Oct Player Profile - Lilly Day - 6yrs

Meet the future deliverer of our Grand-kids!

Child’s Name:  Lilly Day

Age: 6

Venue/s attended:  Woodend, Christchurch

How long have you been coming to Little Kickers? 3 or so months

Favourite Little Kickers game? What's the time Mr Wolf

What do you like best about Little Kickers? Because it is fun!!

What do you want to be when you grow up? Midwife

Favourite healthy food? Apples

Who is your favourite coach? Coach Justin and Emily

What do you love? Babies, horses and football

Parent or Carers Perspective on Little Kickers: 

The low numbers in the class, the positive and very encouraging coaches, the number of different games/ drills each week always different. It has been a really good thing for our shy little girl, she is much more confident and can’t wait each week till Little Kickers thanks to you guys!!

Thank you Jemma for your lovely comments about Little Kickers, we're so glad your beautiful daughter Lilly is finding confidence in our classes.

Player Profile - Gabriel - 3yrs 11 months

Thank you to the lovely, nearly 4 yr old, Gabriel (with a bit of help from his parents) for answering our questions. 

May you be a safe racing driver when you grow up!

Name: Gabriel Taylor

Age: 3 years & 11 Months 

Venues attended: Takapuna & Northcote Int.

How long have you been coming to Little Kickers? 2 years

Favourite Little Kickers game?   "the running around one" ( relay race) "and the one where Mat says 'Gabriel on blue and Marco on red' and then you score a goal!"         

  

What do you like best about Little Kickers? Wearing my football kit & fast yellow shoes, and scoring goals.

                                                                    

What do you want to be when you grow up?  A racing driver.

Favourite healthy food?  Carrot & Cucumber.

Who is your favourite coach? Coach Anna & Coach Mat

What do you love? Batman Lego & Pepper Pig  

Parents Perspective on Little Kickers:  We love LK. Apart from being a fun thing to do with Gabriel every Saturday morning, It's been a great way for him to develop his physical strength and balance skills progressively as he grows.

The Little Kickers team would like to wish you a very happy and special 4th Birthday 

Future All White in the making

We interviewed William Gillingham, 14yrs, Center Back player who went on a football trip with his team to the UK and got to visit Wembly! 

Full name: William Finbar Gillingham

Age:

14

When did you first start playing football?

Age 3 – 4 for Mel Soccer in the UK.

Who do you currently play for?

Wynton Rufers Soccer School of Excellence. Onehunga Football Club

How long have you been playing for them?

6 Years

What is your position on the team?

Centre Back

What is one thing that you enjoy while playing football?
Scoring Goals and winning games.

Is it hard to juggle school and practice and games?

Yes as sometimes they are on the same day.

What makes a great football player?

Someone with the desire to succeed

What did you do in the UK?

We played many Premier League Academies such as Fulham FC and West Ham United. We also  visited Old Trafford, Emirates Arena, and the Highlight; Wembley!

What was your favourite part about your trip?

Playing and beating West Ham 1-0

Who is your favourite soccer player?

John Terry

What is the next step for you?

The next step for me would have to be to make the under 17 All Whites squad.

We wish William all the best for a successful 2013, William is already off to Australia to compete in the Nike Cup!

Player Profile - Lucas G - 3 1/2yrs

We have the adorable 'Super Hero Lucas' as our Player Profile from Mt Eden...

Name: Lucas Gibbons

Age: 3 1/2yrs

Venues: Mt Eden

How long have you been coming to Little Kickers? 2 years

Favourite Little Kickers game?  Scoring goals!

What do you like best about Little Kickers? Playing with the other kids and having a lot of fun

What do you want to be when you grow up?  Super Hero – like Super Man!

Favourite healthy food? Sushi

Who is your favourite coach? Andrew!

What do you love? My Mummy and Daddy and my little sister Pippa

Dad's Perspective on Little Kickers:  It’s great to see Lucas learning skills and coordination in the drills. He really loves it and likes playing with the other kids in his class.

Thank you Lucas (& Dad) for answering our questions, I hope he does grow up to be a Super Hero of some sort!

