Mom Is Teaching

I know it seems like I”m always coming up with one excuse or another but for now, I’m just in a funk.  My feed reader has 1045 in it right now….can I possibly read that much? 

Well, that is tomorrow’s goal, to read that much!  And, to comment on 25% of the blogs that I actually feel are relevant to me and my life and on 25% of the blogs where I think someone just needs a pick-me-up.  So, we’ll see what happens.

In the meantime, check out the new digs on my personal blog,if you are reading in the feed reader because my new digs are diggin’ it!

I hope you are enjoying the spotlights on different families and I have some more in my stash just waiting to go up one at a time…so keep your eyes open. 

And, if you’d like to be featured, shoot me an email jerriannn @ momecentric dot com and I’ll gladly get the interview questions out to you

I don’t know how many of you guys were fortunate enough to see this article and I’ve told you, sometimes I consider my reading in Parenting Magazine to be a thrill and other times it feels more like a pain in the arse.

Anyway, last month, they detailed through 3 families who homeschool and were willing to write diaries of how they did it.  When I began reading it, it sounded like my days basically.  The kids jump up, get our things done like breakfast, toothbrushing, clothes ironed and on and backpack ready to go.  We don’t wait on the big yellow bus or anything but my kids have a timeline in the mornings and getting to school is the mother of all evils. 

But, if you are a family like Kendall Watkins in Atlanta Georgia, you can find yourself in an a different situation all together.  They say they had planned to send their children to a private school.

She said after one visit, she knew they couldn’t educated her children. The advantages are numerous as most of you already know. Avantages allow for traveling.  They pack up the books and teach on the go.  When they can all travel, they do school work in the morning and sight seeing in the afternoon.

Kendall Watkins of Atlanta Georgia says that her approach is a literature-based curriculum but she doesn’t slave over it.  They study themes as they fit into their exploration.  The benefits of this flexibility is that she taught one of her daughters to read at 4 using phonics-based systems.  She tried the same program with another child and it didn’t work.  She had to find an approach with music and games to make the breakthrough with the other child. 

In order to meet state requirements, they file a declaration of intent to homeschool and each month she mails in attendance sheets.  The kids take standardized tests every 3 years starting in the third grade.

As for dad?  His role is to jump in  whenever he is needed.  He does a lot of the informal teaching.  He builds bows and arrows with the kids (show me a public school age kid that even gets to shoot a bow and arrow, never mind build one - and for the record, archery was one of my units in physical education) or plants a garden with the children. 

In order to ensure the children have a social life, they go on field trips to different locations every other week with a group of friends.  The kids also play organized sports and they attend local fine-arts academy once a week to study art history, music and drama. 

Now, when I speak in terms of homeschooling where I live, 90% of what this mother talks about is not readily accessible to my children, making my decisions even tougher.

Tomorrow, another family tells all.

How does this compare with what you do as a homeschool?

If you are looking for some safety “stuff” for your children, I’ve got a deal for you.  You can get 25% off of your first purchase at My Precious Kid with the coupon code # BLACKfriday08.

Go, she has some awesome stuff over there!

We’ve had much discussion here on families that homeschool and wouldn’t do it any other way.  Some that homeschool but would try public schools if they felt the public schools were in better shape.  We’ve had families who think our public schools do a good job and sufficient for their children and have no intentions of homeschooling unless something changes.

I am spending the next 3 days spotlighting 3 homeschooled families out of Parenting Magazine and I’m going to assume that none of those families are readers here but if so, we’d love to hear from you.

So, what I would like to do is take our families here, homeschool, unschool, public school, private school, religious school, whatever your method I’d love to feature you on this blog.

Now, if more educators of one kind come forward and the blog gets bogged down and seems to be about one type of education only, there’s no room for complaining as everyone will have an opportunity to share their story right here.

If you are interested in spotlighting your family, please email me at jareason (at) gmail (dot) com and I’ll get you the questions and we can get some folks highlighted.

So, let’s go, get that email out so I can get you some questions to answer for the spotlight on you and your family.

After all, is that too bad?  I mean, is it a bad thing to learn from other adults?  Nah, I think not.  I can teach one thing, mono is no joke and just because your doctor says, you should be feeling better by Halloween, she might have really mean Thanksgiving and let’s hope to God she didn’t mean Christmas.

And, so with that, I’m going to give you some tips I found about keeping kids safer at Christmas.  I know we all think about how dangerous it is for kids to be out and about on Halloween with all the meanness in the world, but, for some reason, it doesn’t end there.

