Archive for the ‘Child Rearing’ Category

Raising Toddlers: Cleaning Together

Monday, April 4th, 2011

My toddler probably couldn’t care less whether the house is clean and tidy.  But he likes to clean — because Mommy does it.  Toddlers love to work one-on-one alongside their parents. It’s the highest form of play for them, as my mother-in-law learned through Montessori.

Justin and I have done a lot of cleaning together and have had fun doing it. My little boy will even go so far as to fight me for the mop or feather-duster on occasion! This is not to say that cleaning with my toddler has been a painless experience though. Frustration has been a large part of the process, but I’m slowly but surely learning how to involve my toddler(s) in everyday household tasks without making much more of a mess than there was before.

The following are some pointers (and important sub-points) from my own personal experience and observation:

1. Provide the toddler with cleaning items of his own. This means a child-sized broom, his own scrub brush, spray bottle (with water only!), etc. This will make cleaning more fun for him, and will prevent him from fighting you for those items.

(1a)  Never give a toddler a sponge unless you intend to have large soapy puddles all over the floor.

(1b)  Keep in mind that a broom handle can double as a bat to knock things off shelves and counters, and as a pole to poke baby with, so keep an eye on your toddler when he has it.

(1c)  I’ll reiterate, while your toddler will love having a spray bottle of his own, only put water in it…and not too much either!  The toddler has nothing to inhibit him from spraying everything, including himself and the baby’s face, and a lot of spraying concentrated in one spot will leave a puddle which could damage something if it goes unnoticed.

2. Have your toddler work with you on the same task; that is, never send him off to tackle another cleaning project while you take care of this one.  I can tell you right now, it won’t work.

(2a)  If Justin is representative of all toddlers, then toddlers do not have the attention span to stick to a task all by themselves.  Simply telling him to clean up his toys and books — without seeing the task through and calling him back to it continuously — will result in nothing done.

(2b)  Toddlers want to work with you.  So giving them a separate task is to miss the point of cleaning together.

3.  Be selective.  Some tasks are appropriate for toddler involvement, and others aren’t. You have to consider safety, the toddler’s ability, and whether toddler inclusion in the task at hand would be a positive experience overall or have you pulling your hair out.

(3a) Transferring clothes to the dryer, cleaning windows, sweeping the floor, scrubbing the floor (if it’s not water sensitive), and picking up toys, are tasks which can be more or less compatible with toddlers.  Mind you, in my experience, sweeping the floor with a toddler isn’t easy, as it requires defensive maneuvering to prevent your dust pile from getting scattered everywhere.

(3b) Cleaning dishes (unless they’re tough plastic) and scrubbing toilets are not good choices for toddler involvement. Even mopping/scrubbing can be hazardous, as toddlers have no comprehension whatsoever of ‘slippery when wet’, and will run across the floor as usual.  Justin hit the floor enough times that I finally gave up and would only do my mopping when he was contained in a playpen or highchair.

4.  Remind yourself that this is for a good cause and that it will (hopefully) pay off in the future.  You are teaching your little one important life skills. He is learning step by step how Mommy cleans, and developing the coordination to do it himself in the future.  He is forming a good work ethic, and, just maybe, by the time he is five or six or seven he will be able do it all by himself.

Think of it this way: You are multi-tasking. You are getting the cleaning done (albeit more slowly and with some complicating factors) and you are spending meaningful time with your toddler.  It’s a win-win!

5.  Relax and try to stay calm, cool, and collected and keep an up-beat attitude while doing this. I have had to catch myself a number of times when frustration was getting the better of me.  Yelling at your toddler won’t accomplish anything good.  So if you find yourself becoming overwhelmed, just quit that task and leave it for later.  Think through whether your toddler can be involved in a different way, or whether this task is just not appropriate for him.  Or maybe you are just having a tough day and tomorrow it will go better.

If you are a perfectionist, try to lower your standards a bit, and accept that this is going to be a messy process and that the house will be a bit dirtier than you like for this stage of your life.  Your children are not going to stay little for long.  These are their most formative years, and once they are gone, you will never be able to get them back. So I would encourage you to let the cleanliness of the house slide a bit for now and invest yourself in relationships with your children.  You will never regret it.  :D

-Kristin

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Dear Working Mother: Stop and Think

Thursday, January 27th, 2011

by Kristin

Last night I overheard a conversation between a midwife and a midwifery student.  The student, a middle-aged lady expecting her third child, expressed concern over how a career in midwifery would affect her parenting. “I don’t want to be an absent mom,” she said.  The midwife was quick to reassure the lady that midwifery would not compromise her as a mother. In fact, the midwife claimed, midwifery was a better profession for a mother than a 9-to-5 office job in terms of allowing her more time with her children.