Player Profile - Dejaun - 5yrs 

Introducing our player profile this month!

A future sprinter in the making, please welcome Dejaun from one of our Auckland Central East franchise!

Name:  Dejaun Naidoo

Age: 5 

Venues of Little Kickers attended: Meadowbank, Glendowie

How long have you been coming to Little Kickers? 14 months 

What is your favourite little Kickers game? The jet plane game and learning new tricks

What do you like best about little kickers? Playing a game of soccer at the end in a team

What do you want to be when you grow up? A sprinter like Usain Bolt!

What’s your favourite healthy food? Apples, strawberries and cucumbers

Who is your favourite coach? Coach Raphael

What do you love? Listening to music, dancing and soccer.

Parent says: 

Little Kickers is a great way to develop ball skills in children in an enjoyable way. Children go through drills and learn how to control the ball without even knowing it as they having so much fun. Our son has grown from skill to skill and it is great to now see him developing a team player spirit as well! Dejaun looks forward to his soccer game every week and so do we!

Garden Games

Looking for ideas for your children to practice their football skills at home? Have a look at the games below and have fun teaching them to your kids.

A great way to spend a lovely Sunday afternoon and to keep fit =)

Car garage

Corner of a corner of the garden. This is the car garage. Get your child/children dribbling around the garden. When you blow the whistle, the children have to quickly dribble their football into the car garage. To make it more interesting, you can time how quickly they get their ball into the car garage or you can try to get their balls from your child.

Race mummy/daddy

This is a very simple race game, all you have to do is race your child/children. 

Make sure your child/children dribbles the ball in and out of the cones and keeps the ball nice and close. 

Hope you have a ball trying out these games!

Football Success Through Inclusion Not Perfection

This week's post is courtesy of one of our Little Kickers coaches from the UK but we've found the content very relevant for us folks here in New Zealand too.

Introducing Coach Dave...


Football Success Through Inclusion Not Perfection

15 years or so ago I became quite keen on the game of golf. My ability was limited to say the least, but I thoroughly enjoyed playing. The scenery, the company, the gentle exercise, the sense of achievement, were all highly appealing. Then again, all these attributes still appeal to me but I haven't picked up a club since the turn of the millennium. Whilst I found that I could hack my way around any course in my unorthodox style, and my putting was as good as any of my peers, I felt a massive pressure to improve.

This pressure came from friends who were better than me. It would appear their beef with my game was my swing, or lack of it. Rather than starting directly above my head, it started from about a 35% angle behind my back leg. I was perfectly happy playing like this – being in my early 20's, any chance of winning the Open had long gone. But they wouldn't let it go. "You've got so much power, you could be awesome if you had a correct swing" was the kind of comment I'd hear on loop. Finally, I gave in and booked a course of lessons with a 'pro'. He was not amused by my style of golf at all. "You can't do that, you must do this, that and the other". I tried, but the higher my swing starting point, the more air shots I made. And that was when I wasn't hacking lumps out the turf. I was hitting everything but the ball.

I persisted for months with what I'd been 'taught'. But gradually lost patience and fell out of love with the game. It wasn't fun any more. It was hard work, frustrating, even embarrassing. When I heard Bubba Watson had surprisingly won the US Masters, one commentator described his style as "Like watching an octopus cut down a tree with a chainsaw". He then went on to remark on how ridiculous Bubba's long arms would look poking out the end of the Green Jacket's sleeves. This seasoned pundit was pretty much saying 'how could such an unorthodox freak win one of golf's biggest prizes?' A man who by his own admission has never taken a single golf lesson! Well he won it pal, and he won it his way.

Who actually wrote the manual for sports which says 'you can't do that and you must do this'? Surely if a technique works and gets results, then it's right. Yes practice is vital to success, as is dedication. but as I heard Howard Wilkinson say recently, "We need to convince players, not tell them". Surely it's basic psychology, 'Don't expect but suggest instead'. Anyone who's ever been nagged at about anything understands this. It's exactly the same with coaching. Present the information in a fun and engaging manner. Don't ram it down their throats.

