07 – Choose things I can play with

Welcome to Trusting Children Podcast episode 7.

I’m Aisha a mum of 3 young, very active children. I used to be an early years teacher and now my passion has switched from helping children to helping parents.

I created this podcast to support parents respectfully navigate the uncertain waters of parenthood.

We are bombarded with adverts and beautiful images of aaaaaalll the resources that our children should have and often it’s really difficult to know WHAT are the best toys to get for our little ones and what is REALLY necessary. If you find your head is spinning from all the options and possibilities and you want to have a better idea on which resources are truly valuable, this episode is for you.

We all want our children to have the best things in life and that includes the best resources from day 1. However, toys created by large corporations aren’t always aligned with what’s best for our little ones and have incredibly misleading adverts. In this episode I’m gonna take a look at a what constitutes a valuable, quality toy, how to sift through the BS and what to actually look for when deciding what to get for our little ones. By the end of this episode you’ll have a much better idea on what qualities to look for when choosing resources for your child.

Hello everyone, I hope you are all well. I’m going to paint you a picture. My 2 year old, is carrying a couple of toys in his hands. He drops one on his foot and sighs under his breath “oh go shakes!” You’re welcome haha. He’s perfected that little phrase and it makes me laugh so much.

Let’s talk about resources. Have you ever been to a toy shop? I honestly try to go as little as possible and if I can, I go alone. I feel overwhelmed going in there with things jumping out at me, bright colours, things buzzing and humming and flying…I can’t even imagine how children must feel. No wonder they go crazy, no wonder they want to have everything that’s in their reach. But I guess, that’s the purpose of these shops, to make you think you NEEEEED all these things for your child to develop properly.

It’s so easy to get caught up in thinking we need all these toys. We desperately want a few minutes to drink our hot cup of coffee or tea and we see this child on the advert or this child on Instagram peacefully playing independently for ages so we buy all the lovely looking toys hoping that our children will also play with them independently. We see the “Montessori” label and think this toy will surely make our child super focused and clever, we see the toy labeled as “educational” and we hope this will teach our child all they need to know. Have you been there? I know I have, and it’s honestly nothing to feel ashamed of or bad about. These companies KNOW what they are doing, they are promoting these items to us, they prey on our emotions, our worries and our hopes. They make grand promises and they get us. It’s no reflection on us. After all, all we want is to give our children the best.

I have to say, this is a very very personal matter. There is no wrong or right answer here, YOU as a parent will ultimately decide what toys you want to get for your child. I am not going to suggest what toys are better or worse, I am going to give you information about different options and you can then make a decision based on your child’s interests & your own preferences.

What actually IS a Montessori resource? What the heck are open ended toys or loose parts? What does RIE recommend for babies? What is a passive toy? Let’s dive in.

There are many different approaches quite a few differences in the resources that different approaches recommend, but there is absolutely one thing that they all agree on and that is that the best toys for children are the ones that don’t do anything. Magda Gerber, the founder of RIE has a very famous quote: “Passive toys make active learners.” What are passive toys? It’s probably one of the easiest distinctions to make. It’s a toy that does nothing. It’s a toy that won’t do anything unless the child does something to it. The child has to actively engage their body, their brain and their creativity to get the toy to do something. The opposite side of the spectrum are the toys that in turn make the child passive. This category will usually include all electronic items, toys that DO things and the child sits passively and watches rather than engaging. Let’s compare a few examples. Take an all-singing all-dancing electronic keyboard. The child presses one key and it plays a whole nursery rhyme and has multiple flashing lights. The child just sits there and observes the “play” happen. In contrast if your child has a xylophone and beater they have to move and actively engage in order for music / sound to happen. They might not play a whole nursery rhyme, but they are learning about cause and effect, about how to produce sound, about volume, tempo and practicing fine motor movement. Generally, the more a toy does, the less the child does. If you want your child to engage and begin to develop those play skills then choose passive toys. Let me give you some examples of passive toys for different ages:

For a mobile baby: who can hold/grab things a passive would be a rattle they have to move in order to get it to make a sound, a ball they have to touch for it to move, a board book they have to open in order to see pictures.

