NagMummy

As the recent World Cup showcased the best of South Africa, I can’t help being affected by the contrast presented in 2 articles in the June 14 and 28 issues of TIME magazine about the plight of women and children in other parts of impoverished Africa.

Authored by Alice Park, The Perils of Pregnancy: One Woman’s Tale of Dying to Give Birth tells of how a woman in Sierra Leone lost her life at age 18 after giving birth to a pair of twins due to the lack of medical services. According to the article, “… childbirth remain among the leading causes of death of woman worldwide; every day, one woman per minute dies while giving birth or soon after.” The pictures in the article were especially disturbing, including the 18 year-old’s final moments. 

The next article, Battling A Scourge by Alex Perry, is about how the children of a small town in Uganda – Apac suffers from malaria, where “almost 90% of malaria victims are children under 5”. It’s hard to imagine raising kids in these extreme conditions, and reminds me again of how fortunate we are to live in Singapore.

So, there is always two sides to every story…

It’s amazing how plastic has crept into our lives. In fact, I cannot imagine life without it anymore. Recently, an article I read in the April 12 issue of the TIME magazine – ‘The Perils of Plastic’ by Bryan Walsh made me re-think the use of plastic in our home. The content of the article is not new, essentially about the danger of various chemicals from the wide use of plastic in our lives can pose a danger to us, especially young children. But we really need these reminders from time to time.

The picture of two kids in front of their bowls of cereal and a jug of drink struck me how our decisions as parents can make a difference in our children’s future. Plastic has been really useful, especially for parents of young children who love to throw their toys, milk bottles and utensils around. I recall when I first heard about the danger of the chemical, bisphenol A (BPA) sometime in 2008, BPA free milk bottles were not even available in most retail stores.

Some people I know switched to glass bottles but I did not. Reason being we had stopped sterilizing M’s bottles by then and since BPA can leak into milk only at high temperatures, I did not see a need to switch. Also, M was able to hold her own bottle while drinking and she has a tendency to throw her bottle around after that. Above all, I could not be sure all her drinking and eating utensils were BPA free too, especially when we eat out or pack food home.

But reading the article and all the potential danger of chemicals such as PVC and BPA, I can’t help wondering if that is still the right decision. BPA is a synthetic estrogen that can cause potentially cause serious reproductive problems for females. According to the article, Canada and Denmark are the only countries to have banned BPA milk bottles.

At the same time, manufacturers have responded and BPA free milk and drinking bottles are now more widely available, though at around 30-50% price premium. I’ve even noticed some toys labelled PVC and PBA free. The question that comes often to my mind is – Is it really necessary? Well, it’s an answer that will perhaps take governments a lot longer to answer because producers of the chemicals will argue that they are safe in small amounts.

But like mentioned in the article, thresholds can be a really tricky question. As consumers, we often have to make decisions without the full set of information. I looked around our home to see how we can minimise M’s exposure of these dangerous chemicals and I have the feeling it’s not going to be an easy task.

Nonetheless, I took the first step of getting her BPA free milk bottles!

M has been taking medicines for her flu and cough for about a month now. It’s been her longest period of medication. She was just beginning to look and sound better over the past few days, only to start coughing again today! What a nightmare…

We really feel so helpless! It’s just beyond us, even doctors can only do this much.

In times like this, when my fridge is choke-full of medicines, I always only refer to my book ‘Concise Guide to Medicines and Drugs’ for better understanding of all those bottles.

I first bought this book when my dad suffered a minor stroke some years ago and was prescribed loads of drugs. He was constantly asking me what a particular medicine was for and I had no choice but to look around a medicine dictionary. I am a complete idiot with medicines.

Anyway, doctors sometimes do not have the time to fully explain all the medicines to us, including their side effects. I remember one time when M started shivering after she took a particular medicine. We were so frightened then, especially with her shuddering attacks history. Well, it turned out to be a side effect of the drug.

This book has proved really useful, sometimes even better than the medicine

M started half-day childcare at Schoolhouse by the Garden this Monday. I was allowed to stay in the centre for 3 days to ease her in, which I did. And so far so good. She visited the school once and has been excited about starting school. To prepare her for school, I’ve been reading the above book for the past 2 months. And every time we pass by a childcare centre, I’ll point out that all the children are without mummies and follow their teachers’ instructions.

On her first day, we arrived in time for breakfast and I sat behind her while she eat her cornflakes. She was probably a little unsure and looked back at me a few times. After that, the teachers brought the children to a play corner with blocks and cooking toys. M got excited and I decided to make a quick exit, said goodbye and went out of eye-shot. I hanged around for the rest of the morning, taking peeps from time to time. After her lunch, I asked her if she wants to pee and brought her to the toilet. As I wasn’t sure if she’ll tell her teachers when she needs to pee, she wore diaper that day. Overall, she did well.

