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Age 0-3 | Bedtime Stories
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5 Min Stories Age 0-3 All Animals Baby Books Birthdays Friends Picture Books Picture Books Rhyming Stories
Koah Koala is having his first birthday! He's about to discover how fun it is to be One!
5 Min Stories Age 0-3 Age 4-6 All All Poems for Kids Animals Baby Books Early Readers Early Readers Friends Love Picture Books Poems for Kids Rhyming Poems Rhyming Stories
Ollie the Octopus is best friends with Sukey the Spider. Read all about their sixteen-legged rhyming adventures!
5 Min Stories Age 0-3 Age 4-6 All Baby Books Family Feelings and Emotions Growth Mindset Love Mindfulness Picture Books Picture Books
A story about the beauty and love your special light can bring to others, and how it spreads from one person to everyone!
5 Min Stories Age 0-3 Age 4-6 All Baby Books Picture Books Picture Books
Ted is a big boy and wears big boy undies! But something goes wrong when the washing happens!
5 Min Stories Age 0-3 Age 4-6 All Animals Baby Books Early Readers Early Readers Mothers Picture Books Picture Books
Leah is trying to think of the best present in the world for her mother. Her whole family is here to help her think of the perfect gift!
5 Min Stories Age 0-3 All Baby Books Early Readers Early Readers Mothers Picture Books
Some mummies help us, and some mummies love us. What does your mummy do?
5 Min Stories Age 0-3 All Animals Baby Books Early Readers Early Readers Easter Friends Picnics Picture Books Picture Books
Baby Bunny has an Easter Picnic with all her baby animal friends. There's lots of chocolate!
5 Min Stories Age 0-3 Age 4-6 All Animals Baby Books Friends Helping Insects Picture Books Picture Books
Kynan the caterpillar LOVES shoes.
.. but he can't possibly put them all on by himself!
5 Min Stories ABCs Age 0-3 All Alphabet Animals Picture Books
Learn your ABCs with this fun and simple alphabet book!
5 Min Stories ABCs Age 0-3 All Alphabet Animals Early Readers Environment Picture Books Picture Books
A nature alphabet ABCD book for tomorrow's little learners.
Baby Books | Bedtime Stories
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Short Baby Books
5 Min Stories Age 0-3 All Animals Baby Books Birthdays Friends Picture Books Picture Books Rhyming Stories
Koah Koala is having his first birthday! He's about to discover how fun it is to be One!
5 Min Stories Age 0-3 Age 4-6 All All Poems for Kids Animals Baby Books Early Readers Early Readers Friends Love Picture Books Poems for Kids Rhyming Poems Rhyming Stories
Ollie the Octopus is best friends with Sukey the Spider.
Read all about their sixteen-legged rhyming adventures!
5 Min Stories Age 0-3 Age 4-6 All Baby Books Family Feelings and Emotions Growth Mindset Love Mindfulness Picture Books Picture Books
A story about the beauty and love your special light can bring to others, and how it spreads from one person to everyone!
5 Min Stories Age 0-3 Age 4-6 All Baby Books Picture Books Picture Books
Ted is a big boy and wears big boy undies! But something goes wrong when the washing happens!
5 Min Stories Age 0-3 Age 4-6 All Animals Baby Books Early Readers Early Readers Mothers Picture Books Picture Books
Leah is trying to think of the best present in the world for her mother.
Her whole family is here to help her think of the perfect gift!
5 Min Stories Age 0-3 All Baby Books Early Readers Early Readers Mothers Picture Books
Some mummies help us, and some mummies love us. What does your mummy do?
5 Min Stories Age 0-3 All Animals Baby Books Early Readers Early Readers Easter Friends Picnics Picture Books Picture Books
Baby Bunny has an Easter Picnic with all her baby animal friends. There's lots of chocolate!
5 Min Stories Age 0-3 Age 4-6 All Animals Baby Books Friends Helping Insects Picture Books Picture Books
Kynan the caterpillar LOVES shoes.
.. but he can't possibly put them all on by himself!
5 Min Stories Age 0-3 All Baby Books Early Readers Early Readers Feelings and Emotions Picture Books Trucks
Oh no, there's a fire! But Billy the fire-truck doesn't want to get dirty!
5 Min Stories Age 0-3 All Animals Baby Books Early Readers Food Friends Gardens Helping Picture Books Picture Books
Jimmy the Cat wants to make a garden with his friends. What should he plant?
7 parenting stories that are definitely worth sharing with your child
Our time begins with our birth.
Children often feel like the world revolves around them. It is difficult for them to realize that their parents existed long before they themselves appeared. Yes, they didn’t just exist, but they worked, loved each other, traveled and grew up themselves.