When Dick Fosbury decided not to do a scissors style high jump in the 1968 Olympics and invented his own 'Fosbury flop' ensuring he won the gold medal and broke the world record in the process, did anyone say 'you can't do that'? Well I'm sure they probably did, but I doubt he cared very much. It's now a technique which has been used ever since and we saw it at London 2012 and I am sure it will continue well into the future. Until someone dares try something different, that is.

So what's this got to do with football and coaching? Everything, I believe. In England we are so obsessed with protocol. What's right, what's wrong, what's 'the done thing'. Until recently, many pro clubs looked at children's parents to see what the child was likely to develop into genetically. Wouldn't be surprised if some still do. Tall Mom and Dad meant little Billy would be big and strong. Little Mom and Dad meant little Billy would stay little and that was no use to them. The logic remains you can turn an athlete into a footballer but you can't turn a footballer into an athlete. Theo Walcott is a good example. At 16 he had a 100 metres time which was borderline Olympic qualification. Wasn't great at football, but hey that's the easy bit to teach isn't it?

Time and again we see comparatively small foreign players who are nothing less than geniuses. Messi, Zola, Juninho, Tevez, Maradona, to name a few. Would these guys have made it in English football? Would the scouts have wanted them? We'll never know. But my guess is we've discarded a wealth of talent at the expense of brawn and power over the years.

11 year ago I was watching West Brom play QPR in a scrappy Championship game. WBA were winning 1-0 and in the 2nd half QPR brought on a young 6"7 bean pole striker called Peter Crouch. The whole stadium rocked with laughter. Myself included, I'm now ashamed to admit. "One Rodney Trotter, there's only one Rodney Trotter" and then "Rodney, Rodney give us a wave” echoed round the Hawthorns.
I, and everyone else in the stadium, had been brought up, conditioned to think people that big were good for one thing only. Basketball. I bumped into the then chief scout at WBA the following week. His name was Richie Barker. Some of the older ones amongst you will recall him as a manager in his own right – I think he was at Wolves and Stoke. Richie was in the winter of his career at this stage. But I'll never forget bringing up the subject of 'That Rodney' and Richie cutting me dead to say "He'll make some player one day, son, you mark my words. He's got it all". I was confused. I liked Richie as a person, and respected his opinion, but surely he was talking rubbish? Well 11 years later Peter Crouch has fetched a combined transfer fee of £47 million, played for England 42 times scoring 22 goals, played 395 pro games scoring 156 goals, oh and he recently scored easily the goal of the season with his sublime technique.

Football fans have selective memories. Doubt many of the 20,000 or so at The Hawthorns that day remember shouting 'Freak' every time he touched the ball now? So Richie was right. But how many Richie Barker's are there in our game at the top level, in junior football and on the terraces? Sadly, very few. Judging a book by it's cover is still the order of the day.

Crouch is probably one of the most gifted footballers English football has produced in recent times. He just doesn't look like he should be.

I believe the way to increase the amount of gifted footballers in our game is to increase the amount of quality football played and coaching received. Skills development centres are becoming far more widespread but are still the poor relation to the league systems. As I've said before, I believe leagues do serve a purpose for some children but there is absolutely no reason why kids can't play in leagues (if they want to and aren't forced by parents) and also attend skills development centres too.

I myself am starting a development centre for year one and two children as my own children have now reached this age and are too old for Little Kickers. My intention is to hold one hour sessions. The first 20 mins or so will concentrate on ball mastery in various situations. Coaching will consist of limited command style, with majority of games having a guided discovery ethos. The rest of the sessions will consist of various small sided games with themes. Smaller numbers the better to encourage higher amount of time on the ball for each player. We'll have a debrief at the end when there'll be a little, relaxed Question and Answer coaching.

We'll have a pool of players of mixed abilities. Sides will be picked and changed, handicapped and swapped. Positions will be changed too. How can an 8 year old truly know they're going to be a goalkeeper for the rest of their lives? They can't. So they'll rotate positions. Learn how to emphasise with team mates, develop a rounded appreciation of all positions. At the end, the children will go home not having won or lost 12-0, but having played football, and, most importantly, lots of it. Hopefully, having thoroughly enjoyed themselves without having (if I'm being kind) nonsense shouted at them. If I'm being honest, sometimes borderline abuse shouted at them.

