Blog

This weekend, you’re bound to start receiving a flurry of emails tempting you with discounts as we approach Black Friday. The Christmas ads are out, so we’re also being bombarded with festive imagery, and you might be starting to feel some serious pressure to plan the ‘perfect’ Christmas. 

But before you open a thousand tabs offering deals, can we stop you for a minute? It might be worth taking some time to have a think about what’s motivating you. 

It’s amazing how quickly things creep up on you. One minute you’re grabbing a piece of toast for lunch because the baby is unsettled and you need to eat quickly, and the next you have a teenager and still haven’t found a way to prioritise yourself. 

It might sound like an exaggeration, but the truth is that while your baby may ease into routines as they grow (meaning you can anticipate a time to actually eat lunch, hooray!), the demands of early parenthood can often be stealthily replaced by other demands on your time. From baby classes to extra-curricular activities after school, from park trips to parties, prioritising your child can take a lot of time, which is fine, as long as you are also prioritising some time for yourself. 

World Mental Health Day aims to raise awareness of mental health and drive positive change for everyone’s mental health, as well as being a great chance to talk about mental health, how to look after it, and how important it is to seek help if you’re struggling. 

This year’s theme is, ‘mental health is a universal human right’.[1] Good mental health is important for you and your child, which is why we’ve put together simple ideas to support your wellbeing. 

Before I had children, I had really only considered the basics of parenting – feeding them, keeping them clean and healthy, and loving them. No need to overcomplicate things. 

So, you can imagine the shock I felt not only when I had a newborn, but for all the years that have since followed. I remember a day a year or two ago, when I started to feel like my head might actually burst and out would leak a river of all the miniscule, almost-invisible jobs that I carried in it day after day, week after week, always racing to reach the bottom of a never-ending list which, once completed, would mean I could finally sit down with a nice, empty mind and read a book in a cosy chair. Ha! 

Twenty years ago, there was no such thing as social media or apps, let alone influencers, social media managers and app developers. Add to those drone pilots, sustainability managers, content moderators and countless others, and you can start to see how much the job market has changed over a fairly short period. 

It’s impossible for us to imagine the jobs our children might be doing in 20 years, but after listening to our podcast with Jimmy McLaughlin of Jimmy’s Jobs, we know that it’s likely that creativity will feature heavily in future careers. 

If you’ve ever walked into a room full of plastic toys, it might seem at first glance like zero waste is almost incompatible with family life, but there are plenty of easy adaptations you can make that reduce waste and save you money at the same time. This Zero Waste week, we’re thinking about how to reduce waste without missing out on any fun! 

“How do we have so many toys?” 

If you’ve looked around your home and wondered how you already have so many toys (including perhaps lots that aren’t played with anymore), you might be ready for some zero waste play ideas.   

Thinking back on your childhood, if you’re lucky you might fondly remember a grandparent or grandparent-figure. Maybe they indulged you with sweets, told you stories, or let you watch endless cartoons. Perhaps they gave you toys, orange squash, took you to the park or made the world’s best roast potatoes. 

We often treasure these memories from our early childhood, with people who cared for us deeply, whose company we could enjoy while also offering a slight break from our daily routine with our parents. Looking back on those times can feel like a rich tapestry composed of tiny moments that forms part of the fabric of who we are as adults. 

When we first brought our curled up newborn home the idea of them starting school seemed a distant impossibility. How would this milk-drunk creature unfurl themselves to be able to walk and run, let alone start school, running off with their friends with barely a backward glance?  

Are they ready?   

Most children will be excited about the prospect of starting school, but sometimes as parents, we worry. We worry about whether we have done enough, taught them enough or given them enough to prepare them for this next stage.