For a young toddler a passive toy would be a ball track where they have to drop the ball for it to fall down the track. A inset puzzle where they have to match the shape. A car they have to roll, blocks that they can stack.

I’m going to mention heuristic play over here, because young babies and toddlers are incredibly interested in exploring everyday objects. Heuristic play is a fancy phrase for exploring everyday items. You could reeeeeally easily put together a whole collection of toys for them to explore. You probably don’t need to look further than your kitchen. Your kitchen will have a variety of shapes and textures that your child could explore. Things like: silicone cupcake cases, a honey spoon, a whisk, measuring cups, a metal bowl or jug, a colander, various sizes of containers…believe me those are the things your older baby or young toddler will spend the most time playing with. Obviously make sure these items are clean and safe, without any small parts could come off.

Once they can stand or walk, older toddlers are often much more interested in movement than sitting and exploring objects. You will of course have moments and they will be interested in toys too, some examples of passive toys for older toddlers: puzzles, dolls, blocks, cars, animals etc.

The RIE method recommends simple objects. Magda Gerber even called them “play objects” rather than “toys” because sometimes it would be things that aren’t considered a toy in the traditional sense of the word. For young babies RIE recommends not having anything. The philosophy places a strong emphasis on newborns and young baby discovering the world and their own body. Magda Gerber didn’t recommend hanging mobiles over young babies as in a way, it forces them to look at it. She believed a baby should have the freedom to look at whatever they pleased and in whatever direction they pleased, rather than having something right there stuffed in their face. Once a baby can grab as a first play object, she recommended a cotton scarf. A baby can grab and manipulate this object. After that introduce passive play objects following the child’s development using the examples above. Hopefully you have got a better idea of what passive toys are.

A popular label that you might see on toys is “Waldorf” This is a “Waldorf” toy, this is a Waldorf resource. The Waldorf education philosophy (and I am again, really simplifying this here) is based on children being immersed in an environment in which they can learn through imitation and exploration. It places high value on expressing creativity through various forms of art, practical everyday activities, being connected to nature and allowing children to explore resources. The toys that are usually labelled as “Waldorf” are most often open ended toys. Of course you can have open ended toys that aren’t Waldorf and vice versa, Waldorf materials that aren’t open ended. But for the purpose of this episode I’ll focus on what open ended toys are. Open-ended toys or materials are those that haven’t got a prescribed way of playing with them. These are resources that can be used in many different ways. Examples of open ended toys are: blocks (wooden, lego, coloured), magnetic tiles, any kind of construction type toys, toys you can build with, peg-people (so not defined character dolls/figures), fabric/play silks, malleable materials such as play-dough, and loose parts come under this category. What are loose parts – these are a collection of the same objects (could vary in colour or size) that can be used in different ways. Loose parts can be small: wooden coins, rings, corks, pebbles, pine cones, sticks etc or they can be large: tyres, crates, pallets, cardboard boxes, ropes, sticks. Open ended materials have unlimited possibilities, the child can literally make anything and pretend these materials are anything. A stick could be a spoon, a phone, a person, a plane, a snake, a train etc. What are the benefits of open ended materials? The children engage the imaginative and creative parts of the brain. They have the power to make decisions about what is what and how to use it.

So what about, animals, cars, dolls & doll houses, train sets, play kitchens, balls, climbing equipment, threading beads, sensory activities, creative resources (paint, chalk, paint brushes) etc? These are materials / toys that represent something specific, or have a specific way of interacting with the resource but can still be used in a wide variety of ways. Children can role play certain situations from life or from stories using these specific materials but there is still PLENTY of room for their imagination and creativity to run free. Again, specifically Waldorf dolls & animals would have very minimal detail, for example peg people without faces, or a doll with very minimal facial features. The reason for this is by providing children with objects that haven’t got much detail on them, they can really let the child’s imagination run free and they can become many different things. But of course you can have all of these toys that don’t have to be labelled as Waldorf, as always there are many many different options for you to choose.