My philosophy is football coaching should be about inclusion not elitism. I think the English game should work on the basis of 1000 average young children playing in a positive, fun environment is likely to reap greater dividends in the long term than a so called elite group of 20 of whom the majority will fall out of love with the game because of pushy adults and elitist coaching before they become teenagers.

If anyone agrees or disagrees with my philosophy I'd love to hear from you. I'm particularly interested in coaches and parents thoughts regarding the pros and cons of children's leagues in comparison to skills development centres. Why can't they exist happily together? Being diplomatic, perhaps there are lessons they could learn from each other for the greater good?

You can follow Coach Dave @CoachDaveLKFC on twitter. Thank you for reading!

Parent vrs. Me

I wonder whether there will come a time in every parent’s life that they decide what sort of parent they’ll be? I don’t mean as in a strict or chilled out parent, I mean as in to what extent you follow the ‘do as I say and not as I do’ or ‘do as I say and do as I do’ parent. 


I’ve pondered this recently as I am at a stage in my child’s life that I need to make decisions about how I act and what I say around my boys. My twin boys have just turned 3, they copy all my words and sentences and basically everything I do and say. I hear their little voices (alright, very loud voices) and I hear mini-me’s. For example J & E were in the car with a fire truck having just gone past E’s side of the car... 


E “oohhhhh, a fire truck, maybe it will go and fight a fire?” 
J “the fire truck will go past my side now? ... “ that’s a good idea, it will go pass soon?” 
E: “NOOOO, it’s going to put out a fire” 
... goes back and forward a bit about where the truck is and whether it will go pass J’s side of the car or not....
J “it WILLLLL!!!!!!” 
E: “mummy, J is being loud and naughty, he will go into his room soon?!” 
J: “I’m NOT being naughty” 
E: “mummy, he WILL go to his cot... 5,4,3,2,1... he’s going into his cot when he gets home” 
J: “mummy, I am being a good boy” 
E: “he will not get a cracker, only I will get a cracker because I am a good boy” 


They end up having a bit of a verbal tiff but distraction overruled in this instance but in all of the above I just hear me saying every sentence and even copying my intonations, I start to wonder what I’ve created (2 monsters?) or what am I creating? 


It’s no surprise that their are many parenting style and I’m not an expert but I often come across 3 different types: 

1. Live and lead by example – just be who you are and you’re happy for your kids to be replicas of you taking the good with the bad. 
2. Live, change a bit and lead by example –change yourself to become the role model you want your kids to follow and look up to 
3. Do as I say and not as I do – don’t change much but making sure your kids follow your instructions even though you as an adult may go off track often.

I don’t think many people solely fit into 1 of the above but I’ll just go on and talk about my experience and my current dilemma. You see, I am of the thought process that I want my kids to copy my ‘good’ behaviour and do as I do with me becoming a ‘perfect’ role model but this has meant I have had to change certain characteristics about myself during this parenting process malarkey. 


Things I have changed that come to mind: 
- I don’t swear often and never (or extremely rarely) in front of the boys 
- I never yell at them or around them (I used to, very rarely mind you, yell out of frustration in verbal disagreements). 
 - Don’t watch TV during the day 
- I try to tidy up after I use something – big change for me! 
- I try my best to speak using full words such as ‘do not’, ‘you are’ as I like them to know the individual words rather than ‘don’t’ and ‘you’re’, odd I know? 
- Not use ‘yeh’ ‘hiya’ and ‘cause’, – now that’s been a hard habit to break but the day they came home from daycare saying ‘use guys’ really got to me so at least I managed to change it to a bearable ‘you guys’.

There are probably many examples like the above but I wonder how much of someone (like myself who wants my boys to copy my actions) changes so dramatically that I lose some of my personality just to appease their upbringing? I used to be the ‘distracts others’ in my primary/intermediate years and a rebel in my teenage years but got back on track when I turned 20. I look back at the rebel years and go ‘those were good times’! But, I wonder, do I want my boys to be ‘geeks’, ‘cool’, ‘smart’, ‘sporty’... and how much of what I’m teaching them now paves the way for the future? 


