Holly Wainwright with her family.

By HOLLY WAINWRIGHT

An experience I will never, ever forget.

I wasa new mum. My baby was five weeks old. I looked like a mother, wandering around with birds-nest hair and a 1000-yard stare, holding an infant. But I didn’t feel like a mother.

I felt like a fraud. I felt like I was the only person alive who was deeply, deeply confused about what to do with this tiny person who had been recklessly placed in my care.

I was also madly in love. And just like in other love affairs before this, I couldn’t understand why the object of my affections would treat me so bad.

Keeping me awake, yes, but also keeping me guessing in pretty much every regard – why won’t she eat when I think she should eat? Why won’t she fill her nappies on command from the baby book? Why does she cry, and cry and cry when I just love her so? And so on. The minutae of new motherhood is exhausting, and incomprehensible to anyone on the outside.

Just as an FYI, this post is sponsored by Omo Ultimate. But all opinions expressed by the author are 100 per cent authentic and written in their own words.

Taking myself and my tiny tyrant out of our bubble and into an Early Childhood Centre for a gathering of new mums took every ounce of will and courage I could muster. It is very hard to look back and understand why it’s so hard for new mums to get out of the house, but it just is. Especially to a deadline. Especially when you know other people will be looking at you. And your baby.

But with sometears and drama, out of the house we did go.  And taking my place on that circle of plastic chairs changed my life.

I wasn’t the only one who didn’t understand why my baby would cry and cry and cry at 4pm.

Because it turned out I wasn’t the only one who didn’t understand why my baby would cry and cry and cry at 4pm.

I wasn’t the only one who was worrying about poo, how it would stay away for a day and then seemingly flow forever.

I wasn’t the only one who was stressed that I couldn’t measure how much breast-milk my daughter was actually drinking. “But how do I know she’s getting enough?”

And I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t understand why all the “settling techniques” in the book didn’t work for day sleeps. Turns out, they weren’t working for anyone.

Some of those women, I never saw again. Some of them became friends I nowcouldn’t imagine my life without. But what happened in that moment was that I realised that all of us, who had no idea what we were doing, were learning all the time, and the important part was the exchange of experience, which continues, with each child, with each age.

Now, I don’t need to worry about day sleeps and breast milk.

Now, I worry about getting my kids to eat vegetables. I worry about school choices, and why my daughter doesn’t write as well as the kid sitting next to her at preschool.

But now I know where they keep the wisdom. They keep it in a group of mums, none of whom think they know anything, sitting around sharing information.

I will walk away from the playground, or from an online conversation, or a chance encounter at the shops, or from lunch with my mum mates, with a whole slew of new ideas on how to deal with whatever it is that’s keeping me up at nights.

And I realise that over the years, I have earned some wisdom.

What’s important is that she gets to jump.

I’ve earned the wisdom to know what matters, and what really doesn’t. I’ve learned that what’s important to me is what’s important to my child. If she’s upset about it, if she wants to try to explain it, if she needs me to see it, to hear it, then it’s important. If I care, but she doesn’t, then it can wait.

If it’s about me worrying about appearances, about herruining her princess dress by jumping in a muddy puddle, it’s not important. What’s important is that she gets to jump, to show me how happy it makes her, how much she can do. That’s what matters. Not what others see.

That’s a rule that will shift again as the years bring us new challenges but it seems to me that in the mad rush of a typically busy day, if I have to sift out what’s really at the top of the To Do list, it’s as good a filter as any to work out what’s worth worrying about now, and what can be dealt with later.

So, what do I know for sure about parenting? We think we’re failing, but we’re not. We think we know nothing, but really, we all know a whole lot more than we think we do, and we’re all in it together.

Really, against all the odds, we are wise.

My bit of wisdom: Share your problems. Ask every other parent what works for them. When you worry about judgement, and keep problems to yourself, you are the one who suffers. Reach out, however you can.

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By HOLLY WAINWRIGHT

So here’s something I wasn’t worrying about when I uploadedthat really cute picture of my really cute kids on Saturday:

Somebody stealing the picture of my child, pretending they were their’s, and using it in a complex role-playing game where they invent what my baby might say or do.

Baby Role-Playing is the new thing sent to freak parents out aboutonline safety.

Role players build fake families, and interact with each other in the voice of the imaginary children.

What does it look like? This:

That baby does not belong to adoptionrp. But the user has taken the pics and used them as their own pretend baby to play along in family role play.

So one commenter says, “You’re so adorable.” And Mystery Baby answers back, “Tank ooo.”

Creepy? A little. Sad? Definitely.

Why would anyone take photos of stranger’s children and pretend they were their own? A post onFast Company, a technology site, explored the phenomena, and found that as far as it was possible to tell, most of the players were teenagers, often from an unhappy family environment.

FC spoke to psychiatrist Gail Saltz, who said:

 “It’s more exciting to be testing these fantasies online and not in their minds because there’s some follow through online and yet they’re behind the safety of their computer in their bedroom. This is another variation of that. These role players have a desire to try on the fantasy of being a family person, a mother, whatever it might be that they’re searching for or void they’re trying to fill.”

But some of the comments on these feeds take a far more sinister tone, with the “baby” posting messages about nudity and breastfeeding that have a distinctly abusive edge.

When one US mother found this had happened to her child, she started getting strange messages to her Instagram account, and contacted the administrators. She told Fast Company, “I explained that this private user had stolen photos of my infant daughter. Their response was that this was impersonation of a minor and I should be reporting that a minor is using Instagram. I wrote back and said this is not a minor using Instagram. She claims she’s 14 and she’s using a picture of my baby and other babies. They never responded.”

Another example of the #adoption trend.

A petition on Change.org didn’t attract many signatures.

Another group who are likely to build fantasy families are parents who are desperate for children of their own, and some sites, like BabyNames.com have actually created forums where players can do this, but within strict guidelines that include no stolen photos. There the players can reinvent themselves as a mother of three, post pics of their dream nurseries, baby clothes and houses, and discuss their child’s personalities and development as if they were real.

Parents love Instagram. And we love Facebook. We expend an enormous amount of effort, time, tears and love on our kids, and sometimes we just want to show them off. Or update our family and friends about their progress. Or just represent the reality of lives that feature children front and centre.

But savvy parents are wary of sharing too much – we know that swimmers are essential, there’s a strict no-bathtime rule, and that overposting of their heart-aching cuteness is going to annoy just about everyone.

And now we have something new to be worried about. Argh.

By HOLLY WAINWRIGHT

In news that will make snarky parents everywhere smile a secret smile, there’s a sequel to possibly the most famous non-children’s children’s book of all time, “Go The F-k To Sleep.”

You know the one. The one that all the celebrities read out in honey-tinged voices.

The one that made its author, the professionally hilarious Adam Mansbach, famous and wealthy. 

You know,THIS one.

Well now he’s done it again. And this time, instead of targetting sleep-deprived parents (that’s, um, all of them), Mansbach is going for the fussy eater crowd. Because there are a lot of those, too:

We don’t know what’s in this book yet, beyond this one preview pic:

But as the mother of one VERY fussy 2 year-old, I have a few suggestions. And I know this is not in cutesy rhyming couplets, but when you’ve spent TWO YEARS trying to get a very tiny, very strong-minded little person to eat one measly little spear of broccoli (no, not the same one), you haven’t got the patience for that level of creative endeavour.

So, in honour of my beloved boy, here’s my version, ‘Just eat the f-ing food.’

Yes, I know the day ends in a ‘Y’ , but just eat the f-ing food.

Yes, I know that vegetable appears to be green, but just eat the f-ing food.

Yes, I know that’s not your red dinosaur plate, it’s your blue dinosaur plate, but c’mon, just eat the f-ing food.

Yes, I know that the biscuit’s not perfectly square, but just eat the f-ing food.

Yes, it’s fruit. Just eat the f-ing food.

Yes, I know it’s what you had last night, and the night before, and the night before. Just eat the f-ing food.

Don’t worry Adam, I think your job’s safe.

Did you love Go The F- To Sleep? 

By HOLLY WAINWRIGHT

I look forward to afamily holidaylike a starving woman in sight of a breakfast buffet.

I crush on the very idea of not having anywhere to be at five-minutes-ago O’Clock, of it not mattering a jot if no-one wants to get out of their PJs til 11 and actually getting to have a conversation with my other half, rather than, you know, just verbally running through the epic ‘to-do’ list of life.

I salivate at the thought of taking the kids out for relaxed early dinners where we’re not rushing to a “school-night” bedtime deadline, at the idea that a change of scenery will mean a reprieve from the dreaded daily task list, and I cling to the idea that a change of pace will transform me from the mum I am – parenting style: shrieky banshee – to the mum I want to be – parenting style: chilled-out confidante.

And then it comes. And three days in,I want to go home. Badly. Because clearly, I’ve been suffering from family holiday amnesia.

Don’t get me wrong. There are many, many wonderful things about spending 24-7 with your loved ones in anunfamiliar location. But if you are on the brink – or slap-bang in the middle – of school holiday away time and are not loving it quite as much as you know you should, take heart. You’re not alone.

Here are the seven truths of the family holiday:

1. The first night will suck. The kids won’t sleep in a strange place, they’re too excited because the place is so awesome/terrible and they’re just so hyped-up/terrified. Plus, they’re out of routine and they slept in the car. That first holiday glass of wine is retreating further and further away with every failed bedtime attempt.

2. Everyone will get sick. You know that hospital/medical centre/GP you drove past on the way in? You should have taken the number down because you will need it. You will wile away lazy afternoons in the waiting room at A&E/ that quaint family doctor. Accident and illness love holidays as much as you did, before you left. 

3. Everyone will fight. The kids are fuelled by sugary holiday treats and too much time together, and you and your partner are fuelled by the stress of constantly trying to get the kids to stop fighting. 

