By Casey Neill
Does your little one have a hard time winding down for bed?
Not only does Penny O’Loughlin feel your pain – she’s done something to help you.
The self-published Kooyong author wrote Winding Down after often solo parenting sons Fletcher and Harry, now aged 9 and 7, during the Covid lockdowns.
“They are bright, passionate balls of energy that bring me so much joy,” Penny said.
“I needed that one-on-one time to really understand Fletch.
“He is an extremely bright and passionate boy who sees the world with very different eyes.
“We’d walk to the park and he’d wear his tuxedo and no shoes.
“He’s taught me the important things, how to really see things in the moment.
“He really stops and smells the roses.
“This energy and brightness were and still are very hard to wind down at the end of the day.”
Penny tried audiobooks, essential oils, meditations, music, relaxation sounds, teas, warm baths, candles, weighted blankets, massage, and more.
When she couldn’t find the right book to support both her and Fletcher through their bedtime battles, Penny wrote it.
“It’s rhythmic, almost like a meditation,” she said.
“As it’s read, it calms the reader too.
“We overschedule ourselves, with the rapid pace of the world.
“It’s about taking a moment to pause and just be.”
Penny’s background is architecture and landscape architecture, and she’s worked as a landscape designer for years.
“But I’d always go to the children’s book section,” she said.
“I love the simple tales and parables that can explain complex topics simply and with comedy.
“I used to read the kids lots of books.
“I did a children’s book author course at Abbotsford when I was pregnant with my second son.
“I started writing when I did the course, so I wrote and wrote.
“It’s so impossible to get published. I sent them off and I got rejected by everybody.
“I felt like this book worked for its purpose.”
So Penny started down the path of self-publishing.
“I heard, in the back of my head, some of the negative comments about self-publishing but I had to get a thicker skin really,” she said.
“I had to be brave enough to take the steps to get to where I wanted to go.”
She developed an author website and bought a stash of books.
“It’s now just having the confidence to get out and meet people and talk about it,” she said.
“It’s in a few bookshops around and is selling well.
“People are buying it for people who have new babies, as a gift, but also for children who are wound up and have heightened energy at the end of the night.”
Fletcher is “pretty chuffed” to have inspired a book.
“He says, ‘Mum’s an author, Mum wrote a book about me’,” Penny laughed.
“It reminds me of a very difficult time but a time that we worked really hard, and a time where there was massive growth for myself and my son, too.
“It’s the result of hard work – and not just the writing hard work, but the personal hard work.
“It worked for me and I hope it will work for others.”
She read Winding Down in local kindergartens and early learning centres during Book Week last year.
“They now use it after playtime just to bring the energy back down and to switch off,” she said.
A publisher picked up Penny for her next book, this time inspired by her youngest.
“I felt like I needed to do this for him,” she said.
“It’s coming out in December and it’s called Bud and Buzz.
“It’s about a garden.
“Bud is a little flower that’s yet to bloom and he sits in the shadows, yet to be seen.
“He gets his day in the sunlight, but he has to endure the wind and rain.”
Penny is also working on Cartwheeling Sally and Jumping Jack Jim.
“It’s about two little kids who don’t sit still,” she said.
“I feel like all the books are about trying to calm down.
“There’s nothing that makes the kids see themselves on the page and have a laugh, because it is quite funny – they’re at the top of the trees and they’re upside down.
“This is heroing them saving the day.
“It’s rhyming verse and it’s really for the cartwheeling Sallys.”
Order Winding Down from pennyoloughlin.com.