One year, I guess my youngest was almost 1 and in a stroller, by other son, pushing 3 when we were walking through a mall.  There had been a table of elderly folks playing cards in the center of the mall (which is normal during the week) and as we passed, they all turned their attention toward my children (no really, they did, I’m not making that up.  And, while no one was looking, this kid grabbed one of the elderly ladies purses and took off running.

He was gone, he lady was screaming and people were in shock.  We live in such a small town, stuff like that just doesn’t happen much, but that could have just as easily been one of my kids some lunatic grabbed. 

So, I give you, keeping your kids safe during the Holidays.  Little things that I think most of us already know but in the hustle and bustle and people calling and stopping by, it becomes easy to forget.  And, we have a wedding to deal with this year as well. 

Anyway, the tips are so simple:

And, this final tip is the one that I knew the least about.  Apparently the holographic UL Mark on light strings and electrical decorations.  This mark means that the engineers have tested samples of the product for safety hazards.  The green holographic UL marks indoor lights and red holographic UL Mark is for indoor and outdoor use.

I’ve spent most of the week trying to prepare a website for local exposure.  I will have my site featured in the Life Styles of our local paper again.  This website is set up strictly for the parents, students and teachers in our community.  Well, all actuality, there’s two of them. 

I know that neither of them refer to you guys but if you get a chance, swing by, leave a comment for me and let me know what you think about the over-all site structure, idea behind the websites and just general opinions.

I promise I will get back on gear over the weekend.  I am also redesigning my Mom~E~Centric site but that has to wait til later.  Also, I’m being bombarded by ideas and can’t keep my head on straight.  Here’s the sites, see what you think…

Education Uncensored:  The Blog

Education Uncensored:  The Social Network

When I graduated from college, my philosophy was to teach as much as I could teach all while allowing the children to play.  The idea, count while we do jumping jacks, do multiplication facts while we do sit-ups, list the states and capitals while we jump rope, or even do spelling words while we shoot hoops.  It was a grand plan that college had prepared me for.  When I got my first job, that was a joke.  I still believed, but when you have 60 kids at once, it is somewhat more difficult.  The best physical educators I know, or I should say the most successful or the most long-lasting physical education teachers I know, don’t do much more than toss out a ball and blow a whistle whilst sitting in a nearby chair.

I hate that.  I quit I hated it so much.

Then, as I started to buy the daycare, I had to meet these certain stipulations.  One of them was teaching in a daycare for a year or having a degree in early childhood.  Ok, fine, I had done both, but my degree, although my teaching certificate said, N-12 which stands for nursery school through grade twelve, was not sufficient.  UH?

I fought the system.  Who better qualified to teach pre-school children how to play while learning than a physical education teacher with a degree that studied preschool age children?  The Department of Human Resources was not amused. 

Anyway, here’s a few ideas of just what your child can learn from playing.  Parents.com states it like this:

So, how can you do to foster this learning in pre-schoolers?  They can build block towers, play pretend and be there for your child to help him understand taking turns, empathy, etc.

So,, when you start toy shopping, look for toys that meet the needs for enhance sensory thinking, puppets, dolls, trucks, push toys for motor skills and pretend play,

So, anyone else have any good ideas?

If you would like to subscribe to Parents Magazine, you can go here to get a year free or a two years at a discount price…

I haven’t done it on purpose.  I would start writing and the next thing I knew, I’d be paragraphs into a post.  I figured it would be best to cut them off and start fresh with my “secret”.  So, here I am now, finally revealing that secret. 

My secret:  Chiropractic Care

Both of my children were seen with the first week of their life.  My preemie was seen on our way to the hospital when he was a week old.  He was being re-admitted for Failure To Thrive.  That kid just wouldn’t eat.  He doesn’t eat much now but that’s a different story.  Anyway, I am a big proponent of chiropractic care and spent a year in chiropractic school myself.

I was fortunate to meet a doctor when I was 16 who has treated me, employed me, played sports with me and treated my children over the course of the last 24 years.  She has 4 children of her own.  She believes in having her children vaccinated (which many chiropractors don’t) and she believes in modern medicine.

She has a great attitude about when she can help you, how she can help you and when it is time for you to seek attention from a different kind of medical professional. 

One of the best benefits that I can attribute to her care is that my children simply don’t get sick often and they have never had ear infections.  I’ve watched her adjust my own children (as well as many others when I worked for her) and they went from being totally stopped up and miserable to having mucus pour out of their noses.  She actually stopped working on Walker once to get a tissue to wipe his nose.  I am not kidding.