 If a parent swore, smoked, never exercised, drove too fast, use slack lingo... around the boys whether this would instantly turn them into a replica of that person – my presumption is yes. I then realise you can’t help but pave certain ways for them, I have no doubt that our boys will be sporty in one way or another but you never know how good their sporting achievements will be but I don’t care about that part provided they are healthy and enjoy active movement. I would like to think I can create fun, loving, sporty yet sensible teenage boys who know right from wrong, can take certain calculated risks in life but don’t go too far off the beaten track. 


When I read over this all I can think of is myself as I was bought up well, went to average/good schools along the way and had good parent role-models (of course I think I can do better in certain areas, sorry about that one parents if you read this ha ha). I honestly don’t think they did anything wrong to create such a rebel of a teenager and it came down to me being an extrovert so my natural personality overruled BUT I think the fact that I got myself back on track is a testament to their parenting. I knew I was being stupid, knew how to change my behaviour and chose not to until I was ready. 


I feel there are so many rights, wrongs and in-betweens offered to parents to become such an amazing role model you have to put everything in perspective. To realise there is only so much control you can have over the environment they grow up in versus what success they’ll have in life (defining success is another kettle of fish altogether) and only so much of yourself that you can change if indeed you want to in the first place! 


I don’t really have a conclusion for this but your thoughts and experiences are much appreciated and in 20 years I’ll let you know how my boys are going! 


Yvette, Director Little Kickers NZ

Player Profile - Daniel Doherty - 4

I have had the pleasure of coaching Daniel Doherty while a Junior Kicker at Takapuna, he has now moved up to Mighty Kickers and continues to thrive at Little Kickers with Coach's Nikki & Lisa.

Here is Daniel’s Player Profile Interview ...



Name: Daniel Doherty
Age: 4
Venues attended around the world: Takapuna (Auckland, New Zealand)
How long have you been coming to Little Kickers? 2 years
What is your favourite Little Kickers game? “the drills that involve scoring goals and the warm up when you run around the cones and jump over the cones marked out.”
What do you like best about little kickers? “Kicking the soccer ball around.”
What do you want to be when you grow up? Doctor
What’s your favourite healthy food? Chicken Nibbles
Who is your favourite coach? Coach Nikki & Lisa (and Yvette when she comes)
What do you love? Mummy, Daddy, Natalie and all my family. Also I love playing games.

Daniel’s Dad says: It is a great activity and has really helped develop Daniel’s co-ordination. He looks forward to soccer every Saturday and the games and activities are lots of fun. The coaches offer good encouragement and Little Kickers has helped his confidence a lot.

Oh how times have changed...

On exiting Bunnings Warehouse I was met by 3 extremely excited Girl Guides who bombarded me (nicely) asking if I would like to buy some biscuits – ‘how could I resist’ – and happily went away with my packet of Original Girl Guide biscuits (chocolate versus original – hard decision but original won this time).

I went home to my darling 2 ½ year old twin boys, gave them a nice big hug and proceeded to make a cup of tea and dig into my first Girl Guide Biscuit for the year – dunked in tea is my preference! On my third or possibly 10th biscuit (I wasn’t counting) I had a read of the packet which stated...

‘...By selling biscuits girls develop skills such as decision-making, customer service, marketing and money management....’ Girl Guides

I was in awe of how times have changed and how exciting times are for women. It’s great to read such a statement which is written by an organisation built on such old foundations and morals. A statement which epitomises women of today, this statement is written to show parents of these girls and all parents that men and women are in fact equal and can strive to be in control of their own lives.

I know this isn’t news to anyone (or I hope it isn’t!), men and women are equal – we all can live independently, have own education, money, jobs... What excites me though is that young girls are being taught this by Girl Guides and in a way the timing in which I came to buy my biscuits is quite ironic.

I am a strong believer that women can do anything. I happened to be in Bunnings buying Post Caps for the picket fence and gate that I had planned and built over the summer months and it happened to be here that Girl Guides are selling biscuits - in an overtly male place (statistics still show this) but with families galore wandering the isles.

