Category: Mothering without a licence

The “Moms fight the flu” blog tour

When I was approached by Mom Central Canada to participate in a blog tour promoting the H1N1 information provided by the Ontario Ministry of Health, I was more than happy to sign on.* As Mom Central noted in their original pitch to me, “The Ontario Ministry of Health is the reliable source for up-to-date information about the H1N1 vaccine in our province. By sharing their useful links and tips we can help ensure that Moms have access to the information they need this flu season.”

It’s been a little over three weeks since we all received our H1N1 vaccines. Tomorrow, if all goes according to plan, I’ll be taking Lucas for his booster shot. (If you didn’t catch the news, the booster shot is now only required for babies aged six months to three years old.) Considering how much I dithered and agonized over getting the shot in the first place, I am so glad and so relieved that I did. I’m no longer flinching over touching surfaces with my bare hands, and walked rather confidently through the office the first day of my new job this week, shaking hands with dozens of strangers as I went. I’m not sure I could have comfortably done that just a month ago.

If you’re considering getting the shot for yourself or your family (and the government just announced this week that the general population is now welcome to receive the vaccine) the Ministry of Health has provided a list of vaccination clinics throughout Ontario. If you’re here in Ottawa, you can visit the City of Ottawa’s H1N1 sub-site for local site information.

The other reason I decided to participate in this blog tour is because I think the information organized on the Ministry of Health’s web site is pretty useful, and well-organized. For example, there is an interactive self-assessment tool that will walk you through the various signs and symptoms of flu, and whether you should treat your child’s (or your own) illness at home or visit a flu assessment centre.

I have to admit, I’m feeling a lot less panicked by the H1N1 flu than I was about a month ago. I’m not sure if that’s because I feel that the family is reasonably well-protected because of the vaccine, or because the media hype is dying down. But I have a colleague whose 17-year-old son just this week became very ill with H1N1, so it’s not yet time to declare the battle over this virus over.

If your child is sick, here are some guidelines to follow from the Ontario Ministry of Health:

What to Do When Your Child is Sick with Influenza
1. Treat your child’s fever

* Take off heavy clothing and blankets.
* Dress the child in lightweight clothing and keep the room temperature at 20°C (68°F).
* Give acetaminophen or ibuprofen for fever and muscle pain in the dose recommended on the package (unless your doctor says otherwise).

Note : Do NOT give acetylsalicylic acid (ASA or Aspirin®), or any cold medicine that has ASA, to children or teenagers under the age of 18.

2. Treat your child’s other flu symptoms

* Encourage your child to get plenty of rest.
* Use salt-water nose drops to treat a stuffy nose.
* Ask your pharmacist about any over-the-counter medicines for cough.

3. Protect others from flu

* Keep your child at home until his/her fever has been absent for at least 24 hours and he or she is feeling well enough to resume normal activities. It’s important for your child to stay home if there’s fever so that the virus doesn’t spread to other children.
* Your child can return to school 24 hours after the fever has resolved and he/she is feeling well enough to get back to normal activities.

When should you seek medical care for your child?

Use Ontario’s influenza assessment tool to see whether your child needs medical care.

Call Telehealth Ontario at 1-866-797-0000 or your health care provider if your child is under age 5 and develops flu symptoms. The risk of complications from flu is higher for children under age 2.

*Disclosure: I will be compensated for participating in this blog tour with some sort of “Fight the Flu” kit containing items to help keep the house germ free, and will be entered into a draw to win an Acer Notebook computer. The remuneration was secondary to my decision to participate, though, because I think there is a huge amount of conflicting information out there and I am happy to provide a link to the Ontario Ministry of Health for what I believe to be extremely reliable and reputable information.

NurtureShock: A book review in two parts (Part 1)

Back in early 2007, the blogosphere was a-cackle over an essay that appeared in New York Magazine. The gist of it, from what I could glean, was that we were over-praising our kids, and that too much praise was a bad thing. I never did get around to reading the source article, but I frothed in more than one blog’s comment section about how ridiculous I found the concept. Too much praise? No such thing. After all, I was raised on a steady diet of affirmation and praise, and I think it was one of the factors that most strongly contributed to the best parts of the adult I am today.

