Weekend…Christmas, Kids, Consumerism

Chicago Xmas State Street

Christmas and Holidays can pose a dilemma especially for those of us with children. What is meant to be a time of joy and giving can become a time of stress and “gimme, gimme”.

So, I was overjoyed to see this post and thought I would share it with those of you who want to share some of these points with your own children….or grandchildren.

So it got me thinking – what do I want my kids to really know about Christmas?  And because I started thinking that led to me making a list for my kids. Which I’m sharing with you today.

via finding joy: 25 Things I Want My Kids to Know About Christmas..

 

 

In keeping with my consumerism theme this week, I am posting a link to one of my favorite bloggers and writers, Annie Urban.

She makes an excellent effort to “quell” consumerism in her home with her own children. This, mind you, is no easy task and it is certainly made easier if you have all the family together in support…especially the grandparents, aunts and uncles and all who dote on your kids.

But then the Christmas commercials started. Not in December, not in late November, but back in October or maybe even September. And that is when the chorus began. It didn’t matter what type of plastic crap was being advertised, they wanted it, they needed it, it was the best thing ever.

 

 

Wordless Wednesday Again…Kids and Safety

Car Seat Safety for Kids

To me, there are few things more important than car seat safety since kids spend and enormous amount of time in cars.

Here is a must see video for new parents and seasoned parents as well as grandparents and any child caregiver.

car seats, safety first My go to person for car seat information is “The CarSeat Lady“. She is in my opinion the best information source for parents when they are choosing a carseat and when they want information in its proper installation and use.

“Playing” or “Fighting” with Baby…

This video shows a dad “fighting” with his baby. To me this borders on child abuse. I know that dad is trying to be funny but at the baby’s expense…therefore …NOT FUNNY.

Just like teasing this kind of “baby rough housing” seems over the top especially when you make a video of it and you are able to see the baby’s facial and physical reactions to the actions of his dad.

What do you think?

To me, making a You-tube video, “Fighting with Baby“, actually encourages other parents to rough house with the babies in their lives.

This is just not funny…

Babies are learning trust especially in their caregivers; here we see the baby’s father literally throwing him onto the bed…twisting him around his arm and tickling him silly. The baby then tries to defend himself by “hitting” dad in the face only to be thwarted in his self-defending efforts.

I love social media and baby/kid videos but this video makes me sick as I watch it. I would like to see it taken down and a statement from the dad apologizing for using his son to publicize his own career. I would also like him to say that this activity could be emotionally and physically harmful.

Some people think that baby’s are “things” and have very few needs since they seem to just eat, sleep and cry. This is simply not so.

baby

Babies are developing  emotionally and physically at a very fast rate during their first year of life…parents and caregivers have a major role in this development. “Fighting” with baby is something we should not ever consider during this time.

At the very least: This video should come with a disclaimer.

Do Homework Before Holiday Shopping for Kids

Toys

Thanksgiving is tomorrow so I have been hearing and reading a lot about Black Friday and shopping for kids.

When it comes to our children and grandchildren careful thought will go into Holiday gift choices.

I know that screens for kids are somewhat controversial. Let’s face it, eventually your kids will be exposed to the iPad and various other tablets both adult and child friendly. It seems important to know about the various available tablets.

So here is the link to Consumer Reports’ info on tablets specifically for children.

The market for kids’ tablets is growing dramatically. Just two years ago, only 8 percent of children had access to a tablet at home. Today, it’s 40 percent!

Consumer Reports tested six tablets especially designed for children costing between 70 and 230.

You never expect toys to harm your child or grandchild but we know they can… so here is a list of toys that you might want to avoid as they pose a safety hazard to some children.

 

November 26, 2013 (CHICAGO) (WLS) — As the holiday shopping season begins, the Illinois Public Interest Research Group is out with its annual list of dangerous toys that parents should avoid.

Illinois PIRG: Trouble in Toyland Report

Shoppers hitting the stores this holiday season should look out for toys that can be harmful to children.

Children with special needs and parents get help with toy choices from aToys R Us website. Thank you Toys R Us.

 

Toys R Us toy guide for differently-abled kids makes it easier to find the right toys for a child with a disability. The prices range from $5 – $100.

The toy guide is available at all Toys R Us stores and can also be found online:

http://www.toysrus.com/differentlyabled

 

What saying NO really means to kids.

Gingerbread Fun!

Gingerbread Fun!

Interesting findings here with only 30+ children observed.

Kids gravitate to the things we as parents say NO to.

Now most of us realize this even though it may be on a subconscious level. The NO word only increases the risk that our kids and grandkids with go for the forbidden.

The important finding here is that if we say NO to certain foods our kids will only want those foods more…so in order to keep them away from non-nutritious foods we should decrease the opportunities where we have to say NO. Example being …not to have candy laying around the house and therefore we won’t have to say, “No, that is not good for you.”

