On the 12th day of parenting – 2017 highlights and 2018 New Year Wishes

Hello and thank you for hopping over from Me and B Make Tea and welcome to the 12th day of #12DaysOfParenting. Today’s sponsor is Gitte Winter Graugaard who is offering a copy of The Children’s Meditations In my Heart and the theme is Parenting highlights of the year and 2018 wishes. My keyword to enter today’s giveaway is in this post below, good luck! Full details of the #12DaysOfParenting terms and conditions can be found on the #12DaysOfParenting page and all entries are to be completed via the Rafflecopter at the bottom of this post.

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Being a parent is really satisfying, and brings up a range of emotions through the different ages of your children.  You make the decision to have children, if you’re lucky it happens for you, and then comes the hard bit.  Actually bringing up the children so they’re ready to be released onto the world.  Even for someone like me who didn’t want to have children until I realised I might regret not trying, there are lots of parenting highlights to savour, enjoy and speculate on.

For the final day of this series, the twelve days of parenting, I’m sharing my parenting highlights of the year.

Being 6 years old has been great for N.  I thought year 1 of school was good for N, but year 2 has been going even better.  It’s fabulous to see your child grow and develop in ways you couldn’t see happening. Who knows how our children will end up, but there’s plenty of hope that N is going in the right direction.

Passion for learning

The one concern for parents is school and having children who achieve their potential whatever that may be.  While N is always learning on the farm, this year he’s really progressed in other ways.

• He’s discovered he can actually read, and I’ve even caught him a couple of times reading his own chapter books from home – Wimpy Kid (with all its Americanisms, here we come)
• His maths strength continues – being moved up 2 tables as soon as he moved into year 2 really boosted his confidence and prevented him from being bored
• With Horrible Histories and Operation Ouch being top of his tv watching list, he knows more about history than I know and is now relating what he’s learnt on there with other learning when we’re on days out
• Thank you grammar and spellings.  N really isn’t a creative thinker, he’s not one for thinking up and writing stories without prompts, but give him logical learning, or something with a black or white answer, and he’s lapping it up.  I have to say he’s jammy with his spellings because he’s a last minute crammer, but it’s working for him and proving me wrong

Physical highlights

The outdoors is still N’s true love, whether it’s on the farm or on his bike, I’m seeing him improving so much at other physical activities.  He’s never happier than when he’s driving his quad bike, and so far he’s proved responsible.  His tennis is improving despite him going through phases of saying he wants to stop.  We’re negotiating that he needs to continue one activity so if he gives up tennis, he needs to take up another club at school and another sport outside of school. At the moment it looks like he’ll continue tennis outside, but give up the school one because there’s mostly younger children there and he gets exasperated with them not listening.

Swimming is an area he’s done so well at considering the agony we went through when he was younger. Now he’s improving his technique, he’s enjoying his lessons, and being used as a demo for some bits in his class.  Starting swimming with school this year has helped as well.  And he’s finding his way – we just need to build his determination and stamina for crawl which he’s weaker on.

Bringing up a nice boy

One thing I always like to hear is compliments about N from teachers, TAs and others.  Ok, so no-one is going to tell you that your child is a nightmare, but so many people have said what a nice boy N is.

At home it’s not always great.  I’m sometimes on the receiving end of tears whenever he wants to stay on the farm but I’m insistent that’s he’s had enough time on it and is due to come out for the day with me.  And it wasn’t pretty on Halloween evening when he got stroppy because we’d not carved the pumpkin and I refused to because we didn’t have time.  I don’t mind the occasional outburst. It shows he has a bit of spirit and strong opinions sometimes. But generally he’s a lovely boy to have around and I’m proud of the boy he’s become.

N’s also lovely to have a conversation with.  He’ll show how much he likes someone, having not grown out of freely giving hugs out to anyone he wants.  He thinks about things before doing them, and understands how other people might feel.  N is growing to be more of a thinker and not just a risk averse child who wants to check things first.

I’m also seeing him thinking more about friends, talking about them and valuing the differences between them and what they bring into his life. Hopefully he’ll go through school with nice caring friends, who challenge him, but without any fights and too many dramas.

2018 New Year Wishes

Friends. In 2017 I’ve been a bit rubbish at catching up with friends. So I’d like to try and get together with more of them, especially because it’s not going to be long before N isn’t going to want to be out with me so I’m going to have lots more free time.

Family.  I’m still hopeful we’ll get the OH on a family holiday with us.  Possibly not camping, but a few days away somewhere. Or maybe even a foreign holiday.  We’ll definitely be doing our annual friends camping trip again.

Health. Next year I will be going back on my diet again and must lose my weight.  I want to be able to go on holiday and be comfortable in nice holiday clothes, and continue to play tennis with N as he gets better at it.  Hopefully he will continue playing as well.  I also want to get fitter for dancing.

Learning. Of course, I want N to continue to grow and learn at school. He’ll have SATs in 2018, and I’m hoping he’ll be as relaxed about them as he was about the year 1 phonics test.  For myself, I’d like to finish the courses I’ve started (I’ve started a flower photography course and have numerous social media and blogging courses either started or waiting to start).  My aim is to get everything more successful without me needing to spend as much time on blogging. While I still love blogging after 6 years, I know N will want to be on it less, so there’ll be less to write, and I’ll need to catch up on all the sleep I’ve missed out on by staying up late too much.

Hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and a happy new year.  Hope to see you back on the blog or social media in 2018.

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