4. The weather will turn on you. And then you’re trying to entertain bored kids in a place bereft of all your usual props. Before you know it, you’re driving through a drippy pristine wilderness looking for a Maccas with an epic slippy-slide or God forbid, a shopping mall with a “soft-play place”. Shudder.

5. Romance is dead. Remember holiday sex? Well, forget it again. You’ll be lucky to spend any time in the same bed, and are most likely to wake up with a child’s foot in your face and the words ‘I’m scared of the corners’ or ‘Emily farts in her sleep’. Ditto the sleep-in. Best to just pretend those words do not exist. For 13 years.

Think again.

6. You will forget the most important charger. The last family holiday we went on required a ziplock bag with seven different plug-ins for seven different devices. And I still forgot the iPad one. And with that, there went our favourite lie-in distraction device.

Alternatively, trying to track down a shop that sells said charger becomes a holiday obsession you can barely control.

And finally.

7. Your preschooler will vomit up their pricey dinner on the table in the middle of a packed restaurant. Oh, I think that one’s just me…

So, enjoy the break. Because, remember. You’re making memories. And no-one said they all had to be good ones.

In fact, sometimes the ‘bad’ ones are the best.

Are you loving the family holiday right now?

Come and LikeHolly on Facebook. She needs some Friends who aren’t two-feet tall.

By HOLLY WAINWRIGHT

Picture this:

You’re feeling tired and crabby with your kids.

You yell at your daughter to hurry up and brush her teeth, and no matter how loudly you shout, or how serious you make that tone, she refuses to do it. When you push her on why she’s ignoring you, the 10-year-old disappears into her room and comes out with a list.

A list of all the events you’ve missed in her life because you’ve been at work.

Theballet recitals, the first day at schools, the play, the tuck-shop duty. Her soccer game, a parent-teacher night and the Halloween dress-up parade.

You feel terrible. You know there was a good reason why you had to be somewhere else, but suddenly you see the mountain of missed moments from your daughter’s perspective, and you feel like crap.

This happened. That list is real. It’s what happened to the male CEO of one of the world’s biggest bond-trading businesses. A man who earned a gajillion dollars a year (okay, I exaggerate, he ‘only’ took home $100 million a year). And do you know what he did?

He quit his job.

The man in question, Mohamed El-Erian, wrote in an essay forWorth:

“The list contained 22 items…  I felt awful and got defensive: I had a good excuse for each missed event! Travel, important meetings, an urgent phone call, sudden to-do.

“But it dawned on me that I was missing an infinitely more important point. As much as I could rationalise it — as I had rationalised it — my work-life balance had gotten way out of whack, and the imbalance was hurting my very special relationship with my daughter. I was not making nearly enough time for her.”

Mohamed El-Erian at PIMCO.

It’s strangely reassuring that the endless dilemma of thework-life juggle doesn’t discriminate, whether you’re working two jobs to pay your rent, or are one of the most highly-paid money-men in the world, you’re still missing your kid’s dance recital, and she still doesn’t like it.

But would you quit your job if your child did the same thing? If your kids made it known that they hated the time that work took you away from them?

It’s a confronting question, isn’t it?

Because, of course, when you are a gajillionaire, you CAN quit your job. Something the great majority of us can’t do.

All many of us can do is try to manage time and expectation between work and family, and try to land in a place where the two can co-exist while still paying the bills.

But the fact that such a high-profile man is discussing the issue can only be a Good Thing.

Because the work-life juggle (like childcare and maternity leave) is framed as a Woman problem, when in reality it’s a Human problem, relevant to everyone with, you know, a life.

When women quit their high-profile jobs, they are met with sympathy and support – and a little bit of hand-wringing fromworking mums like me who see their own family fears reflected back at them. But when men do it we tend to see it as a mysterious excuse. Mohamed, in such a high-profile position, was subject to many whispered rumours about office assassination when he  took his own giant step back.

A survey conducted in the US last year found that 50% of men were stressed about balancing the demands of family and work, compared to 56% of women. Same-same, people.

I have a full-time job. And when people hear the age of my children (4 and 2) they never fail to comment that I must “really have my hands full”, that it “must be difficult” and the fact that my children are young.

All of those observations are fair enough. I understand.

But it seems almost redundant to point out that my partner is never on the receiving end of those comments (in fact, if anything, he is always told he “lucky” that he chooses to work four days a week, a comment that I have never heard directed at a woman who works part-time).

Men are still rarely put under pressure by society to make sure they’re spending enough quality time with their kids, in fact they’re frequently heralded and applauded for being hard-workers who are sacrificing family time in order to provide.

So maybe, just maybe, Mohamed El-Erian should become an unlikely feminist pin-up. A man who takes family responsibility seriously.

A man who listened when his daughter presented him with the list that we’d all dread reading.

So, would you quit your job if your child asked you to?

Watch the very excellent Georgie Gardner resign her marvellous job for family reasons.

By HOLLY WAINWRIGHT

I don’t want to shock you. But. There was a stripper at theGrand Final yesterday.

Not a streaker – the kind of nudity we’re happy to laugh of as harmless hijinks – but a woman apparently paid to take her clothes off for a corporate crowd in a fancy box.

Because those boxes are, you know, see-through (so you can see the FOOTBALL from them), everyone copped an eyeful of Heather McCartney as she lost her Hawthorn garb and flashed the crowd.

I know. Yawn.

All the people in the box, and who own the box, are now scrapping over who paid Heather to undress, but either way. Yawn.

Every year, around this time, the festival of Australian blokeiness reaches an epic, vomiting crescendo in two massive weekends – the AFL Grand Final, and the NRL Grand Final.

And every year we are reminded that no matter how far we’ve come, when it comes to how a certain type of bloke behaves when he is in the company of other certain types of blokes, fuelled by 27 beers and the common cause of football, there’s a large part of the male culture that is just – douchey.

A stripper for the football final seems like a great idea. Ditto getting into a bit of biffo. Dressing up as Rolf Harris with schoolgirls. Soggy biscuits. Weeing in their own mouths for that epic selfie moment (which you can view here).

 This man told Network Ten News that he picked up the Grand Final stripper’s g-string because, “It’s a collectors’ item.” Just sayin’.

You know, that kind of thing.

I am not suggesting for one moment that all sportsmen, or the men who love to watch them, are these kinds of douches. They most certainly are not. There are many, many footballers and football fans who are great men, hardworking, women-loving, great-mate-to-have-at-your-back kind of men.

I love those guys. I have kids with one of those guys.

But there’s no denying the douche element. And, as a culture, our tolerance of it. Our willingness to label male misadventure as “a bit of fun”.

And there’s also no denying that during footy-finals-fever,  the douchery reaches epic levels.

I have a little boy. He’s two-and-a-half, and he’s the cutest thing you have ever seen. That you have EVER SEEN.

He has golden curls and big blue eyes and he loves dinosaurs, and he worships his big sister like the deity she believes herself to be.

And like every mother who has ever existed in the history of the universe, I look at him sometimes and panic about what he will become.

One day, will I be collecting him from a police station after he was arrested for eating his own vomit for a dare outside a pub? Yes, people, I’ve seen that happen.

Holly and her son Billy.

Possibly.

One day, will I be driving him to emergency after one of his “mates” thought it would be funny to see how many beer bottles they could open with their teeth?

It could happen.

One day, will he be slapped in the face by a furious woman after he’s drunkenly misread (or disregarded) her signals and groped her on a dancefloor? Maybe even beaten up by her furious boyfriend?

I hope not.

But all of those things are possible. Because my son’s Dad and I will try to instil in our boy respect, and self-regard, and boundaries. But ultimately, he’s going to be his own person. And he’s going to be influenced by others around him. We all are.

And he’s going to want to have fun. And he’s going to want to take risks.

As parents, we have many, many fears. Some of them are dark, indeed. Way, way worse than strippers.

But at this time of year, as I hurry my kids past the local beer garden where a gang of overly-muscled, badly-tattooed meatheads are braying at every passing girl, there’s just one that keeps coming back.

Please, don’t let my little boy be a douche.

So, any tips on how to raise non-douchey men?

Come and Like Holly on Facebook. Unless you’re a douche, of course.

Holly and her son Billy. He likes his toast To Go.

By HOLLY WAINWRIGHT.

Confession time.

There’s something that my youngest child uses every single day that I have washed twice in four years.

Something that, according to scientists who know such things, is likely to house twice as many germs as you’ll find on a toilet seat.

I’m talking about myson’s car seat.

A study from Birmingham University about my disgusting hygiene standards typical household germs recently discovered that the the average car seat houses 100 potentially dangerous bacteria PER SQUARE CENTIMETRE.

Another study, conducted in the US, found that out of 20 car seats tested, two tested positive for E.Coli and one for Staph. Neither of which are things you want hitchhiking on the school run.

I’m trying hard not to feel like these scientists are out to get me, because it’s been a tough week, but this news is not in the least bit surprising.

Because my son’s car seat is gross.

My boy only likes to eat his morning meal in the car. It doesn’t matter how long that piece of toast has been sitting on his plate at the breakfast table, he will not take a bite until it’s time to leave the house. And then he will eat the squishy bits of the toast in his carseat and stash the crusts wherever he feels like it. Most likely down the side of his seat.

And then there are all those colds that this winter has brought to our blessed family home. His nose has been running like a tap for three months now.

And then there was that time that everything went really quiet in the backseat and I turned around to see that he had got his hands one of those squeezy fruit pouches and was quietly working it into all the crevasses of his Safe N Sound..

A close up of the car seat revealed that even the germs were grossed-out.

Or that time I gave him a banana on the way home from swimming. Who even DOES that?

And then let’s pause to remember that before my son got his sticky paws on that carseat, his sister had already been annointing it with crap for two years. The only time it’s been cleaned is after two particularly unpleasant vomiting incidents (we’re not animals, people).

