Category: Everything!!!

About

On By bumblebee3londonIn About, Everything!!!Leave a comment

Hi,

Welcome to my parenting blog, which is a continuation of the parenting book I wrote in 2012, Barefoot in The City – Raising Successful, Free-Range Organic Kids.

I am a mother of five children, and am so very proud of them. They have all grown up beautifully, despite the challenges of modern society. I strongly believe in a more organic and heart-led approach to parenting as opposed to hot-housing children in a pressure-cooker environment that characterises today’s fast-paced world. My curriculum for bringing up children centres on love, happiness, family, strong values, and good physical and emotional health. From this bountiful font, all great things arise (that’s my belief anyway).

I feel blessed that I spend part of the year in Phuket, which must surely be one of the most magical islands in the world. But home for me is always Portsmouth, though I now live in London.

Please do browse through the topics on the right sidebar, or read through the posts (sorted by date) at the foot of this page. I do hope you enjoy my ramblings….but please note that this is merely a blog, not a professional website so don’t expect references etc, just lots of heart.

Love, light, peace, Jacqueline

Please be a part of this tribe of parents, teachers and young people – do sign up for free books, etc. Many thanks.

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Exam strategy: crisps and TV

On By bumblebee3londonIn Everything!!!, lightLeave a comment

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“Eat junk food and watch Gray’s Anatomy for 2 hours,” my nerdy Asian kid replied when I asked her what her strategies are for coping with exam stress.

We are currently in the IGCSE exam season and Georgina definitely has a lot on, not only in terms of her studies but also her heavy sporting commitments. She plays football at a very high level and cannot afford to slack off as she is playing in an important tournament in Portugal in less than two months’ time. It is business as usual on the football pitch.

“I’m training kids to be professionals who can earn a living from playing football,” her football coach says pointedly to parents like myself who whinge about his four days a week training regime during the exam time. Surely those poor dears should be in their comfortable homes studying instead of running around in the hot sun chasing a ball?

“Exams are just exams and life goes on,” her father agrees with the coach.

But I am 75% Asian, OK? Exams are a big deal. It is a cast-iron belief that is woven into the Asian genes, like it or not. You’re screwed for life if you don’t come home with a brace of As.

But I was surprised, nonetheless, by Georgina’s response.  She is normally extremely disciplined and controlled, so what is this with junk food and mindless television for two hours?

There are healthy options available in our house and we live by the beach. So why stuff your face with junk food and hole yourself up in your room wasting time watching mindless TV (which she never does), instead of eating a homemade energy bar, swim in the sea and get down to work?

She shrugged. “I give myself two hours. And then I take out my school books.”

She does know what she is doing and what she needs to do.  The walls in her bedroom are covered with Post-Its.

And as a testament to the saying  that we know our own body best, there is a reason for Georgina’s out-of-character behaviour.  Yesterday, I read that Dr Sandi Mann, a researcher from the University of Central Lancashire, and colleagues presented their findings to the British Psychological Society conference in Nottingham which showed that when we are bored, our dopamine level drops and we compensate for this drop in other ways, namely by eating fatty and sugary foods. You can read the short article, Bored People Reach For The Chips, by clicking on this link.

“Bored people do not eat nuts,” Dr Mann said. My goodness, so true! Georgina who loves nuts shuns them when she comes home from school after a long day and still has a couple of hours of studying ahead of her.  Bring on the McVities and crisps.

And interestingly enough, in a separate study, Dr Mann found that boredom can make us more creative. She suggests that boredom can have positive results including an increase in creativity because it gives us time to daydream. Hmmm, television soaps do have their worth after all.

Note to self: my child knows her body and mind better than I do. Note to self: my child knows her body and mind better than I do. It is the innate wisdom called Mahad that I wrote about in my parenting book.