On Tuesday, they had water play and M joined in. But when she got splashed water in her face, she cried. I went to take a look while the teacher was undressing her to give her a quick shower. After the shower, she was crying “mummy carry…” so I helped to dress her. She calmed down when she started to play with the toys. She did not eat much for lunch so I went into the kitchen to feed her and she finished one bowl.

On Wednesday, I sat outside the centre mostly. I informed the teachers that she’s not wearing diaper so they’ll have to remind her to toilet. Around 10+, I heard M crying “mummy carry… i want to go…”. It went on for a long while, I was very tempted to have a look but held myself back. I heard one teacher trying to pacify her but she continued wailing, lasting about 30 min, until lunch time. I found out later that one boy had hit M’s head with the bubble stick and she retaliated by scratching his face. The teacher told her off and she started to cry. Cavemen!

We did not go yesterday as she had lessons at Little Neuro Tree. So, today was her real test. We were actually quite nervous! I left after her teacher carried her into the kitchen for breakfast. She wined a little but did not cry. I said goodbye and made a quick exit. I jumped when my phone rang around 10. Haha… it was mum! And when I picked her up at 12.30pm, she was happily playing blocks with 2 other girls. Her teacher said she did not cry and everything went well.

I’m most surprised seeing how she enjoys playing with other kids. Even though she plays with cousin S very often, M has never played so readily with other kids. She’s diaper free in school too! She’s usually reluctant to use toilets outside home. And she seems to be enjoying herself, telling us what she did in school and looking forward to school.

As for me, I miss seeing how she reacts to different situations, which I could in accompanied lessons. But I got a few hours of free time this morning in return. Not a bad deal at all. I guess it’s time to let go…

11 December 2009 – Megan’s Independence Day!

No way!

Although I don’t take it very often, Hainanese chicken rice is definitely one of my local favourites. Unfortunately, Types Bs like me, Matt and M are advised to trade chicken for turkey. Why? According the book, Cook Right 4 Your Type by Dr Peter J. D’Adamo, “Chicken contains a Type B agglutinating lectin in its muscle tissue, particularly in the breast meat. This lectin disturbs your system and can potentially lead to strokes and autoimmune disorders.”

I first read Eat Right 4 Your Type some years ago. Even though I found the contents of the book quite convincing – that every blood type is suited for different diets due to different digestive systems, it was difficult following through with the recommendations. Main reason was I wasn’t the one preparing my meals.

Before I continue, here’s the back cover for a quick overview:

“If your blood type is O, stick to high protein (red meat) and low carbohydrates

If your blood type is A, you should be a vegetarian (high carbohydrates, low fat)

If your blood type is B, you can enjoy most dairy products, as well as a balance of meat, fish, grains, vegetables and fruit.

If your blood type is AB, your diet should be mostly vegetarian, with modest supplements of meat and dairy”

So, since I started preparing meals (buying the ingredients and cooking) for M about a year ago, I realised I finally had no excuse for not following the Type B diet. The most difficult part of it has really been avoiding chicken, which is such a mainstay. I’ve managed to stop cooking chicken now, but we still take half of our meals are at my mum’s place where I don’t decide the menu.

Another item difficult to do away with is tomato! Who would have thought that tomatoes which have been touted as an antioxidant powerhouse be unsuitable for Type Bs? Again, “Tomatoes must be eliminated from the Type B diet. The panhaemaglutinans produce a strong reaction, usually in the form of irritation of the stomach lining.” Tomato base pastas are another favourite of ours. Although I like cheese, I’ve never quite taken to cream base pastas well, so we make do with aglio olio style pastas these days. What about pizzas? I make them myself now, with only cheese topping!

In the book, every blood type is given a “Highly Beneficial”, “Neutral”, “Avoid” list of foods. As suggested by the author, the first step is trying to eat more of the “Highly Beneficial” foods and slowly eliminate foods from the “Avoid” list. These days, I try to stock my kitchen with “Highly Beneficial” foods. I’m definitely not done eliminating food from the “Avoid” list, but this book is by my bedside and I refer to it from time to time.

Sounds too extreme? As it is, I don’t think we can ever avoid all the food listed in the “Avoid” list. But then, as the Chinese saying goes 病从口入 – casually translated as “illness finds its way in through the mouth”

I ought to give it a try at least!

I came across an interesting article, What Women Want Now in the October 26 edition TIME magazine. It caught my interest and I downloaded a paper titled The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness cited in the article.

