sort. It contains what you need to know and what to say and do in this situation.

It starts with being informed about the facts of being bilingual and having a speech, language, or communication problem. This is important so you can feel confident that you’re right to continue speaking the minority language to your child. And at the start it’s also important to remind yourself that it is not the teacher or psychologist’s place to dish out this wrong advice. It can be hard to resist the authority of the professional, but it’s simply the wrong advice. Speech, language, and communication are the remit of the speech and language therapist/pathologist. Now if the SLT tells you to drop a language, they are also wrong and there is no evidence to support this misguided advice. In fact, there is evidence to suggest that dropping a language can have negative consequences for the child.

When a child has a problem with speech, language or communication, this is an issue above and beyond individual languages. It’s like speech, language or communication are umbrellas and the individual languages like French, Arabic etc. sit under the umbrella- the problem is not the number of languages- it’s an issue with language or speech as a concept in a broad sense.

Most children (monolingual and bilingual) develop speech, language, and communication without any problems. There is a subset of children who do present with problems in their speech and language development. These problems may negatively impact on social interactions and cognitive development in the early years and may affect reading and writing and learning in school. Most of the following information is from Kathryn Kohnert’s excellent book on language disorders in bilingual children and adults. She is one of the well-known and respected academics in the area. I’ve listed the other sources at the end of the post if you want to read in more detail.

Late Talkers & Later Bloomers

About 15% of otherwise typically developing 2 year olds don’t say their first words at about 12 months or several hundred words and many 2 word combinations by 2 years. (2 word combinations are things like my doggie, Mummy gone, Mummy home)

Late talkers don’t yet have a minimal core vocabulary of 50-100 words and do not produce 2-3 word combinations by 2 years of age. Because typically developing children usually show a rapid increase in understanding & producing words at this age, the most obvious thing about 2 year olds with a language problem is their limited talking or word use.

About ½ of the Late Talkers will catch up to their peers by age 3 without intervention and these children are called Late Bloomers.

The remaining half of Late Talkers are at risk for persistent delays & can benefit from early intervention to help with potential long term negative effects of the underlying problem.

Late talkers at greatest risk for persisting delays appear to have problems with understanding as well as producing language; a family member or members with language or learning disability, limited use of natural gesture and symbolic play skills (feeding teddy, taking teddy for a walk, pretending a saucepan is a drum) and more frequent or lasting occurrences of otitis media or glue ear.

Between the ages of 3 & 6, children’s language dramatically increases. For children with language problems, sentences are likely to be shorter, less grammatically complex, or produced with grammatical errors.

EXPERIENCE WITH 2 DIFFERENT LANGUAGES DOES NOT IN ANY WAY CAUSE LANGAUGE PROBLEMS. TO THE CONTRARY, IT IS CLEAR THAT REGULAR EXPERIENCE WITH 2 OR MORE LANGUAGES POSES NO DISADVANTAGES FOR TYPICALLY DEVELOPING CHILDREN.

In fact, regular experience with 2 different languages has been linked to some social and cognitive advantages. Unfortunately this message still hasn’t got out there! For example, a global study by Jordaan in 2008 found that 87% of the SLTs surveyed advised parents to speak only one language to their child.

There’s very little information available yet on the extent to which bilingual children experience disorders of communication but the general assumption is that it would be about the same as monolingual children which is 5-10% depending on what you read.

There can be some additional risk factors for some bilingual children like not knowing about what services are available, not enough support for both languages, and the limited clinical competencies of professionals to adequately assess or treat bilingual children. Some immigrant families may have experiences that can worsen the negative effects of language problems such as poverty, low home literacy, or family instability related to immigration history and/or income.

The available research indicates that children with speech & language problems can and do learn two languages given sufficient and enriched opportunities in each language. Children with autism, Down Syndrome, cochlear implants, Foetal Alcohol Syndrome can learn 2 or more languages if they are given meaningful and continuing opportunities in both languages.  There is still a lot of research to be done but the evidence so far indicates that children with language problems can and do become bilingual. Once again though, this fact is not yet part of mainstream thinking.

For bilingual children with a language problem, the underlying impairment will manifest in both languages, most likely because the problem is due to some underlying inefficiency in processing language input. Therefore both languages are affected. And skills tend to be distributed across the languages which is why it is important to assess all the languages.

