I recently read a conversation with Christine Gross-Loh in the super cool Lunch Lady magazine about raising kids in different cultures. It’s a topic I find fascinating having brought up our girls in places throughout Europe, Africa and in the USA. I’ve seen so much diversity in childhoods and had so many discussions about parental topics with friends from all nationalities that I agree there’s no ‘right way’ in parenting. If you have the honour of seeing parenting around the world and you’re open to how we all parent in our own way, then you feel, certainly as I do, some sort of re-assurance that perhaps you’re doing something ‘right’!
So it was a given that I had to order Gross-Loh’s book to read more and I’m so glad I did. You see I’m not one for parenting books. Sure, I have a pile of them in the attic… but I found because we were always moving countries I wasn’t the type of mother who could give the minute-by-minute routine to my babies, which always make me feel disheartened and sometimes a failure in what I thought was working for us. Anyway, this book is not one of those books that tells us what we should be doing, quite the opposite. It is a book filled with experience and it covers topics such as sleep times for the baby, how much stuff we really need to buy, teaching kids to eat, fostering self-control in our children, understanding the value of play and raising kindness in our kids. Of course teaching kids to eat is something I’m passionate about, but the chapter on how much stuff we need really struck a chord with me. With my eldest, Helena, she was raised for a short time in Angola and we only had our two suitcases to fill with nappies, a small amount of clothes and a steriliser. When Florence came along, we were in London and wow did we go mad on ‘stuff’. We still have that ‘stuff’ in the attic — it was used of course… but was it really needed?
And the chapter on play! Given my opinion of homework and the fact that my kids (and I) are currently suffocating in it, play is of so much value to kids. But let me stop and give you the chance to make your own mind up on this one. Please let me know your opinion on it. I’d love to know your experiences of parenting around the world. Because they do say ‘it takes a village to raise a child’ and once you’ve read this book, you’ll realise how so true that statement is.
Available from all good bookstores and online from UK amazon here and US amazon here.
Vanessa x
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