Here’s the abstract the paper, authored by Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers of The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania:

“By many objective measures, the lives of women in the United States have improved over the past 35 years, yet we show that measures of subjective well-being indicate that women’s happiness has declined both absolutely and relative to men. The paradox of women’s declining relative well-being is found across various datasets, measures of subjective well-being, and is pervasive across demographic groups and industrialized countries. Relative declines in female happiness have eroded a gender gap in happiness in which women in the 1970s typically reported higher subjective well-being than did men. These declines have continued and a new gender gap is emerging–one with higher subjective well-being for men.”

As a female, it hit me that it may be true that as we got more education, freedom and money, our lives have become more complicated. It also reminds of the Marslow’s hierarchy of needs which we learnt in school. As we get our lower-level needs (Physiological, Safety, Love/Belonging, Esteem) satisfied, we move up to the highest level of self-actualisation needs which are undoubtedly harder to attain.

Take my mum as an example, she received only primary school education and is financially dependent (first on the man who brought her up then the man she married). For most of her life, her goal was to bring up her four kids. She did some casual work after her kids were more independent and any income earned was her pocket money. As a grandmother of four now, she is the primary caregiver of one. Is she happier than me?

I’m not sure, really. She is happy, no doubt. But she may have some regrets too. As we prepare M for half-day childcare next month, I’ve been thinking about what lies ahead for me. I believe I will not find as much meaning staying home going forward as M starts to spend more time away from home. Well, unless we have another child.

Interestingly, the results of the study above suggested that level of subjective happiness was no different between women who were young or old, educated or not educated, married or divorced, kids or no kids, working mums or stay-at-home mums… Mind boggling indeed….

Perhaps we have all gotten out of sync with reality? Expecting to stay happily married, have wonderful kids, excel in our careers, be a fashionista etc… all at the same time. Sure, there’re a few superwomen out there who are constantly featured in the media. But don’t they just make the rest of us less happy?

Sometimes, societal pressures, government propaganda and clever consumer marketing can mislead us into thinking what makes us happy. I recall the many times people around me have commented “What a waste!” when they find out I’m a stay-at-home mum. This led to a rather heated argument once. And ever since then, I’ve learnt to just acknowledge and pass it off.

But what I really want to say is “Doing what you enjoy cannot be a waste!”

Well yes, I’m definitely guilty. Quoting author Elizabeth Hartley-Brewer, a ‘put-down’ is

“an unnecessarily negative statement which has the effect of making the recipient feel less good about themselves, of damaging their self-respect and belief in themselves and their competence.”

I try to mind my language around M but still can’t help directing some ‘put downs’ at her on occasions. My most common ones are “Don’t run. You’ll fall” “Don’t embarrass me” “Why are you so lazy?”

Hopefully, they’ve not done any major damage to M’s self-esteem. According to the book, too much of these ‘put downs’ can “cause resentment and create distance and resistance”, which can have negative long-term effects on a child’s self-image and his/her future relationships.

Funny though… because this supposedly damaging way of parenting is how I grew up. Asian parents often put down their kids and seldom praise their kids for fear that they’ll get complacent. Not too long ago, I heard a relative shouting at her primary one kid “You stupid ah?” Most people around us turned out fine, but who knows, some may have gone further with a bit more praise.

Anyway, this book is really like a child psychology textbook, defining and conceptualising self-esteem, self-confidence, self-reliance and self-discipline and how one leads to the next. And so even though it’s been a rather boring book to read, I’m glad it got me to appreciate how our everyday words and actions can make a difference to our children’s lives.

But at the end of the day, I think it’s about us being happy parents, spouses, workers… How else can we expect happy children?

Well, that’s how Dr Harvey Karp describes toddlers in his ‘The Happiest Toddler on the Block’ DVD. An extract from his website:

“Cavemen were stubborn, opinionated, and not too verbal. They bit and spat when angry, were sloppy eaters, hated to wait in line, and were negative, tenacious, distractible, and impatient…”

All parents with terrible twos understand the frustration we go through when our kids act out. Although M has been pretty much a ‘textbook’ baby, she definitely has her fair share of tantrums (during bath and meal times especially). Recently, she even started hitting, biting and scratching her cousin! Although I can’t help defending M that she had been provoked into doing so sometimes…

Of course that does not make the behaviour any more acceptable, so Matt and I have been showing our disapproval every time she does that, so much so that she’s now afraid of getting into grandma’s house. She would want me to carry her even before the door is opened, because cousin S usually runs to us and insists on taking off M’s shoes despite M saying “No No…”. And cavemen M has responded several times with scratching or hitting S.

Anyway, we watched this DVD a few weeks ago and thought we should share it. Dr Karp presents an age-old advice of acknowledging our toddlers in a new and interesting way. He calls it the “Fast Food Rule”, which is how we should always repeat our toddler’s wants after him/her, letting him/her know we’ve understood him/her. Another interesting concept is “Toddler-ese”, which is speaking in your toddler’s primitive language in order to connect with a kid going through a tantrum.

