I’ve found myself quite tired recently, and so my old coping patterns come up… like bullying through my day, moving from one task to the next to keep me going. I end up shunting my kids around town, or not really being available to them at home. When things become too much for me, I shut down into my own busy jobs and miss good quality time with my children. Their attention is my number one job, and I know we can’t be on for them every second, but I feel I could do better.

One day my daughter came up to me all excited, asking me to come look at something she spent a lot of time building. I said sharply: “Not now.”  I was trying to figure out our health insurance situation and was almost at some clarity. The look on her face, the sadness and the disappointment, caused me to pause. In my pre-attachment parenting days, I would have felt the right to keep on going with what I was doing. Although these are feelings she should learn to manage, I do see it as my job to guide her through those emotions. But when I’m the ‘busy’ or ‘automatic pilot’ me, there is no connecting to me.

A pause can get you straight to the cause

Sure, I could be saying I stopped what I was doing to give her my all. But at this point I’m happy with having learned to pause, bend down to her height and look at her while I say, “I know you are excited to show me, and I’m excited too. I’ll finish what I’m doing shortly and be right there to see it” saves her moving into a fit and gives her the chance to say, “I’m sad Mama.” followed by an “I know you are Sweet Pea” from me. Then we calmly go on with our day, with only a short pause to discuss and acknowledge her sadness at not getting what she wants in that moment. Sure beats a long meltdown with my four-year-old daughter on the floor screaming or sitting alone in her sadness.

Written By: Nicole LeBlanc Charlwood

Lack of movement connected to poor learning.

I was telling my mom today that we are researching schooling options for our kids. She pointed out a good series of articles she had read in the Toronto Star. Check out the Atkinson Fellowship Series of articles, and watch for the marshmallow test.

We all want smart kids, and these articles discuss how well education systems help to reach this goal. As parents though, self-esteem is of more concern – we feel being smart is a by-product of children feeling secure physically, emotionally and otherwise. We are concerned that the public system is archaic and too stressed for resources to provide teachers with what they need to educate our children well.

Allana Mitchell writes: ”[Teachers] are having a biological influence on children that is in scale akin to a baby’s growth in the womb. No other profession has this sway over the fundamental cellular structure of so many human beings.”  We need to value our teachers more.

Neuroscience is changing how we look at our children and their development. It is exciting to see teachers taking inspiration from the growing field of brain sciences. We have a boy and a girl. This week I’ve talked with friends who have boys in the public system, which is not serving them because boys learn differently and learning is designed more with girls in mind. With our daughter, we are concerned about her self-esteem and how competitive environments are shown to quash a child’s long-term self-motivation. It saddens me that we may have to look to private options and that we are so far behind in Canada. But despite all the hurdles the system will face if it is to change, there does appear to be light at the end of the education tunnel.

The Fear of Having Stupid Children

The Globe and Mail has some words of caution in What’s So Wrong With Raising Little Einsteins.

Written By: Nicole LeBlanc Charlwood

As parents who are doing little vaccinating with our kids, no one in our family is likely to get the H1N1 vaccine. But it doesn’t mean we aren’t concerned about our children getting sick. The conversations around the poker table, with doctors and research scientists, at classes or gatherings with other families, all seem to come back to similar advice. Clean yourself… thoroughly. And don’t touch your face, let alone your mouth. I can be sure my two young children, who are orally obsessed, should remain healthy through this flu season. Here we go!

Our pro-vaccine GP, a really thoughtful and smart family acquaintance, suggested we not get the H1N1 vaccine for our two-year old who has chronic inner ear infections. We haven’t been doing flu shots for anyone in our family. But with my son’s persistent, super funky  ear infections, I wanted to be sure we were still making a good choice. He did suggest strongly that we get up-to-date on our standard vaccines. I continue to consider this issue. Friends who run a vacation retreat consulted with their virus expert, a relationship they developed because of a Norwalk outbreak at their lodge. After also consulting the same GP, they are vaccinating the adults in their family who will be at their lodge with visitors. They will not vaccinate their children, and keeping prescriptions for Tamiflu for them on file should it become necessary.