Starts every year at three. The child hears how parents or older children share their memories, and asks: “Was I there then?” And they answer him: "No, you haven't been yet." Further, an advanced child can clarify: "I was still in my mother's tummy, right?" And he hears in response: "No, you weren't anywhere at all then." And this, of course, is difficult to comprehend: how is it - nowhere? How is it that I was not there? How is it - grandfather, but suddenly he was small? But gradually time lines up, the schoolboy dad no longer surprises, and the child begins to collect facts about the life of his parents before himself into a mental family album.
1. You also had F's (and you were taken to the police station, which was still the police then)
A neighbor's boy fell off his bike and broke his leg.
"It's nothing," says Dad. - In my childhood, I also broke my leg twice and once my arm. True, I didn’t fall off the bike, but down the stairs at school. And once he punched a hole in his head. Here, feel, here I have a bump under my hair. And then he tells the child a story about his literally childhood traumas. The son listens with great interest, fitting himself into the context of family adventures, failures, pranks and stupidities. He understands that he is not unique, his parents also got into annoying situations and somehow got out of them. Mom once also got stuck in an elevator, dad couldn’t sing, and at the age of seven grandmother was taken to the police for picking flowers near the monument to Lenin.
2. Previously, everyone lived without mobile phones. And without the Internet!
It can be interesting for children to hear how life was arranged before them. There was no Internet and no navigator in the car, and in order to get somewhere, I had to buy a paper map.
As a child, my grandmother wore stockings that were fastened to underwear, and my mother collected gum stickers. But something was arranged in exactly the same way. For example, on vacation it was also possible to drive a car, and the children whined in the same way. Only now I'm driving, and before that I was sitting in the back seat, though without any car seat.
3. Before dad (or mom) you fell in love with others
From the age of seven or eight, a child usually begins to be interested in the world of emotions and feelings and relationships with people. This opens up space for stories about situations in which we experienced this or that feeling and behaved one way or another. This is very useful, because we enrich the experience of the child, supplementing it with our own. Of course, nothing can replace your own impressions, but this is how parents develop the child's imagination (offer him their own analogies to his situation) and empathize with each other. What you should not do is to inspire the child what exactly he should feel in this or that case.
It is better to ask: “What would you do? And how would you behave in my place?
4. How did you meet your mother (or your father)
Another type of story is about mother and father. The story of acquaintance, love, travel, the birth of older brothers and sisters, and maybe the story of divorce, separation or death of the father - all this must be told as soon as the child begins to understand what's what. And the more problematic the story, the more important it is to give the child a complete picture of what is happening as soon as possible. It should not contain myths and omissions, but it is very important for a child that mom and dad love each other at least for a while. There is no need to lie, but it is necessary to tell the best part of the truth first. In any case, this is a story with a happy ending, because in the end, the one to whom everyone tells this was born!
By the way, it is very important to talk about the ancestors of a child who died before he was born or when he was one or two years old.
Character, habits, words - all this lives as long as we remember it. And this is triple important when it comes to a parent who died early.
5. Yes, you too had a severe hangover
The most controversial category of stories are stories about the mistakes of youth. Many parents are just eager to tell their teenager how disgusting the hangover after a wild drinking bout, how unpleasant the first early sex is, and how they once smoked something wrong and caught a panic attack. Maybe this is normal - in terms of the fact that parents are not perfection and not stiff bastards who never made a mistake. But do not count on the educational effect of such stories. Everything will be different for a son or daughter - more fun, scarier, more boring, more complicated or easier. They are not you. Do not try to generalize or impose your experience. And if you go a little further - why do these stories at all? Your first negative experience with another person may not be like that.
The exception is, in my opinion, stories about rare and life-threatening situations. For example, I forever remembered my father's story about the viper's bite and the suction of the poison, and also about the fact that you can literally get lost in three pines. But such things are usually told not as an edification, but as a continuation of the transfer of experience from an adult to a child. At 150 km/h, a pedestrian on the side of the road is not visible at all, a floral print in the apiary is inappropriate, and so on. If such stories are told in time, they can really help a child in adulthood.
6. Life can be difficult, but always interesting
At some point, we get to stories that have nothing to do with our child at all. These are not stories about childhood and not about "where did I come from and how it was." These are stories about adult life and its structure. But here it is important to follow some rules:
- A child (teenager) must be ready to learn this story.
