Family Time

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  • A mother and child holding hands, alongside a book titled "Happy Families Table Talk," with an illustration of a dining room.

    Simple family games to bring joy and connection...

    Children enjoy playing games. Laughter, communication and fun are important ingredients for a happy family. At present, around the world, we are spending more time together at home. The following games are free and use items that are readily available around the house. After dinner is a good time for a family game. I recently received a message from a dad: “I had no idea how much I needed a good laugh after dinner! I was in stitches by the time we played ‘charades with a difference’”. These games suit children of all ages. I’ve even known teenagers to enjoy them. Changes – it’s the best game! How do you play ‘changes’? A family member is chosen to go first. The chosen person turns around three times, whilst everyone else has a good look at their appearance and clothing. The person then leaves the room and changes something about their...

    Simple family games to bring joy and connection at home

    Children enjoy playing games. Laughter, communication and fun are important ingredients for a happy family. At present, around the world, we are spending more time together at home. The following...

  • Welcoming a new life with humanist naming ceremonies

    Welcoming a new life with humanist naming cerem...

    Lucy Dulieu describes the personalised celebration that welcomes a child into the world... What is a humanist naming ceremony? A humanist naming ceremony marks the arrival of a new child to a family in a nonreligious way. They are often held for babies and toddlers, but ceremonies can also welcome older adopted children to a family, or step-children to a blended family. Each ceremony is personalised and allows parents to celebrate their child as a unique individual, to reflect on the wonder and responsibility of being a parent, and to share in front of family and friends a commitment to their child on their journey to independence.  Warm and welcoming, humanist naming ceremonies are child-centred and inclusive. They can be held anywhere: a garden, a village hall, or in a woodland surrounded by nature. Led by an experienced humanist celebrant, they often happen at the start of a larger celebratory...

    Welcoming a new life with humanist naming ceremonies

    Lucy Dulieu describes the personalised celebration that welcomes a child into the world... What is a humanist naming ceremony? A humanist naming ceremony marks the arrival of a new child...

  • Voice of a Grandparent: Anita

    Voice of a Grandparent: Anita

    I’m Anita and I have four granddaughters of school age. Only one goes to a school establishment, while the other three are home educated. Being a lady of a certain age, the news that my eldest daughter wanted to home school her children at first horrified me. I knew of no one whose children did not go to school. School is part of life, isn’t it? That first day when you leave your mother at the school door and enter the world of ‘standing on your own two feet’. It is where you discover how to be independent for a few hours a day while learning the basics of the three R’s. It is where you make friends for life. Or is it? I went to school in the 1960s and 70s when corporal punishment was rife, although I was never a victim of it. There wasn’t a national curriculum,...

    Voice of a Grandparent: Anita

    I’m Anita and I have four granddaughters of school age. Only one goes to a school establishment, while the other three are home educated. Being a lady of a certain...

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Parenting support

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  • A woman gazes at a child cradled in someone's arms, depicted in soft grayscale tones, conveying warmth and intimacy.

    Special Time: being with a newborn baby

    Modern life is very fast. We’ve got used to it, but a newborn hasn’t. He has a startle reaction if his mother lifts him up too quickly.* So the early months after the birth can be an opportunity for the mother to lift him slowly, and to enjoy an intimate ‘special time’ with her newborn. Unfortunately, many women today feel they are plunged into motherhood, with minimal preparation. How can a mother relax and enjoy being with her newborn when she has so much to learn about the practicalities of looking after him? “There should be midwives after the birth. That’s when you need them.” [6 months] First mother: “There’s not nearly enough follow-up after the birth. Everyone just leaves you to get on with it.” [23 months; 4 months] Second mother: “They say: ‘Well, you’ve just had a baby,’ meaning: ‘What did you expect?’” [7 months] Mothers today are...

    Special Time: being with a newborn baby

    Modern life is very fast. We’ve got used to it, but a newborn hasn’t. He has a startle reaction if his mother lifts him up too quickly.* So the early...

  • Illustration of two people drawing on paper with giant pencils.