It’s also important to remember that languages differ in many ways. So, for example in English the subject comes first in the sentence (I love chocolate) but in Irish the verb comes first (Is maith liom seacláid). This means that language problems may look different across the child’s languages especially when it comes to grammar. It’s also important to remember that children who have language problems whether they are monolingual or bilingual, tend to have trouble with things like speed of processing, fine motor sequencing (rapidly tapping their fingers, stringing beads), working memory, attention and so on. Accurate assessment is obviously really important. (I’ll be writing a post on that soon so be sure to sign up to read it).

So, why is telling a parent to drop a language wrong?

There are four main reasons according to Kathryn Kohnert and I think she makes a compelling argument:

1. Bilingualism or experience with two or more languages does not cause or make language problems worse. Bilingual children with language issues don’t seem to do any worse than monolingual peers with language issues. Recommendations to reduce or eliminate input in one language won’t cure or resolve the language delay and in fact can make things worse. Children do not get confused when acquiring two languages. They don’t approach language acquisition like we think they might. (I’ll also be writing a post on this so stay tuned!)
2. Bilingualism is not a choice for many people; it’s their way of life and telling a parent to drop a language is just not possible to follow through on. If the teacher/psychologist tells you to drop a language, then you can use some of the strategies here: http://talknua.com/what-to-say-when-the-doctor-gets-it-wrong/ (I’m also writing a fact sheet for teachers so I’ll let you know when I have that ready)
3. Bilingual children with language problems can learn 2 languages at least to a similar level as monolingual children with language problems, given the right support. They do not do worse in language than monolingual children with language problems. So monolingualism is NOT a cure for bilingual language problems. When a child needs two or more languages for long term social, emotional, cognitive, academic, and career/job success, the primary issue is about what they need the languages for and not whether it is easy or hard to learn 2 languages. NEED is the most important thing. Bilingual children NEED 2 languages to be successful in their 2 language environments.
4. Evidence suggests that bilingual language treatment does not negatively impact the majority language. On the contrary, there is evidence to show that bilingual vocabulary intervention with preschool children actually benefits BOTH languages: majority language and the home minority language. There is also evidence to show that supporting the L1 in young children makes for more efficient learning of a second language.

The evidence? I’ve listed the sources of the information in this post at the end if you’d like to read further.

Hopefully this post together with the earlier one with 12 strategies for dealing with health care professionals and the wrong advice will support you and your bilingual family.

If you want to find out more about speech, language, and communication assessment and intervention for bilingual children, be sure and sign up to get the emails.

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Let’s get talking!

MP

Sources:

Caroline Bowen Ph.D’s web page http://www.speech-language-therapy.com/

Jordaan, H. (2008) Clinical intervention for bilingual children: An international survey. Folia Phoniatrica et Logopedia 60, 97-105.

Kohnert, K. (2013). Language disorders in bilingual children and adults. (2^nd ed..) Oxford: Plural Publishing.

Restrepo, M.A., Morgan, G.P., and Thompson, MS. (2013).  The efficacy of a vocabulary intervention for dual language learners with language impairment. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Services in Schools 56: 748-765.

So following on from my last post about great books to read with your child (http://talknua.com/40-fabulous-reads-for-you-your-children/), this post has 18 powerful ways for making the most of books with your children- nothing fancy required! These tips are for infants and toddlers all the way through to school-going children.

1. Make sure you can see each other’s faces when you’re reading the book together as this makes things more interactive. So this means, sitting side by side or one knee so that they can look up at you.
2. Let the child read the book their own way. So you can bring the book out and just wait to see what they say or do and then follow what they’re showing interest in. This means letting them turn the pages too. It can be hard to wait but it’s totally worth it as the more actively involved they are, the more they’ll be inclined to want to engage with books again.
3. Another option here if they’re not showing interest is for you to pick up the book and start reading it yourself and looking at the pictures. Often that can be enough to make them curious!
4. You don’t have to read it all– we’re reading a longish book at the moment and one chapter is all my little girl can pay attention for. There are 6 chapters and we have read the first 4 chapters at least twice. Now, honestly, the part of me that wants to get to the end of the story and find out what happens finds this very challenging but I can always read it by myself to find out right?
5. Actually you don’t have to read it at all! You can just have a chat about the pictures, commenting on what you can see. So if you notice your child looking at a picture, you can comment, for example ‘It’s Peppa! I love Peppa’ (Hmm, that might not be strictly true but you get the idea!)
6. You can make it more interesting by using different voices for different characters or making animal sounds You might feel a bit self-conscious at first but again, your child will love it! I remember my mother pretending to be a difficult customer in a shop and my sister and myself thought it was hilarious and we couldn’t get enough of it!
7. You can point to the pictures as you talk about them.
8. You could use little figures to bring the story alive when you’re telling a story. This is great for developing imaginations. We made these very simple origami pig’s heads and houses one rainy Sunday afternoon recently and had great fun re-enacting The Three Little Pigs– there are lots of very easy videos on YouTube for making paper animals if this kind of thing is for you.Here are instructions for a pig, a dog, and a fox:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5bsiC5-INc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUCSXtTHo5s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3iVxb8cwOU