For children up to a certain age, it is very important that the parent is unshakable, not weak, not in a vulnerable position. Therefore, let us beware of telling children under 12-13 years old about situations in which we were helpless. And then you can and should talk about it. People are not supermen, they need the help of others, and it is very useful to pass on the experience of such a situation to a child. - For ourselves, this story should remain in the past. If something worries us still, it is better not to share it with children. A sign that the story has not passed is a wave of anger, bitterness or shame that boils in the chest at the memory. If so, then it's better not to. If a parent tries to tell a child what bastards people really are, the child may not believe and move away or receive distorted ideas about reality.
7. You were also just happy (often)
The most necessary, as it seems to me, kind of stories. These are stories about how happy we were without children.
Of course, not in the sense that "and then you were born, and happiness ended." Rather, about the fact that the parent is a separate interesting person with his own meaning of life, history and memories. Impressions, travel, tastes, people, victories - everything that we tried long before the child was born. Let the child feel how much interesting and diverse life is. Let him understand that being an adult is nice. And, of course, that the world revolves not only around children and parents, but on its own.
Photo: iStockphoto (hipokrat, Tomsmith585, kevinruss, marlenka, karenfoleyphotography)
Still from the cartoon “From the slopes of Kokuriko”
The story of a mother of a special child
“I really dreamed of a son. More precisely, she dreamed of a child in general, but especially of a son. It didn’t work out right away, I didn’t immediately believe in my happiness ... But I found out that a healthy son is unlikely to be born, almost immediately.
Doctors said during pregnancy: the baby will have problems. They offered to have an abortion, but - what kind of abortion? I was already approaching thirty, such a long-awaited child, and even a son!
- No, I will give birth, - she said.
Well, right away in his maternity hospital - in intensive care, immediately doctors, examinations ... Cerebral palsy - this is the time. Epilepsy is two. Hearing and visual impairments are three. Continue further?
Doctors were different. Some were supportive and reassuring. And others said very sharply: “There will be a vegetable. Just lie down and that's it. He won't even recognize anyone." I now understand why they said so - so that I would not hope. So that any, even a small improvement, becomes a holiday. And yet - so as not to go in cycles only in the child.
You see, mothers of special children have such a danger: they can completely immerse themselves in the baby. Do only them, forget about the whole world, even forget about yourself.
And so it is impossible. This is even harmful for a child - because, having completely dissolved in it, at some point you can break loose. You need something that will help you get distracted, switch. And then, exhaling, with renewed vigor, rush to the fight for the baby.
When my son was not yet two years old, I gave birth to a daughter. A good normotypical girl means healthy. Once in the world of mothers of special children, you begin to call healthy children normotypical. It seems to be something from another reality.
But in fact, we, mothers of babies with health problems, also really need normal children. Many people told me: “Did you give birth to an assistant, so that she would look after her brother later?” Yes, I really hope that my daughter will help me: even now she can, for example, call me if her brother starts crying or knocks on his chest if he eats and chokes. She is already 2.5 years old, her son is 4 years old. They seem to be small, but no longer babies.
But still, I did not give birth to a helper. Now I already understand: we need healthy children so that we understand the joys of motherhood. All that first step, first smile, first word, first "Mommy, I love you" - we can not wait for this from children whose brain is damaged by the disease. They love us too, but they can't express it. And we, mothers, need these joys. We can invest so much in our children precisely because we are fed by the energy of love and the energy of joy - the one that children give. Therefore, no matter how strange it sounds, in order to raise a sick baby, you need to give birth to a healthy one.
Although in infancy it is very difficult. Highly. I am alone with the children. I don’t know whether to speak or not - but sometimes I cry simply from impotence. Yes, I have a mom and dad who are always ready to help, but they also have their own lives. And they, it seems to me, have not fully come to terms with the fact that their grandson is disabled.
It happens that they reproach me. It happens that they grumble: “You don’t have a life, but some kind of Santa Barbara.” It happens that they advise in such a way that it would be better to keep silent. I understand them too: it's hard for them. But it's not easy for me either.
Well, at least, we now live separately with our son and daughter: the government of Tatarstan has allocated its own apartment. Thank you for this - now I feel like the mistress of my life, and relations with my parents have become much better.
Since the birth of my son, I have been looking for methods of how to deal with him. Tried everything I could. He doesn't walk by himself. Doesn't sit. Completely recumbent… I realized long ago that children with mild forms of cerebral palsy can be rehabilitated using any method. Whatever you take, whatever you do, they will still develop, they will still have results. Strange, right? Dream that your child had a mild form of cerebral palsy. I dream… Everything is relative in this world.
So, many things help children with mild cerebral palsy. Only one thing can help children with a severe form. And parents have to try dozens of different methods - to look for the one that will help. And worry that time is running out, but the technique has not been found.