Ok, so we’ve talked about open ended toys, but on the other side of this spectrum we have to mention closed-ended toys, these are toys that have a very specific purpose or only one way of interacting with them. These would include: books, puzzles (not just jigsaws, but a whole wide range of puzzle-type materials, materials where you have to fit one piece in a certain place, vertical ones, etc), instruments, bead tracking frames.

There is a purpose and benefits to all of these so it’s good to have a variety of available options for your children to have access to.

Right, let’s tackle the biggie…Montessori toys. Toy producers often mis-use the Montessori label to sell their products. It’s a source of a lot of confusion, pressure on parents to have the latest Montessori toy, and sometimes feelings of uncertainty and exclusion if you can’t afford them all. Another very common misconception is that all wooden toys are Montessori. If you see a wooden toy, it’s considered Montessori and that is also not true. The most important thing to remember is this: Montessori DIDN’T design toys. She didn’t! The are NO Montessori toys. She designed educational materials to be used in Montessori schools in a specific way with a specific purpose. So unless you purchase authentic Montessori materials, nothing in toy shops is ever “Montessori.” Got that? So don’t be fooled by toys being advertised as Montessori. Some products are so completely the opposite of what could be considered a Montessori toy but there ARE good quality toys that are aligned with the Montessori principles. In order for a toy to be aligned with Montessori there are a few characteristics that we can look out for.

The first characteristic (and these aren’t in any particular order) is natural materials. This is where the “if it’s wooden it must be Montessori” misconception comes from. Yes, a lot of the official Montessori materials are made from wood, but it doesn’t mean that everything that is wooden is automatically classed as Montessori. Natural materials offer a sensory input. The texture, the weight, the smell, the sound. It doesn’t always have to be wood. Rubber, metal, rope, wicker, natural rubber, silk, wool, chalk. These are all materials that could be used for children to explore. Now before you stat worrying having some plastic toys in your household does’t automatically disqualify you from being a Montessori-aligned home. Don’t worry. It’s all about balance, and some plastic toys can also be valuable.

Another characteristic of a Montessori-aligned toy would be how realistic it is. Montessori placed great value in young children being soundly grounded in reality before exploring fantasy. Examples of this could be: a realistic looking doll rather than a peg-person, a realistic looking animal rather than a cartoony type looking one. A book with real photos rather than cartoony-representations of things. A realistic looking toy car rather than a wooden bumpy puffy car. Can you see now how this wooden myth is a skewed perception? There are plenty of wooden toys that are not realistic-looking. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with them, but they cannot be considered Montessori-aligned.

The next thing to consider: does the material have control of error. This means that the child can clearly see, without any adult input, if they have completed the material correctly or if they have made a mistake. A very clear example of this are puzzles. A child can clearly see if the pieces are in the correct place. There are other ways a material can be self-correcting. For example the pink tower blocks. These are a series of 10 blocks, starting at 10cm, each block is 1cm smaller until you end at the smallest one which is 1cm. Now it’s important to say that even though a material can be self-correcting it can take a child a few times to figure out the correct way of completing it. That’s ok. That’s the beauty of it. They don’t need us standing over their head pointing out their mistake and telling them this is wrong and this is wrong, they will get there on their own, in their own time.

Another important factor is the isolation of a single skill. Each Montessori material is designed to work on one specific skill, practice one skill. So when you see a toy labelled as Montessori that sings the ABCs and has numbers on it and you can press buttons and roll it that is again definitely not Montessori. One toy, one skill. If it’s eye-hand coordination it could be a ball tracker or an object permanence box where the child has to fit the ball in the hole. If it’s colour matching that’s the only thing to focus on. Not for example: colours, and numbers and animals. These would be 3 separate activities. One for matching colours, one for matching animals and one for sequencing numbers.

