Parenting
How to create a consent-based environment aroun...
Sophie Christophy answers your questions. How can I create a consent-based environment around food and eating, when I want to also ensure that my children eat a healthy balanced diet? I worry that facilitating the children’s wants and preferences is going to mean that they won’t necessarily eat the things that they need to be healthy, and that they are too young to make informed independent choices about their diet and what their body needs. When it comes to food, there are a number of ways in which you can work towards a consent-based way of being together as a family, and away from the traditional patriarchal/dominator type of dynamic. One significant way is to give children agency over the process of eating itself. Eating is an intimate act – we are putting food into our bodies, after all. With that in mind, for children to experience bodily autonomy in...
How to create a consent-based environment around food
Sophie Christophy answers your questions. How can I create a consent-based environment around food and eating, when I want to also ensure that my children eat a healthy balanced diet?...
How to find a balance with weaponry in play
Parenting a young child who wants to play with toy guns has been an unexpected challenge for me. My preference is to completely ban all toy weaponry. My partner, who enjoys combat-based stories and games, thinks that is unrealistic. So we walk a tightrope of compromise. When my son was around 3 years old, he asked what a tank was. He had seen a photo of one at a friend’s house and had played with mini army figures. At that time we had no toy weapons in the house, and he didn’t watch films or cartoons that included battles. It saddens me to have to acknowledge that many people feel the need to carry weapons, whether for personal safety or for ideological reasons. So it sometimes feels as if my desire to help, even in the tiniest ways, to create a more peaceful world jars with my son’s interest in...
How to find a balance with weaponry in play
Parenting a young child who wants to play with toy guns has been an unexpected challenge for me. My preference is to completely ban all toy weaponry. My partner, who...
Celebrating twenty years of JUNO!
JUNO’s founding editors and early contributors reflect on two decades of JUNO and natural parenting Patricia Patterson-Vanegas and Emma Jennings on the birth of JUNO and where they are now The world is very different now to when JUNO was conceived and birthed. However, the editorial we wrote in our launch issue twenty years ago is as relevant today as it was then. We parents can use a reassuring voice to help us create our path and value our intuition, while knowing that we are not alone. We also need, probably more than ever, the space to be able to bounce ideas without being judged or cancelled. JUNO was Emma’s idea. I remember her telling me that she wanted to create a magazine that she herself would love to read, with the values that were important to her. She wanted people to share their stories and she had a vision...
Celebrating twenty years of JUNO!
JUNO’s founding editors and early contributors reflect on two decades of JUNO and natural parenting Patricia Patterson-Vanegas and Emma Jennings on the birth of JUNO and where they are now...
One family’s story of autism and the journey to...
It was September 2018. Llewelyn was 2 years 9 months and his journey into part-time education was about to begin. Like every parent, my husband and I were filled with excitement – so many adventures awaited him. But, deep down, I was anxious. I remember the other children as we stood in line waiting for the nursery doors to open. Some were playing happily together in the playhouse – shouting, laughing and singing nursery rhymes – each one acutely aware of the others. How I longed for Llew to join them. There was nothing glaringly wrong when Llew was born, but on numerous occasions, my gut told me something was ‘off’. To this day, I cannot pinpoint what it was, but I felt it. As the weeks went by, it was not long before his differences became apparent to his teachers. He was the child who was always running out of...
One family’s story of autism and the journey to diagnosis
It was September 2018. Llewelyn was 2 years 9 months and his journey into part-time education was about to begin. Like every parent, my husband and I were filled with...
Encouraging our children to be wonderful wild b...
As a picture book author-illustrator, I am always subconsciously looking for another story or image. I try to look for something that speaks to me, ideally something that grabs me and ignites enough interest and passion to convert it into words and art. Usually, it hits when I least expect it, as with the story of my latest picture book, Wild Beings. I watched our young son playing with a bunch of friends in our garden, and it dawned on me how they were all more akin to wild animals than civilised, domesticated humans. Jumping in puddles, climbing rocks, swinging from trees is what lights these young humans up. Messy hair, muddy feet, squeals of joy and screams of excitement are commonplace. You might have one of these wildlings at home. I know some who are positively feral. The way most children would rather run and jump than walk. The...
Encouraging our children to be wonderful wild beings
As a picture book author-illustrator, I am always subconsciously looking for another story or image. I try to look for something that speaks to me, ideally something that grabs me...
