Another homeschooling meeting…

Last night I debated on going to the pool or going to the homeschool meeting… I finally decided to do both and just be late at the meeting…

I am really glad I did that because for one, I really wanted to go swimming… and it felt great… and two… I missed the part of the meeting that was them talking about the conference they went to last weekend… when I came in they were just near the end and talking about concentration and how to get kids to concentrate on their work by using a physical stop sign and then having punishments if they need to use the stop sign 3 times…

omg… I was Crawling out of my skin!! and the worse part was that not only was the girl talking about it but she actually made the stop sign and bought the chart that charts the punishment and rewards… She gave the example of giving an assignment and that after doing half or more they ask to do something else so she has been using the stop sign to make them stop and concentrate on doing the rest…

so… I asked… but what if they want to move on after doing half or more because they got the concept and want to go on to the next thing…

she didn’t seem to think that it was a valid reason…

It really annoys me going to these meetings… I like the interaction with a few of the moms, especially 2 of them.. but the other 3 I just have so much trouble getting… they are always in search of the perfect curriculum, working so hard and struggling to get their kids to cooperate and concentrate… while 3 of us are often talking about whatever comes to mind, they are talking about curriculum…

Another thing that came up about the conference was about a writing club and the way they described it it was really cool and is really in line with an unschooling philosophy… letting kids write because they want to, letting them write what they want, not hovering and correcting etc… I said that it sounded really cool and that is what I plan on doing… but then of course the guns went up… it had to be said that it was only a writing club it is just for fun… but in real life learning kids can’t do that all of the time…

umm…. WHY NOT ??!!!

I just don’t get it… I don’t get them…

Why must the love of learning need to squashed by stop signs, punishments, rewards and overbearing parents?

we didn’t schedule another meeting for now… I am glad about it… I am not sure I want to go back….

What colour are white marshmallows?

Wanting to make some homemade snack bars that the boys love… (made with cereal, granola, nuts, seeds, dried fruit and a few chocolate chips and held together with marshmallow) I picked up some marshmallows at the grocery store over the weekend…

Xavier has been asking me to make them since then…

So this morning I get out a few things and just as I was about to open the bag of marshmallows I noticed the ingredient list…

“colouring”

Why I didn’t check while at the grocery store? I don’t know…

If you have been reading here for a while, or have read the archives a bit we have been avoiding food colouring for the boys for about a year and half… Colin has physical reactions and Xavier has behavioural…

Dr Feingold and the diet he promotes has been telling families with hyperactive children to avoid food colourings (along with other foods and additives) for a long time believing that they are linked to behaviour problems…. and these diets have helped many families dealing with ADHD and an array of other problems… and though I have never read any of the books and don’t follow the diet I do think that there is a lot of truth in his ways of thinking…

however… for many the link between a cracker or a yogourt and behavioural problems is something that is hard to grasp and the fact that food colouring is in so many foods makes it really hard to avoid even when you eat mostly whole foods…

I hadn’t seen but last year there was finally a study…

Though Feingold was proved to be right that food colouring can aggravate the symptoms of ADHD… and that avoiding them can have great effects… the link had never been made officially between “normal” kids and behavioural problems linked directly to food colouring and additives.. until now…

Food additives and hyperactive behaviour in 3-year-old and
8/9-year-old children in the community: a randomised,
double-blinded, placebo-controlled trial

Background
We undertook a randomised, double-blinded, placebo-controlled, crossover trial to test whether intake of artificial food colour and additives (AFCA) affected childhood behaviour.

Methods
153 3-year-old and 144 8/9-year-old children were included in the study. The challenge drink contained sodium benzoate and one of two AFCA mixes (A or B) or a placebo mix. The main outcome measure was a global hyperactivity aggregate (GHA), based on aggregated z-scores of observed behaviours and ratings by teachers and parents, plus, for 8/9-year-old children, a computerised test of attention. This clinical trial is registered with Current Controlled Trials (registration number ISRCTN74481308). Analysis was per protocol.