I also watched her adjust her own children (as well as others) that had tummy aches.  These screaming children would have knots in their bellies from constipation.  On more than one occasion I took Walker because he was constipated and he had a poopy diaper before I could even get out of her office.  Of course I usually talked more than an average patient because we are friends, but regardless of your thoughts, that’s some pretty good time right there for getting relief.

So, that’s my secret.

If you are interested in learning more about sleep training, then I know where you need to be….do you?

Well, let me tell you because probably, you are thinking “the only place I need to be lady is in the bed getting some sleep”, but no, no, that’s not it.  You need to be at:

NO MORE BEDTIME BLUES:  AN EXCLUSIVE WEBCAST EVENT

Presented by  24 hour preschool television channel Sprout, an exclusive mommy blogger webcast host Jennifer Waldburger, LCSW.  She is a pediatric sleep specialist, family therapist and co-author of The Sleepeasy Solution.

The link above will take you to a registration form to join in the webcast.  I was planning to take part as well but….my mom is sick and no babysitter means no webcast viewing for me.  So, please, go, and come back and tell me what I missed, please.

Naturally you all know that by writing this I am dooming my children to sickness.  But, as it is right now, they are sick, so I’m going to go ahead and spill my guts. 

First of all, I want to revisit what the experts in the article on Parenting.com had to say about fevers.  I’m going to just tell you what they said straight up instead of putting it my own words.  “Fevers do help fight infections by stimulating the immune system and killing bacteria and viruses that can’t survive at higher-than-normal temperatures. But that’s no reason to let your child be miserable. Try to strike a balance between keeping him comfortable and letting his body do its job.” 

And, the other thing is this, “If he has a mild fever but seems especially cranky, lethargic, or in pain, giving him the right dose of acetaminophen or ibuprofen will likely make him feel (and sleep) better. If he’s reasonably happy and energetic even though his temperature is 102 degrees, keeping an eye on him may be enough (just make sure he’s well hydrated). The exception: Any fever in an infant under 6 months merits a call to the doc at once.”

The way I feel about that is that the words “It’s best not to treat mild fevers” shouldn’t have been a myth.  We’ve found in our house that anything under 102 doesn’t even slow our children down.  I know people who go to the doctor every time their child’s temperature gets to 99.6 because that’s one too many, but most doctors that I’ve been acquainted with definitely think that is not necessary.

As I mentioned, both of my kids are totally different in the way in which they handle illness and most definitely fevers, but the fact of the matter is, neither of them has ever been sick much.  Walker is 5.5 and has some little cold now which was accompanied by a low-grade fever that we treated with Tylenol Cold.  We chose that combination because his fever did make it to 102 and his nose was running.  Prior to this, he had the croup last summer or was it the summer before that?  And, that’s it.  He had never been to the doctor for a visit except well-baby check ups. 

As for the “3.97 year old who is not potty trained”, he had the croup when Walker had it and this past winter he had strep.  He is allergic to penicillin, omnicef, keflex and zithromax.  We learned this the hard way this past winter.  As we learned of each allergy, the rashes, oh the rashes, the doctor would ask me, “what did he take the last time he was sick?” and all I could say was “I don’t know, he doesn’t get sick very often”.

We spent a week having that conversation and luckily my son just got well on his own.  He was a preemie and I ran to the doctor a little too much that first winter after he was born but he wasn’t sick again until he had the croup. 

So, how come my kids don’t get sick often?  Especially when their mom is sick all the doggone time?

See the next post, hehehe!

Ok, so I’m still on this myth stuff.  But, my children are rarely ever sick and I seem to get a kick out of reading some of the stuff that people try or believe about sick children.  So, here’s the last two from the article at Parenting.com

One of “Don’t kiss your baby if you have a cold”.  Ok, before I read the commentary on this one, I thought, well duh, seems like it makes sense to me, I don’t want sick people kissing on me.  But, apparently, a little peck on the lips is less likely to hurt your child than sneezing or coughing which sends all kinds of germs air born.  The best way to prevent passing your cold on to your child is as simple as good hand washing skills.  Ok, duh, I knew that too.

I’m going to throw this one out here and you can do with it what you wish.  The myth is “colds cause ear infections” and I think many parents would agree with this that when their child gets a cold, they often get an ear infections and vice versa.  But, the experts in this article say that 90% of ear infections are caused by bacteria.  But, that colds will create mucus and fluid buildup in the ear which will then grow bacteria.  So, go figure on that one, I give up. 

