Early parental behaviours that can predict academic success decades later!

A new study by Raby et al (2014) has found that sensitive parenting, including responding to a child's signals quickly and appropriately during the first three years of their life can lead to increased academic performance and better outcomes, even into the child's 20's and 30's.

Researcher's observed parents and babies during the first three years of the babies' lives.  Following this, standardised academic tests were administered.  Results showed that the children who received sensitive parenting, showed increased academic performance.

This highlights the importance of interactions between parents and babies in the early years of their childhood!!

What's your parenting style?

Set goals, not resolutions!!

It's the new year which means new year's resolutions.  How many years have you found yourself setting resolution after resolution to lose weight, make more money, give up junk food etc, only to find that it's February and you haven't been to the gym in weeks, and have just eaten a chocolate brownie!!

Why is it that new year's resolutions don't work?  Simply put, they are often overly generalised or vague, and don't have the specificity and planning which is needed to help us succeed.

My advice - set goals (and make them good ones!!).

Here are some simple principles to put in to play which have been demonstrated to help people achieve their goals.

1)  Goals must be specific!!  Want to lose weight?  How much do you want to lose?  In what time frame do you want to achieve it?  How will you measure it?  
 Goals that are both specific and difficult lead to the highest performance (Locke, 1996).  Making a goal specific helps us direct our action clearly and makes us more likely to achieve a difficult goal.

2)  We need to be committed to our goals, particularly when they are difficult.  Our commitment to goals comes through our belief that the goal is important (Locke, 1996).  When setting your goals, reflect on how important you feel it is that you achieve it.  Did you set the goal yourself, or are you trying to please someone else?

3)  Self efficacy and our feeling of competence to achieve a goal fosters goal achievement.  Do you feel that you have the skills or abilities to achieve your goal?  If not, what will help you to feel more confident?  Do you need a mentor, or perhaps additional resources like materials or information.  The more empowered you feel, the more likely you are to achieve your goal!  

4)  Set implementation intentions.  Implementation intentions are the small situational cues we set in line with our goals, which prompt us to take action.  For example, your goal is to spend one hour each day studying.  Your implementation intentions may include the exact time you plan on studying (6pm each night), where you will do it (the desk in your room, with the TV off), the materials you need to do it (notepad, textbook, highlighters).  Setting implementation intentions has been shown to increase goal attainment on difficult tasks (Gollwitzer, 1999).

5)  Write it down and share it with others!!  You're much more likely to succeed if you put your goal in writing, and enlist the support of others by sharing it with them!!

I hope this has helped with a touch of motivation to start 2015!!  What are you goals for the new year?  

References

Gollwitzer, P.M.  (1999).  Implementation intentions:  Simple effects of simple plans.  American Psychologist, 54(7), 493-503 

Locke, E.  (1996).  Motivation through conscious goal setting.  Applied and Preventative Psychology, 5(2), 117-124  

Christmas Entertaining

Christmas time is officially here!!  As I get older I have become a sucker for Christmas time and absolutely love decorating the tree, shopping for presents and baking Christmas cookies.

Even though Dash is only 12 weeks old, Christmas time seems so much more magical now we've become a family!!

I wanted to order birth announcement cards for family and friends after Dashiel was born but had missed the boat.  I ordered these fantastic Christmas cards in a gift tag shape from Minted and thought they would make a wonderful substitute.

The wonderful photo of Dash was taken by Victoria Poulton Photography  

I've started an annual tradition with friends - baking cookies!!  This year, we did Vanilla Snap Cookies and Gingerbread Men.  The decorating is the fun part!!

Christmas Tree Decorations - Country Road

String Lights (wall) - Freedom

Gift Cards - Minted.com

Adjusting to Motherhood - Part Two

I still feel so lucky to have such a beautiful baby!  Although, for any new mum, adjusting to the pressures of looking after a newborn is not easy.  In part one of this post, I lamented over some of the challenges I've experienced so far.  I thought I'd quit my whining today and instead write about some of the things that have helped me to feel more in control again.

