Germinal writings on parenting multiples
This might seem a bit off topic but….
I’ve been listening to excerpts from Stephanie Nolen’s book, 28 Stories of AIDS in Africa, on the radio here in South Africa. It’s brilliant: beautifully written, first-hand accounts of how AIDS has affected women, men, children, families and communities across Africa.
Turns out the author is a correspondent for the Canadian national newspaper, the Globe and Mail, so I suspect the book is getting good press back home. So it should!
And, really, it’s not off-topic. Motherhood has a way of making the abstract palpable. For me, the AIDS crisis has been an abstraction, something I can read, learn and be concerned about about from afar.
It still is - I claim no immediate knowledge. But living in Africa has made the suffering wrought by HIV/AIDS a little more real. Being a mother has made that suffering a little more visceral.
Lots more information on the book’s website.
Shortly before we left Canada, I read a beaming review of the children’s book, Hey, Little Ant. The book describes a young boy’s moral dilemma: to squish an ant under his shoe, or to let it live?
I wanted to get this book for my kids, partly because I have 3 boys and the urge to squish bugs seems inevitable, partly because I love a good moral dilemma, and partly because I’m a bug-rescuer. I’m reluctant to squish anything, at least not without consideration.
I never found the book (it’s here and here but overseas shipping to Africa is just too expensive). I do wonder, though, how the story would have translated to our South African home. Back in Canada, bugs were outside for the most part. Here, the bugs are perpetually inside. Especially ants.
During the summer (now) there’s an almost constant ant trail through the kitchen; a long line of workers ferrying bits of our last meal back to their buddies in the nest. If a speck of something tasty is left under the kitchen table or on the counter, the ants will find it. They also love the laundry basket, the garbage bin, and any other bug that met its natural demise in our house.
So we kill a lot of ants - quite unceremoniously. House flies too. The kids know that ants and flies, unlike crickets, beetles and the occasional praying mantis, will not be carefully transported to a better home outside. We try to maintain respect for all living beings, but indoor ant and flies? They get the big squish.
Twin Sense: A Sanity-Saving Guide to Raising Twins from Pregnancy Through the First Year. By Dagmara Scalise. 2009. Amacom. New York.
I highly recommend this book for expectant or new parents of twins. Twin Sense is 200 pages of thoughtful advice from a mother of twins and an older sibling. I can relate.
The book is divided into 4 sections.
1. Preparing for Twins. Includes financial considerations, buying what you really need, answering probing/insulting questions from strangers, and preparing siblings and fathers.
2. Managing the Basics. Feeding, bathing, diapering, sleeping.
3. Leaving the House. Yes! One quarter of the book dedicated to getting out of the house! Flying included.
4. Life After Babyhood. A bit about discipline, child-proofing and a summary of “best tips” for life with twins.
This book is straight-to-the-point. There are lots of amusing anecdotes, but don’t expect a scintillating read or cute full-color photos of twins. And what frazzled parent of two or more infants wants that? The sections are short, easy to find, indexed and summarized so you can scan for the information you need in just a few seconds.
I also appreciate that the author is specific. She recommends brands that parents of twins have tried and liked - but I didn’t feel the book was trying to sell me anything. As with Twin Set, Twin Sense is US focused and quite mainstream (no discussion of cloth diapers, for instance).
Still, I would have learned a lot from Twin Sense had I read it 3 years ago. In fact, I learned a lot reading now. Who would have thought of bathing twinfants in a laundry basket?
Thanks to Nettie Hartsock and Amacom for the review copy.
There are hundreds of parenting books out there, including dozens on twins and multiples (see, for example, my review of Twin Set, and soon-to-be-published review of Twin Sense).
You could spend all your savings and half your life reading them. Most of my parenting friends shelved the books once the kids reached toddlerhood and turned instead to intuition and common sense.
I don’t rely much on books either, but they do have a place.
Here are five I’d recommend:
1. Momma Zen. By far the most useful, restorative book on mothering I have read. The author is a Zen priest - and she finds mothering a challenge at times. A welcome shift in perspective on those not-so-great parenting days.
2. The Explosive Child. We bought this during a particularly rough patch when Thomas was, well, explosive. He doesn’t fit the category as defined in this book. No child fits any category. But the book is still useful for its advice on talking to your children: not coercing or nagging but flexibility and cooperation. An ideal worth striving for, even if we often fall short.
3. Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child. Along the same lines as The Explosive Child: teaching children to recognize, explore and cope with emotions. Such as when Alex, who is two, jams his trike into the stairs, can’t work out how to reverse and screams: “I’m frustrating!”
4. Solve Your Child’s Sleep Problems. The classic, written by Richard Ferber. As in Ferberize. As in let-your-baby-scream-herself-to-sleep. The book as a bad reputation; even the title has an authoritarian tone. But of the books I’ve read on sleep (and we’ve had lots of “sleep problems“) this was the most useful for understanding kids and sleep, and, contrary to its reputation, devising our own method for encouraging more snoozing and less screaming.
5. The Art of Possibility. I have to thank my husband for reading this as a parenting book. It’s not written as one, but the advice, especially “Giving an A” can instantly transform destructive patterns into creative ones.
And here’s a book I haven’t read but would like to:
1. The Stay-At-Home-Survival-Guide. Read an interview with the author in Mom Writer’s Literary Magazine.
