Time to dream - guest blog by Cathy Owen

Cathy Owen - who you might remember from the 'Happy meals' article in Issue One - encourages us to spend less time cramming our children's lives with activities and more time letting them daydream and take life at their own pace.

Have you ever wondered, "What's going on in there?" when your child looks like she's in a trance, a million miles away?

Keeping busy
It seems to be widely believed that children need constant exercise and stimulation (and expensive extra classes) if they are to become intelligent and to sleep at night. However, it is starting to come to light that it is not always beneficial to cram children's lives with scheduled activities, with no time to just relax and 'be'. Indeed it can cause undue stress having to rush around getting to everything on time. Pressure to perform or respond in certain ways leads to anxiety. With no time to dream, explore or 'bed in' the new learning, their attention span may shorten, they can become easily bored and dependent on adult stimulation. 

Watching and listening to children confirms that they are happiest when they are free to live life 'off the clock' at their own pace.

Free time
A child who is given space and time for free play, to choose what he will do from moment to moment, is enabled to develop his own inner resources. He is free to relax or explore at his own pace with no expectations placed on him. This helps learning flow freely without hindrance; a child's brain is much more receptive when he is relaxed. Imagination is strengthened and a sense of self-reliance develops naturally.

If he looks like he is drifting off in a trance for a few seconds at a time, this is simply a natural and healthy brain development tool which children use instinctively many times a day, in order to integrate new learning. Allow the child a few moments of quiet while he focuses his attention inwards. His brain is  developing new connections!

Read the rest of this article on my blog and discover many more ideas and children's activities based on my natural, child-centred approach.

Look out for more from Cathy in Issue Four, where she'll be telling us all about baby whispering.

Happy meals - sneak peek

If you've despaired at ever coaxing anything nutritious into a picky child, Cathy Owen is here to the rescue. She explains why playing with your food can be a good thing, showing us how to tell stories with a plate of food and how to put together fun and colourful picture-plates that even the fussiest eater won't be able to resist.

Extract from Issue One

"Speaking as the carer of a seven-year-old who prefers to roll around under the table than sit up and eat, I know how frustrated I feel when my lovingly-prepared meal gets 'yucked'.

I have tried every trick in the book to smuggle healthy food into the kids, from hiding vegetables in lasagne and pureeing them into sauces to disguising them in counterproductive batter and puff pastry. At the end of the day, you can lead a child to the table. but you cannot make him eat.

Children will usually go around five hours between meals before they start to get hungry. They are often not ready to eat at set times. I have met plenty of children who will eat junk, stuff on bread or steal sweets. But I haven't met one yet who will starve him or herself to death. Barring actual clinical anorexia, a child will eat when his is hungry and stop once he is no longer hungry; relatively few will carry on eating unless you force them.

We can influence their relationship with food right now, while they are small, while they see it as a fun and satisfying way to look after their bodies, rather than a boredom/comfort plug, or worse, a forced torment. Even if your kids are older, it's never too late (speaking as an ex-picky junk food eater child who turned into an organic health foodie adult)."

See Issue One for full article