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Inspiring children and building teens

On By bumblebee3londonIn blessings, Everything!!!2 Comments

When my children were young, I did not endear myself to relatives and friends. I specifically made it be known that I would not allow my children to play with plastic toys.  Gifts that were plastic in nature were politely and firmly returned.

“Come on, relax a bit,” my children’s father would say.

No, not on this. We have to live our beliefs in our everyday lives rather than spouting ideals.  Children learn when their parents model their teachings.  If we allow plastic toys – many of which are manufactured unethically using child labour and contributing to environmental pollution – when and how will our children learn to live mindful lives? Our home is the laboratory that our children learn the art of being and the ways of living.

In any case, my children were not deprived despite my draconian laws and moratorium on plastic toys.  They played with pots and pans and wooden spoons. They rearranged my cupboards and spent a lot of time outdoors.  My niece Katie infamously ate earthworms served up very prettily on my mother’s china plate.

My father-in-law made beautiful toys for my children.  It was truly a labour of love. He passed away in 2005 but the toys that he made almost 30 years ago still have the place of pride in my son’s house. My mother-in-law made lovely things for them too with her sewing machine and crochet needles. She made the characters of the series of story books that my children’s father and I wrote entitled The Atoms Family to teach our children about the physical world. Here’s Harry Helium who is one of the residents of the block of flats called The Periodic Table.

My parents, who were less into crafts but more into biology, taught my kids about the plants that grew in the New Forest and the animals, birds and insects that lived there. Almost thirty years later, I still treasure those sketch books.

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Scarcity of ‘toys’ made my children more resourceful. You see, toys entertain them passively, especially those with bright lights and synthetic voices. Without these toys to entertain them, they had to actively engage themselves. They became very creative and resourceful. I did moan a fair bit about the fact they they were always up to mischief, like cutting up old t-shirts to make clothes for the dogs, dismantling things and experimenting with fireworks.

But the upshot is, they learned how to live purposeful lives.

As teens, they would put on cabaret acts for the family. They would dress up. Yes, they were always up to something, living their lives fully and colourfully. Georgina taught First Aid course in her school for small children. She ran weekly children’s Taekwondo classes in our front garden (she was a Second Dan Black belt by 12 years old).  She started a company called G-Tech selling home electronic kits for children to learn the basics.

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Today, she is two weeks short of her 16th birthday. She has no interest in hanging out in shopping malls or nightclubs (though we live in a party town). She does not own an iPad and she is not into computer games. She lives her life as a continuation of her childhood, which was fun-filled, resourceful and creative. She enjoys studying because she sees it as part of the process – no pressure, challenging, can be beautiful – and brings her creativity and enthusiasm into it.  This comes from her childhood where the things she does is active and directed, rather than passive and accepting.  An example of her biology notes:

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This morning, I stopped by my friend Vivienne Reis’s stall. I wish I had known her when my kids were young, because Vivienne is a patron of a Thai charity, Good Shepherd Sisters www.handsofhopenongkhai.com. The ladies supported by this charity learn self-sufficiency by making beautiful crafts and toys.  I particularly love the cloth books with detachable pieces which are good for engaging children in story-telling.

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They are all handmade with love and are very reasonably priced. I especially love the 2-in-1 Mermaid doll….because many years ago, my mother-in-law made one for my daughter Kat.

For more information, please email viviennereis@gmail.com

 

 

Insurance for your child’s future

On By bumblebee3londonIn Everything!!!, LoveLeave a comment

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A few days ago whilst we were driving along the backroads of Phuket we saw these three boys in front of us. The oldest one who was riding the bike did not seem a day older than eleven, swigging Coke from a can whilst confidently navigating the roads like a seasoned rider.

“What a lovely way to grow up,” my children’s father commented. “When they are all grown up, they will have such happy memories of days like this.”

