Oh the fun of shopping with a toddler. There's nothing like it.

You know those foldable seats for toddlers in your trolley? Well, Cubling, if sat in one, protests and makes herself into a wooden board when trying to put her in, accompanied by a loud and definite "no!!!", followed by wailing and her very new loud protest shout (which is ever so cute, and I fear our laughter doesn't do anything to discourage her from it). So it's the trolley itself. Mummy pretends she doesn't see the "no children standing in trolley" sign on the handle.

Once in the trolley, she loves helping mummy putting her shopping into the trolley. For 2 minutes. Then she decides it's so much more fun picking the shopping items up and throwing them out of the trolley. Alternatively, how about climbing on top of the shopping? It's particularly interesting to observe what happens if you stand on the box of chocolates, the box of eggs or the bottle of milk. That's good fun. Next, she discovers the toothpast. Cubling likes to brush her teeth. While mummy is taking advantage of quiet toddler with attention focused on a toothpaste box and tries to sneak in as much real shopping as possible, Cubling opens toothpaste box, opens toothpast top, removes protective foil and squeezes toothpaste into her mouth. Mummy gets suspicious when she hears "yum yum". Toothpaste has created a definite appetite, so there's some wailing for food. Mummy offers banana. Oh the look on Cubling's face. How dare you mummy. So mummy picks up some crumpets and opens them, hoping she'll not be done for shoplifting. That's better, says Cubling's face.

15 minutes into the shopping, all of this is no longer particularly attractive. The time has come for some wailing, shouts for "hoch!", "daddy!", "mummy!" (incessantly I should add) until one parent (if present) decides to give up contribution to shopping and instead run after Cubling in the shop. She doesn't walk, she runs. Her running style is that of a racer, she'll go fast, faster and then falls flat on her nose (commentary from her: "fall, nose!", points at her nose, gets up again and repeat). If second parent is not present, all attempts to hold her hand in one hand and trolley in other are futile as she throws herself on the floor if her hand is held and won't get up until hand is released. She thinks that's a great game.

If parent 2 is there, she'll just run through the supermarket, playing chase, pick up random things and throw them into the trolley. Sometimes she collides with other people and other trolleys. Pretty much normal supermarket behaviour.

Then comes the checkout nightmare. She has to be bribed with crips to sit in the trolley seat. This works rather well and she happily munches away, saying "Hiya" to all the people around her, pretending to be oh so cute, while mummy feels increasingly guilty about toddler's diet.

All the while mummy hardly hides her amazed stares at parents who shop with more than one small child and comes to the conclusion that they must have drugged their kids before venturing out.

The mums and toddlers groups that we ran for asylum seeking and refugee parents (with local residents welcome to join in) were in essence a pilot. The difficulty that these parents experience is that being dispersed involuntarily to Glasgow, they have no family or friends networks. There is nobody they can fall back on if they need a babysitter. Many parents, particularly the mums, don't attend English classes because they have children, and creche places are rare. Some suffer post traumatic stress disorders or other mental health issues caused by torture, having lost close relatives, having experienced war. There may also be physical health issues, but how do you get counselling or medical care if you have children that you have to bring along? Even for their legal representation, they often have to take the children to interviews where they have to explain their reasons for fleeing their country in the presence of young children.

What these parents need is a break. Hence we came up with the idea of parental support groups, a group which is informal and offers a break, while the children can have some fun in the creche, getting a rare opportunity to engage in social, active and creative play.

We experimented with different activities for the parents and regularly consulted them as to what they are interested in. The problem with consulting them was that everyone had a different idea - too many to all be implemented. Sometimes we organised taster sessions of one activity or another, other times we organised courses. A six week hand and foot massage course was very popular, as were health and beauty treatments and arts and crafts classes. Exercise classes, though called for repeatedly, didn't work so well, mainly because of the venue which was not conducive to exercise classes, and also partly due to the type of exercise (Yoga - picked because of the venue limitations) because mums with small children tend to struggle to be on time (which the yoga teacher didn't appreciate).

We also had a few parties, as well as healthy eating classes (that was bringing coal to newcastle, refugee mums have a better diet than the average Glaswegian) and parenting workshops (those were very successful thanks to being run at a time when the group was well established and there was great trust and openness).

I've been busy trying to get other organisations to continue running these groups, and have applied for small grants to enable them to do so. It's looking rather good, so I'm very pleased although I'll miss being at these group meetings loads. It was possibly my favourite piece of work. Initially, it was hard work getting it off to a good start, with many parents being suspicious and not knowing what this was about or what we were about. Once we got a critical number of mums together, the groups ran themselves. Word of mouth is the secret to it, nevermind the countless posters I designed and put up. In one group alone, more than 50 different mums attended sessions over the course of a year and a half - plus their children of course. We shared joy at being granted indefinite leave to remain, and worry and anguish when yet another mum and her kids got detained or deported, or went into hiding for fear of being deported.

We also learned that multilingual support workers have an important role in engaging parents. Without them, we'd not have had the success we had. The participants mirrored the languages of the support workers. We mainly had participants from Somalia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan and various Arabic countries. There were some exceptions, but the pattern was rather clear that language and religion play a role and it makes a world of difference to have multilingual workers, better even, workers who are refugees themselves.

Our last session, or should I say, my last session because I hope it won't be the last for the group, involved making cards. Now, none of those who came along was going to celebrate Christmas, so I was rather curious what the cards would look like. Our arts and crafts tutor wasn't able to make the session so had instructed me in the art of making cards and I brought two templates along (well three, but only used two). Some mums were keen to follow the templates, other were keener to just dive into decorating the cards wildly without the restrictions of a set design. We overran yet again.

