Strange Machines

I must confess first. I was a TV addict.

After work, dear hubby and I would cuddle up in from of ole Faithful and watch our fave programs like CSI and munch on junk food. I could not live without TV.

Fast forward to year 2006 and Jack was born. I read that the cost of watching TV was the opportunity lost spent on other more creative and productive things like reading, playing, or talking to Mom. According to many peer-reviewed studies, kids who watch TV have less vocabulary than kids who don’t, and the latter are more sociable.

I was sold. I swore my kid would never watch television. Ever. And I had to set an example. The TV became a glorified plant holder and took up half the space of the living room. Surprisingly I found life without TV pretty alright, since we were busy with the kids and really have no more free time. I do fantasize about the days when the kids are off to college and I can finally turn on my 35″ TV and watch all the dramas I missed in the last 18 years.

As for the old clunker, we gave it away to an elderly neighbour who was thrilled to have it. She was retired and watching TV every day on a tiny 20″. We figured that by the time the kids were old enough to watch TV, our CRT would have decomposed and we could get a brand new plasma t.v. for $200. And let’s make it a Samsung plasma tv or a Panasonic plasma tv.

And is there credence to all the reports about increased sociability and higher vocabulary? According to people who have met Jack, he is very sociable with people of all ages and speaks non-stop like a Duracell bunny.

I don’t know about other children, but after 3.5 years of no TV, Jack isn’t fond of watching it and he would prefer to play or read than watch TV. He went through a brief phase of TV phobia, probably from something he saw on it at Grandma’s house. But he sat through The Lion King (his cousin was watching at Grandma’s) just last week (which from a child’s eyes, seems awfully negative about brotherhood and rather pro-revenge and violence). His first actually.

According to the scientifically-based Nurtureshock, kids pick up extracts from a story, so even if a story with conflict that gets resolved at the end, the child may simply pick up the conflict and not the resolution.

We can’t shelter our children from the media – heck I want my TV back one day – but the first few years are crucial to protect them from the effects of the media, much of which we as adults are already immune to or unaffected by. But children are vulnerable and judging from our viewing of the “children’s movie” The Lion King, I won’t be letting Jack watch any more till he is much older.

It seems everyone wants me to send Jack to school, from my parents to the old lady I meet serving tea at the coffee shop. “It is essential for socialisation,” they insist.

The research says otherwise.

Playdates and preschool attendance can add stimulation—-and fun—-to your child’s daily life. But socialization-—the process of learning how to get along with others-—is not the same thing as socializing. Frequent socializing with peers does not necessarily lead to better social skills.

In fact, the opposite seems to be true. Too much time with peers can make kids behave badly. It’s the sulky elephant in the room that no one likes to talk about. Even upscale preschools are likely to make kids behave worse. As recent scientific studies confirm, preschool attendance increases childhood stress and retards social development.

(Source: Preschool Social Skills)

To many parents and teachers, these findings seem to defy common sense. Surely we learn social skills by interacting with other people. What could be more natural than letting your preschooler loose in a social world of her own peers?

In fact, part of this reasoning is sound. You do need people to learn people skills. The question is–which people? Preschoolers need to learn empathy, compassion, patience, emotional self-control, social etiquette, patience, and an upbeat, constructive attitude for dealing with social problems.

These lessons can’t be learned through peer contact alone. Preschools are populated with impulsive, socially incompetent little people who are prone to sudden fits of rage or despair. These little guys have difficulty controlling their emotions, and they are ignorant of the social niceties. They have poor insight into the minds and emotions of others (Gopnik et al 1999).

Yes, preschoolers can offer each other important social experiences. But their developmental status makes them unreliable social tutors. A child who copies other children may pick up good habits—-but she may also pick up bad ones. And peers do not always provide each other with right kind of feedback.

When a child offers to share his toy with a caring adult, he gets rewarded with gratitude and praise. He also learns that he will eventually get his toy back. When he offers to share with a peer, he may not get rewarded at all. Without adult guidance, these experiences can undermine social development by teaching the wrong lessons.

Moreover, it’s hard to see what’s natural about herding together a bunch of children who are all the same age. From the evolutionary, historical, and cross-cultural perspectives, it’s an unusual practice.

(Source: The darkside of preschool)

As parents, we are the best candidates to instill in our children the necessary building blocks in socialisation: empathy, emotional self-control, and communication. Offering our children a secure attachment and ourselves as good role models, and being involved and engaged in our children’s emotional world would arm them with better social skills than any preschool would.

A fascinating piece, peer-researched on how we love and discipline and how it affects our children. What most parents do actually is conditional parenting, whether or not we realise it:

Conditional parenting isn’t limited to old-school authoritarians. Some people who wouldn’t dream of spanking choose instead to discipline their young children by forcibly isolating them, a tactic we prefer to call “time out.” Conversely, “positive reinforcement” teaches children that they are loved, and lovable, only when they do whatever we decide is a “good job.”