Beauty is another one. Montessori said “The child should live in an environment of beauty.” Beauty is subjective, but if something feels beautiful to you then that’s good enough.

Another characteristic is the ability for the child to be independent. If a toy requires adult intervention it cannot be considered Montessori. All Montessori materials are designed so that children can complete them fully from start to finish without needing adult help. I have to admit that this is a little pet-peeve of mine. I hate seeing “toys” that are supposedly for children that children can’t use on their own. My children received this little egg box as a gift. Overall I didn’t mind it, but one thing that bugged me so much, was that once they closed the egg box they couldn’t open it independently! I always had to go and help them open it. How is that a children’s toy if they need me to open it every 10 seconds! Grrr. Anyway, I snapped the latch off it so they could then open it by themselves and that solved that.

Finally, simplicity. Which kind of goes hand in hand with all of the above points. A toy that has too many “distractions” things that flash, sing, dance and are generally overwhelming and trying to hit too many things at once cannot be considered a Montessori-aligned toy. We can take all of the above points into consideration, natural, realistic, control of error & single skill & beauty all culminate in simplicity.

Real-life materials. Montessori placed very high value on children using REAL things. Using real cutlery and crockery rather than toy/plastic ones. Being involved in preparing real meals rather than playing with pretend food. Helping with keeping the house clean and tidy, doing real laundry, being part of grocery shopping. These real life activities, called practical life activities, are so easy to setup, usually don’t require special resources. If possible, if you can, you could find items that are child-sized. So for example a mini broom or brush & dustpan. A smaller clothes hanger etc. But if you don’t it’s also ok. The most important part is your child being involved.

So there you go. If you are looking to get some Montessori-aligned toys for your child these are the things you can consider.

As with everything, it’s good to have a balance. You can most certainly include some Montessori-aligned materials in your child’s environment but make sure you also have other options available. By following your child’s interests you will know what toys and resources they enjoy, what they are drawn to, what they concentrate and focus on. Remember your home is not a Montessori classroom. In fact, Montessori classrooms are designed to mimic a home environment. Look around your home and I’m sure you will find plenty of resources your child could use.

Now I want to also remind you that is isn’t all about the materials & toys (Montessori or not). Young children neeeeeed to move. They need to move a LOT. And I know that there is a huge focus on table and shelf activities on social media, but just remember these are tiny snippets. That activity you see on Insta is maybe 1% of that child’s day. What you don’t see is them running around the house or garden or park for the rest of the time 🙂

Children also thrive in nature. The outdoors is absolutely the BEST resource you could ever have. And it’s totally FREE. Experts recommend that young children should spend at least 3 hours outdoors playing freely every day. Angela Hanscom, author of Balanced and Barefoot says: “Movement through active free play, especially outside, improves everything from creativity to academic success to emotional stability.” There is so much children learn from being outside. The sensory input will always trump any sensory activity table, they have opportunities for physical development in it’s most natural and raw form. They learn to risk assess, problem solve, they see patterns, learn about seasons, animals, math is everywhere, language…the list is endless. I personally always, always advocate for as much time outdoors as possible even if the weather isn’t great. There is a famous I believe it’s a Norwegian saying: there is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing.

Again, of course we need to be realistic about this. We are aware of what is recommended, we are aware of what is good for our children and we do our best, that is all. Are there days when I reeeeeaaaallly don’t feel like going outside, I just want to hide under a duvet on the couch…of course! There are days when we don’t even go out in our garden. If we have a day like that, I try to balance it out by planning lots of outdoor time the following day. Same with screens. If I know they have been playing outside for a good few hours, I worry less about giving them a bit of screen time. All about balance and awareness. Being aware of the importance of outdoor play.

