I am so proud of myself – I’ve decided to re purpose my worry about how I’m doing with my parenting. That energy is now being put into doing small things that make me feel more in the moment with our boys. What’s really cool is that it’s been largely facilitated by three things – and they are all review items that I wouldn’t have known of or gone for until I was offered them!
First up, are Rory’s Story Cubes. I have been so impressed with them that I’ve already bought them as birthday presents for other children. And now that I’ve been talking about them, friends are telling me about all the great places they’ve taken them to!! I first got into them because William’s teacher at school suggested that we can encourage his handwriting, by helping him think of stories and adventures to write about. There are 9 cubes in each of the bigger boxes and 3 in each of the smaller ones. We have a mix of big boxes and smaller ones. If there’s 4 of us playing and we have the bigger box, we each take 2 cubes and roll them like a dice. The image on the each of the dice has to be mentioned in a story that we make up, along with the other remaining cube which is left in the middle. We each get 1 minute to think of the story and 1 minute to tell it. When we are using the smaller cube it’s 1 in the middle and each of us rolling the other 2 cubes when it’s our turn.
I was so pleased to have the cubes and the dominoes on our dinner table over Easter – we were doing proper wholesome family stuff! Daddy Weston is really good at thinking creatively and the boys love what he comes up with. They also take great delight in telling me that my stories are rubbish whilst Daddy’s are just brilliant. The boys do pretty well with coming up with things and debate all sorts of practicalities in each other’s stories. Aside from the benefits that you would expect – of us all doing something together, there’s more to this. When we are playing Story Cubes, we are all off ipads, phones and electrical kit. We’re all doing something that is in common, at the same time – creative, thinking and sharing. We are all also listening to each other – properly listening – and laughing, or in my case, being critiqued.
From a practical perspective, the cubes area also really easy to carry around. They are lightweight, stay in the packaging nicely and don’t need charging, credit or wifi to work. They’re great at distracting us all from tech and enticing us into being much more present and in the moment together. I won’t say that we play them all day long. The boys get bored after a couple of rounds, but they are great for calming us down when we’re waiting for food and seem to be good at making us smile – I don’t think I can ask for much more than that!
The second great thing that we’ve had to review are Sorgenfressers. As far as I can see, in Germany, they are de rigeur – they are so commonplace, that Germans must think us strange to only just be catching onto them. Here’s a picture of one…
“All children have worries or fears. Some are big, some are small, but all of them are very real. Parents do their best to try and help their little ones, but they can’t if they don’t know what the problem is. This is where the SORGENFRESSERcome in.
Children can write or draw their problems on a piece of paper, secretly if they prefer, and feed it into the mouth of their favorite SORGENFRESSER. The next step, if needed, involves a parent. With the problem in the mouth of a worry eater, parents have the opportunity to discover the root of the problem. The SORGENFRESSER’S motto is ‘We eat your worries’, and sometimes with just a bit of help, this is exactly what they do!”
No really, that’s it. That’s what a Sorgenfresser does. It’s so simple, isn’t it? When I got them, I was so excited that I took them in the car for when the boys came out of school. They got in the car and were a bit confused. What do I do with it? Why has it got a strange name? How does it eat the worry? Does it do a poo to get rid of the worry? You name it, we discussed it. The boys have both re named their Sorgenfressers – one is called “On Nom” and the other changes its name on a daily basis. What intrigued me, even with the 8 year old, too cool for school dude, is that it went to bed with him from day one, and was used for quiet conversations. Nothing has been written down, but it’s being used for chats and thinking. Sometimes I’m invited to join in and other times I’m not. With our 6 year old, it’s been a real insight into his mind. He doesn’t want to put his worries in there, because they will give him a tummy ache. I explained that he was made to handle worries, but he doesn’t want to do that. Instead, he’s taken to cuddling him whilst we chat about the good and not so good in our days. Our youngest at one point, laid on him, to keep him safe at night. So whilst they are not being used as I’d expected them to be, they are great for facilitating keeping the conversation going at home on topics that could otherwise not come up so easily or in such a facilitated way.
Blimey, I was going to write about the Twinkl subscription that we’ve had to review, but I’ve written so much now that I think I’ve likely well and truly burnt dinner, so I’ll do that next. For now, I hope you look for someone to gift a Sorgenfresser to and that your children receive some Rory’s Story Cubes for their next birthday instead of four boxes of the same small Lego kit. If you know us, you know what’s coming to your party for the rest of the year!!
We received a set of Rory’s Story Cubes and Sorgenfressers as a gift. A blog post wasn’t asked for as they were given really as a personal thing for me after I was helpful to them. But seeing as they’ve been so great for helping me to get more confidence in my parenting, I felt they deserved a post dedicated to them.
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