On Becoming a Domestic and Laboratory Goddess

How many extracurricular activities are appropriate for a child? And what about the science?

Yoga?  Play Gym?  Baseball?  Football? Swimming? Basketball?  How much is too much for your little one?  Dodi at Practicing Parents gives us some guidelines.  Dodi ponders:

Parents have been led to believe that they can somehow programme their children for success if only they do all the right things. It starts even before they are born, when pregnant women are warned of dire consequences if they don't eat the right foods. Then they are told that playing a baby Mozart could speed its development, so they play Mozart and it just goes on from there. It's a  very fascistic, winner-takes-all view of society and it's making a lot of parents - and children - very unhappy.

 

Here's the thing; at what stage does a kid get to be... well, just a kid? And what kind of values are we instilling in our children when we push the idea of "staying ahead of the game" in this way. Personally, that kind of schedule would leave me exhausted and stressed.

Detention Slip ponders the economic realities of these extracurricular activities, reporting that some schools are asking to bear the entire cost of sports participation commentary, including:

Too bad, because some poor kids are pretty good athletes.

Too bad, indeed.  As an aside, you might probe this site a little further.  There's some hilarious stuff in there including use of the term "trick bitch" -- a term I had not heard in easily 10 years.

Blake of the SkepDad blog pulls out his inner scientist to offer us an activity and make sure it is meaningful for our children. Astronaut Blake writes:

The Thing to Do...

I'm writing this post on the fortieth anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, so needless to say "space" has been in the news a lot recently. And as I kick off this new series of posts about "things to do" before kids become teenagers, I thought it timely to start right in the middle of my list with something related to that particular anniversary. Why? Because, oddly enough, forty years after our species first stepped foot on that chunk of rock orbiting our home planet the idea of space and space travel seems to have become almost commonplace. I don't dare suggest that we take it for granted, but rarely a day goes by when we are not somehow -- mundanely -- connected with the benefits of that work: satellites relaying signals and images, a global network for communications, or global location tools.

Space travel is one of the milestones of human science, engineering, and progress, and I think every kid should get at least a quick glimpse of that before they become a teenager.

Speaking of science, here is a fantastic post from Podblack on integrating science into  education.  Podblack also touches on the special needs of abused children.  The post is chock-full of interesting links and YouTube interviews for your surfing pleasure.

The health and well-being of our children

As a mother there are a lot of places offering advice on how to care for your sick child and sometimes the many voices can be confusing, or just plain ridiculous.

PopTart of Motherhood Metamorphosis, a mother of a child on the autism spectrum, reviews Defying Autism: A Miraculous Story Of Hope by Karen Mayer Cunningham . Rather than quote Pop's (can we call her Pop?) review, which is lengthy, I'm going to quote a portion of page 111 of the book that I know will be of special interest to readers of this blog.  Mayer Cunningham writes:

Not every autistic child is demonically possessed, but autism is a curse. In that sense, it must be seen as an oppressive and tormenting force that must be faced with more than just the standard social service tools. The enemy of God wants the people of God ignorant and in despair; this is the ultimate curse. But the Father is in the curse-busting business, and so whether He leads us to phenomenally gifted physicians and clinicians, or to alternative therapies, or to those who know how to address spiritual matters in the power of the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ of Nazareth, He wants us to be free. He wants our children to be free.

I'd encourage you to go read Motherhood Metamorphosis for the review.

Recent FDA recommendations on the use of over the counter cold remedies have left a lot of mothers wondering how to comfort children with cold and flu symptoms.  Holly of Women's Tribune offers suggestions of some herbal products, but unlike some of my fellow bloggers I remain generally skeptical of non-FDA approved "herbal" remedies.  I do like her tea recipe though.  It reminds me of something Abuela Isis made when I had the flu.  That is definitely worth checking out.

On being "the right kind" of mother...

This post from Jo-Lynne of Parenting Squad echoes a lot of what I have been feeling these last several months.  Try as I might, I often feel as though I am a subpar mother.  She also reminded me that sometimes our expectations of ourselves are not realistic.  She writes:

But I'm not.  I'm perpetually late.  I'm often still in my pajamas at lunchtime.  I rant, I rave.  I lose my temper.  I tend to speak harshly and often have to retract my words and apologize for my tone.  Sarcasm is my love language.
 
I'm working on it.  I get it right sometimes, but more often than not I'm left wishing I could be a kinder, gentler mom.  And yet, my kids know they are loved.  I cuddle, I nuzzle, I tickle, I tell them I love them about 50 times a day.  Hopefully that's enough.

I really enjoyed this post from Emma at Baby-Log.  Emma writes that when she was pregnant, she didn't share the news with people until she was six months along.  Why?  Emma writes:

I[I was] opposed to letting my pregnancy become the center of my conversations with everybody. I didn't find it fascinating or even interesting to discuss what colors will I pick for the nursery and what brand of bottles will I be using.

I was reluctant to discussing my future plans because quite honestly I didn't have them - how can you plan in the land of Unknown, having a baby for the very first time?

Part of me thinks that Emma had the right idea.  While I certainly enjoyed sharing certain aspects of my pregnancy with my friends and family, I will never purge the image of my coworker using her hands to demonstrate to a 9 months pregnant Isis just how big the human vagina can stretch.

Family turmoil

CassyLynn at To Have and Have Not is having a hard time getting on board with her children's music.

I admit it: I barely know what my pre-teen son is listening to these days. I try to be a good parent and keep up, but there are a couple of forces working against me. For starters, I can no longer understand all the words to the songs. This hearing disability began about the time I turned 30 years old. My son says that it is the beginning stages of "oldness." I've explained to him that when I was a kid, our favorite bands, like Guns 'N Roses and Jon Bon Jovi, sang with a lot more clarity than the bands today. Yeah, I don't buy it either, but it sounds good when I say it.

GeekMBA tells us about how his childhood relationship with his parents influenced his career path, reminding us all of our innate potential to fuck up our children.  He writes:

What I learned is that your relationship with your parents will have a lot to do with your career success. You cannot run away from the problems with your parents. You somehow have to reach peace with yourself, and address the problems. Otherwise, the problems with your parents will come back you to haunt you some point during your career.

The post on Family and Parenting offers brief advice on how to have family discussions.  I found this post intriguing.  I suppose before I got married and had a child I thought that serious family discussions would just sort of happen.  It takes effort to productively discuss the things that are affecting the happiness of the family  To begin:

The average family is scared to death of certain conversations. Not only are the children blush-till-I'm-beet-red-embarrassed about certain topics, but the parents aren't any less embarrassed about it.

As children age from innocence to teenage years the importance of these topics sky-rockets. The availability of time goes down and the average must-have conversations are not mentioned until they are four or five years past due. Eventually a lack of conversation will take it's worst toll on the level of trust and honest communication that take's place within the family unit.

Finally, over on Personal Web Guide is a post on dealing with resentment.  I resent them for posting it.

That's it from me, little chickens.  Before I leave you to click around until your heart's content, Blake asked me to let you know that the August edition of Skeptical Parents needs a host.  If you're interested (Minerva?), shoot Blake an email at domesticfather at gmail dot com

XOXOXOX,

Isis the Scientist