Our pharmacist friend is vaccinating herself, but not her husband or the children. I have yet to talk to anyone who is vaccinating their children, but the CBC is daily interviewing people in line for the vaccine who are. Today I was told about GPs in British Columbia getting paid $15 per prescription of Tamiflu. I’m trying to get confirmation of this claim and another one about this drug having neurological effects on the Japanese who are using it a lot. It feels to me as if we would be using our children as guinea pigs, to test a drug we know very little about. I’m sticking by some more productive and less political advice for our family.

Here’s an excerpt from a circulating email I’ve seen from different sources:

These are the words of Dr. Vinay Goyal who is an Intensivist and Thyroid specialist with clinical experience of over 20 years. He has worked in institutions like Hinduja Hospital, Bombay Hospital, Saifee Hospital, Tata Memorial, etc. Presently, he is heading the Nuclear Medicine Department and Thyroid clinic at Riddhivinayak Cardiac and Critical Centre.

“The only portals of entry are the nostrils and mouth/throat. In a global epidemic of this nature, it’s almost impossible not coming into contact with H1N1 in spite of all precautions. Contact with H1N1 is not so much of a problem as proliferation is. While you are still healthy and not showing any symptoms of H1N1 infection, in order to prevent proliferation, aggravation of symptoms and development of secondary infections, some very simple steps, not fully highlighted in most official communications, can be practiced (instead of focusing on how to stock N95 or Tamiflu):

1. Frequent hand-washing (well highlighted in all official communications).
2. “Hands-off-the-face” approach. Resist all temptations to touch any part of face (unless you want to eat, bathe..)
3. Gargle twice a day with warm salt water (use Listerine if you don’t trust salt). H1N1 takes 2-3 days after initial infection in the throat/nasal cavity to proliferate and show characteristic symptoms. Simple gargling prevents proliferation. In a way, gargling with salt water has the same effect on a healthy individual that Tamiflu has on an infected one. Don’t underestimate this simple, inexpensive and powerful preventative method.
4. Similar to 3 above, clean your nostrils at least once every day with warm salt water. Not everybody may be good at using a Neti pot, but blowing the nose hard once a day and swabbing both nostrils with cotton swabs dipped in warm salt water is very effective in bringing down viral population.
5. Boost your natural immunity with foods that are rich in Vitamin C. If you have to supplement with Vitamin C tablets, make sure that it also has Zinc to boost absorption.
6. Drink as much of warm liquids (tea, coffee, etc) as you can. Drinking warm liquids has the same effect as gargling, but in the reverse direction. They wash off proliferating viruses from the throat into the stomach where they cannot survive, proliferate or do any harm.”

So I’m off to rub my hands down with alcohol hand sanitizer. Forget about the swine flu… the toxic smell is enough to kill me.

But to do so most parents, including myself, have to be willing to let kids get riskier and dirtier. I am reminded that parenting for me is often about letting go, not trying to control a situation more.

Here are Bev’s Conditions for Growing Wise:

1. Belonging – to family, neighbourhood and the global community.
2. Risk – Intellectual, emotional, physical, social and spiritual. [Play's Place in Public Education]
3. Passion – Children need passionate role models.
4. Power – you get personal power by making decisions based on your values and your desires. You give up personal power by letting others make decisions for you. We are giving up to much power to fear.
5. Presence – Stop worrying so much about your to-do list. Nurture, don’t control imaginative play. [Joseph Chilton Pearce]
6. Productivity – Learning new things.
7. Support – There are 12 people everyone should have in their life. I’ll get it out to you later..
8. Solitude – kids are over-scheduled and need down and alone time to process learnings and gather energy.
9. Mentors & Roll Models
10. Humour – not laughing at the child, not sarcasm which is beyond comprehension when young
11. Gratification Deference – teaching kids to wait for gratification
12. Re-Seeding – reinforcing learnings

Play feeds all of these needs. It is a sculptor of the social brain and drives neural development. Struart Brown, M.D.