Now good luck with the Holiday Season that is upon us…when we all have lots of treats around our homes. Now is a good time to begin to keep them at a minimum not just for our kids’ sake but our own as well.

 

For those of you who are familiar with the evidence base on parental feeding patterns it won’t come as a surprise to you that just saying “No” (restriction) isn’t a wise plan – yet there are many who feel that the ability of parents to “just say no” is a viable defense against our current food environment.

Kiss Goodbye to Holiday Stress

Christmas Window

Kids and the Stress of the Holidays…

I know, what stress is it when you are a kid and looking forward to gifts and toys and all kinds of stuff that comes along with Christmas and Hanukah and other gift giving holidays?

The best way I think we can go about figuring out what might bother our particular children is to look at what bothers us and look back at what we “hated” about the holidays when we were their age.

Looking back with empathy…

Here are some of my memories…

  • I hated leaving my own house on Christmas Day to visit relatives…Christmas Eve was okay but leave me alone with my gifts and my grandmother’s, who lived with us  food on Christmas.
  • Now my parents were divorced so it was somewhat contentious when I did not want to go visiting on Christmas. I was made to feel guilty for not wanting to dress up and go to my father’s family.
  • I hated some of the awful presents that I received year after year from relatives who will remain nameless. Usually they were “regifts” like gloves that were too big and other awful stuff.
  • I also hated having to kiss and hug various relatives that I hardly ever saw except for the Holidays.

Now granted I am a grandmother and I imposed some of my family rituals on my own kids but not many …we always had Christmas at home.

However, Christmas Eve was another story…we spent many Christmas Eves with a family that has adopted us since our own family is across the country.

Here are some holiday simplifying suggestions from our Montessori school, for you and your children…the kids may actually thank-you with their good behavior.

  • Keep your television off as much as possible- your house will be quieter and the advertising will be less. Hopefully it will decrease how much you here these words…”I want…”
  • Try to simplfy your own holiday expectations which might lighten your mood which is a wonderful gift to yourself and your family.
  • Consider saying the word “No” more often when it comes to traveling…going to other homes for Christmas Day…no, to too many parties, decorations, too much food, too many presents. If there is something that you don’t like…try saying, “NO”.
  • Consider being more “Green” when it comes to wrapping paper, cards and food. It is a good thing to teach your children and it is a way to limit some of the “stuff” that is just not important and that may just be driving you crazy.
  • Gifts take on a life of their own during the Holidays…try asking for gifts to your children’s college fund instead of a gift that your child does not really need.
  • Family traditions…you might want to begin some of your own traditions…you do not have repeat the traditions that you grew up with and those that your partner grew up with…how crazy does that get? Develop some of your own traditions that can combine what you both like best and that your kids like.
  • Now about those holiday hugs and kisses…your child should not have to hug and kiss all relatives and friends that he does not even know or remember. What is this telling him…it is telling him this, when he is uncomfortable with certain people touching him…it is okay for him to just say hello and nothing else. Consider the message that we are teaching our kids and then leave the hugging and kissing up to them.

 

Puke Fest, Photography, Play

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Puke Fest, I think all of us have experienced this but not to the extent of this mom. She has developed and shared a strategy for dealing with the flu in her family of six children.

Get some tips to be ready if “puke fest” comes to your home.

If you like taking photos of your family when they are not sick…this is a wonderful site that will take your photography to new level without even leaving your home. You will need a real camera…not just your phone. Have fun and enjoy the view.

 

Welcome! I am so excited that you are here and eager to learn more about photography! I want to share with you everything I have learned over the past couple of years and help you along your journey! Whether you just got your first DSLR or you have been shooting for years, we have something for everyone.

Play is one of the most important things our kids do that add positively to their growth and development. Here are six gifts that will encourage your child to direct their own play.

 

Learning to be a responsive play observer takes thoughtfulness, restraint and practice, but once we get this down, we’ll discover more delightful moments of joy, humor and surprise than we ever thought possible. And we need these daily parenting “bonuses” to balance the more difficult moments and break up the monotony. We’ll also get more guilt-free breaks from parenting because we’ve encouraged our children to hone their independent play skills in our presence (but that’s another post).

 

 

Tuesday…Why I Love My “Virtual Friends”

Lunch Box

Lunch Box

I am going back to introducing some of my favorite bloggers and their blogs. Over the last five years it has been my pleasure to meet many “virtual” friends through an eclectic collection of blogs.

For me, “working” at home and from home has its advantages and disadvantages…one of the disadvantages is the inevitable loneliness that comes with the home-based territory.

Thank goodness, my “virtual” friends are a click away and provide discussions that some of my “real” friends cannot, since they don’t share my work at home status nor are they taking care of grandchildren and to be truthful, I just don’t have that many “real” friends. Over the years, I have made an effort to have a few good friends than a lot of casual ones.

But now with blogging and social media, I have many casual, virtual friends.