Oh my God,my car seat is going to KILL MY CHILDREN.

The science-shaming from the boffins of Birmingham worked. I got up this morning and Googled ‘How to clean my baby car seat’ – and was so exhausted by the wealth of advice on the matter that I decided that this was a job best left to someone else, and promptly sent the links to my partner.

But one thing that I did learn is that the trick to not feeling entirely defeated by the idea of removing and reinstalling your car-seat to clean it is apparently taking lots of pictures of it on your phone, so you know where all the buckles and straps go.

So I went to the car to take pictures, and found THIS:

The culprit. Note the toast crust disappearing down a crevice.

I’m hoping that before the long weekend is out, my boy’s feral car seat is going to go from a crummy calamity to THIS:

Next week, the carseat will look like this.

Holly and her son Billy.

By HOLLY WAINWRIGHT

On the hour. every hour.

Imagine being woken up every night, at hourly intervals, by the call of the person you love the most in the world.

It sounds like a great privilege. And it is. Comforting your baby when they’ve woken in fear, or hunger, or pain, is a parent’s job, and it brings profound satisfaction.

But every single hour of the night, for months and months, maybe years and years?

It stops being a beautiful, nurturing moment. It starts to becomedangerous.

Everybody needs to sleep. It sounds ridiculous. It sounds elementary, but when it comes to the politics of babies and what they do at night, it becomes the most emotive debate of all the baby debates (and that – that’s really saying something).

Dr Brian Symon aka The Babysleep Doctor.

This week the argument about whether or not we should try to “teach” babies to sleep is back. It’s back due to newspaper coverage of a Doctor from Adelaide who calls himself theThe Babysleep Doctor. He’s really called Dr Brian Symon, and he advocates that after six months of age, you should be able to prepare your baby for bed, put them down, reassure them and then walk out and close the door at 7pm, not reopening it until 7am.

Anyone who has ever met a six-month-old baby will tell you that this is the sort of crazy, impossible dream that once sent educated men riding of on camels in search of the inland sea.

But Dr Symon is not suggesting this happens instantly, but rather after a period of comforted “training”. He is certainly not alone in that.

Still, after the article about his methods appeared in a weekend newspaper, he has pulled out of the Melbourne Baby and Child Expo this weekend, as his presence was deemed so controversial that it would disrupt the whole event. You see, a lot of people are really, really angry at what Dr Symon insists is possible, and scientifically justifiable – a good night’s sleep.

Sydney-based Dr Howard Chilton is one such person. The well-respected baby doctor’s philosophy is basically the exact opposite of Dr Symon, as he wrote on his Facebook page:

It is a method of pure abandonment… but it can be effective to silence babies at night. The reason it ‘works’ is that evolution has developed within humans a mechanism that, if the baby feels (s)he is abandoned, crying ceases to protect the baby from attracting predators. It’s called ‘extinction’. Stress remains high (hence it can induce vomiting) but the baby falls silent. This, unfortunately, is precisely at a time when the baby is developing his long-term brain wiring about whether he is loved, valued and safe.

And so, here we are, in a familiar place. Parents caught between duelling philosophies about how to do the most high-stakes job of their lives – raise a decent, happy, well-adjusted little person.

For the most part, parents who seek out the wisdom of baby doctors are Trying To Do The Right Thing. A truly neglectful or deliberately cruel parent is unlikely to be trawling baby books and shelling out the kind of money and time required to enlist the services of a sleep expert. So let’s assume that all the parents advocating for and against sleep-training are well-meaning, and love their children. Let’s get that out of the way.

But why would any parent choose to leave their baby crying alone in a closed room for 12 hours?

Only for one reason – because they’redesperate, and they need to sleep.

I get it.

He looks so innocent. But my gorgeous son is the sleep monster.

 My second child, my little golden-headed boy, is a terrible sleeper. He is almost two-and-a-half, can run and dance and talk and decimate tidy rooms within minutes. But he still can’t sleep through the night.

He wakes up at least once, sometimes more, every single night, and he wants someone to settle him back to sleep.

Why do my partner and I put up with that, when he’s old enough to put on his own shoes?

Because compared to where we’ve been, it is heaven.

Billy was never a good sleeper, apart from a blissful few months when he was a tiny baby. He was in a cot in our bedroom for almost a year. Some nights, often, he woke every single hour.

Every single hour. And cried. Any parent will tell you that your baby’s cry is the most stressful noise you can hear. And one of us would settle him, and tiptoe back to bed, steal some fevered sleep, and then he’d wake up and scream some more.

And yes, of course we saw doctors, and we asked is-it-colic and is-it-reflux, and we tried every strategy we could find online and in sleep books (including this one). Yes, yes, all that.

But he just screamed.

We moved out of our room, two grown adults sleeping on a camp bed in our lounge room while we tried to sleep-train him (his big sister is in the other bedroom). We moved out for four nights – it ended up being six months. And still he woke, and still he cried.

Holly and her family. They look happy. But they’re tired.

During this time, I went back to work. Despite the state of my head at that time, I clearly remember the exhaustion.

It was like nothing else. The kind of tired that you feel in your bones, that blurs your vision like a pea-soup fog, that makes you want to cry.

Most parents know that feeling. And after months of that, months and months of that… well, it’s not good. Everything suffers, including your relationship with your child.

You feel that you’re trapped in a dark place, and that can the only thing that can rescue you is the one thing you can’t have –sleep.

We tried many things to try to get Billy to sleep, but  letting him cry for prolonged periods was not going to work for us.

The reasons are not necessarily the ones you imagine – by then we were desperate for him to sleep for his own sake – but they’re realistic ones: We live in a small place, we have close neighbours, we have a preschool-aged daughter who needs to sleep, too.

And so we got up to him, and settled him. And slowly, slowly, he began to sleep for longer. Perhaps as a result, he still needs one of us in the night.

But from my now almost-clear-eyed place, the judgement being flung at parents who choose ‘sleep-training’ (also, more harshly, known as ‘controlled crying’) this week angers me.

Labelling parents as selfish for trying to salvage their health and some sort of sanity, and rest for their child, is not helpful.

For working parents, and for parents with older children, it is not realistic to continue to preach a line of sleeping when the baby sleeps.

Caring only for one baby, and putting them and their broken sleep patterns at the centre of everything is not a luxury afforded to most families.

Most sleep-training programs are not as headline-grabbing hardline as Dr Symon’s. Most involve letting your baby cry for short periods, with regular reassurance that you are there for them.

Calling out all ‘controlled crying’ as cruel and harmful dismisses the experiences of thousands of people who knew they would be better parents if they Just. Got. Some. Sleep.

So let’s calm the f- down.

How about you? How did you survive the sleepless times?

Yes, Mamamia publishes a sleep-training book,The Gift Of Sleep. Is it controlled crying? Listen to the author, Elizabeth Sloane, answer that question.

Come and LikeHolly on Facebook. She’s tired, so she needs friends. 

Holly’s Partner and their two kids.

By HOLLY WAINWRIGHT

Dear People Who Judge My Partner,

Yes, clearly you were surprised to see a man.

A man at the play centre.

On a week day.

And he wasn’t on his iPad. He was actually playing. With his children.

Perhaps you couldn’t see that the reason he was crawling through that tunnel with all the kids was because he was trying to retrieve our runaway son who had become lost inside the jungle gym. I hope that’s why when he emerged, you glared at him and dashed into the play area to usher your kids away. You know what? You made him feel like he was doing something wrong. Which he wasn’t.

And that time he sat down next toyou and your child at the movies and you didn’t realise that our daughter was right behind him? You didn’t really need to make a big deal about moving your kid a few seats away. You really didn’t.

I know. I know that some men do unspeakable things to children. I know that if any of those things have ever happened in your world, it is not something you can ever, ever, push out of your mind, or stopbeing vigilant about.

And I know that a little offence taken by a grown man, on the scale of the horrendous things that happen to little kids every day, is not A Big Deal.

But here’s a thing that is A Big Deal – we need dads to be involved with their kids. And we need to see them doing it.

We need to see good fathers. Good role models. We need to hold them up and show that in the tsunami of stories about child abuse, sexual assault, family violence and deadbeat dads, there are Good Men.

Lots and lots of Good Men.

We need to see them being physical and affectionate andhands-onwith their children. We need to see that they are perfectly capable of looking after kids and home and being part of an equal partnership and a loving relationship. We need to see that they can be helpful and mindful of the safety of kids around them, even if they’re not their own.

Yes, that guy who put his hands on another person’s child in a playground this week was out of line. But the stories it spurred about men feeling judged and uncomfortable in children’s public spaces made me sad. And a little bit angry.

We need dads to be involved with their kids.

Because it happens to my partner all the time.

He is what you’d call a“hands-on dad”. There are lots of them. He has a day at home with our two little kids every week, and just like any sane human being, he knows that being under house-arrest with preschoolers is a legal form of torture. And so he’s the King of the Daytrip.

Playgroup. The library. The zoo. The duck pond. The park. The beach. Yes, the indoor play centre. Swimming class, complete with change-room drama.

And out in the world, in those places where mums and strollers rule, he is sometimes seen as strange, unwelcome, even dangerous.

He gets it. And he ignores it. But when you hurry your children out of his way, you are sending a message to him and to all of our children that men, all men, can not be trusted.

That there is something suspicious and strange about a male who chooses to spend time with his children and around other children.

But some men love children. Even that sentence is uncomfortable to type.

Before we had kids, he would always be the one rumbling with the big kids at barbecues and family parties. The one who wanted to cuddle the newborn on the first home visit.

Holly and her family.

Since I gave birth to our daughter almost five years ago, I have watched him grow and change in a way I never imagined. Grow completely comfortable in his role. He is a natural father. A person who gets genuine joy from spending time with our children, from playing with them, from comforting them, from teaching them stuff, and yes, even from feeding and clothing them.