Cubling discovered her love for two new books last night - the Secret Seahorse and a book about a Penguin who doesn't speak to a child. Her all encompassing excitement at spotting the hiding seahorse on every page was getting me to laugh hysterically in itself. Then she spotted the octopus. Her face brimming with joy, she pointed to it and exclaimed with pride in her discovery: "baby!!!"

All right then. Babies look like octopae (octopusses? surely not). Actually, come to think of it, there is an undeniable resemblance... (incidentally, she described the jellyfish as a nosewipe, and consistently calls an owl a cat).

The one thing that I marvelled at was how the miserable, excessively crying little baby Cubbler has turned into a confident little girl who has bucketloads of fun and finds the amusing side in everything she sees, bursting out in intoxicating and highly contagious laughter as she shares her world with us. Knowing that she could turn into such a happy, active and funloving person would have made it easier to remain positive in the first few months.

Christmas has descended on Glasgow. And Cubling is loving it. She went to see Nikolaus on Sunday. For those non-teutonics amongst my readers, Nikolaus is the same guy as Santa Claus, in his original religious incarnation - his saint's day is in fact the 6th of December. In Germany, children put out a red plastic boot (you can call it a stocking) or a plate on the eve of the 6th of December, to wake up in the morning and find them filled with nuts, ginger breads and oranges. At some time in some places, the 6th December was in fact the day the presents were given, rather than Christmas Day. Nikolaus goes back to an actual person, the 4th century bishop of Myra in case you were wondering. His attire is red and white, with a mitre and bishop's stick. He looks very similar to the Christmas Man (Father Christmas) who gets more active later on in December which causes neverending confusion among German children. Apparently, Christmas Man is the same guy as Nikolaus, just that he's been stripped of his religious attire.

Usually, Nikolaus runs around with his mate Knecht Ruprecht, his servant with a broomstick, not for flying, but for chastising those little ones who've not been good throughout the year. Here in Glasgow, courtesy of the Kinderclub, Nikolaus left his scary pal at home and only came with his big sack of goody bags.

We'd tried our best to prepare her by reading books that featured Nikolaus. She knows his name and calls him "man". She's seen a few moving/dancing/singing/jingling Santas in gardening centres and her response was a very definite "no!!!" (shakes head vigorously and runs off in opposite direction), so we were a bit worried. On Sunday, though, Cubling was very brave indeed. Initially, when Nikolaus walked into the room, she panicked, especially because the only escape route would have involved passing him on his way in, thanks to the impressive number of German children in this city who were all sat on the floor of the Glasgow Steiner School hall. So we got lots of "no!"s, little screams, escape twists and cheerful mummy babbling efforts, reassuring her that Nikolaus is a really lovely guy who is handing out wee sacks for every child, see, sure you want want as well, don't you? She was happy enough to watch from a distance as Nikolaus handed out bags to all the children. When Cubling's name was finally called out (thankfully with plenty of getting used to this bearded man in a strange coat), she bravely let mummy carry her very close to the scary monster bishop, and took her bag off him. And dead pleased she was with herself too, giving mummy and daddy a very proud smile even more so when she discovered that the bag contained... CHOCOLATE! (and a plastic spider I dare to add, which made ME jump right into the air).

The Childminder has put up all the Christmas decoration, and boy, she's been busy. Cubling thinks it's hilarious: There's these snowmen who come with a carrot as a nose and a pot as a hat. Every time she sees one she bursts out laughing, saying "nose!" "hat!", it must be the funniest sight on earth. There are about 10 images of snowmen in the childminder's flat, so plenty of hilarity to be had. Oh and the Christmas trees... Every tree she sees (Christmassy or not) is pointed out, but the ones with lights, they get an extra special "tees!" treatment (she pluralises everything at the moment. Maybe she possesivises, who knows, let's say, she adds "-s" to words).

Other things that get her hilarious chuckle:

- images of women with a face mask on
- images of children with face paint on
- ducking the duck into the bubbly bathtub
- any image of bearded men wearing red coats
- mummy crawling on all fours (mummies are supposed to walk upright)
- and yet another snowman.

We're working hard on the concept that an advent calendar means only one chocolate per day. I know it's not easy, I still struggle with it myself. It's a bit hard on her really to have so many chocolates in easy reach and having to wait a full 24 hours to take one out.

One of the most successful activities with children that we ran involves using the medium of puppets. We've used this at primary schools, whenever a school approached us about a specific topic that the children had identified and wanted to explore. Working with a puppeteer, the children were given an opportunity to explore the topic in six afternoon sessions, creating a storyboard, a puppet theatre, a background/props, and the actual puppets. We used this with various primary schools. At one school, a classmate of the class we worked with had been detained in a dawn raid and later deported back to his home country. Other children in the class had experienced detention as well, but were subsequently given leave to remain. Regardless of whether the pupils were refugees and personally affected by the possibility of being detained or whether the pupils were worried about their friends - the children were united in being appalled by the practice. Their words and drawings were very powerful and we explored their feelings when losing a friend without being able to even say goodbye, but also what they could do if faced with this situation.

The other secondary school explored the topic of diversity through a puppet show they made themselves. You can view the actual show on my youtube channel (left column) under the title "A birthday pet". This group was more challenging, mainly because they didn't really understand what diversity meant and needed help with scripting the show. Regardless of these difficulties, the activity worked wonders for a very challenging group of pupils, who all at some point or another found great satisfaction in the creative process of drawing theatres and puppets. There were children who were not experienced in drawing, others from chaotic backgrounds, many who experienced and engaged in violence. The sessions were hard going, but there were amazing glimpses of the potential of these children, and their true character often shone through their tough shell.

If you like these and want to see more pictures, have a look at my flickr account (widget top right).