Category: Health

Sibling Rivalry

Posted on by Suki
My children never fight. My children are so similar that they have little to argue about. We have done such a GOOD job with our children, making sure that they aren’t competitive with each other and they never feel that we favor one over the other.
Yeah, right.
Here’s the truth: Our children, though similar in some ways, are polar opposites in personality. Getting them to get along has been something we’ve been working on since the younger one realized that if she pulled the older one’s hair, something exciting would happen! The younger one loves excitement. The older one always wants to know what’s about to happen, what will happen in fifteen minutes, and what will happen years from now.
I remember a conversation they had in the car one day. The younger one was saying that as soon as she could, she was going to leave home and travel around the world and NEVER live with us again. The older one replied that he wanted to live in our house forever. He never wanted us to sell our house, and if we had to, we should sell it to him.
We have tried lots of things. We have family meetings, we point out their respective important places in our family, we talk with the older one, who is old enough to know about these things, about what we all have to do in our family to get along.
We even tried paying him to get along with his sister.
It worked…for about a week. After the first payment, everything went downhill. Apparently money (which is being saved toward the purchase of Lego Mindstorms NXT), is just not as important as making sure he gets in the last word with his sister.
The older one always has to be right. The younger one always has to know everything. There’s not a lot of room for compromise there.
Today in the car on the home from picking up Mr. Know-it-all, he and his sister started to argue about whether a town near ours was a “city” or a “village.” She maintained it was a city, and said that it was clearly a city because so many people lived there. He maintained it was a village because “everyone knows that it’s a village.”
I declared an end to the conversation and he was relieved. “OK,” he said to his sister. “Now Mommy will tell us whether it’s a city or a village.”
Mommy did no such thing.
These arguments drag out like chameleons, never tiring of their color changes. As I sat upstairs trying to work on the massive healthcare bill we are going to be faced with, I heard the fight escalate. I heard “Ow!!!” from him and “You broke my glasses” from her.
I was tempted to intervene, but I was busy, so I let it slide… into… silence. I finished working on the healthcare problem and went downstairs. They were both nestled into the couch behind the back cushions, each reading a Magic Treehouse book. She loves Magic Treehouse because it’s easy enough to read and full of science. I think he loves Magic Treehouse because she does, and that’s what’s really going on.
They really do love each other. When he’s remorseful, he tearfully tells me how great she is and how impressed he is by her and how very funny her ridiculous, strongly held opinions are.
When she’s calm and he’s not around, she writes love notes to him, draws pictures for him, and tells strangers that we meet all about him. In her eyes, he’s a star.
A vexing, difficult star, but a star nonetheless.
My kids are like Laurel and Hardy, the roadrunner and the coyote, the kitty and Pepe le Peu. They’re forever bonking each other on the heads with 500 pound safes and then making it up after the credits roll. If I make sure not to intrude too much, they can find their peace with each other. But whenever there’s an audience to be entertained…
Someone recently pointed out to me that six-year-olds love to shock their parents by saying things like “You don’t love me anymore,” and “you love my brother more than me.” I felt a little smug that MY six-year-old had never compared my love for her to my love for her brother.
Then today… “You love him more than me!” It was pure, six-year-old drama. I played my part and recited my reassuring lines. She brightened up. As long as we stick with the scripts, it’s going to be OK.

Behavioral problems: Resources

Posted on by Suki
These are the resources that I used in writing my upcoming articles on non-drug therapies for treating behavioral problems in children. (See previous blog.)
An Alternative View of Behavioral Problems in Children
Resources:
Articles and research:

Books:

  • The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan, 2007
  • Misdiagnosis And Dual Diagnoses Of Gifted Children And Adults, Webb et al, 2005
  • Ritalin Nation, Richard J. Degrandpre, 1999 (referred to this book but did not use it as a source)
Parent support:

  • Yahoo Groups at http://YahooGroups.com – search for your child’s particular need.
Local practitioners mentioned in the articles:

  • Langdon Roberts, The Center for Transformational Neurophysiology: http://www.santacruzbiofeedback.com/
  • Dr. Jeff Lester: http://lesterclinic.com/
  • Dr. Harry Friedman: http://www.harryfriedmando.com/
  • Lorraine Stern: http://tayodayspa.com/
  • Jennifer Alexander: http://therapists.psychologytoday.com/rms/name/Jennifer__Alexander_MFT_Aptos_California_57328

The “Gift”

