Do your children need Early Intervention?

When you become a parent for the first time (especially the first time, or really anytime) you want your child to be perfect, healthy and strong.

However, sometimes, no matter how hard you try, things don’t always go your way.

This is where Early Intervention can help you and your child.

Early Intervention is a place that is run by the State of Massachusetts and will help your child who is not developing normally (or if you think is not developing normally, do get an evaluation) to learn in different ways.

The place I have personal experience with is in Stoneham, MA and they were fabulous with my son (now age 5) who is on the mild autism spectrum with PPD.

It is difficult to hear from someone you don’t know that well to let you know that your child has autism or has issues.  But, sometimes these issues can be obvious to someone else even though you are with your child more than 80% of the time (for those of us working full time, it seems less than that).

A lot of parents that have twins tell me that they also have been part (or were part of) Early Intervention as well.  My suggestion is to do this earlier than later, as the latest age they will take a child is age 2.9 years of age.  As soon as that child reaches 3 years old, they are too “old” to be in Early Intervention.  Of course, this means that you should talk with your pediatrician about it, discuss it with them in full, and do your homework.

There is a lot more that can help these special children out and I feel good about promoting them since they really helped my son out for the better.

Treadmills for Kids?!

We saw this product, the “Fitness Fun - My Treadmill” by International Playthings, when we stopped by Magic Beans in Brookline on Saturday.  I asked my three-year-old to try it out for fun, but he wasn’t too interested in it.   It looks like we are not the only people whose eye it caught: there’s an article up on boston.com about the trend of selling fitness equipment to children.  Did you ever see this?  It’s the Fisher Price Smart Cyle, which allows kids to play a video game only when their little legs are pumping away.

What do you think about these products?  Personally, I think they are things that optimistic parents and grand-parents might buy their kids, but will be left to collect dust in favor of other (more passive) entertainment.  Can you imagine telling your kids: “No TV until you spend 5 minutes on the treadmill!!”

I bought my son Dora pull-ups…

and then, a few days later, I exchanged them for Diego.  When I was in the diaper aisle of Target, with my son singing the Dora theme song next to me, I was overcome with frustration on how characters and gender-roles are forced onto our kids. And so I proudly put Dora into my cart.  Because of a particular promotion they were having, I grabbed a box of Diego too and headed for the checkout lines.  Unfortunately, I grabbed a box that was two sizes too large, and when I went back for the exchange, I traded Dora and too-big Diego for two boxes of just-right Diego.  My husband wasn’t pleased with the pink, and I honestly didn’t think I could send my son to daycare in pink plastic undies.

First of all, I hate the idea of disposable training pants.  Last year, when my son was but one and a half years old, I sent the following note to the NSP mailing list:

Nowadays they are selling disposable training pants that change color or get cold when a child has wet themselves….  because the disposable training pants absorb the wetness so well that the kids don’t realize what has just happened.   Personally, I think that wet cloth diapers/training pants send the same signal!

I plan on using cloth training pants when my son Evan is ready for toilet training.  Evan is 21 months old, and as much as I would LOVE for it to happen now, he’s not showing the signs of being ready.  At the pace we’re going now, I don’t think it’s going to happen until he’s at least 2 1/4 years old.

So, with the best intentions, I got a few thick cloth training pants, hoping my son would “get the message” and decide on his own to keep them clean.  And there was a lot of encouragement from myself and his father, which turned into power struggles and stubborness and the actual request to wear diapers because it was so much easier for him.   I never made the complete switch to cloth– disposable was so much more convenient.

I’m done buying diapers, and I don’t like pull-ups, but for the time being, I’m stuck with them.

DD Saturation in Vinnen Square

I’m on the second day of a caffeinne-detox.  So my senses are at a heightened sense of alert… I immediately saw the pink and orange sign in the Staples shopping center in Vinnen Square.  The first thought in my head was “isn’t it odd for the Dunkin’ Donuts across the street to have their sign in this center parking lot.”  My second thought was, “oh no, they didn’t just put a Dunkin’ Donuts directly across the street from an existing one.”

But there is was– a tiny new Dunkin’ Donuts nestled among the stores in the strip mall.  I couldn’t believe it, as the large DD across the street is always bustling with customers.  And my son always looks for the man who sells newspapers in the doorway.  He’s nice– he holds the door open for us.

I’ve seen this all over the place in New England.  And the problem exists with Starbucks in our urban centers.  Does each new proprietor hope they can steal customers from their neighborhood competition?   They better be some nice smiles behind the counter! If they build it, they will drink it…. I suppose.