I have a different mindset. My immediate thought was about the tiny boy in front pitching forward and suffering catastrophic brain damage. I looked at my children’s father’s face. I could tell he was remembering his own childhood. He was the South East London version of these three boys. He and his mates would go off cycling deep into the Kent countryside from a very young age. They would go for miles. Once they decided to try to find Dartford Tunnel. They were gone for a long time and when darkness fell the police was called. The tired little boys were given a severe hiding by their mothers but no harm done, there was so much love. It was all part of growing up in a childhood couched with love.

Money and social status counted for nothing. There were no playdates, enrichment classes or tuition where my children’s father grew up. Sure, he could have done better at school and he could have done better socially if his parents were more educated, if they were more ambitious for their son or if they had more money to spare. But they did not and I am glad.

For he has grown up with beauty in his heart from his happy childhood days and has the simple ambition to create the same for our children. In my 48 years of having lived a rich and varied life, I have seen how important a good foundation is in building a happy and successful life. Though academic success is often hailed as the most important foundation of them all, look around you: how many people in successful careers are actually truly and deeply content with their exalted status quo compared with those with humbler lives? Do they actually live ‘better’ lives than those with less grand jobs, the teachers, the office workers, the carpenters, the shop assistants?

It is never worth sacrificing substance for form. It is my strong belief that a child has to have a strong foundation and that foundation is a happy childhood that they can always return to in their minds when the going gets tough, a safe refuge in the belief that there is a happier place always however dire the present is. I strongly believe that as parents, we should invest in building that place for our children. It is their insurance against bad days in their adult lives, far more so than a ticket to glory.

Here’s an analogy. This is one of the many stray dogs (called soi dogs in Thailand) who lives on the beach near my house. I see him almost every day. He is smart, sociable and healthy. The food vendors feed him well. There is a charity called The Soi Dog Foundation that takes care of strays. Someone put a collar on him but he belongs to no one, according to the food vendors. I thought of taking him home to keep as my pet. But I ask myself this, will this dog be happier in a ‘richer’ life than he is living free on the beach? A nice house means nothing. I once knew a person who said he couldn’t wait to leave home – and home for him was a big house in an affluent suburb.

This comes to my point: life cannot be measured in achievements or possessions but in happy moments that make up the story of our lives. To use the old adage, it is not the destination but the journey. It is how you lived the days of your life that matters.

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Pancakes & Parenting

On By bumblebee3londonIn Everything!!!, LoveLeave a comment

My youngest child Georgina does not like to cook. She thinks it’s a waste of time. She thinks she has more important things to do with her time. If she needs food, she’d rather blitz something in the blender and chug it down. We have enough chia seeds, maca, acai berries, Udo oil and stuff like that in our kitchen to open a health food store. Optimum nutrition, she calls it.

Me, I come from the school of old-fashioned parenting. My Ma who asked very little of me, insisted that I spend time in the kitchen when I was growing up. That, rather than studying for exams. “I don’t care, Jac, even if you become the Prime Minister of United Kingdom, you are still a woman, a wife and a mother first and foremost.”

I rebelled (of course) but took on board her indoctrination. In time, I began to love cooking. “You can’t teach someone how to cook, you’ve got to teach people how to love domesticity and to have the desire to nurture others and build a home,” my Ma said when I told her I wanted to run a cooking course years ago. “It’s not just about putting ingredients together.”

A couple of days ago, I made this flourless, sugar-free pancakes which went down a treat with my family:

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Last night, my undomesticated child asked, “Mum, can you make me more of those pancakes, please?”

I told her that the batter was in the refrigerator. She could easily make some for herself. This was her result:

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The first pancake was burnt because she put the pancake pan on too high a heat (typical of her, rush rush rush). She tried again. Her logic: cook for a shorter time. The result: the second pancake was not burnt, it actually looked nice on the outside, but it was sticky and uncooked on the inside. it never occurred to her to turn the heat down, because turning heat down would imply more time to cook, more time in the kitchen, more time doing something she does not enjoy.