In the last week or so, I started hearing buzz about that theory in the background noise again, and found out that the authors of the original article had expanded it into a book that was getting a lot of interest. The book is called NurtureShock, and the general idea they posit is that we’ve been ignoring some of the most important scientific discoveries about children, learning and parenting. They propose to “use the fascinating new science of children to reveal just how many of our bedrock assumptions about kids can no longer be counted on.”

They were on CBC’s The Current last week, and although I missed it, the buzz reminded me that I wanted to check out the book. I was 104th in the queue when I requested it from the library, but lucked into a copy on the two-week “express reads” shelf the very next day.

I had the blog post half-written in my head as I walked out of the library. I was going to do a thorough, scholarly analysis and discount the theory on a point-by-point basis. I was going to tear it to pieces. I could hardly wait. I still had 20 minutes left to kill in Tristan’s skating lesson when I pulled out the book and started reading, pencil and notebook at my side. I was on page four – FOUR! – when my jaw dropped open in shock and dismay.

They were describing Tristan. To a perfect T. I did a 180-degree about-face. They were — gasp! — right!

The chapter starts with Thomas, a child whose IQ test scored him among the top one percent of the top one percent of applicants to his school:

“Tristan Thomas didn’t want to try things he wouldn’t be successful at,” his father says. “Some things came very quickly to him, but when they didn’t, he gave up almost immediately, concluding, ‘I’m not good at this.'” With no more than a glance, Tristan Thomas was dividing the world into two — things he was naturally good at and things he wasn’t.

In the last year, I’ve seen this pattern a LOT in Tristan, in everything from riding a bike to drawing to math problems. Most things are easy for him, but the things that aren’t make him want to quit immediately. He’s reluctant to try, in case he might fail.

I read the rest of the chapter with avid interest. Turns out, their theory is not so much that praise itself is detrimental, but that gratuitous, insincere and non-specific praise is. They review a scientific study in which two groups of students were asked to do puzzles well within their ability. One group was given the single line of praise “You must be smart at this” while the other was given the single line of praise “You must have worked really hard.” The students were then offered the choice between two puzzles. One choice was a more challenging puzzle that researchers told the kids they’d learn a lot from attempting and the second choice was an easy test, just like the first. The results? “Of those praised for their effort, 90 per cent chose the harder set of puzzles. Of those praised for their intelligence, a majority chose the easy test. The ‘smart’ kids took the cop-out.”

Carol Dweck, the researcher who engineered these studies, was surprised by the magnitude of the effect of praise on the students’ choices. She theorizes that praising the effort gives the child a variable he or she can control, while praising an innate characteristic like intelligence “takes it out of the child’s control, and provides no good recipe for responding to a failure.”

The chapter goes on to discuss the culture of self-esteem building that has been inherent to parenting advice for the last three or four decades, following the publication of Nathaniel Branden’s The Psychology of Self-Esteem. The authors note that the idea of promoting and preserving a child’s self-esteem has become “an unstoppable train [where] anything potentially damaging to kids’ self-esteem was axed. Competitions were frowned on. Soccer coaches stopped counting goals and handed out trophies to everyone. Teachers threw out their red pencils. Criticism was replaced with ubiquitous, even undeserved, praise.”

Another researcher, after reviewing 200 scientifically-sound studies on measuring self-esteem and its outcomes found that “having a high self-esteem didn’t improve grades or career achievement.” In fact, he believes that “the contiued appeal of self-esteem is largely tied to parents’ pride in their children’s achievements: it’s so strong that ‘when they praise their kids, it’s not that far from praising themselves.'”

Ouch.

And yet, the more I read, the more “Aha!” moments I had. One of my pet rants is the ‘culture of entitlement’ we seem to be living in right now. No wonder “failure is not an option” in Ontario schools… and small wonder that adults bring the same attitudes into the workforce.

I was so gobsmacked, so excited by what I read, that I couldn’t wait to talk to Beloved about it. I stood in the kitchen and talked about how clearly I saw Tristan in the examples. He scores quite well in just about every subject, and yet he is so obviously reluctant to try things he won’t immediately excel at. He is very risk-averse when it comes to trying new activities, but loves to do the things he does well.