This raises the intriguing possibility that the problem with praise isn’t that it is done the wrong way — or handed out too easily, as social conservatives insist. Rather, it might be just another method of control, analogous to punishment. The primary message of all types of conditional parenting is that children must earn a parent’s love. A steady diet of that, Rogers warned, and children might eventually need a therapist to provide the unconditional acceptance they didn’t get when it counted.

What can we do then? The take away from the article is:

In practice, according to an impressive collection of data by Dr. Deci and others, unconditional acceptance by parents as well as teachers should be accompanied by “autonomy support”: explaining reasons for requests, maximizing opportunities for the child to participate in making decisions, being encouraging without manipulating, and actively imagining how things look from the child’s point of view.

The last of these features is important with respect to unconditional parenting itself. Most of us would protest that of course we love our children without any strings attached. But what counts is how things look from the perspective of the children — whether they feel just as loved when they mess up or fall short.

(Source: When a Parent’s ‘I Love You’ Means ‘Do as I Say’ by Alfie Kohn in the NY Times)

More evidence that houseplants clean our air.

The experiment was conducted by Dennis Decoteau of Penn State’s Department of Horticulture with a snake plant, spider plant, and golden pothos inside “experimental chambers in a greenhouse equipped with a charcoal filtration air supply system to measure ozone depletion rates.”

While it took 75 minutes for ozone levels to come down in plantless chambers, air in chambers with plants reached the target in just 50 minutes. He speculates the plants take in the ozone through their stomates (tiny pores used for gas exchange) and then break it down once inside the plant.

The article also recommended keeping plants in our rooms because:

* Plant-filled rooms contain up to 60 percent fewer airborne molds and bacteria than rooms without plants, studies show.

* People who work in offices with windows and plants are happier than others, according to a study of 450 office workers in Texas and the Midwest. In fact, 82 percent of the participants who worked with plants and windows around said they felt “content” or “very happy,” compared with 58 percent in windowless plant-less offices who said the same.

* Plants seem to make people more contemplative and self-reflective, according to one ethnologist.

For 47 more houseplants that clean your air, check out How to Grow Fresh Air: 50 House Plants that Purify Your Home or Office.

My sinuses have cleared since I put houseplants in my bedroom (since January actually). To date, we have a large Areca Palm (temperamental thing), 2 Snake Plants (hardy), 6 Corn Plants (easiest to manage), and 1 Spider Plant (who goes out for sun and rotates with its brethren outside). These are ideal for an air conditioned bedroom in the tropics. My poor Peace Lily just died. RIP dear fellow.

Not quite. We’d have to get out of Earth first. In a billion years, our Earth would no longer be habitable.

Our best option, according to Ray Villard, news director for the Hubble Space Telescope, is for us to

… come up with a strategy to build artificial mini-planets – essentially flying city-states — that would modify their orbits to migrate along with the petulant Sun’s expanding and shrinking habitable zone. As the white dwarf cools, the wagon train of space habitats would move inward. Raw materials would be harvested from in-falling comets and asteroids. Explorers would be free to travel outward to visit surviving planets and moons. Given our passion for survival, bolstered by super-technology, the future for mankind could truly stretch on indefinitely, beyond even the life of the Sun.

That’s hope for you.

(Source: Living in a Dying Solar System)

After a ton of research when we were considering another child, we put in place a few rules to prepare him:

1. Jack must feel and know that Jade belongs to us. We are a family.

2. We must make him feel she is worthy of all our love and that she takes away none of our love from him.

3. Sharing is emphasized. Sharing is what a family does.

4. Having a sister must be a positive and happy thing to him.

5. Family time is important. We must spend time together (before bedtime, for us) every day. All 4 of us.

6.To remember that it is our job as parents to ensure 1-5 happens and parry all negative sentiments from others.

So with that in mind, here is what we did:

1. Before Jade was conceived, we asked Jack if he wanted a sibling. He said yes.

2. When I was pregnant, we told him we were making the baby for him, and more importantly, that she belonged to him and us, and is also part of this family.

3. When I was tired, I told him making a baby in my tummy was hard work and gave him lots of hugs, kisses, and attention and cuddles while I lay down to rest. We did resty things like reading and playing cars on the bed.

4. I nursed, as painful as it became with my nipples becoming extra sore. I distracted myself with my iPod Touch as I could no longer fall asleep nursing him because of the pain and discomfort.

5. We took care to associate her arrival with wonderful and positive experiences. Like receiving special presents from each parent, and one special one (he has always wanted) from Jade given when he first meets her. And he got to choose a present for her. It worked beautifully.

