Category: Parenting

Fish oil: More than just memory

Posted on by Suki

This just in: A study has validated that a diet high in Omega-3 oils helps short-term memory. I’m not surprised. Anyone who has high-energy, brainy kids and has tried fish oil will attest to its amazing powers. Short-term memory isn’t one of the things that parents tend to be interested in, but my non-scientific survey shows that parents see a variety of good effects from fish oil:

  • Decrease in mid-morning meltdowns
  • Increase in self-control
  • Decrease in mood swings

I know adults who say that taking fish oil helps them feel on a more even keel. I personally haven’t been able to track any effects in myself, but in my kids the change was pretty much immediate. Although they are very different characters, we noticed that they controlled their moods and were able to focus much better after introducing Omega-3’s.

Anyone who has been reading my blog for a while will know that I’m not a big fan of following nutritional fads. For a while, nearly everyone I met told me I needed to try cutting wheat out of my daughter’s diet even though there was no indication that she had a problem with wheat. I’ve gotten advice to take mega-doses of everything from copper to vitamin E. In general, I take the point of view that the best nutrition is gotten from a healthy diet rather than a factory-made pill.

The great thing about Omega-3 supplements, however, is that unlike most vitamin supplements, they are simply oil from the food that we don’t eat enough of: stinky, oily fish. Now, it is the case that my kids actually like fish and we eat it more than most American families. But it’s great that we can get one of the benefits of fish without thinking about it too much. Every day, my kids take their fish pill, and life is just that little bit easier.

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I never met a recipe I didn’t want to change

Posted on by Suki

I have a favorite recipe from The Frugal Gourmet which I have been making for years. The first time I made it, I didn’t have any green peppers as called for in the recipe, so I made it without. It was delicious, so for the next twenty years I have made it my way and been quite happy with it. In fact, when I contemplate it with green peppers in it, it just doesn’t seem right.

It occurs to me that this is somewhat how I approach life in general. But I know that it goes against rules that we seem to think are important to teach in childhood, such as:

  • Fruit
    Giant fruit

    follow the recipe

  • don’t start something you’re not going to finish
  • don’t do things unless you have a reason to do them

The fact is, life is full of changed recipes, abandoned projects, and aimless yet completely fulfilling activities. When it comes to raising kids, I can see that I habitually break all those rules. First of all, I am always amazed that there are parents out there who profess to follow a single parenting “theory.” You’ve got your Positive Discipline disciples, your 1 2 3 Magic practitioners, and your Attachment Parenting adherents. They will attempt to follow a theory precisely, and on message boards and in real life they’ll ask each other advice for handling a situation within the worldview of their chosen parenting guide.

In our house, however, we mix it up the way we serve raita with South Indian curry. Sometimes I’m trying to be all Positive with a kid and it’s clear that she needs a countdown: “Get off that computer 3! right now 2! or I will lower your feet into our aquarium and let the sucker fish clean your toes 1!” Or Discipline seems to be agitating rather than calming so we go for the big hug instead.

Another one of my parenting beliefs is don’t be afraid to jump ship at any time if your designated coordinates don’t fit your current needs. So say you’ve decided that your family must be trained always to put away their shoes the second they come in the house, then you realize that means that your own shoes won’t be accessible when you’ve got an armload of used kitty litter that needs to get to the garbage can. Did I really say you had to put all your shoes away? Well, change of plans.

Life is full of abandoned plans, and let’s face it, some of them deserved to be abandoned. Did I really think I liked my kids being in private school more than being able to do something fun with all that money? Did I really say that if we kept all the scrap wood from the old fence I’d help the kids build a playhouse? Did I really buy ricotta thinking I’d spend the time to make homemade manicotti? How about baked ziti instead?

And finally, some of our most fulfilling family activities are done for no particular purpose. I noticed the other day that I had two adult passes to the deYoung Museum that were about to expire, so we decided to hop over to San Francisco for the afternoon. Usually we plan ahead, find out what’s showing at the museum, call up some friends we don’t often see to set up dinner, make a shopping list of things we need at our favorite Asian groceries on the Peninsula. But this time we just up and went. We wandered through the museum split (spontaneously) into two groups. My daughter and I spent a haphazard couple of hours wandering around with her taking photos of things she liked, like the giant, glass fruit. She also decided to look for horses in every room, which necessitated that she at least look at each of the paintings. A few of the ones she appreciated didn’t actually have horses in them.

