Category: Parenting

Getting body, heart, and soul back

Posted on by Suki

I was explaining to another mom recently about how I felt now that my kids are older, and I have gone through the process of getting my body back (not having a kid hanging on me all the time) and my soul back (feeling like my emotions are tightly wrapped up in theirs). She said that she has heard other parents say that having a child is like reinstalling your heart in another person’s body, which is a similarly appealing analogy. (Though then the literalist in me wonders how you split up your heart into your multiple children…. the soul I can imagine as a more diffuse thing, easier to divvy up among the children!)

It’s a surprising thing the day you step back and realize that you’ve got it all back—yes, you still love your children and their joys, failures, heartaches, and successes are an important part of your life—but you see them go off and have these experiences independently from you. I can see this both with my homeschooled child and the one who is attending school, so it’s not just a function of sending your kids physically away from you each day. There’s something else, some elemental bond that is still there but becomes less like a heavy leather leash and more like an ethereal thread that can stretch to any distance necessary.

The leash was hard for me. I remember the weird mix of relief and anxiety I’d get when I found a way to get away from my small children for a time. They both went to preschool, and both spent time with babysitters and other family members. But no matter how much they were away from me, it didn’t make that leash feel any more comfortable. Small children are so dependent on us physically that even when they’re not with us our bodies are in tune with theirs. I would get a morning to work and have to resist the temptation to call my mom to see if she’d remembered to give them a snack. My body would remind me, even though I wasn’t hungry, that unless snacktime happened it would be fusstime.

Yesterday I had a real milestone dropping my 14-year-old at his first community college class. Those of you with smaller children are probably expecting that I’ll say that he and I were both anxious and wondering how it would go. The wondering part, yes, but anxious? Not really. It just seemed natural and easy to leave my child in the company of random adults with an apparent age-span of 50 years. He and I waited outside the classroom, then once the other class let out, it was just a simple “seeya later” and I walked away.

One of the things I’ve learned in my parenting years is that when your child is really ready for something, you can actually feel it. I remember when I realized that my son was truly ready for kindergarten, about half-way through his last year of preschool. His teacher noticed it, too. “He is SO done with preschool,” she told me. I also remember my anxiety about whether my daughter was ready for kindergarten. If I had listened to myself more, the answer would have been a clear “no.” Though she was truly more than ready to do the intellectual learning expected of her, she wasn’t ready for the demands of a classroom. It took us three miserable months to get that through my thick skull (which had been so busy planning what I was going to do with my free time that I ignored all the signals). She ended up not being ready for the classroom experience until she was almost ten. How much heartache could we have avoided if we’d listened to the clear signals that she needed time to develop skills that other children tend to develop earlier?

I think this being able to feel your child’s readiness is related again to the leash—or that ethereal thread. There’s just a certain feeling that comes up with a child is attempting something doable. Of course, at times there is value in attempting something that will end in failure, but for the most part I like to use the image that teachers use: scaffolding. You offer up learning in chunks big enough that the child is able to go up a step and reach something new, but you don’t offer that high window of learning until the scaffolding is built up. Similarly, in deciding which new experiences are right for a child, it’s helpful to look and see what kind of a stretch that experience will be.

Only a year ago my son was saying that he “never” wanted to go to community college during his homeschooling. But in that last year the scaffolding rose up, and yesterday that new window was an easy reach.

“Seeya later—”

and that ethereal thread stretched just a little bit further.

What’s a parent to do about health and diet?

Posted on by Suki

I think parents around the Internet responded strongly to the article Puberty Before Age 10: A New Normal?, published in the New York Times, because it hit on how vulnerable we feel when it comes to making decisions about food. It’s extremely hard to decide what to believe on the issue of how to feed our children a healthy diet and avoid dangerous substances in their food. There is so much competing information out there, and so much “evidence” that is cited that really isn’t evidence at all. How can we make decisions when the information we get is so confusing?

First of all, what sort of evidence should be considered “hard” evidence? The difference between “hard evidence” and “evidence” is that hard evidence withstands rigorous inquiry:

  • It’s reproducible
  • It can be seen on a large scale
  • It doesn’t go away in double-blind testing

There’s lots of “evidence” out there that indicates that some things in our environment may be making our kids sick. But how do we know how to react to all this information?