When we had the Little Kickers Head Coach come over from the U.K. for initial training he was taken aback by how many girls we had in our classes versus what they have in the U.K. I was so pleased with this, that there are no pretences as to what a girl should participate in versus a boy. They understand the importance of active movement (no matter their sex). Girls enjoy our sessions just as much as the boys and we only see this increasing because sports/ hand eye coordination/ active movement is such a vital role in development of these early years with reading, writing and numerical reasoning.

NZ Football have seen a drop in female players at the age of 8 and over the last few years have put huge emphasis in developing females within the sport which is seeing an improvement already. It is exciting that we at Little Kickers have so many female coaches who are excellent role models to show both boys and girls that it’s a multi-sex sport.

I love New Zealand for being such a young country and able to cut away any pretences of ‘yee oldy’ days. Sport is sport and a child is a child!

Welcome to 2011!

2010 has come to an end, and what a rollercoaster year it was! Sport was at the forefront of entertainment in 2010 with the Football World Cup which the All Whites did amazingly well in – even came away un-defeated!

So what will 2011 bring? The build up to the Rugby World Cup will likely be the key topic of conversation in the sporting world. We’ve now entered the year of the Rabbit, which according to the Chinese Zodiac is the luckiest year, and I’m hopeful it will yield some sporting luck!

A New Year usually comes hand-in-hand with resolutions, and promises to oneself - to improve your life or the lives of those who surround you. Admittedly, you and I both know that a few weeks into the New Year, having promised yourself that you will eat healthily, you will be tucking into your Chinese takeaway. New Year’s resolutions often do not work for one reason or another; however, it shouldn’t take a New Year to prompt you to take steps to improve your lifestyle.

As adults (I use that term loosely!) we are constantly encouraging our children to become better at whatever they do, willing them to have the constant desire to increase their own motivation and to achieve greater things. Yet, we often fall short of it ourselves year after year. At Little Kickers, from session to session we aim to improve many different aspects of children’s lives; our carefully planned sessions include progressions that challenge the children both mentally and physically. The reason why adults’ resolutions never appear to work is because they are usually not enjoyable, or involve people making a great sacrifice. Children, however, improve their skills at our classes successfully because they are enjoying themselves.

When thinking about this, I set myself a New Year’s resolution that would both benefit me and be enjoyable. I have decided to join a social indoor football team, as great as I am with a size 1 Little Kickers kid’s football I feel I should start up or join a social indoor football team to get back into the game.

I would be interested to hear what your New Year’s resolutions are; why not leave a comment and let me know. Best of luck with them!

Here’s to a successful 2011.

Blue September 2010

My father is one of the lucky ones. He was diagnosed with prostate cancer and lives to tell the tale. It seems most people have had someone close to them be diagnosed with cancer and it’s definitely not a ‘it won’t happen to me’ scenario as it’s just all too common now.

No longer can you just be a bystander to this diagnosis, if we can all help each other and ourselves with understanding early diagnosis and taking precautionary measures the more lives we can save.

“In New Zealand, prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men. About 2,500 new cases of prostate cancer are diagnosed each year.” (http://www.prostate.org.nz/) ‘Men’ are husbands, fathers and grandfathers who affect even the youngest generation. It is Blue September 2010 (Prostate Cancer Awareness month) and it seems many men have a dislike for acknowledging that something isn’t quite right or if they do acknowledge it they don’t want to act on it. It’s often up to those around them to push them to go to the Doctor and get a check up.

Now you may wonder what this has to do with us at Little Kickers and preschool football?

A study (‘NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study’) carried out over 6 years shows clearly that overweight and obese men are more likely to die from prostate cancer than men of normal weight, though no more likely to actually develop the disease.

Little Kickers is about starting that all important task of introducing daily movement as a lifestyle behaviour and if this can be done through the beautiful game of football (soccer) that they love to play than that’s even better.