9. It’s good to read the same book over and over– children love it although I know it can be a bit tiresome at times! You can shake it up a bit by drawing their attention to features like exclamation marks and explain why they are there. Or when the font is bigger than the rest of the text. Or quotation marks and so on.

10. You could make your own book– now I’ve only done this once where I drew very simple (I’m no artist!) stick figures for yet another version of the Big Bad Wolf! But you could use the pictures in junk mail to make a book of your child’s favourite things. You could even sort them by category if you wanted to sneak in some work on vocabulary so fruits, vegetables, animals, clothes and so on. Also great for motor skills depending, all that cutting and pasting.

11. And another level again would be to use different textures for a touch & feel book so you could stick in cotton wool, sandpaper, bubble wrap, double sided sticky tape, crumpled paper and so on. With this kind of book you’re sneaking in some great concepts and vocabulary- rough, smooth, soft, hard

12. Preview the story. For school-going children you could read the back of the book first for a description of what it’s about and have a chat about what you think might happen. Making predictions about the story line is very good for children story telling ability and storytelling ability is strongly linked to literacy and academic success.

13. Discussing ideas related to the story as they spontaneously arise during story book reading is another great way to build language. We were reading Fat Alphie The Famous.

Fat Alphie is trying to be a famous artist and his ‘friends’ are being quite critical of his attempts. My little girl asked me ‘What are they doing?’ and I said how they were criticizing Fat Alphie’s drawings. She said: ‘But it’s art- it’s not right or wrong. It can be any way you want‘!! I was delighted!! You could also talk about how characters might feel after something happens or what you would do if you were Little Red Riding Hood and so on.

14. Re-enact the story using whatever you have lying around. It’s really good for children’s imagination to use objects to represent something else so here is what we used for Little Red Riding Hood: 

Who knew a tea towel could be a cape?!!

15. Read for pleasure yourself. If they see you love reading, then it’s a natural part of their day which increases the chances of them being interested too.

16. Read everywhere: in the car, street signs, shop names, names of houses, motor way signs, toll bridge signs……..

17. Encourage your children to write their own books. Again nothing fancy required but great skills being developed here in terms of planning, sequencing, story telling, illustration. Don’t worry about the spelling or whether it makes sens; you just want them to give it a go! Done is definitely better than good here. For older children Usborne have this gorgeous book with all sorts of great ideas about how to begin a story and so on:

18. Visit your local library– the library staff are so helpful and will give you great ideas for books for children at different ages and they have a great range of books and membership for children is usually free. You can let your child pick their own books from a very young age to get them actively involved.

The main way to make the most of books is to let them engage with them their way! This might mean some deep breaths for you and staying quiet but it’s totally worth it!

Here’s a short video I made about reading with your baby if you prefer to watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYqOVdwJlAI

I’d love to know how you get on so be sure and let me know. You can leave a comment below or on the Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/talknua or you can email me at marypat@talknua.com

If you like this post, please share it with your friends.

Let’s get talking!

MP

Does your child resist trying new things? Do they give up easily saying things like I can’t do it?  Or things like I’m not good at maths (this was my personal refrain throughout my childhood!) or I’m not creative or I can’t draw or I can’t do this. Or It’s too hard. If so, then this post is for you.

Basically after reading Carol Dweck’s wonderful book called Mindset: How you can fulfil your potential, I realised that in some respect I had what she calls a fixed mindset. So I saw drawing as something people were naturally good at and the same with numbers.  You were either good at something or not. Other fixed mindset beliefs are things like: You’re a certain kind of person & there isn’t a lot that can be done to change that.  Or You can do things differently but the essential parts of who you really are can’t be changed.  Or how about this one: Your intelligence is something very basic about you that can’t be changed. (Think about how often we say things like You’re so smart to our children).

