Tribal Baby

Charndra, Chris, Maven and Jett  live in Canberra, the beautiful Capital city of Australia.

They met while both beginning as white belts in Taekwondo in 1998, and got married in 2003 in South Australia.

They moved to Canberra in 2006.

Charndra 

Charndra has a Degree in Education, and twelve years experience teaching in country and city schools, with primary, secondary and tertiary students over this time. Subjects she taught included Art, Design, Information Technology, English, Geography, History and Drama. Her actual Degree was originally in Art and Design Teaching.

She has written three sections of the “Spendwell” website for the Office of Consumer and Business Affairs in South Australia, covering such topics as mobile phones, buying and shopping online all geared towards informing teenagers and youths of their rights and responsibilities as consumers. Spend Well 

She has developed and updated the information technology course for years eight and nine while working for the Access Media Service and Enterprise unit within the Department of Education and Children’s Services, in South Australia.
These courses are used by Correspondence and School of The Air students in South Australia, Northern Territory, and even students in China. 

Learning about EC while researching how best to live on one income while raising children, she became enthusiastic about helping and encouraging other mums as they discover the joys of being nappy free, and Tribal Baby was started.

Charndra is a volunteer Community Educator for the Australian Breastfeeding Association, who have been very supportive during her breastfeeding journey.
Visit the ABA for breastfeeding support…

She has a red belt in World Taekwondo, and is hoping one day to gain her black belt – which she was in training for – (the date had even been set) – when becoming pregnant with Maven put a pause on those plans. Both her parents have Black Belts already.

Charndra Chris and Maven began their ‘EC journey’ in 2005, when Maven was born.

Being so astounded by how using nappies ‘part time’ through EC was such a wonderful way to connect with our baby son on a daily basis, we began sharing our experiences online in ‘Nappy Free Baby’ when Maven was around seven months old. (and thus had beginning mobility and slightly less in-arms-on-the-boob time with Mum.)

” A mind once expanded by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions.” Oliver W. Holmes

This was so true about our experiences practicing EC. We all loved it. We couldn’t understand AT ALL why EVERYONE wasn’t doing it, it was so amazing an experience. What a simple way to have many daily, positive ways to connect and understand one another – learning about co-operation, respect for our son’s messages, his comfort level – really being able to help him. 

In time other pages on related topics were added, with links to resources for finding out more, those sources of information I found useful and thought-provoking, or that allowed an informed understanding of a topic. Nappy Free Baby has grown as Maven has grown and progressed through the many ‘phases’ of EC, to a totally nappy free and semi independently toileting toddler. (Mum empties the potty and helps out now and then, but he is largely an “EC Graduate” now, he is two and a half. “Nappy Free Baby” became “Tribal Baby”, in thoughts about how social babies really are and how they benefit from gentle parenting, traditional practices such as baby wearing, practicing EC, as are and were the way of caring for babies in tribal societies.

Tribal baby has visitors from over 25 countries. I’m always astounded at the variety of countries that pop up on my website stats page. EC is truly of interest to people all around the world.

Visitors continue to grow, so I thought about how I could expand Tribal Baby while helping more people interested in EC, but unsure due to the clap-trap in the media, implying it is an ‘all or nothing’ activity only for stay at home mums who get weed on all day. If they only realised how untrue that was, a lot more parents would be mixing a bit of EC into their baby care, and benefiting from it.

When Maven turned two, (about one week before), I began work on the “Part time Diaper / Nappy Free” online course. This grew out of noticing a need in the EC Community for a simple, guided structure to empower and give people ongoing support and practical strategies to follow as they moved from full time nappy use to part time nappy use. 

I noticed that people would want to start to practice EC, but just couldn’t work out where to begin, and that people would get discouraged and give up when reaching various developmental stages, feeling somehow they weren’t doing it ‘right’. Or, I’d meet people who were interested, yet never actually started due to feeling overwhelmed with where to begin and not realising how integral nappies are to our learning. I have planned the materials to counteract that by giving people a clear sense of how adaptable EC is to their lifestyle – as a way simply to cut their use of nappies down to a manageable level as they develop the skills and confidence in communicating with their baby through elimination communication. 

After some conversations with my grandma, who had done this with her own children (and assumed all mothers still did this) I was inspired to help make these skills a normal part of baby care again – even on a very low key level. For, as those who practice EC know, the basic skills are quite simple, and people can then focus more or less time on their communication as the changing needs of their family require.