Last night was sultry and stuffy. We have been promised thunderstorms later today. The morning has been fine - clear blue sky and sunshine. When I went out quite early (does 9.00 count as really early?) in the morning it was already warm. We’ll see what happens later in the day.
On the Food Programme on the radio they have been talking about how we learn to eat. One of the production team conveniently has a small child and so they have a sort of guinea pig to observe. She expressed her concern that her small boy became “picky” after the age of one, when he began to eat more pasta and bread - beige foods - and increasingly turned his nose up at fruit and vegetables. And I thought of our Granddaughter Number Two who at an early age started refusing fruit and vegetables, largely because she didn’t like the texture, the feel of fruit and veg on her fingers. Even now, as an independent student, she will fall back on pasta as a standby. She’s even picky about potatoes - basically she eats chips or wedges (which are basically chips by another name) but definitely not mashed potato, which is just too sloppy.
According to one of the speakers on the programme, nurseries have strategies for persuading children to eat or at least try different food. For example: “Today we are concentrating on green - spinach, lettuce, cucumber, and so on.” Feeding toddlers is a problem because basically we just want our children to eat.
I wonder if mediterranean mummies have the same problem. We often in this country have a tendency to prepare food for the toddler and then cook something different for the grownups. One speaker on the food programme described her surprise when she decided that the should just cook one meal and offer the “grownup” food to the toddlers, and it worked. And then there is the timing of meals. There seems more of a tendency to include the small children at the grownup table, be it in a restaurant or at home, even if the meal is quite late in the evening.
Next week on the Food Programme, they plan to talk to parents in France, which should prove interesting.
Among the other things that stress parents is what their children are being taught at school. In the USA there has been a spate of book-banning. Here’s an interesting comment by columnist Tim Adams that I came across:
“You had to smile at the anonymous parents in Mormon Utah who responded to the fundamentalist Christian zeal for banning books in schools by demanding the removal from library shelves of the Bible, on the grounds of its pornographic content (“incest, onanism, bestiality, prostitution…”).
The real laugh, though, was reserved for the state’s censors, who felt obliged to comply with the demand. It was a real-life lesson in Saul Bellow’s famous argument for literary and other freedoms: “There is no fineness or accuracy in suppression; if you hold down one thing, you hold down the adjoining.”
I also found a cartoon this morning, which I have been unable to find again - otherwise I might have copied it it. Basically it showed a small boy taking a book from the library and bringing it back later because his teacher said it was too advanced for his reading age. The librarian persuaded him to keep it, even if he mostly looked at the illustrations. Librarian and teacher had a bit of an argument, the teacher saying she wanted the child to know his limits and the librarian saying children should be made aware that they have no limits! Quite so!
In the sporting world, I just heard that Djokovic wants to be a record breaker, aiming to win more grand slam championships than any other tennis player. Djokovic, 36, faces Norway's Casper Ruud, 24, in the men's singles final at the French Open on Sunday.
A victory would take the Serb clear of Rafael Nadal's total of 22 wins.
"I like the feeling, it's an incredible privilege to be able to make history in the sport I truly love and has given me so much," Djokovic said.
Maybe he is inspired by Manchester City becoming record breaking winners of football championships.
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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