The problem with knowing whether we are “causing” these problems with the chemicals in our environment is that human bodies are so incredibly complex. And the problems we’re seeing are complex. Put those two things together, and designing a strong study becomes nearly impossible. Sometimes scientists can look at epidemiological evidence (longterm evidence, for example, that a certain type of cancer is rising), but that doesn’t answer the important question: Why? What’s causing it? Is only one cause or a combination?

Here’s an example of this complexity: I wrote at one point about the clear evidence, from the experience of many parents and with some evidence from studies, that gifted kids are more likely to have what is called “reactive hypoglycemia” and that they are likely to respond well to adding Omega-3 oils to their diets. Someone wrote back telling me that if my child was acting crazy when he was hungry, then there must be something deeply wrong with my child and he needed a full medical work-up. But no, many parents see that if we keep enough O-3 in our kids’ diets, we see marked improvement. And since that’s an easy, healthy way to fix the problem, and it’s very hard to find “hard” evidence past that, parents have to be satisfied that at least there’s a workaround.

But how would we get “hard” evidence for something as complex as the behavior of certain kids when they are hungry? First of all, they would have to take parents’ opinions out of the mix, because we are unable to be truly objective observers. But next, they’d have to find a way to verify that they have a large sample of kids who have this problem, and since it’s hard to test the problem without living with the kids, you’d have to put parents back into the formula. In other words, there’s no “hard” evidence for this phenomenon or the cure, but that doesn’t mean that the problem doesn’t exist or that the cure doesn’t work.

In the case of what’s causing this “early puberty” and how it can be fixed, we have even greater complexities. Is the onset of puberty really getting earlier in our country? Is early breast development the same as early puberty or does it just have one obvious characteristic in common? And even if we can prove it’s happening, how can we prove that a substance nearly ubiquitous in our food supply is the cause? One of the reasons it took so long to prove that smoking causes lung cancer is that smoking was so ubiquitous, scientists had trouble proving that it could be a factor. (Even one of the lead scientists on the first major study doubted they’d get any clear results… the day they started compiling their data, he quit smoking, but still died of lung cancer a few years later!)

I talked to my kids’ pediatrician about this and he said he believes, as I do, that the influence of diet on our health is the major new frontier in medical science. The way our healthcare and scientific systems are set up, however, it’s really hard to get funding for this type of research: the “cure” doesn’t involve a drug that a company can benefit from. Unfortunately, this leads to a lot of non-MD/scientists getting into this field — people who are into alternative medicine and are seeing marked improvements in patients just by dietary control. But since that field is also rife with charlatans (who just want to make money) and true believers (who are willing suspend rational judgment), the insistence on rigor and sound data goes out the window.

Correlation vs causation
From XKCD.com

As to how we parents should respond to this confusion, it’s clear that each parent has to make her own decision based on principles she believes in. Some parents are willing to make huge, difficult changes in their lives in case the people who espouse radical opinions are correct. My family’s approach involves straightforward lifestyle decisions:

  • Avoid milk/meat raised on hormones and antibiotics
  • Avoid BPA-lined cans and no heating in plastic containers.
  • Mostly organic produce, with an emphasis on all organic for plants that show high residues (root veges, fruits that you eat the skin of)

But I am not going to turn our lives upside-down for this, because I also believe in a balanced, enjoyable life. Thus, yes, sugar is pretty bad for us, but we love desserts and do eat them in moderation. And yes, we would be better off eating only whole grains, but pleasure in food is also part of health and frankly, sometimes a lovely croissant is just what your body and soul needs!

Finally, I think it’s best for parents to avoid reading inflammatory articles if these articles affect them negatively. Definitely don’t go looking at these magazines whose sole purpose, it seems, is to make us fearful of modern life. We are living longer and healthier lives because, in many cases, of the very same advances in applied science that may be making some of us sick. It’s very complicated, but with reasonable people taking reasonable care to sort it all out, things will continue to improve. As parents, we have an obligation to make our concerns known. But we don’t have to torture ourselves about the decisions we make – sometimes we just have to go forward with what we’ve got.

 

iPotty, uPotty, we all scream for iPotty!