Findings
16 3-year-old children and 14 8/9-year-old children did not complete the study, for reasons unrelated to childhood behaviour. Mix A had a significantly adverse effect compared with placebo in GHA for all 3-year-old children but not mix B versus placebo. This result persisted when analysis was restricted to 3-year-old children who consumed more than 85% of juice and had no missing data . 8/9-year-old children showed a significantly adverse eff ect when given mix A or mix B when analysis was restricted to those children consuming at least 85% of drinks with no missing data.
Interpretation Artificial colours or a sodium benzoate preservative (or both) in the diet result in increased hyperactivity in 3-year-old and 8/9-year-old children in the general population.

I know that there are some that brush this off because their kids might not become more active after eating food additives or either don’t believe it or just don’t care… Think if the bad rep that sugar has gotten as parties and how it has been proven to not be the cause for the hyperactivity… what if it was the all of the food colouring and additives that have really been the culprit all along… the fact that food additives that have NO other function than to make a food look prettier and can have such an impact on behaviour is scary at best and I know for sure that I will never be able to turn a blind eye…

and the white marshmallows…. I called the number on the back of the package to ask what colouring was used… they have blue… but couldn’t say whether it was #1 or #2….

Feminism and unschooling and more…

Here is an article that was shared with me recently…

Learning Curve

Feminism is a funny thing…

For some it may mean that women need to be completely independent, need to work, not have kids and not go into any other role than the independent womyn figure that would never trust a man if her life depended on it…

For some it means juggling both worlds of kids and family and then working out of the home to be “equal” to men.
And for some… being at home, raising kids in the way that is the best ways… not the mainstream ways…. is an act of feminism… However, I think that a lot of self proclaimed feminists see this as being impossible, but it isn’t…

The way I see it is that for a while, feminism was about equality in status as human beings. The right to vote, the right to speak, the right to work with equal pay, not one more important than the other…

Equal… but… not the same…

However… sometime, somewhere, it seemed to change…

I remember when I was in university and hanging out in some feminist circles and feminism was no longer about equality, it was about men-bashing… it was about surpassing men, it was about taking over… Instead of being equal, it has become about leaving the role of woman and motherhood behind and looking at it as something to be ashamed of…
However, my choice of staying at home, raising my children, making my own choices about the way I birth is part of the way that I express who I am as a woman…

So, taking back my womanhood, taking back my body in birth by UCing, taking back my role as mother and nurturing and raising my children in the ways that feel right naturally and not because of a stigma, breastfeeding, co-sleeping and now unschooling, all in the while of being an equal partner within my relationship with my husband and partner in life is the way I express my feminism…

Men have in most part shaped the society that we live in, they in many ways formed the ways that society in general raises children…

Men were the physicians that wanted women to birth in unnatural positions so that they could “see better”, not caring at all that the birth on the back position makes it harder on women to birth and can put babies at risk…
Men were the ones that have made breasts sexual and that have put stigmas on breastfeeding and were the physicians that perpetuated the myths that formula was not dangerous and that often was better than breastfeeding even though they could not be further from the truth…

And it goes on and on… Men have made many mistakes, and it is up to us to change things, however, correcting those mistakes by taking on the same family roles as the men in the past is not the way to go and in my opinion is doing a disservice to the children…

So going back to that article and unschooling, well… I don’t agree with all of it but I think that some good points were brought up in the article and in the comments… unschooling and feminism don’t only come together in the ways that the author is describing, it is about more.