What other “saturation” centers are there on the North Shore?

Parenting in a Culture

[Note: This article was originally posted on my personal blog on January 26th, 2008.  I've kept this book nearby and have re-read sections, always enjoying the unique perspective within the pages.  So, I thought I would share it with you!]

I’ve just finished reading a fascinating book, called Our Babies, Ourselves, wherein the author introduces us to a new science called “ethnopediatrics.” Blending pediatrics, evolutionary biology and anthropology, Meredith F. Small, compares parenting styles across cultures, comparing and contrasting with little judgment, in the best style of anthropology. This means that Americans don’t get a free pass as having the best parenting practices, but they are put into a context as compared to other cultures.

Dr. Small introduces us to the idea of the parent-child dyad, the two-way partnership that arises because children are born completely dependent upon a caregiver. The child’s job, in this dyad, is to communicate to the parent in whichever way possible, and the parent’s job is to respond. Continue reading »

A division of labor?

Have you heard about this recent story in the New York Times Magazine: When Mom and Dad Share It All.

My friend Jennifer wrote a lovely commentary which she entitled Do Lesbians Do It Better? The author of the NYT article states that it is often easier for gay and lesbian parents to strike the best balance between housework and child-rearing because by default they are free of the “traditional” husband-wife dynamic.

I love this quote from page 8 regarding the teeter-totter act between heterosexual partners:

That settled, they moved on to the details of housework. Like Jo Pannabecker, Amy feels happier and more centered when her house is clean enough for unexpected company. Marc thinks fretting about cleaning is “an undue burden.” In many homes, as in the Pannabecker home, the result would be that the wife cleaned to her standards. But in an equally shared home, what is the solution? That he clean to her standards? That she lower her own?

Each question led to another. How often should the dishes be done? What constitutes “doing the laundry”: Washing it? Folding it? Putting it away in the drawer? How often do we need to vacuum, mow the lawn or dust the shelves? Does the litterbox need to be scooped every day or is once a week acceptable?

Yes…. this is what we all deal with. *sigh*

Go visit Jennifer and her cadre over at Parents2Parents and tell her I sent you!

The rise of food allergies

Yesterday, I heard an interesting report on NPR’s Fresh Air regarding the increasing incidence of food allergies. (In fact, I was lucky enough to hear the report twice, as I was driving in my car at 9:50 pm last night, on my way home from singing rehearsal.)  Terry Gross interviewed Dr. Hugh Sampson; a respected researcher who has just been elected president of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology.  He has very interesting things to say about his research, including the investigation of traditional Chinese herbal medicine which seems to completely eliminate allergic reactions to food in both the Chinese population and his test subjects. Another fact is that in America, peanuts are prepared by roasting rather than boiling, which may change the chemical structure of the food to make it more allergenic.  And of course, he mentions the hygene hypothesis, the idea that we clean our house so well and give ourselves so many antibiotics that our bodies don’t know how to deal with the benign pathogens encountered in daily life.  Not very much science can be discussed in a 10-minute interview, but it was certainly interesting to hear about current research in the field.

Neither my husband nor I suffer from food allergies, but I have noticed that my son develops a rash and throws up when he encounters a food containing peanuts.  This might have happened three or four times while he was between 8 months and 2 years old.  Here is a picture of the two of us at a friend’s party.  You can see his rashy face and the spot when I had to clean the spit-up off his sweatshirt.  Of course, you can also see his great balancing skills!

According to the Dr. Sears website, Evan might have a sensitivity to peanuts.  Well, I don’t know what to do with that news.  Obviously, I avoid peanuts now, but I am wondering if I should expose him to small quantities in order to build up a resistance to the allergen.  It seems a pretty minor issue, so I’ve been planning on bringing it up when I visit the pediatrician, but we haven’t had to see them since Evan’s 2 year check-up.  Perhaps we will find ourselves at a specialist being tested for allergies…

Is there any advice that you, the readers of this website, can give to me regarding this issue?  Are there any BS and drug-company free sources of information on the internet?  Where should I be looking for a solution to my son’s potential food allergies?

Commuting into Boston

As gas prices climb higher and higher I’ve been thinking about ways to drive less. Because, after all, if demand is reduced the money-hungry energy industry will have to reduce their prices… right, Robert Reich??

I commute into Boston and over the years I’ve switched between driving and taking the commuter rail. There are certainly pros and cons to both means of transportation: I love relaxing on the train, yet I hate waiting at North Station when, yet again, I’ve missed my train by one minute.

The last time I regularly took the train Continue reading »