Lover of flapjack, creator of mischief, wearer of shoes.

She likes to crayon, play with mud and hide before bathtime.

And she can’t walk.

My 22 month old daughter is hypermobile. This means her ligaments are too flexible so she has problems balancing and holding her own weight. Every day she does a little more, takes a few extra steps unaided, stands on her own a few seconds longer, gains that extra piece of confidence to forget about crawling for another minute. We are hopeful that physio and lots of encouragement will work and help us avoid the dreaded stress fractures and casts.

That last paragraph – the part where I just went into lots of detail about my daughter’s “disability” – is something I find myself explaining over and over again every day.

To the lady in the shop who comments, “Ah how lovely she is. What a cutie. She’s very tall for her age isn’t she?” I launch into full hypermobility syndrome rant.

To the other mums at the various toddler groups who ask, “So she’s not walking yet? How old is she again?” Yep, they get the full hypermobility syndrome rant too.

And to the stranger at the park? Uh huh, you guessed it. The rant.

I don’t know why I feel the need to “explain” my daughter’s lack of independent walking. It’s really no one’s business after all. But people are inquisitive. They’re trying to understand. To place my daughter in a box of explanations. Is she a late walker? Or is there something else wrong with her? She doesn’t look like a baby, yet…. yet… she’s still not walking. What’s wrong with her?

Because, unfortunately, the plain old ugly truth is that they don’t see her.

They don’t see her spark and her sass and her wicked sense of humour. They don’t see the flash of intelligence behind her eyes and her dogged determination.

They just see her wonky legs and wonky feet, that don’t work properly.

They see her lack before they see anything else.

Sometimes I want to shout from the rooftops, “There’s nothing wrong with her! She’s just as clever as your child! She knows every part of her body, can count to five and loves to sing Three Blind Mice! Just because her legs don’t work doesn’t mean her mind doesn’t! Just lay off!”

And other times I want to stubbornly refuse to answer the questioning looks. I want to offer something petty and childish instead. Something like, “Oh she’s only 9 months. Incredibly advanced for her age really. A real child genius.”

At least then we’d escape that second look. The one I dread more than the questioning one. The look of pity.

It’s a funny thing prejudice. It comes in many forms. Never in my life have I ever had to experience any form of prejudice. I’m white, heterosexual, from a middle-class family with no huge skeletons in the closet, other than a bit of an unhealthy crush on Take That.

I don’t know how to deal with the questions. I don’t know how to bat away the pity. I don’t know how to brush off the prejudice.

But I know that I’m going to give it a bloody good shot.

So yes, my daughter doesn’t yet walk. Yes, she’s nearly two years old. And yes, she has something “wrong” with her.

But that is not who she is. So you can keep your labels and your boxes. They’re not welcome here.

We’ll just walk all over them.

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You see, I was admitting to something I haven’t ever admitted to before.

I thought it may touch a chord with other new parents, so I’ve decided to post it here too. I’m hoping other people will ‘fess up to make me feel better. So read on and tell me – are you a self-conscious parent?

*******

As parents we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to get things right. Too often we worry that others are judging our parenting skills, and sadly sometimes they are. Molly Forbes tells us how one throwaway comment from a stranger made her an overly self-conscious parent.

I’ll never forget my first trip to the supermarket with my daughter. It was terrifying and incredibly stressful. Not least because I ended up carrying her (she hated to be put down as a newborn) while I tried to lug around my carrots and nappies in a heavy basket, but also because she didn’t stop crying.

The whimpers started in the vegetable aisle and continued through the meat section, so that by the time I’d eventually struggled to the checkout we were in full-blown screaming mode. It was horrendous. And to make matters worse, I was told off by the woman behind the till. “Your baby’s hungry”, she said, as if I wasn’t keenly aware of that fact. I felt like a terrible mother.

And from that day on, I have been a self-conscious parent. If my baby cries at baby and toddler group, I panic, thinking I’ll be judged as an incompetent mum. If we’re out for lunch at a restaurant and my baby-led weaned baby makes a mess, I worry that people will wonder why I’m not spoon-feeding her. Will they think I don’t know what I’m doing? Everyone else always seems so “in control” – what if they think I’m not up to the job?

Turns out I’m not alone. When I confessed to my friend that I sometimes felt I was being “watched” in my new role as a mum, to see how I was coping, she admitted she felt the same. Caroline is one of the most confident mums I know, so it came as a surprise to find out she didn’t always feel that way.

“I like to sit back and watch my 3 year old explore”, said Caroline. “But I think I often let him do things other parents may disapprove of, like peering into the water in a canal to look at his reflection. He leans right over the side, but I know he won’t jump or fall in, because I trust him to know his boundaries and what’s safe. I know this may be an unconventional approach to some parents.”