It is about teaching our own children, it is about letting them make their own choices for what is right for them and recognizing that they too are equals in our society, it is about recognizing that the school systems that have been set up clearly do not work for all children and there are serious flaws and that it is part of the role I choose of motherhood to give my children the best chances they have to be happy in life…

The good and the bad…

What a day…

It was Khéna’s appt for the allergist today.. so Simon took the day off do that he could be with the boys while I go to the hospital. We headed into Montreal this morning and I dropped the guys off a the pool which we thought would be a fun thing for them to do together…

I headed for the hospital, found a parking space and started waiting… when we finally got into see the Allergist and going through the symptoms he had etc she said that is sounded viral and that if I didn’t want it we could just skip the allergy tests so that he didn’t have to through it all.. So I said that I agree and then she said to just start introducing a bit of everything… even peanuts can be introduced at anytime but just to watch him carefully after we do…

So, we left without testing which made us in advance to go get Simon and the boys… So I headed to Bummis for some Covers which we need and then went and waited for the guys…

Simon came out and I saw that he wasn’t too happy… turns out that he got robbed while he was in the pool… the lock on the locker was gone and they took his debit card, buss pass, some money and his work identity cards…  thankfully they didn’t get his wallet and his Palm which was in his Coat… Some people really suck…. The thing that hurts us the most is the buss card.. 207$ down the drain… That really cuts into our budget…

Of course today is also the day that I bought a new wrap… I needed something more supportive than my EllaRoo’s because of Khéna’s weight… so now I have a Storchenwiege Inka! I can’t wait to try it!

still waiting…

I know… I have said it before…

I MISS HAVING A CAMERA!!!!

I just really hope that I get it before Hallow’een… and to top it off…  Khéna is increasingly near to walking… he took a few steps the other day… I don’t want to miss those moments….

I have been tracking it on the Canada Post site and it was at a stand still for more than a week… and then there was a bit of progress on Friday…

2007/10/27 00:28 International shipment has arrived in Canada
2007/10/26 19:29 VILLE ST-LAURENT, QC International item has arrived in Canada
2007/10/18 14:54 International item has left the origin country and is en route to Canada
2007/10/18 14:42 International shipment has left the origin country and is en route to Canada 2007/10/15 13:46 International item has been posted in origin country

I have a bit of hope still that it will get here soon… but when I do internet searches my hope seems to dwindle with all of the postal horror stories… sometimes Google should not be used…

omg… this is sick…

We keep on getting phonecalls since yesterday about “an add”… after asking a few people who called we figured out that our number was put on a sex add….

Today we found the add and contacted the newspaper and the site that appears on but this is SO annoying….

The add says…

ABSOLUMENT SEXY et provoquante, belle grande femme sensuelle et plus encore, viens me découvrir, tu seras comblé. 450.xxx.xxxx

translation:

“Adsolutlely sexy and provoking, beautiful tall sensual woman and more, come discover me, you will be satisfied”

looking around… we found a few other adds…

they got the area code wrong…

We probably have another week of this…. I feel like strangling someone…

the “rules” of the park….

Yesterday I brought the boys to the park… There was a mom there that I have never met before with her almost 5 year old that was a head taller than Xavier and a 8 month old babe…

The boys ran around like they always do… going up and down and all around…

At one point the mom struck up a conversation and upon knowing that Xavier was 5 she assumed he was in school… when I told her that we homeschooled she had no idea what it was… she had never heard of homeschooling.

As the boys played, they went down the slide as they often do… it is a double slide and they sit on the middle part and go down that way… or sometimes they go head first or sometimes they sit normally… they also *gasp* climb up the slide…

Well…. yesterday, they were going down the middle and running up the slide and having fun… no one else was on the slide, no one else was near it… the other little boy was playing on the other module and was not even paying attention to them… I got the “look”… my kids were not playing by the “rules”…

what are these rules anyway?

Not let kids explore? not let kids have fun? Why Micromanage every aspect of their life and play?