Growth mindset was a revelation to me! Statements such as You can always change basic things about the kind of person you are and I don’t have much experience with that yet as opposed to  I can’t do it or I’m not good at that.

One study in particular that Dweck conducted fascinated me. She sent researchers into classrooms in New York where the children were about 11 years old. They were given a series of puzzles, easy enough so that everyone would do fairly well. When each child finished the test, the researcher told each student his or her score and then said one more thing. Children were either told: You must be smart at this or You must have worked really hard. Next the children were given a choice of test. One choice was a test that would be harder than the first but the children were told that they’d learn a lot from having a go at the puzzles. The other option was an easy test, very like the first one. Of the children who had been told that they must have worked really hard, 90% chose the harder puzzles. Of the children who were told they were smart, most of them opted for the easy test. Why? Well, if you think of yourself as smart, then making mistakes is a big risk because it might expose you as not smart. Emphasising so called ‘natural’ intelligence takes it out of the child’s control. Whereas when you emphasise effort, then each child can take charge of their own effort; it’s within their control. And if you think being smart is just the way you are, then you tend to think that effort is not required. You either have it or you don’t.

The third round involved all the children doing a test which was designed for children 2 years older than them. Everybody ‘failed’. The children praised for their effort assumed that they hadn’t focused hard enough on this test; they really got stuck in and tried lots of solutions. Many of them were overheard saying things like This is my favourite test.  For the children who had been told they were smart, it was a different story. They assumed the ‘failure’ meant they weren’t smart.

The last round of tests were as easy as the first round. Can you guess what happened? The praised- for-effort group improved their score by about 30% while the ‘smart’ children did worse than they had in the 1^st round.

There was one finding in particular that stood out for me. They told the children that they were going to go to other schools and that they reckoned the other children would like to hear about the tests. They asked them to write out their thoughts on one page and gave them the option of including their own scores on the tests. Wait til you hear this!! 40% of the ‘smart’ kids lied about their scores! In a fixed mindset mistakes are shameful, especially if you’re considered talented. They found similar results across socio-economic class, age, and gender. even preschoolers were affected by the statements differently. 

So what should we do? Here are some ways to reframe a fixed mindset:

If your child says I’m not good at this, you can encourage them to think What am I missing? Or you can say You mightn’t be good at it yet but with practice, you’ll get better. Or Nobody is good at something straight away. It takes effort.

My little girl has recently learned to tie her own laces. She observed the other day that I was really fast at doing it- with Carol Dweck on my shoulder, I said that’s only because I’ve had a lot of practice.  Another day when the laces weren’t quite the way she wanted, she asked me to fix them and she said Well at least I didn’t give up. I was delighted!!! She has been watching some interesting videos at school about mindset- you can find them here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zrtHt3bBmQ

My favourite line from one of them is: The surest way to success is to try again. I wasn’t so impressed however, when she said to me one day: Your brain will get lazy there drinking tea and reading a magazine!

Here are some other things to say. You have to consider your child’s age, stage of development and personality with these. And it’s important to acknowledge the feeling first before trying to teach a new way of thinking. So if your child says I give up. You might say something first like It’s tough huh? And wait for the emotion to pass (90 seconds approximately) before encouraging a different perspective.

And finally, here’s a wonderful book that we’re reading at the moment which is all about challenging negative, inaccurate thoughts:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tiger-Tiger-True-Questions-Smile-Again/dp/140192560X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1465386570&sr=1-1&keywords=tiger+tiger+is+it+true

If you’re curious about your own mindset? Try Carol’s test here http://mindsetonline.com/testyourmindset/step1.php

Be sure and leave a comment below to let me know how you get on with the strategies.

Let’s get talking!

MP

So here’s the report on our Love Bomb Experiment! If you haven’t read the post about what it’s all about, you can read that here: http://talknua.com/love-bombs/

About a month beforehand, I mentioned the idea to Iveragh (ee-ver-ah) and she immediately jumped at the idea, in particular the telling mummy what to do all day part! It was easy enough to set some limits like it would be from when she woke up until 6 p.m. And no problem either limiting it to in and around where we live. She decided to call it Mummy & Iveragh Candy Pink Time and she chose the date, May 15^th so we put it in the phone calendar and she was very excited when she saw it appear the day before.