    Aware Parenting: Attachment Play

    Rebecca Sheikh describes ways we can connect with our children through play, in part two of our Aware Parenting series In his book Playful Parenting, Lawrence Cohen says, “Play is where children show us their inner feelings and experiences that they can’t or won’t talk about. We need to hear what they have to say, and they need to share it. That’s why we have to join children where they live, on their terms.”¹ Following an explosive morning with my 11-year-old, I was recently flooded with feelings of guilt, which we parents often feel when we want something different for our children, but get sidelined by our own intense feelings and unmet needs. We got through the moment, and it ended with a heartfelt plea from my daughter: “Mum, I just need you to play with me!” Wonderfully, we do learn, and a few days later when she spoke to...

    Aware Parenting: Attachment Play

    Rebecca Sheikh describes ways we can connect with our children through play, in part two of our Aware Parenting series In his book Playful Parenting, Lawrence Cohen says, “Play is...

  • One mum's perspective on toy overload

    One mum's perspective on toy overload

    We have too many toys in our house. This might sound a bit melodramatic, but it isn’t an easy admission to make as a ‘green’ mother of three.  We started out with such good intentions. We were determined our children would have a childhood full of old-fashioned pleasures; of homemade toys and imaginary worlds, of dens made from bed sheets, and tea parties under the table. Their toys would come from the world around us, gathered by the children themselves. Their dressing-up box would be filled with old curtains, squares of silk and foil crowns, and we would build castles out of cardboard boxes. We would buy second-hand, share with friends, make do and mend. We would not plunder the Earth’s resources buying cheap toxic toys, shipped halfway across the world, produced by people paid a pittance. We would not buy dolls that promoted unrealistic body images and taught my...

    One mum's perspective on toy overload

    We have too many toys in our house. This might sound a bit melodramatic, but it isn’t an easy admission to make as a ‘green’ mother of three.  We started...

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Pregnancy & Birth

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  • Two women stand together outdoors, one wearing a purple wrap with a baby nestled closely. Lush greenery serves as a backdrop.

    Postnatal Recovery: the importance of support f...

    Postnatal care is the poor little sister of the birth world. Our culture focuses entirely on the baby rather than the needs of the new mother. This is reflected in the fact that the majority of the gifts given to new parents are baby clothes and toys. Yet, babies do not care for plush toys and clothing. What they need most, beyond warmth, shelter and food, is loving carers. It makes sense that attention and gifts, rather than being directed at the baby, ought to be directed at the mother. This wisdom is still part of many cultures around the world today, where new mothers are given a period of rest and nurture, lasting about a month, and during which other people take care of the household. It used to be part of western culture too, yet it has been lost in favour of a culture which glorifies a mother...

    Postnatal Recovery: the importance of support for new mothers

    Postnatal care is the poor little sister of the birth world. Our culture focuses entirely on the baby rather than the needs of the new mother. This is reflected in...

  • One mother shares her ritual of burying her placenta

    One mother shares her ritual of burying her pla...

    It’s a mild autumn night. While singing, a procession of my closest female friends is moving into the backyard. I am kneeling down to touch it for the first time. Holding the umbilical cord, I am pulling the placenta out of the bag in which her inedible part has been frozen for the last four months (I drank the edible part in fruit smoothies the week after giving birth). How interesting to hold my own organ in my hands! The organ that was created by my body to nourish a new little being. The organ that secreted all the magical and crazy pregnancy hormones. The organ that provided my baby with nutrients and enabled him to breathe. The organ that protected him against infections and supplied him the required antibodies before he was born. The organ that my body created just for this. It is the only organ that a...

    One mother shares her ritual of burying her placenta

    It’s a mild autumn night. While singing, a procession of my closest female friends is moving into the backyard. I am kneeling down to touch it for the first time....

  • How trust and faith can help heal birth trauma

    How trust and faith can help heal birth trauma

    Throughout my second pregnancy I became aware of a theme emerging: that of faith, i.e. trust. It first came up in the early months; the word just kept popping into my mind and repeating itself throughout. I paid special attention because this was a quality I knew I needed more of. Through my rebirthing training I have learned that our early imprints from gestation, birth and childhood have a massive impact on our psyche and the way we view the world, creating a filter through which we decide the meaning of events. Also, more mysteriously, somehow the things that we expect have an amazing way of happening, be they positive or negative. When we have any challenging experience, our birth imprints get activated and will give us quite a ride unless we become aware of what is going on and work with it. Pregnancy is one of those times in...

    How trust and faith can help heal birth trauma

    Throughout my second pregnancy I became aware of a theme emerging: that of faith, i.e. trust. It first came up in the early months; the word just kept popping into...

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Complete your collection

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A Chance to Win

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