A response to "Six Things Every Parent Needs to Stop Doing Right Now"

A friend of mine shared this article on facebook (opens in a new window) and it garnered a fair bit of controversy.  David and I read it and had some discussion on it and I wanted to share my thoughts on it.  Feel free to disagree, just do so respectfully if you choose to comment.

I'm just starting on my parenting journey and I know I have a lot to learn.  I don't agree with everything the author says, but she does make some valid points.

Exercising with your child in fun ways (riding bikes, playing tag, going to the park, etc) will help keep you both healthy and exercising won't have a negative connotation for your child.  Complaining about having to go the gym will set your child up to see exercise as a negative thing and they will be less likely to want to be active as they grow older.  Model an active lifestyle and your children are more likely to develop a healthy lifestyle as well. Monkey see, monkey do.

As far as screen time, the author doesn't say that all screen time is bad, just that relying on it all the time (using the computer or TV as a babysitter) is not healthy. Sitting with your child, looking stuff up on the internet, learning together - there's nothing wrong with that.  It's a good thing, it teaches the child to use the tools that we have at our disposal and it teaches them to work with someone else to find answers to questions. The author even says that some screen time is okay.  What I think she is getting at is that nothing but screen time all day is a bad thing.  I know it's something I'm going to have to work on myself - I spend a lot of time at the screen and that's not good for me and it's not a good example for Bean.

Having healthy snacks available (I'm not sure chocolate dipped strawberries fall into that category though) sets a child up for healthy eating habits both as a child and later an adult. However it's up to you as the parent what your policy on snacking is, whether the child is free to grab a snack whenever they are hungry or if they have to ask permission for grabbing a snack.  Having healthy snacks available that they can get themselves (with or without permission, depending on your personal rules for your household) helps teach healthy eating and gives them some choice as to what they choose - carrot sticks or apple pieces or an orange or whatever you happen to have available for them.

As for ordering, directing, and correcting vs asking for cooperation, each have their place.  There are some things that are non-negotiable (wearing a seat belt in the car and being polite for example) in which ordering or directing is completely appropriate.  There are other things that are negotiable in which giving the child a choice avoids and unnecessary power struggle (do you want to where your blue shirt or your red shirt?  Do you want to make your bed first or pick up your toys first?).  The author doesn't say never to give directions to your child and does say that you are the parent and they are the child. I think what the author is saying is to choose your battles wisely.  But in the end, you know your child best and know what they will respond to best.

Skipping breakfast, but expecting them to eat breakfast just doesn't set a good example.  If I were a child, my response to that would be "why do I have to have breakfast if you don't?" it's back to the monkey see, monkey do and modeling the behavior that you want to see in them.

The author's position on helping children transition from vacation back to school has some validity, but every child's needs are different.  Some children will make the transition seamlessly, others will need help and emotional support.  I do however agree wholeheartedly with helping children develop language to express their emotions.  It's part of helping them to grow into emotionally intelligent adults.

That was a super long comment, but it's what I think.  I also think the author intentionally wrote her key points to stir up controversy.  After all, it's controversy that sells papers (and most people only read the headings anyhow).  As I said at the beginning of my novel of a comment, I'm just starting my parenting journey and I have a lot to learn.  I may be completely off-base with my thoughts and ideas and I'm certainly not trying to tell anyone how to raise their children.  I'm just sharing my opinions and views.

More Bean

While my little Bean sleeps I figured I'd post some more cuteness...

A little monkey

There is a Bean in there somewhere...

Bean's first Christmas!

Welcome Samuel!

So the October-December update might come later, or it might not.  There's more exciting things to talk about now! Namely, one thing, who is actually a little tiny person!

Samuel David Ayala, December 13, 2013

What follows is Samuel's birth story, for anyone who is interested. As far as I can tell it's not overly graphic, but my perception may be a little skewed. In David's opinion the one thing I didn't stress enough is how loud I was towards the end - minor details. So here it is:

Samuel’s birth story started back in March, the way most every birth story starts.  If you don’t know how that is, ask your mother!  The first four months of his birth story were spent making me sick.  The next five were spent with me eating ridiculous amounts of food and sleeping lots…  All in all, pretty typical.  That is until Wednesday December 11, 2013.

David and I were both way overtired and decided to put ourselves to bed early.  Our lights were out by 9:30, which turns out to be a really good thing.  About 11:00 I woke up with a strange sensation of wetness.  My water had definitely broken. I wasn't having much in the way of contractions, but we called the midwife and made sure everything was ready, just in case.  Then we went back to bed.  I slept on and off until about 4am and then the combination of contractions and excitement woke me up.