So what did she want to do? Very simple things really. Go to Monkey Business (a soft play place up the road). Get a cake from a particular bakery. (This took a bit of negotiation as it wasn’t open on a Sunday so she had to come up with a Plan B) Get the bus to town and buy some clothes in Penney’s for herself and for me.  I wasn’t allowed to have a shower, do my morning exercise, or drink my hot water and lemon alone as I would usually do at the weekend…. and she would decide what we would both eat for breakfast. (Gingerbread men and cashew and date bars….) She wanted to tell me what to wear. (I was most afraid of this I have to admit, especially as we would be going out in public!!) Did I cheat a bit here? Hmm. You can decide! My mother in law suggested I hide anything I didn’t want to wear & tell her it was in the wash but that wasn’t really in the spirit of it all so I decided to do a bit of negotiating instead and appeal to her sense of fairness. So it was too hot for the pink jumper and she wouldn’t want me to uncomfortable would she?! So she gave me a range of options and approved the final choice including a couple of outfit changes during the day! Phew!

Well, the day dawned and she woke up at 7.22 a.m. (unusual for her!) and was up immediately in a hurry to get to Monkey Business. It doesn’t open until 10 a.m. So we hit out first hitch! We discussed the options and she decided we’d walk to the park at 8.30 a.m. Half way there, she claimed her legs were too tired, and she wanted to go home. There was a fair amount of whining and I did think to myself ‘Oh no, this could be a very long day…..’. But what was easy actually was I didn’t have to do any convincing as she was making the choices. So I just said ‘okay, we’ll go home’- no persuasion necessary!

She chose to watch 10 Ben & Holly episodes which would take us to 10 a.m. and then we spent 2 hours in Monkey Business with jellies included. It was hard not to influence her around the food I have to admit!

After Monkey Business, we got the cake (yellow and pink icing- her favourite colours), smoothies and these bars that she likes in the supermarket and snuggled up at home to watch Frozen. She just licked the icing off the cake…oh how hard it was not to say anything about that ……….

Then it was off to a café and this is where the planning is really important if you’re to be true to the approach. I hadn’t planned it well enough so my husband wanted the car by 4.30 and then I wasn’t able to find parking near the café so there was a bit of scrabbling around for ideas for what to do as it was now too late to go to Penney’s on the bus. So we settled on a trip to a playground where she had a great time playing with a little girl she met. Then she wanted ice-cream and before I knew it I had said no- automatic pilot! And I cringed when I heard her say ‘But it’s my day and I get to decide everything’….. again this is where the planning is important- I had no change to buy the ice-cream and the nearest bank machine was a long way away….so more negotiations ensued and we went to our local shop where she bought a magazine and she was delighted. But of course, my inner perfectionist would have preferred to do it ‘right’……

Another part of the approach involves the child making, buying, or finding a token to remind them of the day so after lots of searching in Dunnes she picked a dog-shaped handbag with pink sequins and also decided to buy me a pair of pink knickers to remember the day – I’m not showing you the knickers though!!!

Another part of the approach is that during the Love Bombing time you give your child lots of hugs and kisses and tell them you love them so there was a lot of snuggling going on too- I really missed that the next day when she was at school!

And that was it! So would I do it again- totally! It was really lovely not to be bossy if you know what I mean? It felt very different from my usual parent role of making sure she was getting a healthy diet, saying no, and splitting my attention between her and housework and limiting time at the park or Monkey Business etc. So we agreed we’ll do it once a season and the next one is called The Lovely day with a Dark Pink Love Heart. I’d plan better for the next one though and by that I mean writing out the plan for the day in advance with her so that we can really do everything that she wants to do. This time we had left somethings optional like going to Penney’s on the bus but that didn’t work out because it was a Sunday and the bus times are better on a Saturday. You get the picture. And I’d set a budget before hand and stick to it– otherwise it could become very expensive!!

So Love Bombing? Yes, totally worth it! Overall we had a great day and when I asked her if she’d enjoyed it, I got a very enthusiastic response- good enough for me!

If you try it, let me know how you get on in the comments below! If you have more than one child, the idea is that you spend the Love Bombing time with one child at a time and even a morning could be enough.

Let’s get Love Bombing!

MP