Before I start wrapping up, this episode is becoming quite long now, sorry! There’s just so much to say and I could probably say a lot more too. haha. Anyway…I think it’s important to mention tight budgets. I know that I have definitely felt that pang of jealousy looking at social media accounts that have aaaaaaal the most amazing toys and would mourn “ah if only I could buy that then I’m sure my daughter would sit and play with it for hours like this kid.” First of all, we have to release ourselves from this jealousy. There are SOOO many alternatives to buying all the latest trendy toys. Yes, they really are amazing and yes they are probably great quality, but honestly they aren’t in a lot of people’s budget. A few things you can do: DIY…now I am saying this as the absolute most hopeless DIY person, so I’m afraid I won’t give you any tips on this…but there are PLENTY of accounts that show you how to DIY many many many different materials. Look for 2nd hand things. I have managed to find some really good deals for second hand toys and materials. If they are good quality, it doesn’t matter that someone has used it before. In fact, considering our current climate situation it’s better if we can reuse some things and not keep buying and buying new stuff. Another tip is saving up for larger items, or asking relatives for joint presents. Either join a few occasions or join a few siblings and you can get something that will last longer and all children can play with. You don’t have to immediately go out and buy everything.

And last but not least, in fact probably THE MOST important thing to remember out of aaaanything else I have mentioned today is: Follow YOUR child’s interests. You can consider all the points above but you need to first and most importantly consider YOUR child. I’m sure you’ve all seen the beautiful rainbow. It was one of those things that everyone on social media had, and I really really wanted one. Can you spot the faux-pas here… I…I really really wanted one. I eventually bought one when my daughter was about 1 year old. She is now 4.5 and I have 3 children and the rainbow, honestly has sat on a shelf for this whole time. NONE of my kids have played with it. Maybe once or twice, stacked it a few times and that’s it. Maybe they will in the future. I always use this as an example and a reminder to make sure whatever I buy I buy for my children. Not because it looks pretty, not because it’s the latest trend on social media, not because it’s labelled Montessori or Waldorf or whatever, but because I know my child will be interested in it and enjoy playing with it. Sure, sometimes I mis-judge, but we are all learning.

There we go, I hope this has been helpful to you in making you feel more in control and knowing how to make a decision about what to purchase.

As always, if you have any questions you can find me on Instagram and Facebook and you can always send me an email I LOVE hearing from parents. I have also started doing a live Q&A session on Instagram where I answer any questions about any episodes of the podcast. I collect questions over the weekend and answer them on Monday evening so pop onto Insta if you want to ask anything.

That’s this episode wrapped up, and now time for our Everyday Heroes segment.

Aisha: Parents are the unrecognised and unappreciated heroes of our world. We do so much important work on an everyday basis, and it needs to be talked about more. All parents are heroes and every parent’s story deserve to be heard.

Today’s guest is Anna, and she is from Edinburgh in Scotland, and that’s where she is currently living. She has 2 little children: a 3 and half year-old girl and 1 and half year-old boy. And Anna wanted to come on today and talk about how having children changed who she was and how she started re-evaluating priorities and how she started trying to readdress her life balance and what would bring her happiness and what she could achieve. So, hi Anna, thank you so much for coming to speak to us today and welcome.

Anna: Hi Aisha, yeah this is exciting! Thanks for inviting me on.

Aisha: Yeah, it’s a pleasure. Let’s dive right in. Yeah, you wanted to talk about how having children changed who you are. So, would you like to start with that?

Anna: Yeah, I guess that I always knew that I wanted children so I kind of had hoped that that would happen and when I fell pregnant with my first, my daughter Melody, I was working full time and I was doing lots of exercise and I had a good social life and I was just busy, busy, busy all the time, barely sat still. And then I had my baby and there was a little bit of recovery time. And mat leave was lots of fun, met some nice mums and some other babies the same age as Melody and it was brilliant. And then after about a year of mat leave, I decided to go back to work on a part time basis which was brilliant, I’m a teacher so I managed to get a sort of half week contract and I went back and I really, really struggled at work. I found it like, almost unbearable to be able to do the childcare and do the teaching and be able to kind of like do everything that I wanted to do with my life ha-ha.