And our children adore him. When they wake up scared or sick in the middle of the night, he and I are entirely interchangable. The cry goes out, ‘MummyDaddy, MummyDaddy, MummyDaddy!’ We share the role of their safe place.

In 2014, involved, adored dads like my partner are not unusual. So why are these dads still treated as a freak show?

The fact that child sexual abuse is no longer a dirty, silent secret but something that we are all aware of is a great leap forward in keeping our kids safe.

But pushing men out of public parenting spaces will not help anyone.

Who wants to live in a world where Dad can’t take the kids to the shops because people will be uncomfortable if he takes them into the Parents’ room when they need the toilet?

And how is it helpful if only mum is welcome at playgroup, kids’ swimming, ballet?

Surely the eyes of many, vigilant men keep our children safer? And surely kids seeing examples of compassionate, loving men all around them gives them something to aspire to? More choices of what their own families, their own partners, their own lives, could look like?

And also, there’s this. There is no more beautiful sight in the whole world than a happy dad playing with his kids. And it’s not something that should only happen behind closed doors.

That’s all.

In my house, 2014 feels like it’s been sponsored by Disney.

Frozen. Frozen. Frozen. We have Elsa costumes, we have the DVD on high-rotation. The CD’s playing in the car.We have Elsa and Anna action figures, we go to Frozen parties, we eat Frozen cake.

The look on my daughter’s face here pretty much sums it up:

But that’s not all. When my almost-5-year-old isn’t tugging on her hair, willing it to grow so she can have an ‘Elsa plait’, she’s ‘being’ Ariel. Ariel the Little Mermaid, who’s been swimming around pop culture since 1989.

My daughter has many, many questions about Ariel.

“How can she hold her breath underwater for so long?” She’s a mermaid.

“Can I be a Mermaid when I grow up?” That would be a no.

“Do sharks eat mermaids?” I would guess, yes.

I fought theDisney princesses for a long time. And then they beat me. My pre-preschooler instincts were that they were lousy role models, and that they promoted a very particular, very narrow view of what women were – in need of saving.

Source: Loryn Brantz.

But parenting stiffens your spine in so many ways, and chills you out in so many others. Now that I live in Princess Land. I’ve made my peace. Or have I given up?  I suppose I have decided that are many, many more serious things to worry about than the influence of Ariel, Elsa and her mates.

So I don’t want to be”one of those” parents who’s trying to steal away the magic and fantasy of childhood.

BUT. I wish they ate more, these girls.

I wish that the women who are my daughter’s idols, her moon and stars, her (cough, splutter) role models, had even vaguely realistic bodies, instead of waists the size of gnats, wrists like twigs and ankles that would never, ever make it full a whole night of dancing with a prince, handsome or otherwise.

Which is why I LOVE these illustrations, by photographer Loryn Brantz, where she’s taken the princesses and just made them ever so slightly “normal” in the waist department.

Like this:

Ariel, BEFORE. Source: Loryn Brantz.

Ariel, AFTER. Source: Loryn Brantz.

Because I genuinely don’t understand why the Princesses need to be QUITE SO THIN. Yes, yes, I can just about live with the idea they have to look beautiful and glamorous, and aspirational (just like a “real” princess), but I can’t think of a good reason why they are not just slim – in the ‘this is the western standard of beauty and princesses are beautiful’ kind of way – but in a teeny-tiny, sylph-like, so-light-they’re-almost-invisible way.

And Disney are not backing down on the thin-ness. After flirting with a slightly more human shape with Merida in Brave, they reverted straight to type with the almost feminist Elsa and Anna, neither of whom would have a chance of standing up on those spindly legs in real life.

Sigh. So hope with me that obsessing over these icons isn’t setting up my daughter for a lifetime of “Why don’t I look like that”. And instead enjoy Lauren’s imagined world where the princesses get dinner, as well as a handsome prince.

Ariel, The Little Mermaid. Source: Loryn Brantz.

Loryn Brantz is a two-time Emmy Award-winning illustrator and design professional. She lives in New York where she strives to create works that make people giggle no matter what the medium. You can check out her workhere. You can also connect with her via herFacebook orTumblr accounts.

To see the original article on BuzzFeed, clickhere.

This post was updated at 8.15pm.

By HOLLY WAINWRIGHT

Did you put a bet on the horses today? Throw some dollars in the office sweep?

Did you dig out an old hat, or your kid’s tiara, pull out a party dress, get stuck into the champagne?

Of course you did. I did.

In the Mamamia office, like in so many others, we stood around the big TV, in our not-a-normal-Tuesday dresses with our hats and our warm bubbles in hand, and we jeered and cheered and teased each other about where we were coming in the Sweep.

And then.

While everyone was mentally tallying their winnings and the nation went back to the bar, a horse was dying a horrible death. This happened just moments after the end of today’s Melbourne Cup in amongst thousands of happy racegoers.

Today’s race that stopped a nation has now killed two horses.

Again.

Today it was Cup favourite, Admire Rakti , who won the Caulfield Cup just two weeks ago. And tonight news has broken that a second horse, Araldo, was put down after an aborted attempt to save a severed leg.

Admire Rakti  in training.

Halfway through today’s race it became clear that there was something seriously wrong with Admire when he dropped back to last in the field– doubtless infuriating thousands of punters.

Admire Rakti  was gasping his last breaths.

Admire collapsing in stall after the race:

The Japanese officials who travelled across the world with him to run in one of the world’s richest races were with him when he collapsed immediately after the race and died in the stalls.

Tarps were put up around the stalls:

The green tarps are up at Admire Rakti’s stall.@TomElliott3AW@3AW693pic.twitter.com/AixNeOaFY7

— Tom Andronas (@tomandronas)November 4, 2014

The horse’s  jockey, Zac Purton, said: “I felt something was wrong unfortunately and I didn’t push him out otherwise it might have happened earlier.”

Back in our office, we felt awkward and uncomfortable. The envied winner muttered something about “blood money,” and we all went back to our day.

Then, almost immediately, came the news that another, Araldo, a locally-trained horse, had shattered his cannon bone after shying away from a flag-waving child on the side of the track. He put his leg through the fence and cut it severely.

Several hours later, he was dead, put down when an attempt to save his leg by inserting metal pins failed.

“It is with sadness that we confirm that Araldo has had to be humanely euthanised as a result of the injury it suffered in a freak accident following the Emirates Melbourne Cup,” confirmed Dr Brian Stewart, Racing Victoria’s Head of Veterinary & Equine Welfare.

You may also be interested in…

Will this photo stop you from going to the races this weekend? 

Three of the most powerful animal cruelty PSAs.

As social media erupts in anger, you have to wonder why any of us are even a tiny bit surprised. Twelve months ago, the same thing happened.

After the 2013 Melbourne Cup race, Verema, a four-year-old horse from Jordan, broke a leg and was euthanised behind a green screen on the track after the race as everyone looked away and filled up their glasses one more time.

But still. Today, we pulled on our hats, opened the wine and headed to the TAB.

The Mamamia Team preparing for the race.

Because Melbourne Cup is a party time, and Australians are always more than happy to punctuate the sometimes grinding monotony of every day life with a celebration. Anything will do. And a little fun and frivolity is certainly a welcome thing at a time of so much bad news both global and local.

The race that killed Admire Rakti today. Post continues after video. (Warning: This video is graphic and might be distressing for readers.)

But what are we celebrating, really, on the first Tuesday in November?

Money. Lots and lots of people handing over money that they can’t afford to lose, and people who already have a great deal making more. Australians, it’s estimated, would have gambled more than $87million today.

$87million pouring into the hands of bookmakers in one day.

And that’s before we even factor in the estimated $1.7billion that business generates from the ‘networking’ opportunites around the Cup, or the $6.2 million prize money that’s up for grabs for the winner.

Those figures go a long way to explaining why we’re happy to overlook the other thing we’re celebrating on Cup Day.

Admire Rakti before the race today

Animal cruelty. We’re celebrating the lives of animals being manipulated and managed in an entirely unnatural way so that they can entertain us and make us lots and lots of cash.

None of it’s pretty.

Consider this information from the opponents of horse-racing:

- In the last 12 months, 125 horses have been killed on Australian race tracks. The Coalition for the Protection of Racehorses estimate 18,000 ex-racers are killed every year.

- Animals Australia say that racehorses are fed a high concentrate diet (grains) during training, rather than extended grazing, which often leads to horses getting gastric ulcers. A study of racehorses at Randwick found that 89% had stomach ulcers, and many of the horses had deep, bleeding ulcers within 8 weeks of the commencement of their training.

- The exertion of the races leads a large proportion of horses to bleed into their lungs and windpipe – Animals Australia say it’s called Exercise-Induced Pulmonary Haemorrhage. A study carried out by the University of Melbourne found that 50% of race horses had blood in the windpipe, and 90% had blood deeper in the lungs.

- 33 knackeries across Australia slaughter between 22-32,000 horses every year. 40 per cent of those horses are racehorses.

Today, The Coalition for the Protection of Racehorses’s communications manager Ward Young told Mamamia, “We’re distraught that this happened, but not surprised. It takes an incident like this to remind everyone of the cruelty of horse-racing.”

“This horse is just one of the 125 other horses who were killed on Australian race tracks this year.”

“Add in the use of the whip and the fact that a horse can be beaten an unlimited amount of times toward the end of a race, and then the glamour of racing doesn’t seem like what it’s advertised by the racing industry around Spring Carnival,” Mr Young says.

And what’s worse, none of the vast amounts of money made by the racing industry goes back into looking after the horses, according to Mr Young.

“The racing industry rejected our proposal last year to use just one per cent of revenue from all betting turnover throughout the financial year – 14 billion dollars – for a retirement plan for racehorses,” Mr Young has told Mamamia.