I found one that suits my son - this is the method of Svetlana Gribova. She also has a son with cerebral palsy. Also "heavy". Starting to study with him, she did not even hope that the child would be able to walk. But now he is 22 years old and he walks by himself. Yes, he has no speech, but the guy tears from his mother's hands! This is real happiness. I myself mastered this technique, completed a training course - and now I am using it with my son. Our work, of course, is for many years, but I hope that my son will have success.
And yet, one cannot be limited to only one. I continued to look - and quite unexpectedly got to the "Mom's School". For me, this was a salvation - not even to study with my son, but simply to change the situation.
It was hard: I had to do all the household chores, both male and female. Take care of your son and raise your daughter. Deal with her jealousy of her brother. She wants me to put her to bed - and at the same moment her son whimpers, he also cannot fall asleep alone. I feed my son - my daughter immediately needs to eat. And if the son just squeaks, then for my daughter my inattention is a reason for a completely serious offense. Difficult. Sometimes it seems that there is a concrete slab above me. I try to pick her up but she won't. Doesn't rise. Never rises...
This is how I came to Mom's School - completely exhausted, almost without emotions.
There they appeared. School has become a time of inspiration and anxiety for me. With inspiration - perhaps, there is no need to explain, but anxiety ... I suddenly ran into a problem that I had not realized before: the world of my children is me.
In the evenings, all the mothers gathered for "mother's gatherings" - they talked with specialists, sculpted from clay, just talked about something of their own.
I wanted to participate in everything, absolutely everything! How I yearned for them! But the children were picked up by volunteers during their mother's gatherings, mostly young girls (they themselves were not yet mothers). And my daughter did not want to stay with them, she cried.
She did not understand them, and they did not understand her: we live in Kazan, I teach her the Tatar language. Now even in schools it can be studied optionally, that is, the language disappears! Therefore, I decided that at home we would speak Tatar. And she will learn Russian in kindergarten, at school ... So, in the "Mom's School" daughter turned out to be a foreigner. Nobody but me and her understood Tatar. And when the daughter for the first time in her life found herself without a mother, in an unfamiliar environment, with people who speak a language she does not understand and do not understand her, she began to sob. My heart was breaking.
Every evening I decided whether to feel guilty about leaving my daughter with volunteers or to go to evening events that I was literally eager to attend.
I even talked about it with a psychologist - and more often I still went. And she was worried.
And the days were busy with the son. The “school” does not last long, during this time the specialists need to have time to work with each of the children, work with them, discuss the situation with all other specialists, with the mother, teach the mother new techniques ... After all, the most important thing is not even what will happen at school, and what you take home from it. Yes, it was a real intensive - the son even got tired by the end of the day, he probably never had such an eventful life as in "Mom's School". Probably, it was easier for older children ... Although for special children, much is determined not even by age, but by the state of health.
After the "Mom's school" we began to do exercises that were suggested by experts, we changed our classes with a speech therapist, defectologist. After all, for our children, any new information is already an occupation. Cooked food - let the child smell it! Let his olfactory receptors work, let the brain receive new information, process it, and remember it.
Our children do not have enough impressions - they don’t run like others, they don’t see and hear like those who are in good health. And if ordinary children gain impressions without our help, then special ones need help.
Even I felt how important it is - new experiences. A change of scenery, new people, new tasks… “Mom's School” shook me up. Yes, it was difficult. And yes, it was fun.
And one more thing - in "Mom's School" I looked at Yulia Kremneva. She, too, is a special mother, she also has two children, also a son and a daughter. Where does she get so much strength from? Where is its source of energy?
Even there, in the "Mom's School", other participants were discussing with passion a new project - "School of Leaders". Online training for mothers who want not only to live next to their "special" children, but also to gain professional skills. I listened to these discussions - and again conflicting feelings fought in me. I really wanted to raise my hand and say: “Take me! I really want to see you!” But at the same time, I thought, “No, not really.
Well, where do I go. And two more kids."
And suddenly Julia herself suggested: “Do you want to?” And I could no longer answer: "No." I'm still not sure that I can go through the project to the end. Will I have time, will I have enough strength to develop all the ideas that are in the project, to apply all the knowledge in practice? After all, this also takes time - and I have a son. I need to deal with them. And my daughter is growing...
So I just study. Today I have time - and I'm doing it. How will tomorrow turn out? Don't know. But I will stick with the project. "School of leaders" is my communication with the outside world. If you turn it off, only a circle of three people will remain: me, son, daughter. And nothing more. Nothing at all. Of course, I will still grow as a physiotherapy instructor - maybe someday I will even be able to make money from it. But, believe me, I don’t know what is harder - finding extra minutes for the “School of Leaders” or giving it up and staying inside this circle of three people.
