My Child and Other Mistakes: The hilarious and heart-warming motherhood memoir from the comedy star

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Whether that be with homework, or craft projects or creating a new dish for supper – encourage them to take risks. Remind your brain, as utilitarian as it sounds, that each of us has a role to play in a family, even our children. Parents can help their children feel safe and secure during uncertain times by helping them recognise that life is actually less certain than they think – but this is okay.

My Child and Other Mistakes: The hilarious and - WHSmith

I am a very slow reader (and listener) but I just couldn’t stop listening to it and finished the book in 4 days (it hasn’t happened since I was in secondary school). Success has shape-shifted from the vast, the international, the stratospheric (with me at the centre of it all), to the small, the fundamental, the domestic – all rotating around a small child who loves pink wafer biscuits more than some members of her family. See Ellie as your cheerleader, whatever choices you make, and have a few laughs with her along the way. At least once a month my husband and I try to work out how we managed to while away all those kid-free weekends.During the final chapter, she was snuggled up in my arms at about 9pm, after an hour and a half of trying to settle her down into her own bed to go to sleep, and feeling zombie-like, desperate for some alone time relaxing with her dad Yes, having my daughter has made me less overtly self-obsessed, but that’s largely due to me being so busy nurturing the piece of myself that is within her. It’s what I like to think of as the extraordinary ordinary story of the experience of becoming a parent. She briefly discusses miscarriage, relaying the story of a friend who had sadly experienced it, however, for readers who may be impacted by this story, Taylor gives prior warning so that those readers can skip on a few pages to avoid reading.

My Child and Other Mistakes by Ellie Taylor | Goodreads My Child and Other Mistakes by Ellie Taylor | Goodreads

I think trying to get used to that, with all the hormones flying around, and trying to work out how you now exist in this world, when this life has been lifted from you, is massive. In the end we settled on a brand-new childcare centre that was big, bright and had cameras in every room, meaning I’d be able to watch Ratbag steal maracas from the mouths of other kids from the comfort of my own home. On my bad days, I go through a horrid ritual where I’ll get out of bed, go into the bathroom and stare in the mirror to see how disappointing the body I’ve woken up in is today. I would live a jet-set lifestyle and become best friends with Kristen Wiig and end up replacing James Cordon as host of The Late Late Show. Examples of unhelpful thinking styles include catastrophising (assuming the very worse will happen), black and white thinking (seeing things only as either good or bad), ignoring the positives (dismissing when good things happen and only focusing on when bad things happen), fortune-telling (assuming they know what is going to happen) and over-generalisation (assuming that because something happened once, it will always be that way).When further talking about having a baby, Ellie said, “It’s the most commonplace, unexciting lifechoice to make. However, almost every single point tries to be pseudo-political with stats on everything from miscarriages she hasn’t had, to BAME maternal mortality rates, to shared parental leave that she was indeed able to take. As someone without kids I wasn't sure I'd appreciate this book as much as I should, but I was very wrong. Ellie Taylor has a vibrant personality that really seeps through into the writing, making it easy to read compulsively - I hadn't known of her before but would definitely be interested in her other work. A raw, refreshingly honest, and hilariously funny read, this book begins prior to Ellie’s pregnancy during a period of her life when she was questioning whether she wanted children.

My Child and Other Mistakes by Ellie Taylor | Hachette UK My Child and Other Mistakes by Ellie Taylor | Hachette UK

And her voice was so clear throughout the book, never getting lost to ‘I am writing a book I must sound formal and knowledgeable’.Thinking and speaking in such similar cadence made this such a perfect read, everything made so much sense in my brain because it was explained just as I too would explain it. Her words have brought me sunshine in some particularly dark nights through hilarious anecdotes that I can already relate to, as well as feeling like being given a huge hug of reassurance.