Her pancakes made me think: this is just like parenting! As parents, we are given raw batter when we have children. Notwithstanding fatal diseases and accidents, we end up with a pancake after 18 years when the child grows into an adult. What sort of pancake you get depends on what you do in the 18 years. Thus, I strongly believe that slow-parenting with a deep love for the path produces the best result.

This is Georgina’s latest attempt, once she realises that you can’t hurry life if you want to bring out its full flavour 🙂photo 1-130.JPG

You can browse my cookbook, inspired by my mother-in-law, here.

Related article: Killed by Busy-ness.

The journey, not the destination

On By bumblebee3londonIn Everything!!!, Love, light, blessingsLeave a comment

I don’t think there are any parents out there who deliberately set out to damage their own children, but because we have been damaged ourselves by our own childhoods and because society influences us to raise externally successful children, we unwittingly set those destructive wheels in motion.

Life is tough enough in the real world for adults without carrying emotional scars.

I am so blessed that my mother is a daughter of a humble fisherman, and she had no ambitions beyond raising happy, kind children. I am sure it frustrated my high-achiever father a lot. But when I failed my entrance exams to get into highly ranked private high schools, all my mother would say with her usual big smile was “Oh never mind, dearie.” Those years at home with my mother were always sweet; everyday was beautiful.

In time, I got into Oxford on full scholarship.

Ditto my mother-in-law. She was a cleaner, her mother was an immigrant who spoke little English. My mother-in-law didn’t have much ambition for my children’s father other than be a decent family man and raise a good family.

Did we lose out focusing on the journey rather than the destination and outward signs of success? No. Not in the slightest. We have built a lovely big family, which is our legacy of love.

Legacy of love

On By bumblebee3londonIn Everything!!!, LoveLeave a comment

The best thing I will ever do in this life is raise my five beautiful children. They are beautiful not because of genetics but because they are filled with beautiful things only. No unkindness, no harshness and er, not much discipline but just lots and lots of love.

The amazing thing was, my children’s father and I weren’t ready when the babies came. But our amazing mothers showed us how to pass on their legacies of love to the next generation. Success was never in our parenting vocabulary, but magic, joy and beauty.

I am so moved each time I see the love of my parents-in-law for my children over 25 years ago, but lovingly preserved. These toys were made by them so painstakingly, with so much love. You can’t fake unconditional love like this, and this is why my children grew beautiful. We have not increased our wealth or social mobility this lifetime, but we have left a legacy of love. May they go on to raise the next generation as beautifully and as joyously as they have been raised. Amen.

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With Kindness, Not Love

On By bumblebee3londonIn Everything!!!, light, LoveLeave a comment

Many of us, by our thirties and forties, have built and established the veneer and persona of a successful and happy person to fit within the social infrastructure and to gain peer acceptance even if we are a seething mass of unresolved issues beneath the surface. We accumulate those charges against us from our childhood years, from our early relationships, from days long bygone. And often, we do not do anything to heal the old hurts; we just suffer in silence and plaster over the pain. The prevalent belief is that if we are outwardly successful, the old inner pains will go away over time.

Thus, the ignored inner child within us is subdued in this head-led environment, forgotten except in private moments occasionally, because who would want to sound like a loser bleating about Mummy and Daddy and how hurt still we are about episodes that happened decades ago?

A few weeks ago, I was in a therapy session with a small group of good-looking, outwardly successful professionals who were trying to make sense of the bad hand Fate dealt us.

Here’s the story of a 38 year old investment banker whom we shall call Abby. Abby’s father left the family when she was four, and she has not seen her father since. She decided not to let that pain of abandonment ruin her life so she worked hard and became successful at her job. She had several good relationships but never felt the urge to settle down. Then when she was 35, she met Paul. Paul was her Mr. Right in every sense of the word. Though she wasn’t the marrying kind – possessing such a dim view about marriage based on her parents’ – she and Paul began to make plans for a life with each other. They even talked about having a child together, despite her reservations. All was going very well, until Abby’s inner child spoke up and ruined her perfect plans.