Beloved was obviously listening to me, but he was regarding me with an expression on his face so curious that I eventually stopped in mid-sentence. “What?” I asked.

“You don’t see it, do you?” he asked, and I blushed. I did see it. “It’s not just Tristan, it’s YOU!” I skulked out of the kitchen muttering, “Stupid book, stupid praise, stupid husband thinks he knows me so well, what does he know, grumble grumble grumble…”

Of course he is right. He’s so right. It is me. My name is DaniGirl, and I am a praise junkie. I need to be validated. This blog exists because of my fundamental need for external validation. From the time of sentinence, I have made choices that would please my parents and those around me. And, I hate to fail. Really, really hate to fail. My ongoing struggles with French are a case study in my unwillingness to take the necessary risk of possibly making a mistake in public and looking foolish in the name of learning. If I can’t figure something out practically immediately, I lose interest.

Now, I also believe that the strong sense of self that my parents instilled in me from birth has practically everything to do with the fact that I am a happy, confident and successful adult who has achieved by age 40 just about everything I set out to do in life. In the grand scheme of things, I’d rather be a vaguely needy praise junkie with a successful career, loving husband, stable environment, lovely children, supportive family and terrific friends than an independent and persistent homeless crack addict. But I have to say, the first chapter of this book has given me lots to think about.

When I got to the end of that first chapter, I turned the page and realized the subject had moved on to an examination of whether kids getting, on average, an hour less sleep is causing ADHD, obesity and lost IQ points. Another interesting theory, perhaps, but I was anxious: where’s the rest? Where’s the answer? I want more on the subject of praise, please. Twenty-six pages hasn’t covered this in nearly enough detail for me. I need a roadmap, and a checklist. I need a work sheet. What if I fail?!

In all honesty, I’m not sure I can dial back the praise. It is too deeply ingrained in who I am, and in how I raise my boys. It is fundamental to who I am. I will, however, be more selective in my praise, and try to praise what the boys can control over what they cannot. I like the idea presented that the brain is a muscle that grows with each mistake made and learned from, and I’ll definitely be incorporating that into my mothering repetoire.

I’m almost afraid to read the rest of the book. What other deeply-held and fundamental tenents may be toppled like the Berlin Wall by the time I’m done? I’ll come back and let you know whether I can even look myself in the mirror by the time I’m done.

In the interim, as always, I’m curious as to your thoughts. Can you praise a child too much? Have we as a culture become self-esteem junkies? Is there any hope for an inveterate praise junkie like me, or should I just focus on saving the boys from praise addiction?

Lucas speaks

Yesterday, Lucas said his first sentence, complete with subject, verb, object and preposition: “I play with Lego!” (Yes, the exclamation point was obviously in there.) Funny, he is exactly the same age – not quite 21 months – that Tristan was when Tristan said his first full sentence: “I bump head.” Sadly, Simon’s first sentence has been lost to the sands of time.

It’s a relief to finally be able to interact with Lucas on a verbal level. He clearly understands almost everything we say, and mimics us with startling clarity. With words come reason; I can begin to explain cause-and-effect and temporal relationships, making my life so incredibly much easier. And Lucas is obviously delighted to be finally able to express himself, his desires, his concerns. “I draw!” he often says, as Tristan does his homework. “Juice!” he demands, pointing at the cupboard where the cups are kept. “3-2-1-beep!” he calls, pointing at the microwave that warms his bottle.

His favourite expression, and ours, is an enthusiastic and undeniably Buckwheat-like “O-TAY!!” of agreement. While trick-or-treating with his brothers last weekend, I couldn’t quite convince him to say “trick or treat” as he shyly gazed at the strangers smiling down at him. I’d say “Can you say ‘trick or treat’?” and he’s reply with a loud and bright “O-TAY!!” that seemed to charm the candy-givers even more than a shy “trick or treat” might have. We left many smiles in our wake as we roamed the neighbourhood.

This morning, he utterly delighted me by peering around the edge of the newspaper I was reading and saying, “Hi baby!”

Some day, he’s going to get a lot of traction from that line…

H1n1 vaccines, Canadian babies denied Baby Einstein refund, and other miscellany

I read with interest the story in the media this weekend of how the Walt Disney Company is offering refunds on the purchase of Baby Einstein DVDs, after the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood challenged the idea that the DVDs were a teaching tool rather than simply brain candy for toddlers.