This short documetary show’s what happens to horses after they finish racing:

I am not an innocent when it comes to animal welfare. I am not an activist. I eat meat, and wear leather, and I take my kids to the Zoo.

But even to me, it seems there’s something obscene about our willful blindess to the cruelty of horse-racing.

Especially on this one day. That comes around every single year.

Today two horses likely paid for all our fun and hangovers and empty pockets with their lives.

Maybe next year I’ll remember. And leave my hat at home.  – You can follow Holly Wainwright on Facebookhere.

If you would like to learn more – or make a difference – visitThe Coalition for the Protection of Racehorsesor visitAnimals Australia. 

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At Mamamia absolutely everything is up for discussion: from pop culture to politics, body image to motherhood, feminism to fashion. We unashamedly cover what everyone is talking about today: whether that’s stories which will make you laugh out loud, cover your mouth in shock, help you get informed or start you thinking about an issue in a different way and sometimes, we help you to just switch off the brain power from a few sweet minutes and kick back.

“Is that 911? I just threw my son off a bridge.”

These were the words of  Jillian Meredith McCabe when she spoke to an emergency telephone operator on Monday evening at 6.30pm. She was still on the phone to police when they arrived  to find her standing on the edge of the Yaquina Bay Bridge in Oregon, in the US.

It was a cold night, and the water was freezing. Officers said they would not expect a human of any size to survive in the river for more than 20 minutes, never mind a slightsix-year-old boy.

And hours later, a tiny body was pulled from the water.

London McCabe was dead. He may have been dead when he went over the edge of the bridge, he may have been killed by the fall, he may have drowned in the icy water. He is gone. And his mother has been charged with aggravated murder, murder and first-degree manslaughter.

Are you enraged?

I was. In a week when I have read about anincest “cult” in NSW, a child sex abuse ring exposed by the disappearance of an American teen, the neglect of an Australian toddler to the point of malnutrion, and always,Luke Batty, whose father murdered him in plain sight, it seems the world is unbearably cruel to children. I have had my fill of it. I want to look away.

The Yaquina Bay Bridge, from which Jillian reportedly threw her son, is 130ft high. 

Then I read on, and this woman’s despair and isolation began to shift into focus. She is a mother and a wife, and she was the exhausted and increasingly desperate primary carer for two severely affected human beings.

London McCabe had what is being reported as “severe”autism. He required constant care. This has absolutely no bearing or affect on the value of his life – of course it does not – it is a detail reported to give us a glimpse at a motive for a mother to do something so horrific to her own flesh and blood.

“He liked big floppy hats and anything that was fuzzy,” says London McCabe’s uncle.

Because when a parent kills a child we reach around for reasons. For answers, for any information that we can place between us and them to distance ourselves from the horror.

Jillian McCabe had a challenging son who required a great deal of care. And she also had a sick husband.

She had been married to Matt McCabe for years, and he had been the provider for the family while she cared for London. And then Matt developed MS.

She wrote on her blog:

‘My husband went from being able to walk/drive/work/make money/talk/throw our son in the air to being diagnosed with MS, having a mass in the brain stem, he is now walking with a walker, not being able to drive/work/make money, he now slurs his speech…

‘Matt went from the sole bread winner and provider to not in a matter of 2 weeks,” Jillian wrote about him on a blog in 2012 she had posted to explain why she and her family had gone from self-sufficient to asking for crowd-sourced cash to pay for medical bills.

‘Matt’s laying in a hospital bed… complaining we don’t have insurance, we don’t have the money for hospital bills, he has a shopping cart website to work on…’

Jillian closed that post with: ‘I NEED YOUR HELP.’

London with his mother, shortly after his birth.

She did need help. Financial, or practical, or mental? Considering the terrible outcome of this story, probably a combination of all three.

Her husband’s family say that Jillian was struggling with her own mental health issues, as well as being under the immense pressure of caring for a non-verbal child and a rapidly-declining husband.

Her family say that had tried several times to get her admitted to hospital herself for help, but there was a bed shortage, and they didn’t have health insurance, so they were waiting for a bed to come up in a public mental health facility when she, as London’s uncle Andrew said, “Took him for a walk and did what she did.”

Are you still enraged?

I was. And then I wasn’t. I looked at the pictures of London, and I was just overwhelmed with sadness. In the photos, he is lying on the couch with his Ipad.

He is sitting in his carseat with his sippy cup placed in a holder beside him. He is clean, and sometimes smiling, and he’s being carried around by his Dad in one of those kid carriers that parents always imagine will allow them to go on long hikes, but actually just break your back.

Matt with London. 

He looks loved.

Parents killing their own children is such a horrifying act, reviled above all others, because we know – parents especially know this – what an unholy and unnatural breach of trust has to occur between a child and a parent for this to happen.

Unless there is trauma, abuse or neglect present in a family home, a baby looks to their parents for protection from the moment they’re born. You are their safe place.

Until you’re not.

When Jillian appeared in court yesterday, via videolink, she was dressed in restrictive clothing to stop her from harming herself.

Her husband’s family say that she has had a “breakdown” while caring for London. “We’re devastated,” London’s uncle told NBC news. “London was a good kid.”

London with Matt in hospital.

Jillian is a killer. She needs to go prison for a very long time and she needs psychiatric help.

But I don’t know what’s to be gained by bellowing “Monster” at this extremely broken woman, and turning away.

Distancing ourselves from people whose struggles are beyond our own experience only broadens a gap that becomes harder and harder to reach across for help.

Empathy and understanding are not the same things as excuse and justification, and demonising those who need help the most serves no purpose.

Jillian has already lost everything. Unable to see a way out for her son and herself, she threw everything away that night on the Yaquina Bay Bridge.

I’m not enraged any more. I only feel devastated for a family destroyed.

Ricki-Lee Coulter

Someone’s trying to stir up a fight.

In one corner, there’s a confident woman in her 20s, telling the world that she has no desire to be a mother.

In the other is a blisteringly honest woman of 40ish, frankly sharing her experience of infertility and regret.

This is the storm that’s circling from a newspaper column that thewonderful and witty Bianca Dye wrote this weekend, in response to comments from kick-arse singer Ricki-Lee Coulter. Ricki declared that she didn’t want kids, but if she changed her mind, “I might turn 40 and go, ‘come on let’s pop one out’.”

Bianca wrote in the Daily Telegraph:

I’ve been through a number of failed IVF rounds and I’m still going…

I’ve had two miscarriages and put on 12kg from the hormones they’ve pumped into me. I’m begging Ricki-Lee — I wish I had of thought about this more at her age.

My advice?

Freeze your eggs now Ricki-Lee, while you can.

Bianca Dye has spoken openly about her struggles with IVF.

Neither of these excellent women is spoiling for a fight. They are simply speaking, publicly and honestly, from two opposite ends of the fertility spectrum of the most central of human issues – parenthood.

But Ricki-Lee has spoken about – and not for the first time – a lifestyle choice that mainstream society does not respect – the desire to NOT have children. And Bianca’s position, rightly or wrongly, is being painted as the default response that we level at any woman who challenges the idea of motherhood as all.

“OF COURSE you want children. You just don’t know it yet.”

Young women like Ricki Lee – bold enough to discount that one thing that is supposed todefine their femininity above all else – have always been viewed with suspicion.

“She’ll change her mind,” Is probably one of the least insulting things she’s heard on this topic. If she’s anything like my  child-free friends, she will have been labelled selfish and shallow for good measure.

Because not wanting children is truly the final taboo. Even in 2014. Women can be anything they want, as long as they put ‘mother’ on the list, along with Prime Minister, brain surgeon and domestic goddess.

And who can blame young women of not daring to admit that it’s not their plan? It seems we literally do not know what do with women who don’t want to become mothers. When you don’t follow the marriage-and-baby script, you are viewed with suspicion. Think of former Prime Minister Julia Gillard, for example, who spoke of the dilemma of a childfree woman who seeks public office: “If you don’t have children then [you're seen] as being incapable of understanding the struggles of the vast amount of Australians who do, and if you do have children, it’s ‘Oh, who’s looking after the children?’.”

But  on the flip-side, ambitious young women like Ricki see their older counterparts struggling daily with “having it all”, of juggling two worlds and never quite feeling like either is a perfect fit.

Young women see that, once a woman has had a child, she is often viewed as less desirable, less focused, less committed. And who wants that?

Each of these women have been interrogated about their choices.

So if they are brave enough to admit that they could get more done and live a life defined by choice rather than duty if they don’t become mothers, all power to them.

I’m not in the least bit surprised that Ricki-Lee, who has bucketloads of gumption and a less-than-perfect childhood of her own behind her, isn’t interested in motherhood.

Let’s hope, that if that’s how she feels, she stands strong in her belief.

Because there’s something much worse than regretting not having children – having children that you should never have had.

Becoming a parent is too important to do it because it is expected of you. Becoming a parent is too difficult and demanding to do because everyone else is doing it.

If you are ambivalent about having children – don’t have them. Do a Ricki-Lee and be brave enough to declare that your dream is different.

Because there are too many unwanted children in the world, and too many parents who cannot, for many, varied and complex reasons, put their children first and give them the love and support that they need.

Bianca has a point – we all change as we get older, and our perspective and desires change as we do. But we have to respect a young woman’s opinion on this just as we would her decisions on anything else – whether she wants to work or travel, make a startling career choice, not marry the first guy who turns her head.

Only someone with the wisdom of age, and experience of the the slowly-crushing grief of infertility can offer the advice to Ricki-Lee that Bianca did in that newspaper column: Don’t regret.

But we can’t assume that all women’s lives follow the same script, we can’t assume that women are ‘wrong’ because their choice bucks the norm. And there is no reason to fear the woman who doesn’t want kids – in many ways, she’s doing the world a great favour.