The importance of being active comes with it the recognition of keeping healthy and awareness of your body in a positive way (even at their young age). We start off getting children to enjoy being active. We keep our sessions light hearted and fun without putting undue pressure on succeeding at what they are doing. We support your child’s effort whether their ‘big kick’ off the sandcastle (aka coloured marker) was actually a small kick or they missed it completely. It doesn’t matter to us, we’ll get them to keep trying and give them plenty of high fives along the way. Their enjoyment at the sessions is the most important thing.

By introducing the love of sports into their lives we hope to instil the love of healthy living which leads to a healthier lifestyle. This in turn leads to a healthier family environment and generations of healthy families.

If we can start this process at pre-school age we are more likely to succeed.


More information about Prostate Cancer and Blue September:
http://www.prostate.org.nz
http://blueseptember.org.nz/index.php

Full-time versus Part-time mum

I recently got back in contact with an old school friend who I found out was pregnant with her first baby. She messaged me back asking if I was lucky enough to be a ‘full-time mum’ i.e. a stay at home mum. It took a while for me to get my head around that question and how I would answer it.

I could have easily asked the same question to expectant friends prior to having children myself but my views on the ideals and benefits of being a stay at home mum versus a working mum drastically changed now having kids.

Pre-kids I had a lot of patience, in good health and had good energy levels. I am fortunate enough to have my husband work a 5 minutes drive away with the leniency to come home if required and an understanding boss who happens to have 2 sets of twins! When my boys (twins) reached around 15 months old I was finding it increasingly hard to keep up my energy levels and patience to survive day on day. It became regular practice for me to call my husband up once a week pulling my hair out wondering how I was going to survive the next hour and it’s not as if my boys are different to any other toddlers. I soon realised something needed to change maybe it was time to look at some part-time work. I love my boys to bits but I felt like I wasn’t being the best parent that I could be.

I actually find my self luckier being a ‘part-time mum’ than a ‘full-time mum’ and I don’t mean in terms of finances, I mean in terms of energy levels and patience.

We were lucky enough to stumble across Little Kickers which has been my saviour in life in terms of how I care for my kids and in a way my sanity!

We started off with an independent nanny who luckily the boys adored to bits but unfortunately she left with minimum notice and left us stuck as to what to do. It felt like ages that I spent discussing the pros and cons of day-care and whether we should investigate this option further. I had only recently read a report from one of the boys’ paediatricians Simon Rowley who wrote about the negative impact of day-care on children under the age of 2 so I was even more reluctant to go down this route. My main concern was the boys’ happiness as I thought they may be stressed or uncared for versus a nanny. My pre-conceived understanding on day-care was that there wouldn’t be enough carers to properly care for of all the children.

How wrong was I, after visiting 5 centres I found the perfect centre for my boys. The carers were so loving and understanding: they kept to their routine, fed them healthy lunches and had more than enough energy to keep up with them.

I spent 3 days with the boys at the centre until I felt as though I could leave them alone. There were a few tears at the start (by them) but once I was around the corner and out of sight they soon stopped. They now attend day-care 3 mornings and 1 short day a week and what a better parent and person I am for it.

I feel like a new person and I know I am a much better parent for it. During my working day I get to speak to other business’s, parents, suppliers, employees and generally feel like I exist as a person and not just someone’s mum. When I pick the boys up from day-care I have this rush of love for them. I especially love it when they don’t know that I’ve arrived and I get to see them playing with the other children and then when they do see me I get an assortment of emotions from them. These range from running away from me because they want to stay and play to dancing around in excitement and giving me huge hugs as they wave goodbye to the carers (even if I’m not ready to go yet).

Once home I put work aside and use all my energy in interacting and playing with them, I adore hearing their giggles and now have the patience and energy to deal with their terrible two’s better. I love that they come home from day-care having learnt new words or actions to songs and seeing them develop socially.

I’ve realised my life needs more than just kids to make it complete and being a ‘part-time mum’ works perfectly for me, I actually feel lucky that I can be one over a ‘full-time’ mum. I am sill a wife, business women and a friend and to add to that a loving mum who is trying to find that perfect work/life balance.

My hat goes off to full-time mums as I often feel you don’t get enough recognition for what you do in today’s society and how hard your days can be.

Yvette; mum, wife, business partner, coach, friend....