Okay, seriously? People really thought that these DVDs were learning tools and not just a way to keep the baby entertained for 20 minutes so poor mom can take a shower or load the dishwasher or just gaze aimlessly into middle space for a precious hiatus?

But I was curious and I knew I wanted to blog about this story, so I did my due dilligence — which, apparently, the Ottawa Citizen / CanWest Global did not. The original article I read, which I read in the Ottawa Citizen on Saturday, says refunds would be made available to American AND Canadian parents, but when I went to the Baby Einstein Web site, I found that the offer is — as usual — good in the US only.

So let me get this straight — gullible American parents who feel they’ve been duped can be compensated, but gullible Canadian parents, who pay about $5 more per DVD by the way, are SOL? Nice.

***

The good news is, we should be hearing about the “blueprint” for all-day kindergarten in Ontario today from Premier Dalton McGuinty. I’ve heard that it will be rolled out in a limited fashion within two years but full implementation will take up to five years. Hoping it comes to Ottawa for the fall of 2012, at least!

***

I spent a lot of yesterday scanning Twitter for H1N1 chatter. Even anecdotally, I can see the tides turning in favour of the vaccine and in my opinion, rightly so. Even though I heard that the vaccine clinics were a bit of a debacle yesterday — seriously, they have people lining up OUTSIDE for up to THREE HOURS?!? — I am highly, highly impressed with the city for implementing a twitter account that updates the wait times at various vaccine clinics across the city. One of the smartest government applications of social media I’ve yet seen. Bravo!

And here’s a tip for those of you without a twitter account: you can still read the latest update by going to http://twitter.com/ottawahealth. For previous updates, just scan down the page.

I’m pulling the big boys out of school and blowing off nap time (lord help us) on Wednesday afternoon to bring the kids in to get the H1N1 vaccine. Say a prayer to the god of short lineups and patient children for us, willya?

By the way, I was listening to CBC radio this morning, and Kathleen Petty was interviewing a local pediatrician (or maybe family doc) who had just won a prestigious award of excellence. They were talking, of course, about H1N1 and the doctor provided in just a few sentences the information that I’ve scoured hundreds of articles looking for. The main indications of *any* flu are cough and fever, plus at least one of sore joints, runny nose, etc. She said unless you have cough AND fever, emphasis on the “and”, you likely don’t have any kind of flu but if you do have (or, if your child has) both cough AND fever, you should be proactive about keeping your self/child home. Finally, a rule of thumb!

***

Thanks to everyone for your considered and considerate opinions on yesterday’s peanut butter toast post. I think that in the end, I agree with whomever suggested that the restaurant was certainly within its rights to honour the family’s request that no peanut butter be served, but that it would have been better handled had they informed people as they came in the door and not as their food was being served.

Edited to add: Please, if you haven’t already, read this comment from Jody. One of the most reasonable, well-informed comments I think I’ve ever read on the subject of peanut allergies. Thanks Jody!

***

I’m just putting the finishing touches on my giant annual list of local Christmas and Holiday parades! I love doing this post each year — and there are some exciting changes to the City of Ottawa parade this year. More soon – stay tuned!

Peanut butter toast

I would like to ask you all a question, but first a caveat. This is likely to be a sensitive topic with strong feelings on either side – which is why I’d like to examine it. I’d like to make a special effort here to ask you to be respectful in your comments. Not that I really need to — you are all considerate and thoughtful nomatter what the topic — but I don’t want this to seem like a post designed to stir things up, merely to have a chat about something that I found curious.

Having said that…

Almost every Sunday morning, we have breakfast with another family also challenged by blessed with three boys. Yesterday, we were placing our order when a very large group, a group that seemed to be a hockey team or something similar, settled into a long table behind us. Because there were so many of us, and so many more of them, we pretty much took up the whole section of small, pub-style restaurant.

As the server brought out our food, my friend asked for some peanut butter and the server explained to her that the party at the next table had asked that no peanut butter be used in the restaurant while they were there because of severe peanut allergies.