At 6am, when everyone else got up for morning chores I moved to the bathtub to try and relax.  By about 9am, my contractions were about 5 minutes apart.  We called the midwife again and I crawled back into bed to try and rest.  Amazingly, I slept.  The midwife arrived about 10:30 (it was a busy day for the midwives!) and when I woke up about 11 she checked me.  I was only 2cm, so she told me to rest as much as I could and call when things changed. 

I had some lunch and got David to fill up the birthing pool.  Then I went and hung out there.  It was wonderful.  Whoever invented birthing pools with inflatable floors was a genius! David set things up so my laptop could be down there with me and I distracted myself online and breathed easily through my contractions. Once the water cooled off, I got out and walked around for a bit, still breathing easily through my contractions.

By 4pm or so, the contractions started to get stronger.  Breathing quietly through them wasn't working as well.  I was back in the birthing pool.  David got supper started upstairs and then came to join me in the birthing pool.  We worked through contractions together.  Things seemed to be picking up.  David called the midwife again and we continued to work through things.  Once the midwife arrived, she checked the baby’s heart rate (perfect!) and my blood pressure (also perfect).  Things continued to progress, getting more and more intense.  I handled things alright at first…time started to blur.  I decided that I wanted supper and Isaac brought me some (he was a very excited and attentive uncle-to-be).  I managed about half a dozen bites.  Then I started throwing up.   Time continued to blur, alternating between contractions and throwing up.  At one point mom brought me my evening meds and I promptly threw them back up.

After about 24 hours of labor (roughly… I wasn't watching the time too closely) I began to reach my limit.  The intensity of the contractions had almost peaked (I didn't know that at the time) and I was exhausted.  We moved from the birthing pool to my bed so that I could try and rest better between them.  That only worked so well, because no sooner had we gotten upstairs than the contractions came closer and closer together.  At one point I was shamelessly begging for something to ease the pain – even though I knew I really didn't want anything to interfere with the baby.   We considered a transfer to hospital so that I could get something for pain – however, the thought of making the transfer was almost unbearable – not just the car ride there in a worsening storm, but the psychological aspect of perceived failure at a homebirth.  The midwife checked me (first check since the morning) and told me that all I had to do was get the baby beyond the lip of my cervix and it would be done.  We were almost there.

We didn't transfer to the hospital.  Instead I moved to the bathroom where I continued to throw up and bellow through contractions (no more quietly breathing through them!).  David went to the bedroom to lie down.  I don’t think he slept though.  Soon I felt the urge to push.  I could feel the baby's head coming.  The midwife called David to come back in.  With a few more pushes Samuel was born into David’s hands and then placed onto my chest.  David moved behind me to support me as I cradled my newborn son on my chest.  We sat like that for a while until I passed out (oops!). David was a champ and brought me water sweetened with honey as well as a spoonful of honey while the midwife held my feet up and I laid flat on the floor. It didn't take long before my blood pressure stabilized and I was able to sit up with my baby on my chest again. Once the cord stopped pulsing, David cut it and we announced the name of our little Bean. 

While it wasn't the quiet, gentle, hypno-birth I had dreamed about, the result was a beautiful little boy – Samuel David, 7 lbs, 14 oz, and 22 inches long. 

snuggled up after a bath

Snuggling with Daddy

Update July - September

Catchy title, right?  I know... I do what I can. So I haven't actually posted anything but five-minute Friday posts since July (!) so there is a lot of ground to cover!  So a summary will have to suffice.
July: Everyone in the big house was gone for Canadian Jamboree (big Scout to-do out West) and David and I ran the farm.  We dealt with a pneumonia outbreak among the crias and lived to tell about it!  Though the learning curve was steep for both of us.

This was one of our sick crias - he's healthy and rambunctious now!

August: David and I built a changing table for Bean. We also celebrated our first wedding anniversary and David left to return to school in Iowa for the year.

The unpainted finished change table

Celebrating our anniversary at the Lego store

Waving good-bye at the train station as David left to go back to school

September: Mom and I went to an alpaca seminar in Ohio and learned how to assist alpacas in difficult births.  Later in the month we went to a wedding in Iowa and got to visit David and other friends!