6. I tandem nursed as often as I could (too tired to argue anyway). Day time anyway. Night time was tougher as he was nursed to sleep. Someone had to either carry her till he slept or entertain him while she nursed and then dozed off, on her own (of this I am grateful).

7. We do things together. I keep them both close – none of this someone takes him away from me while I am looking after her. Whether changing diapers or nursing or playing. Both kids sit on my lap during story time.

8. I don’t refuse him as much as I can if he wants to nurse. He wants to know I still love him so I show him in that way that I do. Lately he has been asking me if I love him and I take it as a sign that he needs my attention. I always stop what I am doing and look him in the eye and say tenderly, of course I love you… so much.

9. I take time to spend individually with each child. Daddy takes him out to the playground so I have one-on-time with Jade (even though when he is engrossed in his games I sneak a conversation with her). When she is asleep in our Ergo (which I use all the time with her), I play and read to him.

10. It is tiring and I am often exhausted and screaming for me-time. Accept all the help you can get to rest. But don’t allow anyone to undermine your relationship with your kids. When they say well-meaning things that do hurt him, I reassure him and correct them gently.

Take your time and enjoy each day. Your greatest gift to your children are to help them build a strong and loving bond between them so that years on even after you are gone, they will always still have each other.

Another alarming article about the dreadful effects of cigarette smoke on children. Point of the article is, don’t smoke at home and don’t go anywhere where there is third-hand cigarette smoke sitting on furniture or carpeting (or any surface for that matter) if you don’t want your children’s health affected.

A New Cigarette Hazard: ‘Third-Hand Smoke’

By RONI CARYN RABIN
Published: January 2, 2009

Parents who smoke often open a window or turn on a fan to clear the air for their children, but experts now have identified a related threat to children’s health that isn’t as easy to get rid of: third-hand smoke.

That’s the term being used to describe the invisible yet toxic brew of gases and particles clinging to smokers’ hair and clothing, not to mention cushions and carpeting, that lingers long after second-hand smoke has cleared from a room. The residue includes heavy metals, carcinogens and even radioactive materials that young children can get on their hands and ingest, especially if they’re crawling or playing on the floor.

Doctors from MassGeneral Hospital for Children in Boston coined the term “third-hand smoke” to describe these chemicals in a new study that focused on the risks they pose to infants and children. The study was published in this month’s issue of the journal Pediatrics.

“Everyone knows that second-hand smoke is bad, but they don’t know about this,” said Dr. Jonathan P. Winickoff, the lead author of the study and an assistant professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School.

“When their kids are out of the house, they might smoke. Or they smoke in the car. Or they strap the kid in the car seat in the back and crack the window and smoke, and they think it’s okay because the second-hand smoke isn’t getting to their kids,” Dr. Winickoff continued. “We needed a term to describe these tobacco toxins that aren’t visible.”

Third-hand smoke is what one smells when a smoker gets in an elevator after going outside for a cigarette, he said, or in a hotel room where people were smoking. “Your nose isn’t lying,” he said. “The stuff is so toxic that your brain is telling you: ’Get away.’”

The study reported on attitudes toward smoking in 1,500 households across the United States. It found that the vast majority of both smokers and nonsmokers were aware that second-hand smoke is harmful to children. Some 95 percent of nonsmokers and 84 percent of smokers agreed with the statement that “inhaling smoke from a parent’s cigarette can harm the health of infants and children.”

But far fewer of those surveyed were aware of the risks of third-hand smoke. Since the term is so new, the researchers asked people if they agreed with the statement that “breathing air in a room today where people smoked yesterday can harm the health of infants and children.” Only 65 percent of nonsmokers and 43 percent of smokers agreed with that statement, which researchers interpreted as acknowledgement of the risks of third-hand smoke.

The belief that second-hand smoke harms children’s health was not independently associated with strict smoking bans in homes and cars, the researchers found. On the other hand, the belief that third-hand smoke was harmful greatly increased the likelihood the respondent also would enforce a strict smoking ban at home, Dr. Winickoff said.

“That tells us we’re onto an important new health message here,” he said. “What we heard in focus group after focus group was, ‘I turn on the fan and the smoke disappears.’ It made us realize how many people think about second-hand smoke — they’re telling us they know it’s bad but they’ve figured out a way to do it.”

The data was collected in a national random-digit-dial telephone survey done between September and November 2005. The sample was weighted by race and gender, based on census information.

Dr. Philip Landrigan, a pediatrician who heads the Children’s Environmental Health Center at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, said the phrase third-hand smoke is a brand-new term that has implications for behavior.

“The central message here is that simply closing the kitchen door to take a smoke is not protecting the kids from the effects of that smoke,” he said. “There are carcinogens in this third-hand smoke, and they are a cancer risk for anybody of any age who comes into contact with them.”