We were, to be honest, very surprised. I am used to allergy concerns from schools and from friends, but I can’t say that I’ve ever heard of anyone asking an entire restaurant to deny their patrons peanut butter during a Sunday-morning breakfast rush. We complied, of course. We are blessed to be largely free from allergies, and doing without peanut butter through one breakfast is a hardship we are quite able to endure — although there was some moaning and complaining from our, erm, peanut gallery.

On the other hand, we wondered why someone who is so at risk and so sensitive to peanuts would even come in to a restaurant that serves almost every plate with a side of toast.

It must be exhausting to be so vigilant, and I have nothing but sympathy for the parent and the child, but it does make me wonder how far we should be expected to go to accomodate those with these kinds of severe allergies. I honestly don’t mind packing nut-free lunches and snacks, and we managed to choke down our toast laden only with jam. But is it really reasonable to ask an entire restaurant to pass on the peanut butter due to one child’s allergies?

I don’t even know the answer. I suspect if it were my child, the answer would be “hell, yes!” But then, I would also be embarrassed about the imposition. And, to be honest? If it were me, think I’d just avoid going out for breakfast.

What do you think?

Oh, and by the way, a friend of mine has recently been inducted into allergy hell with her one year old and is scouring the blogosphere for information and perspectives. If you know any good blogs laden with allergy-relating parenting perspectives, can you pass them along in the comments? Thanks!

H1N1 and Halloween

I’ve finally made my peace with the H1N1 vaccine and decided to get the shots for our family. For what it’s worth, this Wired.com article helped me decide to do it.

But I have another question for you. I heard a passing reference in the media the other day (note to self, must get over addiction to media!) to the fact that this may be one of the least-busy Halloweens in decades. I was surprised, considering it’s on a Saturday night and all, but even more surprised by the reason for the speculation. First, they said economic concerns may put a damper on trick-or-treating. Hmmm, okay, not so much for us, but then we’ve been relatively unscathed by the recession. The other thing, though, was fears stemming from H1N1.

My first reaction was to scoff. For goodness sake, is there no end to the chicken-little-esque panic over this damn flu? But, the idea keeps rattling around in my brain. Hmmmm. Do they have a point? Should I give all the little candy wrappers a swipe with a Lysol wipe before the kids dig in? Am I really going to buy that far into the hype?

What do you think? Have we gone too far, or do you think this is a valid concern?

Coveting

When I was a wee lass of nineteen or twenty, and I’d just quit university to work full time in retail, we were living a pauper’s life in a tiny apartment in the west end of Ottawa. We barely had enough money to pay our rent, let alone buy groceries, and I remember putting $2 into the ATM so I could withdraw $5 to get us through the weekend. (I loved Royal Bank back in those days, because it was the only bank whose ATMs dispensed in $5 increments.)

I was working as a cashier in the smoke shop of Zellers, and I can remember with almost painful clarity the hungry covetousness I’d feel when people would open their wallets to pay for a purchase and reach into a deep stack of $20 bills to pay. Imagine having more than one, let alone a stack of five or six, $20 bills in your wallet at one time. It was almost unimaginable to me.

By the time my first baby was born a dozen years later, I was far from rich but certainly comfortable enough financially that having a couple of twenties in my wallet at any given time was the rule rather than the exception. With a steady job, a roof over our heads and a reasonable disposable income, what I coveted most in those early days of motherhood was sleep.

Tristan at least was a good sleeper from an early age, but my middlest son Simon nearly killed me with his nighttime wakings well into his second year. I was so tired, so catastrophically exhausted in fact, that I remember an overwhelming covetousness of six or seven or — I was almost giddy with desire at the idea — as much as eight blissful hours of uninterrupted sleep. I couldn’t even look at images of someone in bed or sleeping on television without feeling an overpowering jealousy, an almost physical covetousness of their sleep.

While Lucas still wakes rather predictably twice each night, once around midnight and once closer to dawn, he’s easily placated and I’m back in bed and asleep after just a moment or two of nighttime comforting, so these days I’m about as well rested as I’ve been through most of my mothering career. Something about the move from two boys to three in the household, though, has tipped the scales of balance wickedly out of order and I find that my life has become an epic battle between me and the never-ending to-do list.