My children have never had ear infections.  I’m beating on the wood floor right now because for heaven’s sake, don’t let them get one now, but as I mentioned in an earlier post, I’ll give you my secret later.

So, I’m going to give you the rest of these myths and see if your thinking and mine line up with the good folks at Parenting.com.  Remember, your gut will take you where you need to go, I have to keep telling myself this.

So, as for myths, here’s one I’m never sure which way to go on.  The myth is “It’s best not to treat mild fevers”.  Now, with that said, according to the experts, you have to be able to strike a balance.  Depending on the child, depending on the fever and depending on the symptoms…that’s how you decide whether to medicate a low grade fever or not.  Some people believe that a low fever is good for the body, it helps the body fight off the illness.  But, at the same time, if your child is experiencing symptoms, you want to help, right?  I have one child who rarely ever runs a temp.  When he does, we get him some medicine, let him rest and he usually bounces back really quick.  If he doesn’t, then we know it is time to look into his illness further. 

My other son is a fever running kid.  He runs a fever at the drop of he hat and very rarely does it manifest into anything.  So, unless he is complaining, we don’t give him anything.  Both of my boys had croup and run really high temps a couple of years ago, but they acted so differently and neither of them slowed down when it was time to play.  They were coughing like made but you could not get them to just sit down and relax, they didn’t act as if they felt bad at all.  But, when the one who never runs a temp had a fever of 103, I knew it was time for a doctor visit, not just some medication.

*I’ll tell you my ancient Chinese secret for keeping my kids well in another post*

Here’s one that I truly thought was true.  The myth is “The B.R.A.T. diet is best for diarrhea.  I had a child in my daycare that seem to exist on the BRAT diet because every time we turned around she was sick and her mom was instituting this diet..you know…because the doctor said so.  So, basically, what the experts say is that while it will indeed thicken the stools, most children won’t be very happy about that food combination and might stand a chance of getting better quicker if you give them something they like.  Avoiding greasy foods and fruit juice is the main idea here.

I’ve managed to lure myself away from all those articles I read while sitting in doctors offices lately, but just as soon as that happened, someone pointed me in the direction of an interesting article on Parenting.com  I’ve mentioned before that at times I really enjoy the information I find in parenting magazines (well all of them for that matter) but sometimes the information is just downright useless if not incorrect in my opinion. 

But, this article, The 7 kids’ health myths every mom should ignore is one that I felt was worth passing on to you guys.  And, as usual, they come with my own personal commentary.  After all, what would you think if I left out the snark?

The first myth is “Feed a cold, starve a fever“.  Now, I’m sure that the folks who believed in this myth years ago had a reason for thinking it made sense, I just can’t seem to figure out what it was.  I can never think of a time that “starving” is a good idea, and when it pertains to a child?  Well, yea, it seems silly to me.

The second one is “Greenish mucus means your child has something worse than a cold”. I have to admit that I believed this one for a while, and in my personal opinion, greenish mucus does mean you should at least pay a little more attention to your child’s health.  But, since neither of my children have rarely ever been sick, I can’t say that I adhered to this philosophy.  My kids have had plenty of runny noses and what with all the mold we found in our home as we’ve remodeled, it’s no wonder, but I am not one to run to the doctor a lot and my kids have done quiet well.  If I have to be the one to say it though.

Ok another one goes like this, “Colds and flu are most contagious before symptoms appear”.  Again, this seems to be the case for many illnesses like the chicken pox but children are contagious as long as they are hacking and sneezing all over their peers.  And, if you’ve ever been inside a pre-school or even most elementary schools, you will see plenty of kids who either don’t wipe their nose at all until they are forced to use their shirt sleeve or who are constantly putting their mouths on items that contain germs.  My kids seem to have this thing about garbage cans.  They drive me nuts wanting to touch, heck fondle, every garbage can we get near.  I’m not sure why, but it drives me nuts.

I’ll get you some more myths tomorrow!  Just remember to go with your guy, you  know your child better than anyone and if he/she is acting odd, then chances are, something is amiss.

I found this fascinating quote today:

You should read the whole article.

If you have children, chances are you’ve suffered from sleep deprivation at one time or another.  And, if you are like me, you enjoy reading books where parents spill their guts regarding their own problems. 

Anyway, if you would like to be part of a webcast held exclusively by mommy blogger Jennifer Waldburger, a pediatric sleep specialist and therapist.  She is the co-author of The Sleepers Condition.

So, go here and sign up and don’t forget, November 12 at 2 Eastern Time…we can always use some advice on sleep.