Alpaca course - learning to deliver difficult crias

Wedding in Iowa

David-Monkey waking up David-Human 

Sad good-byes (notice the growing belly!)

Visiting Summer

Visiting Chelsea Bell

Paying a surprise visit to Kathy

Visiting with Talia

And that's all for this post.  Hopefully I'll get October's update up soon...No promises though.   Facebook, of course, has more pictures!

Five Minute Friday: Tree

This blog has fallen on the wayside...far too long without a post.  I'll try and get a post up in the next few days and let you all (if anyone actually reads this) know what's been going on.  However, it is Friday, and I'm sitting at the computer, so I'm going to participate in Five-Minute Friday.  You can join the party here. This week's prompt is "Tree"

Start:
When I hear the word tree I think of two things - first I think of the plant that grows in abundance around our house... tall, straight, pointing to the sky, fallen down, dead, chopped for firewood, covered in leaves, bare, sticky with pine sap...  And then I think of the other kind of tree.  The family tree.  Family trees have always been important to my family, on both sides.  Family trees tell us where we came from, who we came from, what our history is, and how we are connected in this world.  But what they don't tell us is our future.  A family tree only looks back - it cannot look forward.
However a plant-tree can look both forward and backward.  If it were sentient, it could look back and remember what it was like to be a sapling, a slender shoot coming up from the ground.  And it could look forward to what it will be - big and strong, growing both in height and diameter and weather, space and time allow.  For a tree, there is only one path it can take, and that is the path of all trees.  It will continue to grow, grow, and grow some more.
Our family trees are different.  We can look back but not forward.  We have the whole world in front of us and can grow to be whatever it is that we want to be.  There is no set path for us.  We can be astronauts or doctors or mothers....

Stop.

Five Minute Friday: True

I've been absent the last few weeks...Number of reasons why, none of them terribly important and most only semi-valid, except for the one Friday when my wrist/hand were so flared up I couldn't type. Pregnancy-induced carpal tunnel syndrome decided to show its head as I entered the third trimester.  A reduction in the amount of typing I do and splinting have helped immensely.
So this week's prompt for Five-Minute-Friday from Lisa-Jo Baker is:  True. So here comes five minutes of unscripted writing...

Start:
True.  It sounds simple.  Four letters.  On the surface it's what everyone wants - the truth.  Openness, honesty, transparency, true-ness.  But how often do we actually get a glimpse of what is true, what hides behind the facade that we all put up?   I wonder why we throw that mask up, the one that hides the true-ness so easily.  Is it because we are afraid to be confronted by the deepest realms of ourselves?  Or is it because we are afraid that others won't be able to handle it if they new the true-ness of what goes on inside our heads and behind our masks?  
The thought of baring my soul, of sharing the bald true-ness of my life, my experiences, my opinions, my secrets, is terrifying.  What would people think?  What would people whisper behind my back?  Would people see it as a plea for attention?  An attempt to draw pity or sympathy towards myself?  Or would they be able to see it simply for what it was/is - the truth?
Stop. 

No picture this week.  I'm tired.  It's time to call David and leave him a video message with tonight's devotions and crawl into my bed.

Five Minute Friday: Worship

So, for the last couple of weeks I've put off writing for Five-Minute-Friday until the evening and by then I'm too tired or too busy to make a proper post, so it doesn't happen.  This week I decided to bite the bullet and do it now, while I'm awake and not currently occupied.  I've got lunch in my belly and Bean is not currently demanding that I go to the bathroom.  So here goes, this week's word is "worship"

Start:

Worship.  What comes to mind is not just being in a worship service with other believers, though that certainly is a form of worship I often engage in, but it's so much more than that.  It's what happens when I look up at the stars on a clear night on the farm and wonder in amazement at the details there.  It's what happens when I'm in outside in a beautiful countryside or out on a lake and see the life around me.  It's what happens when I pick up a new cria and and note the perfection with which it was made.  It's what happens every time (or at least often) when I feel Bean kicking in my stomach or hear the heartbeat at the midwife.  Those times and many others fill me with the desire to worship the Creator and Author of life.
Worship is also being in church or at camp and signing and singing songs and lifting praises towards the heaven, but it's also so much more.
Sometimes worship becomes corrupted and I begin to worship the wrong things.  I worship ideals.  I worship things.  I worship my image - both physical and otherwise.  I worship other people.   When I worship the wrong things I'm not singing praises to them in song, I don't pray to them, but I do put an improper emphasis on them and devote too much of my time to them....

Stop.