Aisha: You felt like you sort of had a lot on your plate?

Anna: Yeah, so I went back to work and I kind of thought I could handle it and that I’d be able to kind of balance everything out but actually it was really difficult because my job was really demanding and I felt that I wasn’t meeting my daughter’s needs the way that I wanted to, the way that I had been doing for the last 12 months. SO, I really just struggled at work because I wasn’t performing the way that I had been before, in terms of like my own expectations and you know with teaching there’s a lot of work that you have to do behind the scenes that isn’t necessarily part of your contract and it’s kind of just the nature of the job and the type of industry that I’m in. SO, I was finding myself just working ridiculous amounts just to try and keep up and then not sleeping well, being anxious about everything and it was just this spiral of not being able to cope. So, I ended up just having a rotten time at work and then just needing a break. Work recognised that I probably wasn’t in a good place mentally either. So, I decided to leave and work fully supported that. I took a bit of time for myself, and Melody had a little childcare time for me just to kind of rest and recover for a bit. And then I found out very quickly after that, that I was actually pregnant with my second. SO, my whole ability to not be able to cope was probably mixed in with my hormones raging with very early pregnancy. SO, a mixture of being pregnant and kind of trying to cope with kind of this high-pressure teaching job and trying to meet the needs of my 1 and a bit year old all just sort of…yeah, it got quite tricky! So, yeah…

Aisha: Did you feel like you were being stretched and not giving a 100% to either of those things where you wanted to give the best you could?

Anna: Yes! I’d been so kind of…I’d been quite a dedicated teacher and meeting the pupils needs in every way that I could and then suddenly having a baby, my own child to look after, and working part time which in some cases is quite difficult because you’re only there for half o fit and you’re trying to pick up the pieces…yeah I felt like I was being pulled in so many directions and I actually tried for like a couple of weeks at work – ‘you know what, I’m just going to give like 60% today, I’m just going to give 60%, I’m just going to do what needs to be done and then just go home, pick up Melody (because I was doing drop offs and pick-ups), pick up Melody, just do 60% and leave.’ And I was trying to do the 60% and it just wasn’t working because it’d be ‘oh you’ve not done this’ or ‘oh you did this last year, can you just do it again’…I was like, oh dear, this 60% thing just isn’t working. SO yeah, I just felt like I couldn’t do both. I couldn’t be the mum that I wanted to be, and I couldn’t be the teacher that I wanted to be, and things have to change. So, I was very lucky in terms of I could just take a bit of a career break, a bit of time just to kind of reassess things.

Aisha: And how did you find that time where you took to yourself? Did it help you re-evaluate, re-address what your priorities were, what you found important at the time?

Anna: Yeah, I had lots of chats with my husband about like the position of professionalism I felt. You know, I’ve trained to be a teacher, I’ve been a teacher for coming up to 10 years and I can’t just leave, like that’s just…you know, like I’ve got to be able to support myself, to be able to continue being a professional and be a mum. Like I have to do it all. And, you know, he was very supportive and said, ‘Well you have to do what’s best for you and teaching has been something that has become more difficult and is very difficult for you now, you know, let’s just take a breather’. And you know I was very lucky that I did have the opportunity to take a break.

Aisha: Well, that’s also quite a big step to accept that something that you’ve done for such a long time and to take that leap and say, ‘well actually this isn’t what’s best for me right now’. And yeah, I think that takes quite a lot of courage to walk away from something like that, that you’ve trained for and like you said, had been doing for so many years.

