We followed a “baby-led” self-feeding approach with Pomme and can’t speak highly enough about it.  It was easy, it was stress-free, it was fun.  She was eating with utensils by the time she was a year old — just from imitating and experimenting.  We never had to ‘convince’ her to eat, or ‘make’ her eat, or ‘teach’ her to eat.  She enthusiastically explored food and let us know very clearly when she needed food and when she did not.  Now, at two years old, she eats a full range of ‘real’ foods, adult foods, spicy foods, and really she always has.  After having gone the traditional route of cereals and purees when Flipper was an infant – and having all the typical ‘picky child’ and food battles — we now can’t imagine possibly doing it any other way than baby-led.

Feel free to check out our photo album of Pomme’s early eating adventures!

I was very impressed in the first week, when they quoted from Einstein Never Used Flash Cards: How Our Children Really Learn-Why They Need to Play More and Memorize Less.  Not only quoted from, but actually interviewed with the author.

This week they’ve drawn from the classic book The Hurried Child
by David Elkind.  I confess I haven’t read this one, I’m going to add it to my reading list though.

I also will confess that I haven’t listened with 100% rapt attention to the entire broadcast.  I’m finding it’s mostly information that I am already aware of — thanks to having already read these books, or from my research into unschooling, and my forays into the ‘free range kids’ internet subculture.  This isn’t news to me.  In fact, it still makes me a bit annoyed and angry to think that a program like this has to be made, that it is still news to a great many parents out there.  It’s just so much… common sense.

But I try to be understanding, because I was there once, myself.  Just as I once fed my first child cereals and purées for his first foods, and how I kept him in diapers until he was 3, and yet baby-led finger-food solids and going diaper-free are just so obvious and common sense to me now.  Oh, and how about the fact that I thought slings were “too hippie” when my first was an infant?  We all have to start from where we are in our society’s paradigm and our own biases, and go from there.

So I am BEYOND ecstatic that this scathing rebuke of our educational myths is being played on mainstream radio.  And in such a rational, calm, non-sensationalist, investigative and factual manner.  I can only hope that it begins to clear the rubble in the minds of a few listeners, starting them down this path to “academic enlightenment” for their children.

If you missed it, don’t panic — you can listen online at the CBC website.

I guess first of all, I should come up with cute nicknames for my kids… I have observed that most ‘family’ bloggers refer to their kids as “Little Fish” or “Peanut” or “Pumpkin”, in order to maintain a certain sense of privacy.   Let’s see…

My 10-year-old son is energetic, hyperactive, distractible.  He’s quick to temper and prone to selfishness.  Yet he’s also a gentle soul who likes soft and cuddly things, he’s gregarious and kind to his friends, always laughing and full of jokes.  We think he has sensory issues and he has trouble sleeping.  He’s moderately gifted, but lazy.  He can build the most astonishing Lego creations, he will draw amazing pictures endlessly, he loves to read.  He loves the blues, idolizes Stevie Ray Vaughn, and is a master of Guitar Hero.  He has a junior black belt in karate and is now in Tae Kwon Do.  He’s a competitive gymnast.  He’s never been to school and has no interest right now in ever going.  He asks hard questions about life and fairness, and seems to alternate between the maturity of a grownup and a 4-year-old.  He has two main goals in life — to be a guitarist in a band, and to be a marine biologist.  He especially adores whales and dolphins, but is already an expert on anything under the sea.   Even his bedroom has an undersea theme, and he won’t eat fish because it makes him sad.

So then… he is “Flipper”.

Now my daughter is quite a different creature.  She will be two years old next week.  Her favourite things to talk about are shoes, cats, fish, dogs, cars, and colours.  She’s viciously independent, insists on doing things by herself, and insists on ‘helping’ mommy in the kitchen, with cooking, doing dishes, as well as other chores like doing the laundry and taking out the garbage.  She can be very loud and cantankerous, like any toddler, but on the whole, she’s actually fairly reserved, quiet, calm, and serious.  She was never “diaper-trained” and is now a “graduate”, virtually potty-independent.  She did “baby-led solids” and her favourite food is spicy Indian curry.  And potato chips.  Apples and bananas and pomegranates.  And, of course, mommy milk!  She is the most beautiful baby you’ve ever seen, she looks like a porcelain doll.  She’s surprisingly petite given her parents… She’s the apple of her daddy’s eye.  Hm.  And her favourite undies are the ones with the apple on them, which she calls “apple bum”.

Maybe she can be “Apple”.  Not to be confused with Chris Martin and Gwyneth Paltrow’s cute little girl of the same name…  No, even better.  She’ll be “Pomme”, like her yummy pomegranates (the word means “seeded apple,” by the way), and since I’m bilingual and we’re trying to work on French… and it just seems a wee bit classier.

So there we have it.  My bouncy, friendly, confusing Flipper, and my rosy, sweet and colourful Pomme.