A grandmother of three reflects on the formativ...
I believe that the first five years of life are crucially formative, a foundation on which the personality of the child is built. As adults, we have daunting responsibility. If we are so busy with our adult lives that we are unable to become as children ourselves in order to respond with directness and clarity to the steady gazes that are so willing to trust and encounter us, we miss out on the beauty and joy of those early years. This dance of call and response is, to me, crucial for healthy development. When our needs and interests clash (as they most certainly will) with the needs and interests of our children, there can be much disharmony and angst. Even in the most difficult of circumstances, a light touch of awareness and humour can allow us to see the ‘knee-jerk’ and unnecessary knots that we tie ourselves up in. Children...
A grandmother of three reflects on the formative years
I believe that the first five years of life are crucially formative, a foundation on which the personality of the child is built. As adults, we have daunting responsibility. If...
Gentle approaches to helping babies sleep
Whoever coined the phrase ‘sleeping like a baby’ was not, I would bet, a parent. Of course, there are some who are blessed with wonder-babies who sleep through the night from the beginning. But for the rest of us sleep is, at some stage in the first few years of a child’s life, a major issue. Our story... My son Timmy certainly prepared me for the time ahead before he was even born. I remember lying awake whilst he tumbled about inside me like a circus acrobat until his self-appointed bedtime of 1.30 am and not a moment sooner! Then whilst he had a lie-in, I was up at six o’clock for work. This timetable continued after his gentle birth at home. I have some friends who didn’t know what to do with themselves in the first few weeks of their newborns’ lives, as their babies slept all the time....
Gentle approaches to helping babies sleep
Whoever coined the phrase ‘sleeping like a baby’ was not, I would bet, a parent. Of course, there are some who are blessed with wonder-babies who sleep through the night...
Balancing evidence with intuition
Research can help inform our parenting decisions, but it’s important to remember its limitations, writes Amy Brown Recently there has been an influx of parenting guidance urging parents to make ‘data-driven’ parenting decisions. Whilst I’m all for research (and it would be slightly odd for me as an academic not to be), it’s important to be able to take a step back, recognise that science is not perfect, and ask how it can help us best when it comes to any decision. Here are three top things to remember: 1. A lack of evidence is not the same as evidence of harm A lack of research evidence is not proof that something is not important. Sometimes research for the most obvious things doesn’t get conducted, because, well… it’s obvious. The Christmas letter in the BMJ in 2003 summed this up well. Entitled ‘Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma...
Balancing evidence with intuition
Research can help inform our parenting decisions, but it’s important to remember its limitations, writes Amy Brown Recently there has been an influx of parenting guidance urging parents to make...
We have a Barbie doll problem in our house!
I have decided to face up to reality and admit that we have a Barbie problem. The truth is we seem to be housing six and a half Barbies to date, including the one lying forgotten in the mud at the end of the garden. Also we’ve a Ken, but he doesn’t count. He’s just an Action Man living under a new identity. (And I don’t need an Action Man problem as well.) I feel it is time to confront exactly what my problem is with these dolls. Is it just an irrational loathing based on my own snobbery? Or is there something truly sinister about the Barbie Empire? Some enlightened people take issue with the contorted, inappropriately sexual body shape, and the premature luring of young children into teenage interests such as fashion and ‘beauty’. Then there’s the manipulative marketing spin, creating a consumer need for the latest merchandise,...
We have a Barbie doll problem in our house!
I have decided to face up to reality and admit that we have a Barbie problem. The truth is we seem to be housing six and a half Barbies to...
What really matters: parenting with loving acce...
There is so much information out there as to the best way to bring up your child. There are themes ranging from discipline, diet and education, to TV watching, play and personal safety, relationships and sexuality and, of course, work and childcare. Sometimes this makes me feel anxious that my children are not always getting the best care and provision. I have moved five times with young children because of family circumstances. This was not easy. However, it now seems to be a blessing. I have challenged all sorts of beliefs about what is best for my children quite simply because I was not able to control everything. I have seen children in state schools, Steiner schools and home educated. I have seen Muslim children, Christian children and children brought up without religion or with holistic spiritual beliefs. From all of these backgrounds, I have seen children who exude a...
What really matters: parenting with loving acceptance
There is so much information out there as to the best way to bring up your child. There are themes ranging from discipline, diet and education, to TV watching, play...