1)  Exercise - get out and about with the pram
One of the best things you can do for your mental health is a walk every day.  Now that you're attached at the hip to a small child, getting to the gym won't be so easy.  A walk with the pram is wonderful for breaking up the monotony of being house bound, clears the head, helps get bub to sleep and is great for fitness.

2)  Get out of the house every day
Being home all day is incredibly isolating, especially when previously easy tasks like tidying up or popping to the shops are so much more difficult.  I found that making an effort to go out somewhere every day makes a massive difference - whether it be a coffee or lunch with a friend or just going out for a hair appointment, doctor's appointment, trip to the shops or whatever....whilst it might take me a long time to get out the door, I feel so much better for doing so.

3)  Spend some time reconnecting with things you enjoy

I've made a conscious effort to try and do things like pick up my guitar, to try and bake something new and to get back into writing blog posts.  Some days it might take forever to do any one of those things but even 20 minutes of doing something you enjoy while baby is sleeping is truly wonderful.

4) Join a new mothers group

I've actually really enjoyed joining a mothers group - it's fantastic to be able to speak to mothers going through the same things at the same time and to ask all those poop related questions you're too embarrassed to discuss with your non-mother friends.  

5)  Accept that some days things will be out of your control

I think I really struggled with not being able to have control over my day.  There are those days where the baby does not want to stop crying or does not want to go to sleep where you just can't get anything done.  I'm gradually learning that at this point in my life, my priority needs to be Dash.  It all pays off when I see him smile!!

6)  Enlist help!

We've started using a cleaner once a fortnight and I have to say it has been such a big help!  I honestly don't know how I would get to all the housework otherwise.  Two hours a fortnight has made a massive difference.  Otherwise asking for help from friends or family to help out when you're having a rough day is really important!!  A friend recently delivered me some home cooked meals, and it was the best gift I could have been given!!  

Motherhood is a massive adjustment, but like all things in life, it gets easier with time....and the rewards are absolutely wonderful!! 

Lemon Bars

Keeping with my lemon themed baking (see my lemon yoghurt cake here!!), I decided to give these delicious lemon bars a go!!  They're based on the recipe from the Tartine Cookbook, but I saw the recipe on the Late Afternoon Blog and they looked so good I had to give them a go!!

Sometimes I have those days where I get it all wrong!!  I attempted these two nights ago after just getting my little baby to sleep.  After making a beautiful base and having the filling ready to go, I some how managed to burn the hell out of the base, set off the smoke alarm and wake my poor bubba!!   I didn't have enough butter left to try and re-bake the base so had to throw away my filling after hand squeezing so many lemons!! :( Baking fail!! 

My oven seems to be set to overdrive so today I tried again but made a few temperature tweaks.

It was worth the second try!!  They look impressive, but were actually quite easy to make.  They're very sweet, so I'll be having mine with coffee!!  They also keep in the fridge for 4 days.

Ingredients:

Crust 

1/2 cup icing sugar

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

3/4 cups unsalted butter at room temp

Filling

1/2 cup all purpose flour

2 1/4 cups caster sugar

1 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice (approx 5 large lemons)

6 large whole eggs

1 large egg yolk

Directions :

Pre-heat the oven to 175 Degrees Celsius and butter 9 by 13 inch pan.

To make the crust, sift the sugar into the bowl of an electric mixer. Add the flour and butter. Beat on low speed until you get a nice soft dough. Evenly spread the dough on the bottom of your buttered pan (I just patted it down with my fingers). 

Bake for 15 - 20 minutes, or until the crust is golden brown. Make sure the crust is cooked evenly.

While the crust bakes, prepare the filling. Sift the flour into a mixing bowl. Add the sugar and mix together. Add the lemon juice and a little bit of lemon zest. Stir until the sugar has dissolved. Next add all of the eggs and whisk well. 