I think it’s very easy to lose a sense of spontaneity with so many things to do in our hectic world. We schedule ourselves into a corner, making sure that every activity is done the correct way, done fully, and done with purpose. Sometimes it’s really great just to wing it. Who knows? You might find a painting you liked in an exhibit you would have skipped, or you might just prefer that recipe without green peppers, after all.

Crisis healthcare

Posted on by Suki

I’m getting to know our healthcare system a little more up close and personal than I’d like this week. My brother got hit by a car when he was out bicycling and had to be helicoptered to a trauma care facility. He’s doing better and may be moving out of the hospital and in with my parents tomorrow, but it was a weeklong lesson in how to get good healthcare in modern America.

1) Make sure you have insurance

Of course, hospitals are required to save the lives of anyone, regardless of their insurance status. But as important as that is, the lifesaving aspect of healthcare is just the beginning. I have to admit, I actually didn’t know if my bro had health insurance, and that was one of the first questions I asked his fiancee, who was with him when he was hit and has been at his side for every allowable minute since then. If he hadn’t had insurance, yes, they would have saved his life. But the first thing we would have started to do was worry about how it was going to be paid for. There are many more important things to worry about, such as making sure he gets good care, making sure we do everything possible to help him along, and setting things up so he’ll get care once he is out of the hospital. We have the luxury of knowing that he’s not going to spend every cent he has on this accident, but millions of Americans don’t have that luxury… yet.

2) Make sure you have a loving family and caring friends

When you’re spending a lot of time in a hospital, you start noticing the other patients, and the other patients’ families…or lack of family. For part of his stay my brother was next to another head-trauma patient. No one came to visit that young man. No one made sure he was comfortable outside of the few things hectic nurses can do for their patients. No one questioned his doctors on their decisions. No one brought him drinkable coffee from the Vietnamese cafe across the street. From the important decisions on down to getting your favorite snacks delivered, having your family around is extremely important. And it has to be family: Friends were not allowed in the ICU.

3) Corollary to #2: Make sure your loved ones are close by and can spend time with you

We have a family joke that we have contributed greatly to the population growth in California. I came here in the 80’s for college, and my entire family followed: 4 siblings with their eventual children, parents, cats, and dogs. So when my brother was hospitalized, we had enough people close enough to make sure someone was available at all times. Of course, none of us lives anywhere close to the trauma center where he ended up, but we could drive to get there. And a few of us had flexible enough schedules that we’d go to the hospital with our computers and smartphones and spell each other so we could get a little work done. But what if we’d lived across the country, or in another country? What if none of us had the ability to skip work? In my brother’s case, he wasn’t able to sign documents so he had to have a family member nearby at all times for the first few days. Though the staff at the ICU were kind in ignoring the fact that his fiancee wasn’t technically allowed to be there, they had to have a signature from an actual relative.

4) Make sure you have advocates

This is why #2 and #3 are so very important: when you’re in the hospital and not able to stand up for yourself, you need an advocate. This can be a close friend, but for legal reasons (see above) it helps to have family members (or a legal representative) who are there to sign for you. You never know when your job as an advocate will change from legal to something much more important. When my dad was admitted to the hospital a few years ago with extreme abdominal pain, my mother patiently explained to each person who took his health history that he only had one kidney. They all seemed to think this was not urgent. Finally the surgeon showed up. My mother asked him whether he’d noted on my dad’s charts that he only had one kidney—the surgeon was the first person who knew how important this information was and took it seriously.

5) Prepare ahead of time for disaster

I have found out in the last few years how few of my friends, most of whom are parents somewhere in my age range, have advanced directives or wills. Though paying a lawyer is, of course, the very best way to get this done, Nolo Press has done a great job of providing those of us who can’t afford a lawyer with instructions for putting together these very important documents. In case of disaster, does your family really know what you want done regarding healthcare and, in the worst circumstances, death? If both you and your spouse died at once, what will happen to your children? If someone has to make healthcare decisions for you, who do you want it to be? If you don’t have family, or if you are not close to your family, who do you want to be able to make decisions for you? All of these questions can be answered ahead of time, and they make it so much easier for the people you love to deal with a catastrophic health crisis.

We have been by and large impressed with the care my brother has received. The staff seems completely on top of things—computers have gotten rid of the many errors that came of scrawled charts hung on the ends of beds. And they are generally helpful and caring. But still, hospitals are places where lots of things can go wrong. If you want your family to get the best care, you have to be there, and be vigilant.

