Cruising With A Young Child
It has been much easier being full time parents jointly than I had anticipated. Although it can get a bit much occasionally, both Dan and Nigel benefit from the amount of time they now spend together, and we share out the childcare reasonably well.
In the winter when one or both of us may find work, the balance will change and we will try to cope with that when it happens.
Daniel has lost the routine which he had in Guernsey, however he is generally happy and although he frequently talks about the things he did at pre-school, with his childminders or with my parents, he is not upset that he is not with them now, he seems very level-headed. He knew I would take him back to visit them all before too long.
We read him books, and we play a lot with stickle bricks and his train set. With the stickle bricks he asks to build all the things he sees, we have made lots of planes, trains and boats. Daniel can build a lot of them by himself, and we have taught him to strengthen them up so they don’t fall apart. One day we made a fish pond with lots of fish and a fishing rod, and one day we made a tram.
Dan has a collection of little people, they have queued up to wait for the sticklebricks train, they drive cars and have races, we have made a traffic jam, a boat towing a dinghy, and an outboard motor (which Dan designed extremely accurately by himself).
We also make models from all the DVD’s which Dan watches, we make a Wallace and Gromit rocket, and a chicken pie machine from Chicken Run.
Playdough is also popular, and we play games with words so he learns what letters thay begin with. His vocabulary as regards boating is even more excellent than before.
However unfortunately he has forgotten how to count, and he gets muddled after four or five!
We sing lots of songs and he makes up his own songs which are very funny.
In the two weeks since Dan was three, i.e. second half of July, he has learnt by heart the alphabet song. Nigel is teaching him the letters of the alphabet in writing, one a day.
Dan now has a very good concept of languages, he understands that some people speak English and some speak other languages and not English, that some people understand only some English and that sometimes he has to repeat himself more to be understood. He knows several words of Spanish and Portuguese, the other morning he was playing with his toy people on his own and I heard him say “and the man says “Ola” to the lady, and the lady says “Ola” to the man …”
He has played with plenty of Spanish and Portuguese children quite happily, language doesn’t seem to matter too much at that age!
I still say goodnight to Dan in Guernsey French and now he is asking me what other things he can say in Guernsey French! I will have to dig out my notes.
I also have several books in French and we read those too. If we stay in France over the winter I will try to teach him a lot of French, to help him while he attends a local pre-school.
Since mid-May, Nigel takes Dan nearly every day to the beach, and Dan is improving his confidence in the water now that the sea temperature is rising. He enjoys playing with water at chest height, then as the waves pass he is lifted up. He will not wear armbands but has now conceded to use the rubber ring sometimes.
Since July, Dan is very confident with his rubber ring and will swim happily into deep water with it. He swam with Nigel all the way to the boat, which was anchored off the beach at Malaga quite some distance away. Further on at Adra he swam directly off the boat boarding ladder for the first time, in the harbour with his rubber ring, and in Formentera he swam off the boat boarding ladder when the boat was at anchor.
I am hopeful that during next summer, when Dan is four, that he will learn to swim without his rubber ring.
May onwards - in the warm weather Dan often is naked, and apart from two accidents the first day he has been consistently using the potty or weeing over the side like Daddy. Poos are a different matter, he asks if he can have a nappy so he can poo in it! However if he has clothes on he still wants to wee in a nappy.
Since the second half of June, Dan has been using toilets to poo in, even public ones, he is coming on quickly!
Since his 3 rd birthday in mid-July Daniel has been using pants during the day, and apart from one accident on the boat he has been very good.
Dan has been on boats on and off since the tender age of eight days old – his first trip was to Sark in a friend’s motorboat. He was 10 months old when Spinalonga was launched, and he spent many weekends and holidays on the boat that season and the next. We sailed (sometimes motored) around most of the Channel Islands , and to France , England , and Ireland . During those first two seasons we often put him in his car seat, which was tied in somewhere suitable. He would eat and have naps in it, and be let out to play inside. His bunk was on the floor in his cabin where he could not fall off anything.
Dan has developed very good balance both on land and in/on the boat, and our main worry on the boat now is if he fell off it. Before Spinalonga’s second season, when Dan was big enough to climb out of our deep cockpit, I installed safety netting around the whole boat.
We do not often use a lifejacket on him, but we will if it is rough or getting dark and he insists on being on deck. Mostly he would rather stay inside the boat or in the cockpit than wear a lifejacket. In the hot summer weather he would overheat with it on anyway.
When he does go on deck it is always under supervision and in good weather and good visibility. When in a quiet anchorage I will sometimes let him on deck on his own, but only if I can hear him pottering about. Normally he is doing something noisy or singing or chatting to himself while on deck, so my automatic parent switch tells us if the noise stops so we can check on him.
We have not tried tying him to the lifelines on a harness, I don’t think he would put up with it.
Since we have been living aboard, we have learned that unless we leave the boat only to go to the beach, we must take some form of transport for Dan. Although he has plenty of energy for fun things, he does not usually enjoy walking, and we have learned especially in the heat that it is not viable to carry him.
So now for any visit into town, we take either Dan’s bicycle or his pushchair, depending on his preference. During a day-long visit we opt for the pushchair as he can have a nap in it.
Dan loves his bike, it has stabilisers but I guess it won’t be very long before he doesn’t need them. He rides sensibly and is good near roads and where there are people.
We have met a lot of people, some only briefly, and some who are now friends. Dan is nervous when meeting adults or children for the first time, but usually warms to them quickly, and he is not afraid to play with children who speak another language. He does not really get to know many children though, as we are frequently on the move during the summer. However some of the friends he met are Javi in Porto Novo, NW Spain; Tom and his mum Jacqueline, who we met in Cascais (near Lisbon, Portugal); Dougas, Ana and Dautzung, our Brazilian (grown-up) friends in Cascais, and Luka and Billy in Palma de Mallorca.
In NW Spain, we came across a phenomenon which certainly caught Daniel by surprise. Most people, especially older ones, have a great affection for children. Sometimes even though they don’t know us, they will show particular attention to Daniel. The men generally only ruffle his hair, which is fine and Dan doesn’t mind, but some of the older women come straight to him and touch his face and arms and try to talk to him in Spanish with their faces close to his. He doesn’t want to be poked and prodded by some old woman he has never met, who won’t understand that he doesn’t speak their language and he doesn’t want the attention. He feels he can’t get away, and after continued touching he tries to push them away, he even hits them sometimes to try and make them go away. Although he should never hit people, I understand how he feels and help him get away when necessary!
However in Portugal this lessened, and in the south of Portugal and Spain it no longer happened.