Do you think you can decide you don’t want kids in your 20s? 

Check out our gallery of kick-ass women who are leaving ‘mother’ off their resume.

Ricki-Lee Coulter

Holly and her son, Billy.

By HOLLY WAINRIGHT

Step away from the tinsel. It is NOT Christmas yet.

I know you’re tempted, I know you want to get the party started, but just take a breath.

Hold back. Let it go.

Christmas hasn’t started yet. It’s November. NOVEMBER.

But I can’t blame you for being confused.

In news that makes me want to weep, according to scientists, Christmas now starts on August 19.

The smart people at the Royal Statistical Society have worked out that August 19 is when Chritsmassy words start popping up in Google searches, a date that’s inched earlier and earlier as the Google-able years increase. Back in those innocent days of 2008, Christmas didn’t start until October.

Everyone has a different idea of when Christmas really begins.

According to my local shopping centre, it starts on November 1.That’s when they’ve start dangling shiny wreathes around the escalators, hoping to induce a little retail panic.

According to traditional Catholics, it starts at noon on Christmas Eve, December 24.

According to the Christian tradition of Christmastide it starts on Christmas Day, December 25. And look, they should really know.

Me, I have strict rules about when it’s acceptable to start dangling baubles.

And it’s September.

When my colleague told me that her brother’s family already had their decorations up on November 13, I judged.

And when I went round to my friends’s place in February and they still had the tree up – “the kids just love it so much” – I judged.

A bit of reaching out to Reddit on the topic seems to get all the same responses – “I love Christmas, so I put my decorations up in the first week of November.” “We like to put our decorations up in November so we have longer to look at them.” Ijudged those people, too.

I judged because, in my opinion, these people have Got Christmas Wrong.

I don’t approve of the way Christmas is creeping – the way it get earlier and earlier each year.

I’m not the Grinch. Honest.

And it’s not because I’m the grinch – honest. It’s exactly the opposite. I love Christmas. I love it so much I want it to be special.

The glow of fairy lights, the smell of pine (or plastic), the paper and bows, the carols, the chocolate and champagne… that stuff is precious. It can’t be bandied about for months either side. You can’t make it Christmas every day. It doesn’t work.

You’ve got to ration the good stuff in life, or it just becomes wallpaper. You’ve got to be able to accept that special things happen at special times, and sometimes you have to wait for them, and sometimes you have to give them back. So it is with Christmas.

The sight of a Christmas tree aglow should move you – give you a tingly mix of melancholic longing and anticipation – and there’s just no space for that in October. A tree with fairy lights on it isn’t a Christmas tree before, let’s say, December 10 – it’s just a tree with fairy lights on it.

For me. preservingChristmas traditions has nothing to do with religion. But it has everything to do with sentimentality. Because for those of us who celebrate it, however loosely, Christmas is about our childhood. Bringing it back, or pushing it away.

Holly’s family. Poor things, they don’t get a Christmas tree til December 20. 

And in my house, growing up, we put the Christmas decorations up on December 20. Five days before Christmas. And you took them down on January 6. And so those are my inbuilt Christmas rules. I can’t help it. Despite the fact that there’s nothing else I insist on doing exactly like I did was I was 12 – my still back-combed-damaged fringe thanks me for that – myChristmas rules are inbuilt.

Now I have children of my own, and a job, and we don’t always put the tree up on December 20. Because sticking to hard and fast rules does not work with little people. And sometimes, I need to bribe them to get them to behave, so I throw around Santa with abandon waaaay before my rules kick in.

But seriously, stop trying to ruin Christmas by spreading it thinly. Despite the whole idea of the Festive Season, Christmas does not last three months – it’s a two-week thing.

Less. Is. More.

When do you start celebrating Christmas?

These people know how to get stuck into the Christmas cheer, hopefully all these images were taken in December,

White Christmas 1954

To my adored friends and family,

We need to talk.

I love that you love my kids. My kids love that you love my kids.

I love that come Christmas, their piles under the tree are teetering towers of enormousness, and not even half of it cost me a cent. Or, more importantly, several hours of rummaging around on the lower shelves of the racks at Toys R Us while people step on my head.

Holly and her family preparing for the Christmas period.

I love that you thought about them long enough to consider them when you were Christmas shopping. I love that you remembered that Matilda is still in her pink phase and that Billy genuinely thinks he’s a dinosaur.

I love that about you.Seriously.

But here’s the thing. And I know I sound like an ungrateful arse. I may well be an ungrateful arse, and a bad mother, for what I am about to say. But someone needs to say it, so here goes.

Not all presents are good presents.

You see, anything you buy for my children will live in my house andimpact my life. And call me selfish, call me Grinchy, but to be honest, things are pretty fraught around here at the best of times, and throw in a blaring plastic fire engine with no volume control and life could really take a turn.

So here, so we can all still be friends, are the six things that you should please refrain from buying my kids this Christmas. Believe me, I’m doing us all a favour.

1. Drums. 

I know, you’re scoffing. Like, who would DO THAT, really? But one of my most lovely and wonderful friends did exactly this last year. She ‘did it to’ one of our other friends – bought her daughter an adorable Dora The Explorer drum kit. Our mutual friend appeared to be delighted, and the four-year-old girl who received them was certainly beside herself, but seriously? If you pulled that in my house I would have been tempted to stage a minor house-fire to disappear them.

While we’re at it, let’s throw in recorders, whistles, those automated keyboards that are ALWAYS too loud. Basically, anything that requires musical talent to make it even just a little bit audibly bearable. Let’s just leave that alone until there IS some actual talent in the house.

2. Loom bands. 

They’re over. And I’ve never been happier. Because my kids are too little for them, but think that they’re not. So when my daughter says “Let’s Play Loombands”, what she means is, “Sit next to me, Mummy, while I hand you teeny plastic bands one at a time, until you lose the circulation in your fingers.”

I don’t want any presents that require my full involvement, thank you. Again, I’m a bad mother, but I have Things To Do. Things that don’t involve retrieving 43545043 luminious plastic loops from every crevice of the couch.

3. Lego.

It’s great. It builds both their practical and artistic sides, and encourages fine motor-skills and keeps them busy for hours.

BUT sooooooo many pieces to get lost and scattered to every corner of my home.

And also, just this: Ouch.

4. Licensed character clothing. 

No. Just no.

You know, that Dora The Explorer T-shirt that’s scratch n’ sniff and glow in the dark and spouts lines from the show. No, just no.

Because my daughter will LOVE it. and she will want to wear it every single day, and it looks nasty and it washes badly and it really isn’t her colour. And I’m the one who has to look at her all the time, after all.

There are two exceptions to this rule: Frozen. Knock yourself out. That merch is so hard to find that I don’t care how ugly it is, I’m going to bite your hand off taking it from you. And two, pyjamas. Who cares if my kids are tasteless in their sleep?

5. Oversized cuddly toys. 

Friends Who Don’t Have Children think that giant pandas and life-sized baby elephants are the perfect marriage between their level of disposable income and the wide-eyed-unwrapping Wow Factor. Yes, my child will be deeply impressed with that snow leopard for exactly half an hour, and then it’s just another enormous thing to clutter up their bedroom and get covered in dust.

Hot Tip, for the FWDHC – Kids’ favourite cuddly toys are not chosen on size. They are chosen on some completely mysterious, possibly black-magic formula that none of us can understand. If you think it’s the crappest little rag you’ve ever seen, they will think it’s their long-lost twin without whom they can’t eat, sleep or leave the house. Children are mysterious creatures.

6. Kinetic sand. 

Those who do not have young children do not know what kinetic sand is. Here’s a heads-up – kinetic sand is Sand. Supposedly, it does not make a mess, because it sticks together, completely dry, and allows the kids to sculpt and build and shape things – I believe they were once called Sand castles – in the middle of the living room. My daughter seems to know about it via osmosis, and “Magic Sand” is on her Santa list, big time.

Kinetic sand is bullshit. Yes, it DOES still stick to their fingers, and it just gets dirtier and grubbier with every play. And it never, ever, ever stays in its Play Tray. Because it’s Sand.

Don’t do it. Instead, your present can be to take my kids to an actual sand pit, or an actual beach, and help them build actual sand castles for an hour or so. Then buy them a Paddle Pop. They’re $1,50.

That’s perfect.

Thank you so much. And you know, Merry Christmas.

What would you add to the list?

Come andLike Holly on Facebook. As you can see from the way she treats her friends, she needs all the new ones she can get. 

Matilda’s preschool ‘graduation’ – possibly the only time she hasn’t worn pink in the last 12 months.

So, a Barbie doll beat me down.

As surely as if my daughter had grabbed Babs by her spindly little legs and whacked me over the head – I am beaten.

Today, I desperately want to stand withGreens Senator Larissa Waters, as she is roundly ridiculed in the tabloid press for daring to suggest that we stopped choosing our kids’ toys based purely on their gender

I would love to go along to one of her and Play Unlimited’s‘No Gender December’playdates, where my kids can play with fair-trade toys that are neither pink nor blue.

But I would be a traitor. I would be a fraud.

Because my little girl loves pink, and tutus and princesses. And my little boy loves dinosaurs and trains.

And that, my friends, is the cold hard truth.

It wasn’t meant to be this way.

I didn’tfind out the sexes of either of my children before they were born, in part because I didn’t want to start gender stereotyping them before they even really existed. You know, “Is he kicking? Oh, you’ve got a little soccer player in there….” and so on.

There were no pink and blue baby clothes, only shelves filled with tiny piles of bright reds and greens and earthy neutrals.

My kids, with their princesses and dinosaurs. Clearly, no gender-stereotyping here. 

For years, I pretty much resisted buying anything pink and fluffy for my first child, a girl. She loved wearing shorts, and she loved her little boy mates, and she was physical and feisty and outspoken.