Posted on by Suki
I used a word I don’t particularly like when I was talking to some parents the other day. The problem is, it’s the word that is used, and substitutions for it sound awkward. I was referring to my daughter and how I’d been reading a “gifted homeschoolers” e-mail group (mostly to reassure myself that I’m not alone in the parenting world).
One of the moms replied in the way that one of the moms always does when you use that word. “I think all kids are gifted,” she said.
In the sense that she was using the word, the sense that it has for everyone but those who get caught in the Escher-like upstairs-downstairs of educating gifted kids, she was right. Every single person is unique, and for each unique child, you can find a gift that they can offer the world. Some of them have big fancy gifts like Shirley Temple. Some of them have quieter gifts that they discover over a lifetime.
But I’m stuck with this word that doesn’t exactly express what it means. “Gifted and Talented Education” is the official title for the program in California’s public schools, and “the gifted” is what they call the kids. That immediately makes other parents, whose children are therefore “not gifted,” think that you’re bragging. It couldn’t be further from the truth.
Having been one of these kids, I have no illusions that it’s easier to be who they are than to be someone who is “not gifted.” Each one of our unique humans has a unique set of things to overcome. It might surprise a lot of people that gifted kids are actually less likely to graduate from high school. And even more surprising to many people is that your IQ actually has no strong correlation with success in life. In fact, people who study the gifted say that you’re better off being pretty darn smart (somewhat smarter than average) than really, really smart. Those who are really, really smart have bigger handicaps to go along with their “gift.”
As I understand it, kids who are gifted learners often develop backwards. You notice pretty much right away that they’re different. The other kids go through the stages that they describe in parenting manuals. Gifted kids do…something different. Some of them develop their social skills normally, but most don’t. The schedule flips around. When other kids are learning to get past parallel play and make friends, gifted kids are often more interested in reading dictionaries.
My son was not one of those kids you read about who do amazing intellectual feats early on, but he was clearly different. He went from not speaking to speaking in paragraphs. He didn’t have his terrible twos, but when he was five he started throwing scary fits like he was a two-year-old. At times we feared he was autistic. He made his first friend at the age of four-and-a-half. Our goals for him have never been academic. When a teacher asks what our goals are, we say we’d like him to be happy.
Our daughter is in many ways the opposite. She has always acted outward. Her terrible twos started at 18 months and we’re not sure when they’re going to end. She is unable to handle being in a classroom for more than a few hours at a time if she’s not being constantly intellectually stimulated. If I can keep up with her, we can have great homeschooling days. But it’s extremely hard to keep up with her. Teachers never asked us what our goals were. It was clear that our goal was to keep her able to be in class, till we chose another path. Homeschooling is becoming the educational model of choice for lots of parents of gifted kids.
Both of our kids are typical as gifted kids, but very unusual in the wider world. Parents react to them in a variety of ways. Sometimes parents compare their kids and find them lacking. “I wish my son could read like yours,” said the father of a second-grade classmate. “I wish my son could hit a baseball,” I wanted to reply. But I didn’t, because it’s really important with all kids, not just “gifted” kids, to accept what comes in the package. If my son decides one day to play baseball, I’ll encourage him to do his best.
Other people just don’t know what to do with them. They might assume the children actually don’t understand what they’re saying. One time when my daughter was three, she cursed at my son by saying, “I will stop your circulatory system.” Someone overhearing it said, “She doesn’t know what that means.” But she did. She is endlessly creative with her knowledge of how the human body works, and with her insults. Like Shakespeare.
The thing parents always say about gifted kids is that they’re exhausting. You want to enjoy their “gifts,” but sometimes gifts can get in the way of enjoyment. Everyone is telling you that you’re lucky, and you’re happy that you survived a day with Shakespeare and Galileo breathing down your neck.
Like all parenting, it’s a topsy turvy roller coaster ride. Enjoy!

Love Her and Let Her Go

Posted on by Suki
I received some pearls of wisdom the other day about discipline from a tattooed great-grandmother who works at my daughter’s homeschool program.
My wise woman told me that she never had preschoolers in her care give her trouble about walking in a line on sidewalks. When I expressed my doubt that she’d be able to rein my daughter in like that, she let drop a phrase that has stuck with me. “Oh,” she said, “Your daughter has a perimeter. All kids have perimeters. Your daughter’s is just a bit bigger than most.”
What she meant was the for some kids, you need to let out the slack to rein them in. When you take a kid with a “wide perimeter” and try to force them into the small enclosed behavioral space that you keep other kids in, it backfires on you.
What she also meant was an almost heretical thing to say in modern education: not all kids are the same. No matter how hard you try, some kids are not going to be good at taking tests, some kids are not going to be good at raising their hands quietly, and some kids are not going to be able to catch a ball. In every classroom, you have (hopefully) a good representation of kids who fall somewhere in the middle. But you are always going to have kids that fall outside that perimeter, and what do you do with them?
When you call my daughter on every little infraction of the rules, the infractions increase. Teachers who try to keep her on the straight and narrow fail. A good example is circle time. At her old school, a private Montessori, she was required to come to circle time. The teacher tried everything: giving her a five-minute warning, positive reinforcement, negative consequences, you name it. But she didn’t like circle time much. When she was left to her own devices, she’d sometimes join in. But the more her teacher tried to get her to join, the less she wanted to.
After leaving that school, we went to visit her homeschool program. I told the teacher, “She just doesn’t DO circle time.” No problem, the teacher said. She can join if she wants to. After a couple of weeks in the program, my daughter noticed that no one was forcing her to sit in the circle, and she started to join in…when she felt like it.
The fact is, in our society we recognize that rules don’t apply equally in many ways. It’s illegal to beat someone up, but if you both agree to wear gloves, follow some rules, and do it in front of an audience, you can try to knock someone out and not get arrested.
So what does it mean in a classroom, or in a family, when you admit that rules don’t apply equally? It causes problems, of course. In our family, we first have the issue of age. Our two children are four years apart, so rules can’t always apply equally. Our son has to do many things alone that our daughter gets help with — and conversely, our son GETS to do many things alone that our daughter would love to be able to do. There’s also the issue of “perimeters.” Our son has a very, very small perimeter. I spent much of his preschool years working on helping him to be more confident. When he was small, he spent time outside of the home literally attached to the adult he was with. When I dropped him at preschool, I would “hook” him onto his teacher so that I could make my escape!
It’s taken me years to be comfortable with the fact that my six-year-old needs the opposite treatment. She really needs to feel like she has the ability to make her own choices, depend on her own body, and have her own opinions. This means I have to turn off the mother who hooks her son into each new environment, and find that mother who expresses confidence in her daughter then looks away, or at least pretends to. If I send my daughter across the street to get the mail from our box, she does it well and confidently. If I watch her, that, to her, expresses my lack of confidence in her.
This is very hard to translate to a classroom. Her Montessori teacher constantly sent the message that she didn’t trust my daughter, and my daughter received that message loud and clear. When I told the teacher she had to let go a bit more, she said, “But the other kids will see that I’m not applying the rules fairly.” I agree that this is a problem. But I see the difference when adults work with my daughter. The ones who want to rein her in fail. The ones who “get” her and are able to give her space while also guiding her in the right direction, do fine.
One year I had her enrolled in two different preschools, one private preschool, and the Watsonville Adult School program in my son’s school. She was having big problems at her main preschool, but not in the other. I asked her teacher at the Adult School program one day about this difference in behavior.
Her teacher (a former motorcycle gang member) let drop her own pearls of wisdom. “Your daughter’s a strong girl, and I like strong girls,” she said. That was all the explanation she needed to give.
Love her, and let her loose.