What I covet now is time.

Sometimes, I catch myself thinking back to the five or six years between when Beloved and I moved in together and when the first baby arrived with a kind of wonder. What on earth did we do with those mountains of free time? Okay, so I was finishing my university degree through night courses for a couple of those years, but there were still three solid years where it was just him and me and the dog… and we thought our lives were so busy! Oh, the things I would do if only I had half, even a quarter, of all that free time back in my life right now.

There is so much to be done, so many things clamouring for my attention, every single minute of every day now. I’m actually having to put in a conscious effort to notice the things that I’ve managed to get done in a given day instead of the things left undone, because the latter was really starting to freak me out. And maybe it’s just my personality, but I’m easily inspired and quickly distracted, so I keep coming across new stuff that I’d like to try, new project in which I’d like to become involved… and there’s just not any room in my life for what I’m already doing, let alone any new stuff.

Like when I was on CBC the other day with Lynn, and third person in our little interview was a fellow who had done a lot of organizing in his school to make it more friendly for kids to walk to school. I was quite intrigued by what he had done, and I could hear my internal engines revving up. What a cool idea, I would love to get something like what he has done going at our school, and my brain was off and running with the possibilities, the people I’d speak to and the approach we’d take and… and then, cold as a bucket of water in my face, the realization that I can’t do that right now. Simply can’t. There aren’t enough hours in the day to get the floors washed regularly and the grass cut more than once a month and closet doors hung that have been sitting in the garage since we picked them up in Home Depot half a month ago. Seriously? No time!

Each moment of my life right now feels like it’s stolen from one account to satisfy another, the temporal version of robbing Peter to pay Paul. I’m coming to peace with it, and I’m getting the important things done, and even finding time to do the things that I do simply for me — the pictures, the blog, the Saturday morning visit to the gym. I’m getting used to the fact that our house is hopelessly cluttered and not as spotlessly clean as I might have liked, and that just about everything we choose to do is a tradeoff for something we must consciously choose not to do.

When I’m feeling the most overwhelmed, the most thinly stretched, and when I’m most keenly aching for that extra time — oh, the things I would do with just an increment of all that wasted time of days gone by! — I try to think of the future. Surely having a relentlessly curious toddler in the house is one of the largest contributors to the everyday chaos of our lives. Right? I truly can’t imagine that it will always be like this, and I simply can’t conceive of the fact that it might be worse, that I might some day look back with nostalgic regret and wonder why I thought I had it so bad when in retrospect these were the glory days of leisure.

One day, I’m quite sure, I’ll have that time again. Sometimes, I find myself coveting my own future… which is, really, not such a bad place to be.

Tune in to All in a Day on CBC radio today!

Remember when I mentioned that the producers for All in a Day, CBC radio’s excellent afternoon drive show, were looking for parents to debate when it’s safe to let kids walk to school by themselves? That’s happening today at 4 pm!

Lynn from Turtlehead will argue a more conservative approach, and I will defend the idea of greater liberty. To a point. And maybe for somebody else’s kids, not my wee helpless babies. Um, this might be a bit of a lopsided debate!

Got a thought to add to the debate? I’d love to hear your opinions. At what age should kids be walking to school by themselves? When I mentioned to Tristan’s Grade One teacher last year that we were considering it, she flinched visibly and said she thought that was far too young and yet, I’ve said it many many times before, I was walking back and forth to school with no problem at age four. Have kids changed? Has the world? Is it our kids’ judgement we’re worried about, or stranger danger?

And don’t forget to tune in this afternoon, 4 pm at 91.5 FM!

Flotsam and jetsam – a “cleaning out my inbox” post

A few tidbits that have dribbled out of my inbox lately, worth a mention but not quite an entire post…

Remember when I blogged about the MoonJars? I just received their newsletter, and now you can enter to win a set of 25 standard MoonJars for your child’s classroom. Follow this link for details. (The contest is aimed at classrooms or community groups for Grades K-3. Entries should be submitted on behalf of classes/groups through their teachers or parents.)