Among the substances in third-hand smoke are hydrogen cyanide, used in chemical weapons; butane, which is used in lighter fluid; toluene, found in paint thinners; arsenic; lead; carbon monoxide; and even polonium-210, the highly radioactive carcinogen that was used to murder former Russian spy Alexander V. Litvinenko in 2006. Eleven of the compounds are highly carcinogenic.

(Source: NYT)

I was really sad to read that stress during pregnancy can affect one’s baby, as evidenced here, here, here, here, and here.

I’ve been through an immense amount (to my reckoning) of unneeded stress through the tail end of my first trimester till today with virtually no support from anyone. Hence I worry about my baby girl’s brain development. Trying to stay positive has been an uphill battle.

Advice from the first article: people needed to develop greater sensitivity to pregnant women’s needs.

Yet most people are insensitive to pregnant women’s needs, simply judging from a poll taken among friends. Worse if you’re having your second. I’ve been accused of being a bad mother, lazy, negligent, emotional, overreactive… the list goes on.

It doesn’t feel like there’s any solution.

Ridiculous notions I’ve heard this past month about pregnancy and child rearing:

1. Breastfeeding past the age of 1 will cause an Oedipus complex.

Wow, there must be many mothers and sons having sex now because the sons were breastfed past 1! Seriously, all documented cases I’ve read of incest involves relatives who DID NOT grow up and/or live together from birth.

2. Drinking cold water will make the baby cold.

Right and drinking hot soup will burn the child.

3. Exposing a pregnancy belly is disgraceful for a mother.

But a fashion consultant told me it is chic to do so!

4. 2 year old children need to be toilet trained whether or not they are ready for it.

Tons of research show they are not physiologically ready till 3 and the best way to toilet train is for them to be ready.

5. Children must be fat to be healthy (and hence are overfed).

We already have enough problems with obesity so I wish purporters of this notion will just read some research articles and get a clue. Just because a child is genetically slim and active doesn’t mean he doesn’t eat. He grazes, just like Dr Sears recommends. Smart kid. He’ll never be fat.

6. Children need to be dressed to look as old as they can be.

Children are only small once. Why force them to look old prematurely?

7. Mothers are not entitled to personal time.

This one probably irks me the most. People decline to help or worse, criticise very disparagingly when a poor mother stays up for a few hours after baby sleeps for some personal time, and looks rather tired the next day (we look tired every day!) because they think stay home moms should be on call 24/7 but even maids get a day off sometime! And they get to sleep through the night.

That’s all I can recall for now. You can tell I’ve been hearing these a lot. Feel free to add, and to point and laugh.

I’m a real laid back Mom. As a teen, danger was my middle name. I have the proud scars and trophies to show for it. And a fond memory of a black Kawasaki trail bike I spray painted myself, whom I named Tommy Ray after a character in Clive Barker’s grand novel The Great and Secret Show.

As a kid, I loved to play in the mud, climb trees, windows, the gate, just about everything and I never fell. I loved the outdoors and I loved risky adventures. We had a small garden filled with lots of plants and trees where a little girl could bring her stuffed animal friends and play make believe. It was a wonderful, happy, stress-free childhood.

I intend for Jack to have the same.

So it is to no surprise that I not only encourage my son to climb, jump, play in mud, I also teach him safety rules. For instance, when he climbs, he must concentrate on what he’s doing, and he must hold on with both hands. If he needs help, he must ask. And I’ll only let him climb places which I deem safe, which is almost anywhere.

These days I am lazy and loathe the sun, but I will slather on sunblock and be prepared to swelter just so my boy can enjoy the park nearby and visit the lovely jungle trails at our zoo. And oh he loves it. He’ll swing like a monkey on the handrails while we wait for the tram and race through the path like a speeding bullet. He’s the most active child I know.

Research agrees risky fun play is critical for survival skills like making judgement calls and assessing danger, especially in this modern world:

According to the study, kids need the adventure of “risky” play: “Risk-taking increases the resilience of children,” said one researcher. “It helps them make judgments,” said another. They list examples of risky play that should be encouraged including fire-building, den-making, watersports, paintballing, boxing and climbing trees.

Arnon Lotem, a researcher at Tel Aviv University, found that modern people have adopted risk-taking behaviors similar to those of animals like rats and bees. And this behavior, Prof. Lotem says might not prepare humankind for the types modern dangers we face every day — like crossing the street, accepting a high-risk mortgage, driving on the freeway, or flying a plane.

(Sources: New Study: Kids Need the Adventure of “Risky” Play; Humans Evolved to Fear Snakes, Not High-Risk Mortgages or Risks at Traffic Lights)