Posted on by Suki

Well, the votes have been tallied up and the winner has been decided. The award? The TOADY, given by the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood to the toy most deserving of our parental disdain. The competition is really tough out there, but this year the award has again gone to a toy built around a screen, the iPotty.

iPottyWhy, you might wonder, do these parents hate screens so much? Are we all luddites, looking back to the past before technology took over our lives?

That is, perhaps, one explanation. It’s natural for parents to compare their children’s lives with their own and wonder whether they’re doing the right thing. We remember climbing trees when we were kids though now we’re raising our kids in a treeless desert, or we remember how much we loved our public school though we have chosen a private Montessori, or we remember the joy of eating a bologna and American cheese sandwich on Wonder Bread while we’re raising our kids whole grain vegan organic.

But most parents are pretty quick to separate silly nostalgia from serious comparison. We may expound on the delights of eating Ho-ho’s while watching Gilligan’s Island, but that doesn’t mean we think it’s the right choice for our kids. Most of us actually make choices with some amount of thought, and we know that we make compromises each and every day. If we didn’t come to peace with our compromises, parenting would lead directly to a padded cell.

There is nowhere so fraught with compromise than how we parents have allowed screens into our children’s lives. Most of us probably grew up with television, but none of us grew up with cellphones that play high-resolution video games. The change that our society has gone through is extraordinary, with today’s children facing an adult future dominated by jobs that didn’t even exist when we were kids.

My own parenting life has straddled this change. A very useful book I got during my first pregnancy reviewed various brands of baby equipment and noted that some of the companies even had websites! If I were pregnant now, I wouldn’t buy such a book—I’d be reading blogs, consulting reviews submitted by thousands of parents, and subscribing to Facebook pages.

But despite our longing for a past when our kids actually wanted to go outside and play, there’s a much bigger and better reason for parents to reject a product like this: Our small children simply don’t need screens. Every piece of evidence gathered about babies and toddlers is that they learn through human interaction with the real world. Babies who are regularly put in front of screens have measurably lower IQs. They don’t bond as well with the adults in their lives. They don’t get on the business of learning what children their age should be learning. [Read this great piece by Media Mom.]

Apptivity Seat
And hey, how ’bout the “Apptivity Seat” from Fisher-Price? Yet another bad idea to put kids in front of screens.

Yes, I’m sure that some study will come out showing that babies who use iPads have quicker reflexes or learn to track small objects earlier than other babies. But that’s not the point. Babies with screens are hitting the pause button on the business of being babies. In my family, we use technology as useful tools for learning, working, and entertainment. But when technology gets in the way of life, it’s time to turn it off and get back to real life.

And how much more “real” can you get than potty training? Integrating screens into an essential physical learning process is silly at best, psychologically damaging at worst. If I had small children now, this is one compromise I personally wouldn’t be able to come to terms with. Introducing screens into the bathroom is an idea that simply…eh…stinks.

Related posts:

Enter the big girl

Posted on by Suki

I just gave away my daughter’s play kitchen. This may not sound very monumental, but in our house, it’s huge. She’s about to turn 11. The play kitchen is the correct height for a 3-year-old.

A few years ago, I first broached the idea that if she got rid of it, she might have room for something else in its place…something she’d actually use.

“But I love my kitchen!” she exclaimed. OK, I thought, she’s not ready yet.

Some time later, the subject came up again. She set her face in one of those stern looks that signals no room for bargaining.

“OK,” she said. “But only if I can sell it for $100.”

Boots
A long ago time when the kitchen had all its knobs.

In case you think this sounds reasonable, let me describe the kitchen: Once upon a time it may have cost $100 from one of those fancy European kid stuff catalogues. However, it had been through a few children before my daughter took over. Every time we glued the handles back on, they’d fall off. She put stickers on it and then peeled them—mostly—off. With new kitchens sporting microwaves and faucet handles that turn, this one harkened back to the days when kids were supposed to use their imaginations. In other words, no one was going to pay $100.

So I gave up again.