I couldn’t help but disagree. In the midwifery clinic I am familiar with, the midwives alternate between 1-2 weeks of in-clinic visits during set hours and 1-2 weeks of being on-call at home.  When a midwife is on-call, attending a birth comes first before any family activity.  Regardless of whether you are celebrating Christmas, or your child’s birthday, attending his/her graduation, or just on an excursion to the neighbourhood playground, you have to respond to a call to attend a birth. As anybody can imagine, mother walking out the door in the middle of a birthday party or any such event would be a terrible disappointment for a child at best.  In addition, other midwives I knew had admitted to me that they did not have a close relationship with their children, or that their children had expressed upset over their mother’s absence.

I summoned up enough nerve to confront the midwife after the lady had left, pointing out to her that she did not present a full picture of the challenges the profession holds for a woman with children.  Not surprisingly, the midwife was quick to defend her position and dismissed the stories I related of the other midwives, saying that that was the experience of only a few.

However, what she did admit was this: “The one thing you will have to learn to accept [as a midwife] is that your children will love other people as much as they love you.”

If you ask me, the ramifications go far beyond that.  What is your absence teaching your children about the importance of relational commitment? Of family life? Of being there for each other? If mother, by her actions, makes her job a greater priority than her children, what message is that sending to them?

How is it affecting the children emotionally? This is especially a concern if there is a turnover of caregivers, such as is the case in daycare. How can a child learn how to form emotional bonds if he is systematically abandoned by his caregivers? How will the insecurity affect his development?

What if the real problem is that the child will learn not to love?  Or that the only love he learns is self-love?  If mother and father are more interested in their own self-advancement than in the nurture and care of their offspring, what lesson will the child learn?

To the working mothers (those who are working out of choice as opposed to necessity) I say: Stop and Think.  Ask yourself the tough questions…before it’s too late.

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Equipping Maniacs

Monday, June 21st, 2010

In fact, Americans, taken as we find them, who do not get their moral restraints from the Bible, have none. If, in our moral training of the young, we give up the “Thus says the Lord,” we shall have no hold left. The training which does not base duty on Christianity, is, for us, practically immoral.

If testimony is needed, let us quote Dr. Griffin: “To educate the mind of a bad man without correcting his morals is to put a sword into the hands of a maniac.”

John Locke spoke to the same point. “It is virtue, then, direct virtue, which is the hard and valuable part to be aimed at in education. If virtue is not settled in the student, to the exclusion of all vicious habits, all the education in the world will do nothing but make the student worse or more dangerous.”

Taken from R. L. Dabney’s On Secular Education (updated version by Douglas Wilson)

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My Humanitarian Work

Tuesday, May 11th, 2010

Every day, I feed the hungry.

I nurse the sick.

I clothe the naked.

Every day, I serve and protect. I rescue people from dangerous situations. I identify new ways to keep people safe. I have not yet joined the peacekeeping force, but I expect to soon.

I teach English and help people with their Physics lessons. I also teach History, Ethics, Theology, Music, and the other Sciences.

I’ve donated my organs to the cause of giving people life and health.

Every day, I strive to improve the living environment of others.

I counsel and comfort those in pain. I give encouragement. I wipe tears away.

Every day, all day.

24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

I’ll never get a paid vacation. I’ll never be offered a promotion or a raise. I’ll never be awarded the Nobel Prize or an honourary doctorate.

I’ll face the disapproving looks of many of my peers. They thought I should do something “useful” with my life.

As if raising the next generation of world-shapers wasn’t a good use of my life.

I’m a stay-at-home mom, and I am not ashamed.

Posted in Child Rearing, Feminism | No Comments »

What the Government and the Medical Establishment are Admitting about Vaccination

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

I was doing some research on vaccination and discovered the website of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The CDC, as their website states, is “a part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, [and] is the primary Federal agency for conducting and supporting public health activities in the United States.”

As I was browsing through their webpages, I came across information which I suspect most people are not aware of. I wanted to share this information, specifically with other parents who are faced with the same dilemma of “to vaccinate, or not to vaccinate.”

First of all, let’s discuss the ingredients of the common childhood vaccines.

