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Christmas Shopping at Ikea

admin — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 05:13:21 +0000

There are dangers in getting all of your Christmas shopping done in one morning. First, you’ll hear ridicule from all your male friends who prefer the sport and tradition of rushing around on Christmas Eve. Second, you really won’t be done. There will always be some extra things you’ll just have to get as the clock counts down to the 25th.

To say ‘we’re done’ when it comes to buying gifts for Zacharie would be a lie, but we’ve got the big things out of the way and we did it all in one morning at Ikea.

Here’s what my son will find under the tree this year:

Duktig mini kitchen – the boy loves to cook
Lillabo train set – same gauge as the popular tv show model, way way way cheaper
assorted Titta puppets and hats (not on the website)

Even if your kid’s not in to kitchen stuff, a visit to the children’s section of Ikea is a good idea to check out their revolving tickle trunk of puppets and plush toys. We’ve been buying every puppet we can since Zacharie was born. They don’t last long in the stores, the quality is excellent and they’re really fun to play with. Just now, at 2 1/2 is Zacharie starting to appreciate creating his own character voices for the dozen puppets we’ve picked up.

New in the Ikea play section this year are hats. Brilliant, fun hats. Potted plants, fruit bowls, flowers, jesters, planes, birthday cakes and more. All for just $5, like the puppets.

Even if you have an infant, stock the tickle trunk while you can. And if you’re really on the ball, you can just put them away and save them for their 3rd birthday or Christmas.

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Toddler 101: Temper Tantrums

admin — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 05:13:20 +0000

These are notes taken from Toddler 101, a program presented by our daycare where Gillian Ashley-Martz, a Registered Clinical Counsellor, a mother of two and Certified Canadian Family Educator who has been working with families for over ten years taught new parents how to get through the early years.

The part of the presentation that had parents scrambling to take notes and leaning forward paying attention was a 7 step process in conflict resolution.

HOW TO DEAL WITH TEMPER TANTRUMS

1. press PAUSE button
(take a deep breath and gather yourself, don’t get sucked in to the situation)
2. REMIND myself that the only person I can control is me
(look back at the toddler’s job description: they’re just doing their job by challenging boundaries)
3. REFRAME how I think affects how I feel which affects how I react
(you get back what you put into it)
4. CONTROL the SITUATION not the child
(the key is to stay neutral and calm – dont step into the drama. Remove the object of frustration and remove yourself if you’re losing it)
5. DONT GIVE IN and do follow through with consequences. Be CONSISTENT
(reinforce that you mean what you say)
6. REGROUP help them restore equilibrium to REASSURE them that they will learn self control
7. ROLE MODEL self control and how to handle powerful negative feelings

The key to remember is that the toddler is looking for attention and testing boundaries to assert their independence. When you see them do something right, express how it makes you feel. Ask them how it makes them feel. Once kids have a label, they will live up or down to that label, between 0 and 6 they’re constantly developing beliefs about themselves.

So make it a positive belief and make it often. It takes 10 positives to delete 1 negative.

Here is a final thought I put out on Twitter the night of the seminar: Honestly? parenting seminars just cause us to overthink things. we were BORN to have kids. it shouldnt be hard. #toddler101

If you’re really struggling and can’t find resolution, then maybe there’s some Dr Phil styled advice in this Toddler 101 series, but really – if you’re a rational and smart person, you’re going to be a good parent. Really, you’ll be fine.

Photo on Flickr by Citril

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DadCAMP3 On The Big Screen

admin — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 05:13:19 +0000

It was Hockey Night at DadCAMP last night as the boys got together for a little hockey action at the Rink on Renfrew.

DadCAMP is all about Dads getting together and meeting other Dads and enjoying some of the best days ever with our kids. This one didn’t disappoint.

We snagged seats on the aisle next to where the Zamboni comes out on the ice – Zambonis are the tractors of hockey, a sure fire hit with boys. Our seats were right in the front up against the glass and behind the net meaning we got a great view of the action and lots of banging hits right in our face.

Throw in some popcorn, a couple of appearances on the big screen and a great time was had by all. It was kind of like a baseball game, the score and game didn’t matter, it was all about being with friends. The Giants lost 5-0. Didn’t matter. We were at DadCAMP enjoying another best day ever.

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Today Is World Diabetes Day

admin — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 05:13:17 +0000

Today is World Diabetes Day.

Type 1 Diabetes is the type that usually affects kids. There’s nothing you can do to stop that switch from being flicked one day. You’re born with it.

My friend, Kerri Morrone Sparling’s blog is called Six Until Me. She discovered she had Type 1 Diabetes when she was 6 years old. She talks about the challenges of living with diabetes, how she manages her daily life, and how she’s finding community online.