Sometime last year she started to complain that she had nowhere to put anything. Please note that this kid is not hurting for storage space. She has an enormous closet, a dresser, a set of shelves, and three huge drawers that pull out from under her bed. But her room was filled with the details from every stage of her life. She not only had every baby doll she ever got, but also all the clothes she’d bought and made for them, their broken stroller, and medical equipment from surgery she had when she was four (now used when her babies were sick). She won’t let me give baby books away, so I one time I put them all up on the highest shelf to make room for books she was actually reading. Over the next few weeks, most of the baby books came back down, one by one as she felt the need to read them for the thousand-and-fifteenth time.

This is a person who places great value on remembering her past, which is something I definitely understand. (Heck, I wouldn’t keep this blog if I didn’t get that!) But while I am a particular culler and documenter, she is a pack rat extraordinaire. When I attempted to get her to throw away two plastic water bottles she’d brought back from Greece, she said in exasperation, “But they’re Greek! I have to keep them.” She wants to keep pretty much every piece of paper she ever does a scribble on, and doesn’t see any harm in keeping broken toys “in case I need them someday.”

But along with double-digits comes a new practicality. She has started to be more selective in what she keeps. The Greek water bottles, yes. The broken toys, cheap stuffed animal from the dentist, and great numbers of pieces of string that might come in handy someday went without complaint.

And now the kitchen. It was taking up a small but important piece of real estate in her room, and it was clear that if she were going to be able to make changes, she’d have to part with it. You may be expecting that I will now tell a tale of tears and fond goodbyes, but that’s the magic of growing up. As we hauled pounds of her past life out of the room, I asked what she wanted to do with it.

And received a shrug in return.

After it was loaded into the car, she didn’t even bother to ask where I was taking it. The kitchen that could only be sold for $100 was given away to a nice little girl my daughter doesn’t even know.

I find these periods of punctuated growth one of the most fascinating aspects of parenting. One day you despair that your child will never do some thing that you desperately want, then months later you realize that he’s been doing it and you didn’t even notice when he started. Our kids’ growth charts may show a smooth, steady line, but their personal growth is all jigs and jags.

Yesterday, hang onto the kitchen at all costs. Today, enter the big girl.

Book Review: Make Your Worrier a Warrior

Posted on by Suki

Make-Your-Worrier-Final-CoverMake Your Worrier a Warrior:
A Guide to Conquering Your Child’s Fears
by Daniel B. Peters, Ph.D.
Great Potential Press, 2014

I don’t have any world-class worriers in my house, so as I started this new book by the author of Raising Creative Kids, Dan Peters, I wondered how much it would apply to my parenting life. But as is always the case with a well-written, thoughtful book, I found plenty of thought-provoking ideas, inspiration, and creative solutions to a wide variety of problems.

The first thing that happened as I was reading the book was that I realized that although I don’t have a world-class worrier, we have often sailed these waters when it came to individual situations that our children faced. Neither is what I’d call a worrier in general, but both have gone through periods of specific fears, avoidance behaviors, and other issues that are covered in this book.

Peters takes a strong stance right from the beginning that worrying and fear in general is something that therapy hasn’t addressed well in the past. He points out that now that we have such a detailed picture of what physically happens with the fear response, we have much stronger and more targeted tools at our disposal.

The first tool he wields is knowledge: His book trains parents to understand what the fear response is and where it comes from. He offers a picture of why fear happens, what physically happens to a child experiencing fear, and why simply identifying the fear and talking about it is not enough. He also details the various diagnoses that our children might receive related to their fears, while cautioning us not to fixate on the diagnosis itself but rather on how to manage the fear reactions. Using examples from his own practice, Peters shows us that no matter where the fears came from in the beginning, they have a common physical expression that can be identified and targeted.

Peters’ method of choice is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), which addresses the symptoms of the problem rather than trying to find root causes. The bulk of the book is devoted to detailing what this approach is, how it works, and how families can implement it in their daily lives.

Of all that I appreciate about this book, the greatest is the respect and trust that Peters offers his young patients. The book is not about something that parents can do to their children, but rather a manual on forming a partnership with their children of any age to gain understanding of and control over their fear responses. Peters repeatedly stresses that this approach will offer children useful tools, not just to overcome a specific fear but to gain an understanding of living with their brains and overcoming other obstacles they might face.

[More information and on sale at Great Potential Press]
[Purchase this book on Amazon.com]
[Read an article about taming the worry monster by Dr. Peters]

Now available