Paul was divorced with a young daughter. His ex-wife had met someone whom she was planning to emigrate to Australia with, taking Paul’s young daughter with her. Paul was inconsolable. He sought legal advice, he also thought about emigrating to Australia with Abby to be near to his daughter and remain a part of her life. After weeks of pleading with his ex-wife, Paul was almost suicidal.

But just when Paul needed support most, Abby’s hurt inner child lashed out. “Why are you acting like this? Men are not supposed to love their children. Only women love their children.”

Abby is intelligent. She is outwardly normal. She has a huge social circle. Though her father abandoned her, she had read books and watched movies where men love their children. She even had male friends who love their children. Intellectually she knows that there are men who love their children, but her inner child, not having experienced that love, refuses to believe in it. Her inner child, still suffering from the pain of abandonment 34 years earlier, wasn’t going to lose this opportunity to be heard, whatever the cost.

And here’s the thing: we can’t subdue our inner child forever. Now and then, especially at the most inopportune moment, he/she will lash out. We can build as many layers as we like through self-deluding stories, positive affirmations and outward signs of success, but he or she will break through the barriers, angry and destructive, speaking with the illogicality and unkindness of small children, often ruining the good for no reason, as in Abby’s case.

I am not a psychologist and I know that releasing childhood emotional trauma is a big complicated area. I wouldn’t know how to start advising people, but as a mother of five children, I follow the old adage, it is easier to raise a happy child than mend a broken adult.

Parenting requires some thought, some very deep thought, though many stumble upon it accidentally. And here’s mine from living a well-lived 48 years, 30 of which I was a mother: raise a child with kindness always. I said kindness and not love, because love can be harsh, whereas kindness is always the soft marshmallowy feeling that makes a child feel safe, secure, happy and loved.

But most of all, do be mindful of how you speak to your sons and daughters. Be mindful about the words and the intention behind those words, because your voice becomes your child’s inner child, who stays within them for life. I hear my mother’s and my mother-in-law’s voices in my children all the time. I am blessed that my kids have wonderful voices from their past because that is truly the best we can give our children, this Culture of Kindness.

In the words of Albert Einstein, “Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value” if you want your child to be truly happy deep within himself as an adult. Outward success is a cold bedfellow when the inner child is still crying out.

Love is strong and kind

On By bumblebee3londonIn Everything!!!, Love, Love, light, blessingsLeave a comment

In my book-to-be, Catching Infinity, I wrote that life clusters around Zero and Infinity. When I first wrote that sentence several months ago, it was solely from a theoretical perspective. The female protagonist, Alice Liddell from Alice in Wonderland, now twenty years old and a postgraduate at Oxford, wanted to experience the breadth and depth of human emotions to root herself to this world.

Because for what purpose is life and the human body, if not to experience?

Do we just die, having left an enormous carbon footprint, with our life stories being remembered and talked about for one or two generations, three if we lead big, eventful lives? Or is life starker than that, namely human existence is merely about fulfilling biological determinism by passing on our DNA, creating a larger gene pool?

 I recently faced a serious health issue, which of course brought Infinity right up close and personal. There was this mad rush, this swirling chaos, all revolving round my unfulfilled dreams, two more babies yet to be born, a renewed vow to live a more meaningful life, to make every single day count, and yes, to experience the breadth and depth of human emotions NOW, should Infinity choose to absorb me before the year ends.

When the years and decades that I thought were mine by right were suddenly condensed into minutes, hours, days and weeks, my inner life suddenly becomes the event horizon of my own personal Black Hole. Black Holes, which used to be the most exciting thing in the Universe to me, suddenly became ‘not nice at all’.  Even light cannot escape its gravitational pull; in a Black Hole, everything will be gone, erased, scrambled. I was supposed to be getting married next week. How could I reconcile that beautiful, much dreamt-of occasion with what I am going through now, too sick to walk up the stairs? I don’t see myself when I look at the reflection that now stares back at me. In the short space of a mere two weeks, the woman that I had been was decoded into bytes and bits in a hologram-like Universe.