Caroline admitted this approach can sometimes make her feel like the odd one out amongst her friends who are parents, “This means I’m always worrying that other people may think I’m a bad mother, because I let my son do things they may not let their child do.”

For Caroline, these crises of confidence have got worse as her son’s grown older. “I think I was more confident when he was a baby. Now that he’s growing up and wanting to explore his world more I find there are bigger differences in the choices I make as a parent to that of some of my friends. This makes me really self-conscious at times. I know a lot of this is probably my own perception, but the odd comment from other people doesn’t always help.”

Consultant Clinical Psychologist and Parenting Expert, Claire Halsey, says it’s actually pretty normal to feel self-conscious as a parent, “There can be a real sense of being judged even though it is highly likely that you’re not. Being offered well-meaning advice can be seen as suggesting you’re failing when actually it’s usually supposed to be a helping hand.”

Claire puts much of this down to the high expectations many parents place on themselves, “Parents do place a lot of pressure on themselves to be the parent they see in the adverts or soft focus magazine shoots looking dotingly at their baby. When ‘real life’ is a mix of sleeplessness and worry about topics from when to wean to where to get good child care, so it’s easy to feel like you’re not doing too well. In fact this is all entirely normal.”

So when does the self-consciousness and lack of confidence stray from the realms of “normal” to “problem”? “While it’s entirely normal to struggle at first with a new baby, it’s time to seek advice if you’re feeling in a low mood for more than a few weeks after the birth,” recommends Claire. “It is always wise to seek advice and support, no matter whether the difficulty is large or small.”

As a new mum, I’m aware that a lot of my feelings of self-consciousness were completely normal. I was getting used to a huge new responsibility, juggling breastfeeding with sleep deprivation and a new role at home. But instead of being honest with other friends who had babies, I was eager to appear that I was taking it all in my stride. This meant when conversations about sleep patterns or development came up, I’d often find myself telling white lies, to “keep up” with the other mums. I didn’t want to be the one to be left behind.

Looking back, I wish I’d just been honest. If I’d have admitted my daughter wasn’t a brilliant sleeper, maybe those mums who claimed their newborn was sleeping through the night would have come clean about the odd white lie too. According to Claire, honesty is the best policy when it comes to parenting, “While it can appear every other parent has everything under control, underneath they are probably just as uncertain and lacking in sleep as you are. It’s definitely most helpful to let on if you’re unsure of how to handle some parenting situations, as your health visitor or friends with babies are your best options for reassurance or new ideas. “

Luckily for me, trips to the supermarket no longer bring me out in a cold sweat. That could be partly because I’ve never ventured back to the shop where I was “told off”, but also because I now know all the other parents there are probably too busy trying to keep their own children happy to notice my daughter throwing a tantrum at the deli counter. And if I get an attack of self-consciousness, I’ll just have to remember it’s probably in my head. Afterall, I’ve got through the first 14 months of being a mum just fine, so I must be doing something right.

The post Confessions of a self-conscious parent appeared first on Mother's Always Right.

An Apple Crumble Family...

Do you ever have days where you wish you still lived “at home”? Or that your mum was just over the road? Or that you could just pop round for Sunday lunch with the in-laws?

We have those days. Quite often actually.

Frog’s Northern Granny came to stay from Up North this weekend. And now we miss her. We live four hours away so popping round for Sunday lunch isn’t really an option. This makes me sad.

But then, if we did live Up North, we would be even further from Frog’s Southern Granny, (and Grandpa too, if you’re reading this Dad) who we also love.

It’s a lose-lose situation. And one that makes me go all misty-eyed for those bygone days where families lived on the same street and you could just pop round to Mum’s with an apple crumble. Not that those days have ever actually existed in my family. My Nana lives two hours away and my other Gran wasn’t really the apple crumble type.

But you know what I mean, don’t you? Is it something that actually exists anywhere other than Corrie and Neighbours?

I keep reading about the Modern Family. About how today, it’s common for new parents to be “geographically isolated”. It’s all because of work and jobs. We move to where the jobs are, rather than making our life around where our extended family is. It’s not rocket science.

But I don’t want to be a Modern Family. I want to be an Old-Fashioned Family (I have yet to find this term, but you get where I’m coming from). I want the Apple Crumble dream.

This is something that is never going to happen though. I chose to have a family with a man from the North, while I’m a girl from the South. Whichever way you look at it, one of us is going to be a fish out of water. So we’re choosing to compromise and have neither family on our doorstep.

And actually, I don’t think that’s a particularly bad thing. It means we get spoiled rotten when we go to stay at Northern Granny and Southern Granny’s house. It means we always have places to visit during the holidays. It means every time we see them it’s that little bit more exciting.

And just between me and you, I was never that good at baking Apple Crumble anyway.

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