When the little boy came to the module where the boys were playing they stopped going up the slide by their own accord and started using the stairs.. they did keep on going down the middle though and waited their turn…

The other little boy pushed by Colin at one point and the mom said nothing but she was very quick to react when her son was about to go down the middle of the slide… he did it anyway and she glared at me as my boys went down… then they went and played on the other module… her son continued and she talked to her son quite loudly when he did it and then kept on glaring at me…  (there was no one else there… he wasn’t hurting anyone… he was having fun…why not let him?)  then she said really loudly something like “some other parents let their kids do anything… but you have to slide on one side of the other!”

ARGHHH!!!!

When Xavier came back to slide I told him that the little boy was getting in trouble because he was doing the same thing as him… so maybe slide on one side or the other for now… he went down one time normally and then went and played on something else…

I don’t get it at all… why do parents not let their kids play and explore? Who is going to get hurt by the kids going down the middle of the slide? Who is going to get hurt when a kid runs up the slide when there are not other kids around? Why do parent follow their kid up onto the modules and not let them explore by themselves?

I really don’t get the unspoken “rules”…

where is the respect?

I am getting tired of reading and hearing about people that don’t care at all about the needs and wants of their kids but only think about themselves… people that have no respect for kids…

People that choose not to breastfeed and ignore the health risks of Formula Feeding (or know them and simply don’t care), their babies go from crib, to chair, to excersaucer, to bucket, to stroller, to high chair and must not be held to much because they believe that babies can be spoiled with too much attention and love, and *gasp* may even need human contact more than the preconceived maximum allowed time per day…. people ignore a child’s cries because they believe that at a certain time or place cries have no more meaning…. I have said it many times before and I will say it again…. making a baby cry themselves to sleep is one of the saddest things I can think about and as I said before, is pure neglect IMHO….

Babies, toddlers, kids are human beings and equals…

We choose to have children because it is part of our nature, part of what and who we are… However, in our society, many people seem to choose to have kids because it is the next step, or they really do want children but are caught up in what society and media portrays as the perfect child… that child that is seen but not heard… that is independent and never asks for anything but has every material thing on the planet… (of course they believe that you can “spoil” a child with love and attention but not with toys and possessions)

I am tired People that not only work out of the home and only see their kids for less than a few hours a day and then get babysitters on the weekends because they need “alone time” and then complain about their kids the rest of the time… They are often so unattached from the needs of their kids but try to make up for it it material goods.

How can you love someone and yet want to change them from the moment they are born? How can you love someone that you don’t respect and see as a possession?
Why do people mutilate their kids genitals with no medical reason and then try to make it seem as if it was nothing and it didn’t hurt, just blatantly making their kids out to be insensitive and not worth anything… or is it just that girls are more important and feel differently than boys since FGM is illegal…

How can someone love someone and not comfort them when they need it and make someone cry (or fuss) themselves to sleep? Would they treat their spouse like that? what if their spouse was in an accident and could no longer function, would they just make their spouse cry because they need to learn not to be be hungry, thirsty or need affection between certain times of the day? No, I would hope not, that would be cruel.. yet…. they just think that kids are not not worth respect….

How can people continue the cycle of violence by hitting their kids (and this means tapping, smacking, popping and all of the words that are used to downplay hitting) Again, if you hit your spouse, if you hit other adults you can be arrested… but kids again are not worth that respect it seems….  It is a hard cycle to break but it must be done… violence is never the answer and it only teaches kids how to fear… not how to make the right choices…

It saddens me so much the lack of respect that kids are shown….

So… I am in a crabby mood…

I got new glasses about a week and half ago….

purdy… aren’t they?

Yesterday Colin broke them…. he wanted to try them on while I was sleeping and instead of opening them out… he bent them down… while making them straight again, one side held, the other gave out…

They are still under warranty but I have to wait until the new pieces come in in about a week…. then it will be about 40$…

Then the hot water tank busted and flooded the laundry room and a bit of the playroom…

Thank the stars Xavier came in the house while we were out in the pool… when he got in he heard water running and went down stairs and saw the water and ran to get me and said that some thing was wrong…

I left Khéna in the back yard where he was playing, told the boys to follow me because the pool gate was open… I quickly turned off the water that goes into the heater and ran back to lock the gate and get Khéna… then I looked outside and saw my neighbor and asked him to come help me find the breaker to turn of the water heater….