But in the case of life mirroring fiction, I wrote that order and chaos are not diametrical opposites. In Catching Infinity, the second female protagonist Karin Van Achterberg had to cope with her husband’s tumultuous mind in the aftermath of Alice’s destruction. But she, The Wife, found beauty and order beneath the chaos, because chaotic systems are an inseparable mix of the two. From the outside they display unpredictable and wildly random behaviour, ugliness even, but expose the inner workings and you will discover a perfectly deterministic set of equations ticking like clockwork to the steady beat of Love. Yes, according to Chaos Theory, there is an underlying order beneath it all.  It’s just that we don’t often have the wisdom or the peace of mind to see it.

Thus, I took myself and my chaotic mind off to church to fathom the underlying order when my life was spinning off tangent. Church for me is Westminster Cathedral, the bastion of Roman Catholicism in the United Kingdom.

He, on the other hand, is anti organised religion, believing instead in a myriad of Hindu philosophies and long-dead Eastern sages. He often commented – only half-joking, I’m sure – that he has to do the Sudarshan Kriya and invoke the protection of Lord Krishna each time before he steps through the doors of Westminster Cathedral. But he, who gets woken up when I can’t breathe at night or when I am just being a drama queen, has been sitting in Westminster Cathedral with me stoically as I prayed my heart out.

“Do I terrify you?” I asked.

‘Naw, but your church does, Jac. It gives me the beebeejeebies just sitting here.  But I pray with you, to your God, in your language.”

“Don’t,” I replied.  “Don’t compromise your own beliefs for mine, or you’ll lose the sense of who you are. And right now, more than ever, I need you to be strong for me.”

“Jac,” he began patiently.  “Beliefs, ideologies and even principles are just a set of rules to guide us by as we muddle our way through life. They are just ideals. They do not maketh us.  Love maketh us. It does not make me less of a man to yield to you sometimes, Jac.” He paused.  “Because I dare to. I have no fear because Love guides me.”

Being a mother of five, I resonated very deeply with his words. All too often we bring our children, especially our sons, up to be strong. We instill in them our values, our morals, our beliefs, and send them out to the world with siege mentality, to win, win, win, to be successful rather than to be of value to humanity. We prize success because in some perverse way, successful children are our justification as parents, our bragging rights to other relatives, neighbours and friends in our twilight years.

Yield is not a word in many parenting vocabularies, so over-written those vocabularies are by the word ‘success’.  We don’t teach our children to yield – there is something shameful even in yielding because it is mistakenly associated with weakness and relinquishing control – but yielding is oh, so important, because if we don’t yield, we break. Put this in ‘real’ terms: some of the tallest buildings in the world are built to sway in the direction of the wind before righting itself when the moment passes.  It takes an extremely strong person to put aside those childhood ideals, to be vulnerable even, to have the courage to go where life leads instead of clutching fearfully to old structures that stop us living meaningful lives. If life is not lived joyously, consciously and freely each day, for what purpose is life? The answer is in Catching Infinity, of course – big smile.

 

 

 

 

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Glamorous green smoothies

On By bumblebee3londonIn Awesome Recipes, Everything!!!Leave a comment

I have been trying to photograph green smoothies for YEARS, trying to make them look artistic but they always come out as an unappetising slimy gloop. And we expect kids to chug them down enthusiastically?

If I were business-minded, I would love to set up a health juice bar, and this is how I would present my concoction.

(1) Base cup – fruits, such as bananas, mangoes, dragon fruits, apples.

(2) Ooooph – organic greens. Lots of!

(3) Liquid – coconut water, alkaline water.

(4) Topping – chia, bee pollen, moringa powder, maca, acai.

Hope you / your children like this! ❤

green cocktail