Anna: Yeah, spot on, that’s exactly it. I felt guilt about leaving this really great profession in terms of, like, being such an important part of a community and I am a good teacher and I do know what I’m doing, and I enjoy it, but only when I’m happy. And I think the happiness sort of seemed to shift there. But yeah, it was sort of a huge identity step for me because I kind of, I didn’t know what I was stepping into. And I didn’t know where I was going, apart from well I have to be a mother, and I want to be a mother and I’ve got another baby coming so…be a mother and just accept it. And I think I found that journey hard, because I’ve always been quite self-sufficient and then suddenly, I was sort of relying on savings and relying on just trying to cut back on any additional costs to kind of keep us going. And it was a loss of control probably, and a loss of identity. So, I did wrangle with that quite a lot and I spoke to some people about it, you know, I spoke to some lovely family friends who are older, wiser, who were all supportive and who made me feel like I’d made a good decision, so it did take some time. What also coincided with my decision, so I handed my kind of notice in and given up the position at my school. Like the week before the coronavirus hit the UK. So, like the week before I had just sort of given up my opportunity for earning things for the immediate future and then suddenly all this uncertainty hits the UK and the job market and what’s going to happen to my husband’s job and like…you know…everyone was just kind of having this panic of this whole world just suddenly having to stop and industries just on pause. So, I felt guilty about the timing because I thought ‘Oh that was rubbish timing, I can’t go out and earn anything’ and I don’t have a job to come back to once I’ve had my second baby. But, you know, I kind of got over that and we were like let’s just see how things go.

Aisha: In the process of that you know you sort of grew into and it sort of took some time, like you said, but you feel like you’ve found a new identity, and a new self and a new purpose?

Anna: Yes, I do feel like, you know…so Melody is 3 and a half, Wilbur, my son, is yeah 1 and a half now so yeah it’s only kind of in the last sort of 6 months that I’ve completely accepted ‘ do you know what, I’m just going to focus on being a mum at the moment’ and I kind of do some voluntary work as well which sort of keeps my brain busy and that’s to do with childcare as well so I’m kind of still using some skills but ultimately my priority is creating a lovely space for my children, a loving space for my children. I mean a secure space. Running the house…I mean I don’t have a huge house; I don’t have that many things, but I feel like even just meal planning and even just trying to just keep on top of keeping things clean and tidy is overwhelming enough ha-ha-ha. But that’s maybe just my capacity levels at the moment. So, I’m kind of happy to just be like you what my place at the moment in life is to focus on being the best mum I can be and providing this environment for my family and providing this environment for my husband as well, you know, he works from home now, he’s very much part of our day-to0day activities when he’s not at work and the environment I create for him supports us as well, you know like, I make a big pot of soup for lunch or I think about let’s get everything sorted so we’ve got the whole weekend just to relax and to try and catch up on sleep and to do some fun stuff and to go ride our bikes. So, I support him, not financially but I support him in other ways. Which is what we’ve talked about a lot, we all support each other in different ways. And I feel like we’ve got a nice balance at the moment, and we bring different things to our house and our household so yeah, I kind of feel much prouder of who I am. I guess in my community there’s not that many kinds of stay-at-home mums. A lot of my friends that I know kind of, in my sport of local area, are juggling childcare with working and the guilt that comes with working and the guilt that comes with sending your child to more childcare than they’d like to. And you know I have conversations with them, and their point of view is, but I feel guilty that I have to work, I don’t want to work but we need to, or I want to work because I want to maintain my position and they’re kind of a lot more career driven than perhaps I was. So, they have equal amounts of kind of…it’s not really guilt it’s…

Aisha: And no situation is ever perfect, so ha-ha there’s always something …

Anna: Yeah, exactly no situation is ever perfect. And I guess I could look at other families and say, ‘oh look, haven’t they got such a lovely balance, isn’t that great.’ But actually, I just need to stop comparing myself, there’s no reason to compare and it’s a waste of time because everyone has different circumstances, different things going on.

Aisha: Well, it sounds like you’ve found a good balance with your partner and your family and something that works for you and the journey of…

Anna: Yeah, yeah, we’ve found a good balance.

Aisha: Great! Thank you so much Anna for coming on here and talking to us and sharing your story with us.

Anna: Oh, no problem! It’s been lovely…I hope it’s been good to listen to!

That’s all from me today. Thank you so much for listening to this especially long episode and sharing your time with me today. We’re all in this together and we have got this!