The boys were running everywhere, Khéna was crying cause he was tired and wanted to nurse, we couldn’t find the breaker…

I finally got Khéna to fall asleep and got the boys to calm down a little since they upset that they couldn’t play in the playroom….

I called 3 plumbers and found one that could come today (it is after 1pm and no sign of him yet)..

we finally found the breaker so that was a good thing… but no hot water until the plumber arrives and installs a new tank and Simon had a BIG mess to clean up last night….

eta: sorry jessica, I had to delete that last post and re-post and lost your comment…

The Lable of Attachment Parenting (part two)

This post is just a bit of a continuation of a post I wrote in Jan 06…. you can read it Here.

Though most of that post still applies to what I believe, my views have evolved over the last year and a half since that post and as much as I have evolved, the AP community online has changed…

AP has become trendy… babywearing and Cloth diapering is stylish and continuing in the mainstream point of view of children, just more accessories. Mainstream parents that enjoy the tools that once were considered AP, and have flocked to AP support sites and have infiltrated and many times conquered them, rendering the sites to being full of people who call themselves AP but do not practice the theory.

For quite a long time now I no longer want to be identified with AP because of the skewed perceptions that people have.

I think the big problem is that people start out right… know that CIO doesn’t feel right for a good reason, know that breastfeeding is best… but aspects such as babywearing and even cloth diapering have become stylish and since the boards that host that discussion on a large basis were mostly of gentle mindset in the past, those subjects attract all…

It is GREAT that people want to wear their children more, use cloth etc… it truly is… but those are not the ways to be attached, nor are they the goals of being an attached parent… to wear your baby is a tool that makes things easier, as is co-sleeping and even gentle birth.

There seems to be a sad misconception that Attachment comes through the physical stuff in infancy but that at a certain age things just can’t work that way anymore… as kids grow up the unrealistic expectations of what a child “should” be doing step in… weaning, too big to be carried, parents think that the child should be in their own bed etc… the physical practices that defined what AP was in the past just fizzle away and AP can’t be practiced anymore. The problem as I see it is that people get stuck on the physical stuff and don’t learn or haven’t been modeled the theory of attachment.

There is a whole new world past infancy and attachment doesn’t wane after but needs to grow stronger. Living concentually, being a parent, a guide, a teacher to our children… discipline should not divide, no time-outs (love needs to be unconditional) and of course no physical punishments (smack, tap, spank all equal hit and is abusive behaviour and will lead to power struggles, insecurity and doing things for the wrong reasons). Respect should be earned both ways and modeled. It is hard to break the cycles for many, but it must be done to give the next generation a chance.
The GOAL of being attached to your child is to raise a child with respect, to raise a child that makes decisions because they are right, not because they are afraid of the concequences, to raise a child that sees the parent and not their peers as teachers or as guides… Of course that parent needs to do the right things also… not be perfect, no one is perfect but be able to admit their faults and work on them… that is what is important…

Gentle birth makes bonding easier, makes breastfeeding easier and women have less chances to have PPD…

breastfeeding gives bonding and health… Child led weaning is about respect for not only the physical needs of the child but the emotional needs as well…

When we co-sleep we teach children how to sleep by mimicking and they are able to feed easily and both get more sleep…

Babywearing fulfills a babies physical need of contact for the first few months, reduces colic, helps digestion, even teaches babies balance and the skills for sitting and walking later on… it also teaches children how to talk and communicate with others all while mom or dad has their hands free to do other things…

These are all tools that are part of the continuum from infancy, to toddlerhood and into the child and teenage years… the tools of attachment change as children grow but the attachment itself needs to survive until the day that the child becomes an adult and has the skills to continue through life on their own.