Kids and Vitamins

Posted on by Suki
This just in: vitamins aren’t good for you. In case you think I’m rehashing an old Woody Allen movie, read the New York Times – http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/20/news-keeps-getting-worse-for-vitamins/?em . In many of the studies they cite, taking vitamin supplements actually LOWERED the person’s life expectancy.
This is something I have a little disagreement about with many of my friends in Santa Cruz. I realize that many people here are into popping supplements for any and all ailments. Perfectly reasonable people who seem thoughtful shell out gobs of their money for supplements like Airborne, which claims to lessen cold symptoms. In fact, one such intelligent person said to me (with a straight face), “I took Airborne, but I guess I took it too late because I still got sick.”
It didn’t seem to occur to her that taking vitamins doesn’t have any effect on the progress of the world’s most common virus, which has resisted all other attempts to control it. Instead of blaming the company for making unfounded claims, she blamed herself for “not doing it right.”
The idea of “fixing” our bodies with supplements is based on a fallacy. The fallacy is that when foods or herbs contain a certain substance that seems to make our body healthier in the longterm, then it follows that condensing that substance into a pill will somehow do the same thing immediately. The problem is, in most cases this just isn’t true. Although eating a healthy diet is part of keeping your body strong enough to resist disease, taking doses (or even worse, megadoses) of vitamins doesn’t have the same effect.
The name “supplement” is key to the proper use of vitamins. If for some reason a person’s diet is missing an important nutritional piece, or a person’s body needs more of one particular nutritional element, dietary supplements can help. But taking vitamins doesn’t “fix” an unhealthy diet or lifestyle. And though being healthy can help keep your immune system strong, a cold virus is a wily thing.
What worries me particularly about the unquestioning use of supplements is how it affects kids. Since the supplement industry is unregulated, random tests find that contamination with heavy metals is pretty common. (See http://nccam.nih.gov/health/bottle/ ) Heavy metals are dangerous for adults; for kids they can have permanent negative effects. Add to that the effect of longterm megadosing in children – no one knows how this is going to pan out. Even vitamins specifically for children often have more than 100% of recommended daily amounts of vitamins. Yet the same people who are worried about buying only organic foods for their kids are filling them with these unregulated chemicals.
We all worry about whether our kids are eating a healthy diet. But in modern-day America, it’s more likely that your kid is getting too much of some things rather than too little. I was concerned, for example, when my nine-year-old just flat out told me he doesn’t like milk and he was no longer going to drink it. But given his diet, which is high in calcium-rich vegetables and cheese, and his lifestyle, with lots of sun exposure, it really isn’t a problem. Most cultures don’t give straight milk to older children, with no devastating effects on their populations.
I just saw a link to a great New Yorker article about over-parenting on a list I read. (http://tinyurl.com/6negrt) We are all so susceptible to thinking that we’re not doing ENOUGH these days. Everywhere we turn, an advertisement, book, TV show, or article is telling us that we can do more and more to “help” our kids be healthier, stronger, smarter, more successful. What parent doesn’t want the best for his or her kid? It’s really hard to resist this stuff.
And now that I think about it, I’m guilty as charged. I’ve been buying orange juice spiked with extra calcium.
Just in case…

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