I won my first-ever auction on eBay this weekend! I’ve bought stuff before, and I’ve bid and lost things, but I’ve never actually won an auction. I’m so stoked! The item was shipped from Mississauga yesterday, and I’ve been using Canada Post’s tracking feature to watch it migrate across the province. Did you know you can get e-mail tracking updates? How cool is that? I’m ridiculously excited to watch its progress across the province. It arrived in Ottawa at 6:36 this morning — with any luck, it will be waiting for me at home tonight. Yippee! (You’ll have to wait to see what I got, but it has to do with the 365. Fun!)

There’s a kids’ consignment sale happening on Sunday, October 18 called My Kid’s Funky Closet . According to the e-mail I received, ” It has been happening for 4 years now at The Glebe Community Center in Ottawa. The Ottawa Police provide their child finger printing service and Little Rays Reptiles put on a show. They collect for the food bank and snowsuit fund as well. They have consignors who make money selling their gently used children’s items and maternity wear and people at the show have an opportunity to dress their children at a fraction of the cost of buying new. There are toys, games, bikes, strollers, baby equipment, clothing, maternity wear and vendor booths to visit as well.”

Those of you with daughters might be interested in this one.

Plan Canada just released the 2009 edition of their ground breaking series of reports Because I Am A Girl (BIAAG). These reports highlight the plight of girls around the world and the unique role they play in the fight against global poverty.

Plan Canada in support of the 2009 BIAAG report is filming a documentary across Canada and will be in Ottawa from October 2nd to the 5th filming at locations across the city. This documentary is aimed at capturing the experiences of teens, tweens and their inspirations. These experiences will be captured and replayed as a documentary to be released in Spring 2010.

If you think your teen or tween might be interested in participating in the documentary, the latest filming schedule will have them at the Rideau Centre downtown on Saturday, October 3 from 12 pm to 2 pm.

If people are unable to attend the events they can still support the campaign by visiting www.becauseiamagirl.ca and find more ways to get involved. You can also follow the documentary crew as they blog about traveling across Canada and talking to girls who are helping to achieve positive social change around the world.

And finally, I’ve been chatting with one of the producers for All in a Day on CBC Radio. They’re thinking of doing a sort of parenting panel debate on when is the right time to let kids walk to school by themselves. We’ve had a lot of similar discussions here, so I said I’d ask y’all to see if anyone is interested. Even though I’m still shepherding Tristan back and forth at age seven, I think I’m pretty close to letting him walk by himself — assuming he’s ready for it.

I’m a little conflicted on the subject, but want to subscribe to the “free range kids” kind of ideals and believe that it is just as safe now as it was when I was a kid for kids to be roaming the neighbourhood. If you want to debate the issue, and especially if you’d argue a more conservative approach, let me know and I’ll pass your information along to Sarah at the CBC.

Parental validation at meet-the-teacher night

It was meet-the-teacher night at the boys’ school last week. Since Simon has the same two teachers he had last year (and that Tristan had as well) I’m pretty comfortable with that relationship. I was looking forward to meeting Tristan’s new teacher though.

I sat in Tristan’s desk in the back row and looked around, full of awe and wonder that he’s in Grade Two but I clearly remember Grade Two. The kids left stuff out on their desks for us to look through, and there were heaps of administrivia, much of it relating to First Communion later this year. They have two class Webkinzes and lots of affection from the teacher and 20 minutes of homework a night, which seems a little steep to me, but it looks like it’s going to be a good year.

One of the handouts on the desk was a booklet was called “Diary of a Second Grader.” It was filled with photocopied worksheets they had completed like, “My favourite recess activity is…” and “The thing I am good at is….” I was enjoying reading it, knowing most of the answers before I finished reading the question but happy to have this sweet insight into the mind of my occasionally stoic seven-year-old.

One page said across the top: “My mom says there are three things that I need to remember when I go out into the world.” These were Tristan’s answers:

  1. Do not stand on the fernitur (sic)
  2. Be polite at somebody else’s house
  3. I will always love you.

Isn’t that the best? One of the three primary messages that my son carries out into the world is that I will always love him. I am a good mother!

Excuse me while I go take my shiny bauble of parental affirmation and frame it on the wall, for reference the other 99 per cent of the time when I feel like I’m making things up as I go along and really have no clue as to what I’m doing.

“I will always love you.” Sigh….