According to a pdf list I found through CDC’s website, the vaccines doctors are giving your children include the following ingredients:

- Formaldehyde or Formalin

- Aluminum compounds

- Monkey Kidney Tissue

- Calf Serum Protein

- Bovine Albumin or Serum

- Chick Embryo Fibroblasts

- Thimerosal

In recent years, researchers have been labeling formaldehyde a carcinogen (cancer-causing agent). As for injecting children with foreign animal proteins, other researchers are speculating that this may possibly be interfering with or damaging their human genetic code.

But in regards to Thimerosal, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration admitted this:

“Thimerosal is a mercury-containing organic compound (an organomercurial). Since the 1930s, it has been widely used as a preservative in a number of biological and drug products, including many vaccines, to help prevent potentially life threatening contamination with harmful microbes. Over the past several years, because of an increasing awareness of the theoretical potential for neurotoxicity of even low levels of organomercurials and because of the increased number of thimerosal containing vaccines that had been added to the infant immunization schedule, concerns about the use of thimerosal in vaccines and other products have been raised. Indeed, because of these concerns, the Food and Drug Administration has worked with, and continues to work with, vaccine manufacturers to reduce or eliminate thimerosal from vaccines.” (Emphasis mine).

What does this mean? This means that Thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative used in your baby’s vaccine, is toxic to your baby’s nervous system and brain.

What severe reactions can the ingredients in these vaccines cause in your child? The CDC website had an entire page devoted to the possible side effects of vaccines. Here are just two of the common childhood vaccines and the possible side effects:

DTaP (Dipheria, Tetanus, and Pertussis vaccine) – Moderate to Severe Reactions

  • Seizure (jerking or staring) (about 1 child out of 14,000)
  • Non-stop crying, for 3 hours or more (up to about 1 child out of 1,000)
  • High fever, 105 degrees Fahrenheit or higher (about 1 child out of 16,000)
  • Long-term seizures, coma, or lowered consciousness
  • Permanent brain damage.

MMR (Measles, Mumps, and Rubella vaccine) – Severe Reactions

  • Deafness
  • Long-term seizures, coma, or lowered consciousness
  • Permanent brain damage

The CDC website claims that severe reactions only occur in the case of one out of a million vaccinations. The Health Canada website claimed that severe reactions occurred in the case of less than one in a million vaccinations. However, one source I read revealed that reporting a severe reaction is NOT mandatory in Canada. If this is true, then the accuracy of the statistics given is seriously questionable.

Many doctors and parents would insist that the vital role of vaccines in preventing serious diseases outweighs the risks of vaccine injury.  However, studies published in medical journals reveal that vaccines are not 100% effective in preventing disease.

Here are extracts from the abstract of an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1987:

An outbreak of measles occurred among adolescents in Corpus Christi, Texas, in the spring of 1985, even though vaccination requirements for school attendance had been thoroughly enforced. Serum samples from 1806 students at two secondary schools were obtained eight days after the onset of the first case. Only 4.1 percent of these students (74 of 1806) lacked detectable antibody to measles according to enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, and more than 99 percent had records of vaccination with live measles vaccine….We conclude that outbreaks of measles can occur in secondary schools, even when more than 99 percent of the students have been vaccinated and more than 95 percent are immune. (Emphasis mine).

More recently (1996) the Scandinavian Journal of Infectious Diseases reported this:

Since 1991, 6 years after the recommendation of universal childhood triple vaccination against measles, mumps and rubella (M + M + R), Switzerland has been confronted with an increasing number of mumps cases affecting both vaccinated and unvaccinated children. The M + M + R vaccine mainly used in the Swiss population after 1986 contains the highly attenuated Rubini strain of mumps virus….Mumps was confirmed by virus isolation in 88 patients, of whom 72 had previously received the Rubini vaccine strain….These data support other recent reports which indicate an insufficient protective efficacy of current mumps vaccines. (Emphasis mine).

Of course, science is always improving. But who can say whether vaccines have been perfected yet? Furthermore, even if a child is inoculated against one strain of a certain disease, how will that protect him against another strain?

So one must conclude that a vaccinated person bears the risk both of a vaccine injury and of contracting the disease, whereas the unvaccinated person risks only the disease.

I would greatly encourage parents to become informed and make responsible, knowledgeable decisions about their child’s health and wellbeing. Educate yourself about the disease, the vaccine, and the risks of both before you make your choice. Also, check out the history of the disease and whether vaccination played a significant role in bringing down the fatality rates.

- Kristin

Posted in Child Rearing, Health and Wellness | No Comments »