Things you learn in the bathroom with a 3 year old: the little ones are called “poop crumbs.”
Oy vey!
June 28, 2007
June 27, 2007
Fathers beware: we’re watching you
A new campaign by the Virginia Department of Health to eradicate sexual abuse of children opened in the Hampton Roads area with billboards showing an image of a man holding a child’s hand, with the caption “It doesn’t feel right when I see them together.”
While the intentions behind this campaign are laudable, the effect may be to vilify men who are showing affection toward their children. In an age when we rightly lament the marginalization and/or absence of fathers, the use of this image in this campaign has the potential to strike another blow against healthy father/child relationships. When it comes to pedophiles, I’m of the belief that castration is a good start, and execution a good finish. But don’t take the sweet image of a man holding a child’s hand and use it to suggest something dirty. Be diligent, yes, but let’s not encourage a witch hunt.
This billboard makes me feel icky when I look at it. But that’s the idea, I guess.
More parental outsourcing: Buy a baby name
Modern parents have a wealth of options when it comes to hiring help in child rearing. Baby nurses to care for the child in the weeks after birth. “Sleep ladies” to figure out why the little darlings want to stay up all night. There’s even a hand-shaped pillow you can buy to fool your kid into thinking you are holding her. So this latest service, as reported by the Wall Street Journal, fits right in: Baby-naming consultants. The hundreds of baby name books and websites too much for you? Hire someone to cull the list down to a few names. For a few bucks more, maybe they’ll even make the pesky final decision for you.
June 25, 2007
Discipline for the Real World
If I were a kid, I wouldn’t want my parents to read this article. In fact, these statements sound a lot like the pat aphorisms my parents used on me. But maybe that’s the essence of parenting–giving your kid goofy absolutes and ultimatums. Twenty five years later, my sister and I remember mom’s edict that my sister was “never allowed to shoot another rubber band for the rest of your life!” Of course, it was said in response to Mom just having been hit in the eye by a rubber band. Doesn’t exactly bring out the philosopher in ya….
Secondhand smoke and babies
A new study from the UK confirms what most of us already understood: that second-hand smoke is bad for babies.
“Our findings clearly show that by accumulating cotinine, babies become heavy passive smokers secondary to the active smoking of parents,” Dr. Mike Wailoo of the University of Leicester and colleagues write in the Archives of Disease in Childhood.
“This is the first time we’ve got direct information on the effect of smoking in homes on babies,” Wailoo told Reuters Health. “It clarifies and I think it firms up information that we all thought we had.” He added that cotinine is just one of thousands of potentially harmful nicotine byproducts that can accumulate in infants’ bodies.
The American Cancer Society offers tips on quitting here.
June 20, 2007
June 8, 2007
Pet Peeve: Stop Calling Me!!!
“No, she is not here. No, she hasn’t worked here for over a year, and even when she did, this was not her extension. Yes, your representatives have called here every day for two weeks now and I keep telling them the same thing. Yes, I appreciate that you are sorry for the inconvenience but so was the person who called yesterday. No, I do not have her home phone number. I’m begging you, will you please take this number off her account and stop calling here?!”
If they were phoning my home number, I would just make up an outrageous story and have some fun with them. But since they are calling my office, I feel like I have to be polite and professional. Still, how do you stop what have become harassing phone calls at the office?
Daycare woes
I’ve been negligent about posting lately, but there has actually been a lot going on.
We suddenly lost our daycare spot for baby girl a couple weeks ago. She had been attending a center for about 2 months since I returned to work. One afternoon we arrived to pick her up and found out that the center was closing effective immediately and they weren’t sure if or when they would reopen. It seems they were over capacity for zoning, among other violations, which they had known for a couple months but never communicated to parents. They did reopen two days later but with a reduced roster and we didn’t make the cut. But after the way the situation was handled by the owners, we wouldn’t want to return there anyway. Communication was mostly non-existent, and they lied misled us about the situation when they did say something. After promising to call everyone, they only contacted the families who (by some arbitrary process) got to keep their spots; the rest of us didn’t even get the courtesy of a phone call. And it wasn’t just us as newbies who got the unceremonious boot: families who had sent multiple children there over the course of several years were also dropped without so much as a phone call. Unbelievably poor business practice. Unfortunately, given the shortage of child (particularly infant) care in the area, I suspect that they will still have no trouble filling spots and staying in business, despite their terrible treatment of their customers. As difficult as it was for all of us parents who had to scramble to make other arrangements, I feel worse for the older children who suddenly found out that they could no longer return and they wouldn’t see their friends and teachers again. No chance to say goodbye, no transition, nothing.
The upshot to all this for our family is that we were fortunate enough to find an in-home provider who had a spot open for baby girl. She’s gone there for two weeks now and it seems to be working out just fine. She’s in a mixed-age setting with one other infant and several older children, and seems to enjoy watching the antics of the older kids. One of the providers calls her a “steady-smilin’” girl and said she’s the easiest baby they’ve ever cared for. I’m grateful that we were able to make arrangements so quickly. Some of the families are still cobbling together care while they try to work out a long-term solution.