So, I tried to put to practice this method when we came home late one night and did not want M to watch another 30 minutes of TV before bedtime (she was obviously tired but  wanted to go through her usual routine of TV, milk, bed). After getting dressed, she headed for her bedroom door but I refused to let her out, saying “No Hi-5, it’s late”. She then started to whine, then wailed “I want to watch Hi-5!” repeatedly.

So I echoed “You want to watch Hi-5?” a few times, she nodded and stopped crying. I continued with “But it’s late now, you’re tired, you need to drink your milk and go to bed, you can watch it tomorrow, alright?” She started wailing again, banging on her bedroom door. But once I say “ You want to watch Hi-5?” she stops and I’ll say “You can watch it tomorrow, alright? Mummy promise.”

We went through many rounds of this before she finally calmed herself down and said “It’s late, cannot watch Hi-5.” Wow… amazing I thought, I almost wanted to give up and let her out! I must say I found it quite comical acting like her and trying to match her level of emotion as suggested by the “Toddler-ese” concept. I actually had to control my laughter many times!

In recent weeks, it’s been easier getting her to accept not watching TV before bedtime, especially when it’s late. Usually, I suggest reading her a book and she’s fine. There’re other concepts which Dr Karp explains in his ‘The Happiest Toddler on the Block’ DVD, book and website which go a long way towards helping parents deal with the daily struggles with their toddlers.

I’ll try this method whenever M acts out these days. Not always successful but definitely worth a try!

M has been very much a ‘textbook’ baby and now toddler. And that’s according to the definitions from the book ‘Secrets of the Baby Whisperer’ by Tracy Hogg and Melinda Blau. In short, ‘textbook’ babies respond well to routines and require a high level of predictability. I’ve since read the follow-on book on toddlers as well. And the best tip I got from the book is on how to establish routines.

Besides routines, there’s another thing I liked about this book. It tries to ‘categorise’ babies and toddlers into 5 different types – Angel, Textbook, Touchy, Spirited, and Grumpy. Although it’s quite impossible that one child displays traits of one type only, it really got me to appreciate M for who she is. We parents often compare our babies but it’s really not fair to them because they’re all individuals. The strategies for dealing with each type of baby and toddler also came in useful.

And routines are just great for both mother and child, offering us security and predictability. The book also offers a really simple routine for young babies, E.A.S.Y. – Eat, Activity, Sleep, You (Mummy’s personal time). Using this suggestion, I was able to establish a routine for M by the time she was around 6 months old. Although I’m well-aware it won’t happen 100% of the time, but just knowing what comes next is good enough!

Let me give you an idea of M’s typical weekday at 29 months old.

p/s: On weekdays, I cook lunch and we go over to my mum’s place for dinner.

With so many ‘Activity’ times a day, I sometimes run out of ideas what to do! Which is why we attend some classes which takes us out of the house and allow me to sit back and follow the teachers’ lead. Other things we do to ‘kill’ time are: supermarket trips, walks to the park & playground, story-telling, baking, doodling, crafts, pretend plays etc…

With such a ‘hectic’ schedule, I ‘knock out’ by 9.15pm on some days

So we did sign up for the programme after the talk (if you read my previous post). In fact, we are about to start our second term (12 weeks) with them. Anyway, here’s our journey so far…

I started reading up on Glenn Doman’s books first (when M was around 1 year old), starting with ‘How to teach your baby to read’ and ‘How to teach your baby Math’ and so on. I became aware of The Shichida Method around the same time. As there were no readily available reading material here, I ordered three of his books from Japan.

The power of the right brain amazed me enough to want to experiment on M. But I did not want to spend too much money such that my expectations will become unrealistically high. So I decided to go with the home-based Glenn Doman method. We first bought the English set from GD Baby. By the time I got started, M was 14 months and almost walking.

Not exactly the ideal time to start, but anyway I tried to flash the cards when she was ‘confined’, like when she’s on the potty or in the high-chair. Soon after, I started the Glenn Doman Math set but this time we bought the kit direct from US instead because it was a more basic set and cheaper even after shipping cost. M was not always interested in the cards, crawling away quite often.

I continued with the cards anyway. But as M was very easily distracted, I find myself flashing less cards and also less frequently. Occasionally, I stopped for a couple of weeks before starting again. I do not think we got very far really… definitely not like what others could achieve.

The flashcards slowly became forgotten and I stopped before M turned two. Then recently I was packing the flashcards and though if we should give them another try. Since I haven’t been too successful at home, I thought it could be time to seek some ‘expert’ help. As I’ve read quite a fair bit of negative feedback about the local Shichida franchise, I decided to go for another outfit, Little Neuro Tree. There is a relatively new outlet near our place.

More in my next post…