When the crust is ready, pull out the oven rack keeping the pan on the rack and pour the filing directly into the hot pan. Drop the temp down to 150 Degrees Celcius  and bake for 25 minutes or until the filling is no longer wobbly. 

Let cool almost all the way through. Cut into rectangles, top with powdered sugar and serve. 

Adjusting to Motherhood: Part One, Shock to the System!!

Having a baby has been a wonderful and amazing experience.  Never in my life could I imagine the love I would feel for this small creature who is becoming more and more amazing every day.

As a new mother, I can say that nothing could truly have prepared me for the experience of becoming a parent.
I did all the classes, bought all the accessories, outfits etc, decorated the nursery and read all the books, but at the end of the day, it's still a MASSIVE shock to the system!!

He sure is cute though!!!

Shock number 1:  Sleep Deprivation
After a painful C-Section and an exhausting day, the biggest thing on my mind was a good night's sleep and time to rest and recover....but sadly the realisation hits me - I will never (in the next few years at least) have an undisrupted night of sleep again!!!  Arggggghh!!!
At least for now (who am I kidding, forever...), I have coffee, lots of coffee....delicious coffee.

Shock number 2:  Complete and Utter Dependence
"Maybe I'll just pop out got a coffee and a pedicure" I think to myself..... uh oh, will the pram fit next to the spa pedi chair!?  Can the bub stay quiet while the beautician sloughs my hooves!?  Will I get dirty looks from the other patrons if he cries!?!?   The end result?  No pedicures....ever again!! (or for at least a few years).

Shock number 3:  The one hour window
A newborn baby needs to be fed approximately every two hours....but no one mentions that this two hour timeframe is from the start of the previous feed, and that feeding a newborn baby can take about one hour....this gives me a one hour window to leave the house before young Dash is crying and hungry again...by the time I pack a gigantic bag of baby related accessories, assemble the pram, get out the door, the hour is up :(

Shock number 4:  I will never travel light again
So I bought myself a stylin' Mimco baby bag in an attempt to look like a stylin' new mama...little did I know that just a couple of months later my sleek new bag would weigh about 10kg and be splitting at the seams... I had so little space left, I even left my Aesop hand cream at home *cries*!  What has become of me!?!?
I also seem to manage to get stuck in doorways on regular occasions because of the large girth of my bag and accidentally took out several jars of unsuspecting jam in the supermarket recently *runs and hides behind the smallgoods section*.

Shock number 5:  I pretty much can't wear anything in my closet any more
Although it seems obvious, I didn't think about planning a breastfeeding friendly wardrobe for post birth...now every time I put something on, I have to think about how I can breastfeed in public without ending up half naked in a cafe.  This rules out pretty much all dresses and many tops!!
....and when I do finally find a breast accessible top, I have to consider that it's highly likely to will be covered in milk/spit-up/wiz in probably about 10 minutes, I kid you not!!!

Shock number 6:  A newborn baby poops pretty much every time he eats
'nuff said....

Stay tuned for part two of this post, with some tips I've learned for adjusting to life post baby!!

Weekly Roundup

Blog posts have been far and few over the past months!!  My apologies for my absence....this year so far I have managed to:

1)  Start a masters degree

2)  Sell an apartment

3)  Buy a townhouse

4)  Move house

5)  Have a baby

Not a bad effort if you don't mind me saying so!!  I promise now that I'm off work and adjusting to life with a newborn baby that the blog posts will resume, with more posts on psychology, life, recipes, fashion, design, music and all things wonderful - I may even throw in a few about motherhood and adjusting to life as a parent.  In the meantime, the festive season is fast approaching and I'll have some silly season posts coming soon.  

Here are some of my favourite links of the week - Happy Friday!!

12 weekend habits of highly successful people

How to get ready for a party in five minutes

A clever tiny space

A great idea for Christmas gift wrapping

Did anyone else love Penny Lane's outfits in Almost Famous??

10 tips for working from home

A cute pastel dress for summer

Four types of sleep schedules we all fit in to - which one are you!?