But then The Pink Creep began. My home was swallowed by a gradual rising tide of tulle and plastic in every shade from peach to fuschia. You see, parents are not the only ones who buy things for their kids. In fact, your first child receivesso many gifts, you don’t make even half of the decisions about what they wear and what they play with.

But there is a grace period when you get to make the decisions (and hide the stuff you hate), until that dreaded day when your child wakes up and has An Opinion.

And my daughter’s Opinions go like this: I Like Pink Things. I want a baby doll. I want a pink fluffy pram. I want jewellery. I want to wear your lipstick. And I want a Barbie.

A Barbie, FFS.

Maybe I can live with astronaut Barbie?

Meanwhile, my son’s Opinion is this: Roooooooar! I am a dinosaur. And Where’s Thomas?

Like Senator Waters, I find it kind of infuriating. I am deeply irritated that the toy shop is divided into pink and blue aisles. It really annoys me that when I buy a book for a child and ask for it to be gift-wrapped at the counter, they ask me “boy or girl?”, as if the two genders cannot even share wrapping paper.

And I have a sneaking suspicion, as older people do, that it wasn’t like this when I was young. Yes, there were boys’ toys and girls’ toys, everything wasn’t quite to segmented, so strictly policed along gender lines.

This iconic 1981 Lego ad seems almost radical today. 

Is it possible that as the women’s movement has changed almost everything about our lives, the choices for our children when it comes to their interests and pleasures. are more strictly prescribed than ever? Yes, yes it is.

Lego is now strictly for ‘boys’ or ‘girls’. Guess which kind this is (Post continues after gallery):

But unlike Senator Waters, I do not believe that my daughter’s penchant for pink princesses, and my sons’ for trains, is going to contribute to to her chances of earning less as she grows up, or of either of them becoming a victim of, or a perpetrator of, domestic violence.

Today on Mamamia, Senator Waters wrote:

Even though it’s 2014 and many women drive trucks while many men push prams, a lot of toy companies don’t seem to have caught up.

Old-fashioned stereotypes about girls and boys and men and women, perpetuate gender inequality, which feeds into very serious problems such as domestic violence and the gender pay gap.

Please, Senator. No. I can only worry about so many things at once. I can do all kinds of things to fight for a better world for my daughter, but fighting against her being naturally drawn to the girls’ shelves at Toys R Us surely can’t be the deciding factor.

Barbie may have beaten me but that doesn’t mean I’ve given up.

Because whether my daughter’s sprinkling fairy dust or fixing a toy car, I am always going to teach her that she is worth as much as any man, and that she has the absolute right to be treated with respect and dignity, and to always treat others the same way.

I am always going to teach my son the same. The exact same.

I can try to fight the pink and blue tide. I can rail against Thomas, and Dora and those God-forsaken Disney princesses, but really, my job is to sweat the big stuff.

Like making sure my kids – both my boy and my girl – know that whatever phase they’re in, whatever they’re interested and obsessed with at any given moment – Dad and I might roll our eyes, but we smile and nod and feign interest.

And while we worry about the day to day, we keep supporting them and reinforcing the big lessons, the ones that matter way more than toy colour.

Be kind. Be just. Be curious. Be bold. Be happy.

And whatever aisle you find your happiness in, whatever colour it is, that’s just fine with us.

Where do you stand on the Pink or Blue debate?

Come andLike Holly on Facebook and offer some advice on how to deal with The Pink Tide.

Okay, so we’re mellowing out a bit, but some toys are just terrifying. Here are a few:

Stripper's pole with money included

Is there a harder thing you’ll ever do than stand up and say goodbye to your best friend? Is there a more important speech you’ll ever make?

Is there a request – as Michael Clarke said today, it’s a weighty honour to be asked – that is so impossible to refuse, but difficult to carry out?

Watching Clarke deliver his mate Phillip Hughes’ eulogy in the glare of a hundred cameras was brutal. And beautiful.

The usually confident, private and eloquent man couldn’t raise his eyes to the crowd, couldn’t catch his breath and raced through the words as if trying to outrun his tears.

Watch Michael’s speech, here. (Post continues after video):

You can read his beautiful speech,here, but there was a gasp of recognition from anyone who has ever lost someone when he said this:

“I keep looking for him. I expect any minute to take a call from him, or for his face to pop around the corner.”

Think of the people closest to you – how their littlest details are the things that you would miss the most if they were taken from you. Think of the way you know what they’ll say before they say it, the way they have of making you smile when you don’t want to, the smell of their hair, the sound of their laugh, the feel of their arms around you. And try to put that into words worthy of remembrance.

And then try to stand up and say them when all you want to do is hide and mourn and hide and grieve and hide and hope that when you wake up tomorrow, today’s reality will have shifted, and they will be back with you.

Because Australia has been knocked by Phillip Hughes’ death. But for many of us, it’s a symbolic loss.

The nation has put their bats out for Phillip Hughes.

We’re feeling the injustice of a young life that didn’t get a chance to run its course. Shock that this could happen in the “gentle” game so entwined with the national character we can’t imagine our iconic Australian summer without it. The unthinkably freakish and public nature of the accident that took him away.

But we didn’t know him. We are saddened by the ridiculous cruelty of what happened, but tomorrow, our lives will go on. Phillip Hughes will become a story we tell our children about danger and chance and loss and mateship.

Tributes to Hughes in his hometown of Macksville (Post continues after gallery).

Australians React To The Death Of Phillip Hughes

But for Phillip’s devastated mother, Virginia, for his father Greg, and for his siblings and friends and team mates, Phillip’s loss is a tangible thing – a space in their lives. It’s phone calls that won’t come, conversations that will never be had, birthdays that won’t be marked, a Christmas to be suffered through with an empty chair at the table, runs never scored, children who will never be born.

For them, his loss is unbearable.

When they woke up on November 25 and brushed their teeth and drank their coffee and closed their front doors behind them that only eight days later, no-one close toPhillip Hughes had any idea that they would soon be standing together in an unprepossessing rec centre in rural New South Wales. Trying to find the words to say goodbye to someone so central to all of their lives. Trying to find words to fill the gap left behind.

Today, that task fell to Phillip’s cousin Nino Ramunno, brother Jason, sister Megan and great friend Corey Ireland, all of whom spoke with such dignity and strength about their cricket-loving, cow-obsessed, family-focussed Phillip, a man who through their words and memories, is a name and a face that the nation will now never forget. And it fell to Michael Clarke.

“So rest in peace my little brother. I’ll see you out in the middle.”

Do you know who would trust to speak for you at the end of your life, whenever it comes?

That’s what Phillip Hughes’ loved ones did for him today, with all of us watching on.

We should all be so lucky as to get to there with people around us close and strong enough that they can stand up and speak for us when we can not. To thank those who supported us and carried us and loved us, and to paint a picture of us in their minds that will stay with them as we fade from view.

And we should all be so lucky as to have eight pairs of broad shoulders to then carry us away from the crowds, towards some kind of peace.

Leave a message of support for the Hughes family, below. 

“It’s a pooooooo! It’s a poo-poo!”

I have been trying to write this story about “having it all” for two days.

During that time, I have been interrupted approximately 200,000 times, most recently by the voice of my 2yo son, shouting about poo.From the bath.

A poo in the bath, any parent will tell you, is A Very Bad Thing. The clean up is not pretty, and everyone feels dirty afterwards.

It is actually the perfect metaphor for the arguments about a working mother’s rightful role.

I definitely Have It All. All the chaos, All the stress and All the joy of  a young family, a busy job and many,many Responsibilities.

Recently, I made a decision that went against pretty much every fibre of my being – I decided to Have A Bit Less.

I decided that I couldn’t – right now – do my demanding dream job and be a present mother to my two small children, a decent partner and all the other roles in my personal life that I want to fulfil.

I realised that I was spreading myself too thinly, trying to do too much, and that my health and happiness were fraying at the edges as a result.

So I’ve stepped back at work. It was a difficult thing to do, and remains a difficult thing to admit.

But here’s the thing. People are delighted.

I’m not talking about my children, who yes, are happy to see a bit more of me. Or my partner, who’s just pleased that I look at him when he’s talking, rather than sliding my eyes towards my phone, anticipating its every beep.

I’m talking about People. People like the doctor who said to me, “It’s a brave decision. You don’t want to be one of those mothers who outsource parenting.”

Or another person who told me, “I blame feminism. Our mothers’ generation have sold us all a dangerous lie.”

People who love to say things like the following:

“You can’t have it all. Stop trying.”

“You can have it all. But not at the same time.”

“No, women can’t have it all, and why would they want to?”

I want to say something to those People. I want to tell those People to get f*cked.

This is the way the world likes to see working mothers. Is your life like this? (Post continues after video)

It’s the same thing I want to say to the British Government, who this week presented a report on the pressures young women face. In the preface to the report, the British Minister for Women makes the observation that mothers (those dastardly mothers) are damaging their daughters by ‘foisting’ onto them the “entirely unrealistic cultural rhetoric of ‘having it all’.”

This tumbling rush to embrace the idea that women have stuffed everything up by being too greedy, needy and ambitious, is unsettling and insulting.

Don’t get me wrong. “Having it all” is indeed bullshit. But not for the reasons these people think.

The woman who is widely credited for coining that phrase was the iconic US Cosmopolitan editor Helen Gurley Brown. She did not have children, and was not thinking about working mothers when she published Having It All in 1982 which was an entertaining jaunt through the notion that a woman could aspire to having a career and a husband. That a woman could earn her own money and still have sex and fulfilling romantic life.

I know. So audacious. So greedy.

Helen Gurley Brown, the woman who wrote Having It All, was not talking about working mothers.

Since womankind has roundly kicked that goal of having money and sex, we’ve moved the phrase “having it all” to something with a higher degree of difficulty: the idea a woman can have a career and children. Children who can recognise her face, at least.