“From School to Homeschool” now available

Posted on by Suki

My book, From School to Homeschool, is now available as a pre-release direct from the publisher, Great Potential Press. It will be available from retail stores and as an e-book after November 1.

From School to HomeschoolThis book stems from my experiences as a “reluctant homeschooler.” When my younger child dragged me into homeschooling, kicking and screaming (that’s me kicking and screaming, not her!), I was completely unprepared. Many of the homeschooling resources I found seemed particularly unsuited to my family, our kids, and our outlook on education and learning. I muddled through our first couple of years, wondering why school didn’t work for her, what our homeschool would look like, and how I would know what success would look like.

Through the help and support of my local homeschooling community and the online community of gifted homeschoolers, I slowly got my footing, and realized that although each child is different, there is a commonality of experiences that builds a shaky foundation for all of us to stand on. I started to write about those experiences, benefitting from advice and ideas from the many parents out there who are so sharing and supportive to others.

This book is the result of those years: not a homeschooling manual full of specific homeschooling resources, but instead a guide to understanding what homeschooling is and can be, how we can get to know our children’s needs better, how homeschooling can bend to suit the varied needs of gifted and asynchronous learners, and what success looks like for families who had formerly considered prestigious schools and high grades as markers of academic achievement.

If you would like to be on my mailing list to receive notifications about the book, speaking engagements, and other publications, please visit my contact page.

Book Review: A Parent’s Guide to Gifted Children

Posted on by Suki

A Parent’s Guide to Gifted Children
James T. Webb, Janet L. Gore, Edward R. Amend, Arlene R. DeVries
Great Potential Press, 2007

Parents often wish their children came with an owner’s manual. If there is anything that comes close to being an owner’s manual for parents of gifted children, this book is it.

The authors comprise a who’s who of experts on gifted children. James T. Webb, the lead author, is perhaps the best-known writer and speaker on gifted issues in the United States. His more recent book, Misdiagnosis and Dual Diagnosis of Gifted Children and Adults (also written with a team of experts), outlines the specific psychological pitfalls gifted children face. The other three authors, Janet L. Gore, Edward R. Amend, and Arlene R. DeVries, add both depth and breadth to Webb’s solid credentials. Together, the authors have worked with gifted children in almost all capacities.

The book serves first as a very good primer for a parent who is facing questions about raising a gifted child. The first two chapters define giftedness and explore common characteristics of gifted children. In doing so, they answer two questions that often accompany a parent’s first forays into the gifted literature: First, is my child gifted?, and second, how is my child different from other children?

The authors point out that the diagnosis itself can cause problems for gifted kids and their parents. From dismissive comments by other parents such as “all children are gifted,” to misunderstandings from educators like “bright children don’t need any special help,” gifted children and their parents face a lot of opposition as soon as their children are identified.

The second goal of the book is to teach parenting and educational approaches that work as an approach to all children, but are even more important when working with the needs and intensities of gifted children. Chapters on communication, motivation, and discipline outline an approach that takes into account both the child’s age-appropriate emotional needs as well as respecting the child’s unusual ability to process and understand information.

The parenting sections of the book expand into gifted-specific problems: How do the parents of gifted children help them in relationships with their peers? How does having a gifted child affect the relationships of siblings? How can a family’s values support a gifted child? And most importantly, how can a marriage survive the complexities of parenting a gifted child?

A Parent’s Guide only touches upon aspects of aspects of raising a gifted child with twice-exceptionalities such as learning disabilities, mood disorders, and ADD/ADHD. Parents who suspect that their gifted child may suffer from concurrent problems will do well to read Misdiagnosis and Dual Diagnosis of Gifted Children and Adults after getting an introduction to the issues in this book.

Finally, the book devotes chapters to the educational needs of gifted children, as well as working with other professionals. The educational section gives a blueprint for looking at schools — what to expect in traditional schools, private schools, gifted programs, and gifted schools. There is a short section on homeschooling, a popular choice for parents of gifted children. More useful is the information offered about teacher training for gifted issues (most teachers receive no training), gifted programs in schools (which may or may not serve a gifted child’s needs), how to work with the school administration, and how to advocate for your gifted child.

A Parent’s Guide is a great starting point for educating yourself about the needs of your gifted child and the possible pitfalls you may face as you raise and educate him or her. However, more important than the actual information in the book are the pointers to how to learn more about giftedness, schools, and your child’s emotional health and educational success. If you’re just starting down the road to helping your gifted child, especially a younger child, this book offers a straightforward “owner’s manual” that will guide you through the challenges you and your child will face.

Now available