TED Video: Stuart Brown, M.D. from the National Institute of Play – Play is more than fun.

I am also reminded about a talk David Suzuki gave at a local high school a few years ago. He said that his parents are responsible for who he is today. One of the most important things his mom did for him was to let him run into the house all excited about some discovery from outside, and not require him to take his muddy boots off.

Written By: Nicole LeBlanc Charlwood

Image via Wikipedia

I wish I had the knowledge and experience of raising a young boy and girl when I was younger myself.  I think it would have helped me better understand gender differences experienced later on in adult life. The natural differences in boys and girls are astounding and very distinct, especially at a young age.  We all know the stereotypes as adults: women are more emotional, better communicators and team players.  Men are more about action than words, and doing it themselves etc..  Toddlers playing with big trucks, smashing toys and wrestling with each other often contrast with girls playing with dolls, putting on pretend shows and playing tea party.  But are we teaching them to reflect our own gender preferences, or is there a natural inclination towards seemingly boyish or girly activities?

Let’s start with physical differences.  Medical researchers have seen that at birth, girls are slightly shorter and weigh slightly less than boys. Girls’ skeletal systems are also more mature, making them slightly more resistant to skeletal injuries. Boys are not only more physically vulnerable during the first year of life, they are more physically active with behaviors like squirming, kicking and wiggling, which may lead to more accidents. Further to this increased likelihood of boys ending up in the emergency room, girls are generally healthier than boys overall in early infancy and childhood.

Sight is also different between the sexes. Girl babies are better able to perceive differences in color and texture. This perception may be one reason why girls will typically prefer toys with patterns and textures, such as dolls with clothing, hair, etc.. Girls can also differentiate individual faces, and may actually prefer to examine the human face over other activities. Additionally, within the first six months of development, girls tend to become more sociable and more inclined to ‘coo’ at people and recognize familiar faces.

Boy babies are better able to discern location, direction and speed of moving objects. Boys will typically prefer toys that move such as trains and trucks. By 2 months of age, boys are able to see greater distances than girls, but are less able to distinguish specific details. However, boys are better able to keep track of motion, and may prefer mechanical motion over human motion. Recent research supports that boys are able to figure out the laws of motion about two months faster than girls. Generally speaking, boys also tend to walk sooner than girls and start working on their motor coordination and skills.  In girls, the language areas of the brain develop far before the areas used for spatial relations and for geometry. In boys, it’s the other way around. A curriculum which ignores those differences will produce boys who can’t write and girls who think they’re “dumb at math”.

Boys also don’t hear nearly as well as girls their same age.  As a possible result, they often learn to verbally communicate as much as 6 months to a year later developmentally than girls.  Written skills for boys also lag behind girls. That said, boys are more physical beings at a younger age than girls, and can take more readily to sign language. Boys can also show preferences for parallel play (individually playing next to someone, but not necessarily with them) vs interactive play in which girls appear to prefer. Clinical research shows that boys are also much more likely to develop attention deficit hyperactive disorders than girls.

In girls, emotion is processed in the same area of the brain that processes language. So, it’s not too difficult for most young girls to talk about their emotions. In boys, the brain regions involved in talking are separate from the regions involved in feeling. The hardest question for many boys to answer is: “Tell me how you feel.” As much research from child development experts shows, regardless of gender, children under the age of 4 are governed predominantly by their right brain (the emotional side).  So, young girls as a result can be very mood-driven and emotional, even as compared to boys.

A recent study conducted by researchers at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and Georgia State University,  confirms that boys are less interested in 1 on 1 social interactions than girls, and are more likely to want to compete among larger groups.  Girls, by contrast, show more brain activity (and interest so the theory goes) when they are approached with 1 on 1 personal social interactions.   The study begins with a premise that every parent of a tween knows: as kids emerge into puberty, their focus changes dramatically. They care less about their families and more about their peers.  But as Gordon Neufeld, Gabor Mate and other child development experts know, children who are raised by their peers vs parents encounter many more issues later on in life.