As a grandmother, I am thankful for this. I love blogging and I love visiting blogs and social media. Blogs help me understand the world through my children’s generational lens and the lens of my contemporaries. Since I spend a lot of time with my grandchild, I appreciate the world she lives in and also the world that she will inherit from my generation and that of her parents.

YoniFreedhoff is one of my “virtual” friends, through his blog, “Weighty Matters”.

It is a blog that is both serious and humorous. He is a doctor and I am a nurse so his humor is not wasted on me.

Nutrition is something that continues to fascinate me…it is a field that is ever-changing and has life long implications for each and every one of us. Yoni keeps me focused on the new innovative and the old tried and true approaches coupled with a tongue in cheek attitude.

Here is his latest post on a controversial Manitoba Child Care Lunch Regulation Program. It is humorous to a point but there are also serious implications, too much government intervention into how we feed our families, as well as the “stupidity” of those who are interpreting this new “food policy police policy”!

Family doc, Assistant Prof. at the University of Ottawa, and founder of Ottawa’s Bariatric Medical Institute – a multi-disciplinary, ethical, evidence-based nutrition and weight management centre. Nowadays I’m more likely to stop drugs than start them, and love going to work in the morning. You can also follow me on Twitter at YoniFreedhoff

 

It’s quite possible that the single stupidest school lunch policy on the planet comes courtesy of a strange interpretation of the Manitoba Government’s Early Learning and Child Care lunch regulations (an earlier version of this article incorrectly pointed at the Manitoba Child Care Association as the source of the strangely interpreted policy).

via Weighty Matters: Parents Fined For Not Sending Ritz Crackers In Kids’ Lunches.

Week in Review-Food for Thought…Saving Your Friend on the School Bus

Father Holding Daughter's Hand

Eating together as a family is recommended in many, many articles.

In some families, it is a sacred time, when they share food, and their thoughts with each other without the interruption of screens, phones, television or computers. Some families can manage dinner together several times a week others not so much.

With so many schedules competing for our time and that of our children, perhaps we need to assess how stressful it is for everyone to sit down and eat any meal together.

Maybe, we should re-evaluate how we spend time together and whether it has to be all together at a dinner table?

Perhaps, we can do other things together and use car rides  bike rides, or even walks to share precious moments with each other.

Julie Cole discusses her take on family dinner time…as a mom of six she has some suggestions, all of us might find helpful. Her expectations are realistic for her family.

What expectations are realistic for yours?

Parenting is a tough gig these days. There are a lot of studies and research directing us. While I think it’s important to consider the information that we are bombarded with, I like to integrate that with my experiences, some common sense, and the knowledge that I’m the one best fit to make the decisions for my family. The dinner table is not going to make or break my family. I’m quite capable of doing that all on my own, thank you. Check back with me in a few years though – if no one is using three syllable words, I may reconsider.

via The MabelhoodFeeding Time at the Zoo » The Mabelhood.

 

Another post this week from one of my favorite bloggers was inspired by Julie Cole’s article, it also deals with family dinner time and meaningful family time.

I have found that family dinners are difficult these days…my husband has a very long day and I am hungry way before he arrives home from work and so is my granddaughter.

When my own kids were young, we managed dinner together most evenings. It was hectic, but everyone looked forward to sitting down and eating a home cooked meal.

They may not have liked all the food that was served and there may have been many heated discussions along side the usual sibling issues but it was a family get together at the end of the day. I can say with certainty, It was definitely not  the Cosbys  but it was three generations sitting together talking or arguing about something or another.

Over the years, dinner time has morphed and now the weekend is when we enjoy calmer meals together, some at home and some out.

I have to admit when we eat out…it is much more relaxing for me and I actually enjoy what I am eating. This is not always the case when I am the one cooking, serving and cleaning up.

With age, I have learned that the dinner time togetherness can be forfeited for other meaningful moments of togetherness that are both relaxing and enjoyable.

For this reason, I love getting older and wiser and I love being able to read about how mom’s today like Annie and Julie have adapted togetherness time to include other enjoyable activities with their kids along with occasional dinners.

 

It’s not news – families that eat together regularly are better and the rest of us suck. Time Magazine reports that the more often families eat together, the less likely kids are to smoke, drink, do drugs, get depressed, develop eating disorders and consider suicide. They have a better chance of doing well in school, delaying having sex, eating their vegetables, learning big words and knowing which fork to use.

 

 

What would your child do if his school bus peer told him he just took a handful of pills and hoped he would die? Here is what Drew did…kids have to make decisions all the time and some of these decisions have far reaching consequences…how do we help them navigate their world?

 

Red-headed Drew Carlson of Woodland Middle School saved a life. He saved a family from the loss of a child. He listened to the hushed voice of his peer and he did not hesitate to call 911.

via 6th Grader Calls 911 Overdose From Bus | Elaine Pawlowski.

Have a wonderful weekend!