Impossible, right? Wrong. Because 65% of mothers are “having it all” all over Australia right now.

Except they’re not. Because that’s not what we mean by “having it all”, is it?

I am not the first person to point out that no-one accuses a man who wants to have a job and a family of trying to “have it all.” In fact, in mainstream Australian culture if a man is not working to provide for his family, he will likely be viewed with some suspicion and disapproval.

And no-one suggests that a low-income-earning single mother, trying to hold down a couple of jobs, is “having it all”. In fact, if she stopped working, and say, claimed government assistance to help feed her family, she would quite probably be seen as a lazy, shirking bludger.

No, “having it all” are 3 little words that we reserve for shaming a particular breed of parent – the mother who is perceived to have a choice.

It’s a weapon we use against women who dare to stay interested in their jobs after they procreate. Who dare to admit that even if they didn’t HAVE to work for financial reasons, they might still want to. Women who don’t want to waste their education and experience, and yes, they might see it as a waste for their professional relevance to wither as they spend years at home dealing with other people’s poo.

Women who dare to admit that they still gain satisfaction and pride and yes, possibly status, from something other than motherhood.

*Those bitches*.

Rather than smacking frazzled women over the head with these ridiculous three words, let’s look at what really needs to happen.

Annabel Crabb’s brilliant book, The Wife Drought, argues that it’s time men were involved in every conversation about work-family life. 

The genie is out of the bottle. We are not going back to the 1950s. One income is not magically going to buy you a home in a major city. Financial and intellectual independence is not going to stop being important to women.

In fact, the next generation of Australian women will be the best educated in history, and they are not going to forget their education and ambition the moment two lines blink on their pregnancy-test app.

Let’s talk about more flexible working arrangements in senior positions, more affordable quality child care, a cultural shift to men being able and encouraged to opt out of full-time work at the same rates as women. Let’s talk about the ability to job-share, the possibilities of working remotely.

All of these things are concrete, helpful things that will make women’s lives less fraught, and in turn children’s lives better.

So yes, some People are pleased to see the end of the notion of “Having It All”, but I do not stand with them.

I do not stand with People who feel validated by seeing a woman stumble.

Holly with her daughter.

I do not stand with People who believe that a woman wanting a life that’s meaningful outside and inside the home is being greedy.

I do not stand with People who think that if a woman can not afford to put her professional life on hold for the five or seven or 10 years that you have deemed appropriate, she is an irresponsible role model.

I do not stand with People who don’t believe that rich lives are busy and full, and that children don’t thrive with two fulfilled, engaged parents.

No. I stand with all the parents who are out there dropping balls. Sometimes, one of those lands on your own head. Or your partner’s. Or your boss’s. Sometimes, your child will cop one, and those are the worst.

But we’re not greedy. We’re not delusional. We’re not dangerous. We’re just busy.

And to those People who are happy to see us struggle, because it sits well with your small view of a woman’s life, we’re sick of dealing with your poo.

We’ve got enough of that at home.

Picture the scene: You’re in a shopping mall. Fake snowmen deck the halls. It’s 35 degrees outside.

It’s loud. It’s sweaty. You’d rather be anywhere but here.

Actually, you didn’t have to picture that scene. You were there on Saturday. Maybe you’re there today. My sympathies.

You’ve managed to unload the kids for a few short hours toChristmas Shop. Or, God forbid, you’re taking them along with you. Because you’re leaving it too late for online delivery times. And it’s cheaper in person. And you have a list.

If you’re a home-made cookies-tied-up-with-ribbon person, we can’t be friends any more. Sorry.

The pertinent question is, just how many presents can you buy in two hours?

Because when it comes to presents, we’ve all got the non-negotiables – your kids, your partner, your parents, his parents (why are YOU doing all this shopping, again?). Your good friends. Their kids.

But when you’ve got kids of your own, it gets complicated. Because what about:

Theirteachers/preschool teachers; Their swim/judo/cricket/dancing/judo/trapeze/Nepalese chanting  instructors;  Their babysitters; Their daycarers?

So. Many. Presents.

This is the dilemma parents face at this time of year, every year. And this is the dilemma teachers face at this time of year every year – what the hell do I do with 35 scented candles and 14 boxes of chocolates?

If you’re like me, then this week you’re spending a LOT of time encouraging your kid to make ‘lovely’ home-made cards – “So much more thoughtful than another box of chocolates” – and if you’re like me, you’re hoping that on Friday, you won’t be dodging dagger looks from the teachers who really, really wanted AN ACTUAL PRESENT.

So here, from my outrageously unqualified position of being a reasonably tight mother of two small children with plenty of people in their lives  is the simple YES/NO/SCENTED CANDLE guide to who should get what this Christmas.

You can dismiss the scented candle, but some of them are really, really fancy. And we’re sure some people, you know, actually like them. 

ASK YOURSELF:  Does your kid like their teacher? Do you like their teacher? Will they have the same teacher next year?

YES? Buy them a car. Nothing is too good for an excellent teacher. Can’t afford the Saab? Give them a bottle of wine. They’ve had a tough year.

NO? Pasta necklace. Always, always the pasta necklace. Especially if your child is over 10.

She’s so getting the pasta necklace. 

ASK YOURSELF: Is your babysitter a sulky teenager who always expects dinner and plenty of kid-free time to binge watch Pretty Little Liars?

YES? Nothing. You give them enough every time they come over, like the contents of your fridge, and all your download data.

NO?  A lovely, caring role model for your kid who is actually directly accountable for their wellbeing while you get to ocassionally go out and be freeeeee?  A scented candle. A really, really nice one. Come on, some people love those. Seriously.

ASK YOURSELF: Is your child on struggle street? Could they really do with that extra push that a little teacher-love could bring?

YES? Jewellery. And not the pasta kind. If Timmy’s going to get to the State champs, only Tiffany will do, dammit.

NO? It’s definitely time for the hand-made card – “You’re the best, Ms Amy, and without you, I’d drown. Thanks so much – Timmy.’

If there’s only one way to assure victory – do it. 

ASK YOURSELF: Does he love your little preschoolers? Does he wipe their bums and noses, teach them it’s not nice to bite and never, ever charge you extra when you’re 10-minutes late to drop-off?

YES? Not just a car, but perhaps a share in a small holiday home down the coast. This might be the toughest job in the world. It’s worth it. Can’t stretch to real estate? Hard liquor.

NO? Then it’s time to pull out the best present a teacher of my aquaintance ever got – a box of Jatz. Or a punnet of blueberries (another real-life actual teacher-present). No. Hold on, blueberries are really, really exxy.

Look, good luck. And when you’ve contributed to the class whip-round, and bought the individal present, and sat down to stick the pasta to the home-made card, just remember, this is a beautiful, special time of year.

All about others, and giving. And not at all about going into debt trying to show the people in your kids’ lives that you really, really want them to be nice to your kids. You know, next year.

So seriously, what are the best presents to get the important people in your life who you don’t know very well? 

Perth toddler Sam Trott went missing from his Landsale home Tuesday morning. (Photo via ABC.)

If you’re putting your child to bed in a rush tonight – stop.

If you’re yelling at them for the 10th time to brush their teeth, to get in their damn pyjamas, to stop tormenting their brother – stop.

If you’re thinking of skipping the bedtime story to get a jump on your emails, or that bottomless basket of washing – stop.

Because if you’re putting your child to bed tonight – you’re outrageously lucky.

If everyone under your roof is healthy and close, you are audaciously, ridiculously lucky.

Stop for a moment and feel it. Hug them.

Breathe in the smell of their hair, feel their weight in your arms. And tell them you love them. Because tonight there’s a family in Perth who will never get to do that again.

Their little boy is gone.

Beautiful boy: Sam Trott. 

Sam Trottwas two and a half. He hadautism. He loved The Wheels On The Bus. He could be sociable, he could be shy, and he loved water.

He was so loved that yesterday he stopped an entire suburb in its tracks for a frantic search.

Yesterday morning, the members of the Trott family were following their familiar routines, ticking by to the familiar rhythms of a family home. The only change to an ordinary Tuesday morning the arrival of workmen installing mirrors at the house.

Everything can change in a minute.

Literally, a world can be upended in the time it takes you to hear your fridge door bleep.

“One minute he was there and I spoke to him,” said Lyndall, Sam’s mum, of the moment she realised her little boy was no longer at her heels. A two-year-old, after all, is always under your feet.

“I heard the fridge door beep because he was in the fridge, I said ‘shut the doorSam. 30 seconds later it beeped again and as I turned back around … he wasn’t there. I immediately saw the front door open and I just ran, I ran… In 30 seconds he was not there anymore.”

Little Sam didn’t know how to open doors but one of the mirror-fitters hadn’t thought to close one and so the boy toddled out. It is a split-second action that the workman will replay over and over in his head.

Perth’s Walbrook Mews community came out in such large numbers to try to find Sam, that police had to turn volunteers away. Strangers left food and water out on their steps overnight, in case a hungry little boy wandered past, hungry, thirsty and lost.

Locals left supplies out for Sam in the hope he might walk by. 

This morning, this heartbreaking plea to all homes in the area from WA Police:

‘Reminder to all, before you leave to work or leave your drive-ways to please check under, around and inside vehicles just in case Sam has crawled under or inside any of those places overnight.’

But in the end it was all too late.

Sam’s tiny body was found in a lake just two streets away from his home around 10am this morning. He had been missing less than 24 hours.

24 hours that changed so many lives.

Absolutely everything can change in a day.

So tonight, hug your kids and think of Sam. Send love and strength to a shattered family. Recognise how lucky you are if your loved ones are in your arms.

We’re standing with you, Lyndal and Matthew, and remembering your beautiful boy.

Leave a message of support for Sam Trott’s family, below. 

FollowHolly Wainwright on Facebook.