Dr Brian Rodrigues is a researcher at UBC. He does a great job explaining what Sir Frederick Banting did with the discovery of insulin and how his research is helping people live longer lives with diabetes.

Sandy Struss is a motivational speaker and has been living with Type 1 Diabetes since she was 17. She tells us of the day she was diagnosed and how having an insulin pump gives her hope.

These are interviews I aired last year when I was a radio host at 95Crave in Vancouver. Not being on the air this year, I’m using the web to shine a light on diabetes and this World Diabetes Day.

Do me a favour, listen to the interviews, become aware and help me in my fundraising for Team Diabetes so that headway can be made in diabetes research before the switch is flicked on us or our children.

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Toddler 101: The Job Description

admin — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 05:13:16 +0000

These are notes taken from Toddler 101, a program presented by our daycare where Gillian Ashley-Martz, a Registered Clinical Counsellor, a mother of two and Certified Canadian Family Educator who has been working with families for over ten years taught new parents how to get through the early years.

To better understand why toddlers do the things they do, Gillian presented “the toddler job description”

STRUGGLE FOR INDEPENDENCE FROM THE PARENT AND SELF MASTERY
Toddlers are still trying to develop from the dependence they needed as an infant to the independence they feel as toddlers. It’s a slow resolving conflict since they havent fully developed a sense of self and that they are separate people. Toddlers still believe everything is part of them, so they cant give anything up -
they dont know it any other way.

Just think of how they express themselves: they NEED the blanket. They NEED their soother. They NEED to have their favourite pjs on.

Toddlers want to have their parents around, but dont like the fact they want/need you so they push away, then they dont like you away, so they pull you back.

It’s all about a fear of separation trying to balance with drive for autonomy. Gillian compared what toddlers go through as to what teenagers try to balance when searching for independence.

PARENTAL WILL VS CHILD’S COUNTERWILL
Children learn who they are by resisting parental will and asserting their own. It’s a natural way to find their own personal boundaries and abilities. When we feel someone else trying to take control, we will assert our own control, even if we know that the controlling will is right.

Toddlers don’t say no to resist you, they do it to create space to figure out who they are as a separate entity. Toddlers will resist any idea or thought that didn’t first occur in their own mind

TODDLERS WANT TO DO EVERYTHING FOR THEMSELVES TO DEVELOP SENSE OF SELF MASTERY
While toddlers want to do things on their own, they still lack the cognitive skills to do this effectively. The result is frustration and melt downs.

It’s important, then, for parents to seek out situations where the toddlers can succeed. The more we try to control the more they’re hardwired to resist, we end up feeling controlled by them

It becomes a perpetual circle. The more they try to control us, we try to control them and they become more defiant. These struggles mostly happen around food and toilet training.

Parents then need to step back and see how they’re reinforcing the behaviour. With food, for example, if you show over attention and worry about food and negative behaviour, you’re relinquishing control and you reinforce that behaviour.

Remember, the toddler is looking for situations where they’re successful, and if they’re successful at being rebellious – that’s the behaviour they’ll continue.

STRUGGLE TO BALANCE CONTROL OF PARENT WITH LEARNING SELF CONTROL
Babies are born with 100 billion brain cells and many of them are not connected. It’s the interaction with parents in the infant years that makes the map. So toddlers have a fully mapped out brain – their interaction with the environment wires the emotional part of the brain with the knowledge part.

As parents of toddlers, we need to be frontal lobes, showing them how to make decisions. This is an important developmental stage and requires parental behaviour modelling. Whatever you put out is what you will get back.

The toddler years are the key times to reinforce positive behaviours. If they get your attention behaving, that’s how they will continue to seek your attention.

Coming next in Toddler 101 is Part 3: The 7 steps to successfully avoid temper tantrums.

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Car Seat 101: Research Tools

admin — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 05:13:15 +0000

There are many resources for car seat research online, my friend Karen Hamilton (@tinybites) has been kind enough to pass along the tools she’s discovered as she preps for baby #1 in the new year (right around the same time we’ll be escorting Chuck in to the world).

Infant or Convertible

The first thing to choose is something we’ve tackled before in Car Seat 101: do you want a convertible car seat or an infant only to bring your bundle home from the hospital?

Karen is going with the latter.

“Definitely going with an infant carrier based on what practically every car seat rep has said about convertibles – they’re often too large at shoulder height to accommodate a newborn even if your baby meets the weight requirement,” she said.

The decision is tough for some since infant seats are used only for the first few months when your infant is unable to support their head.

Buy New vs Buy Used vs Rent

“Still haven’t decided whether we’re buying or renting. If we buy, we’re buying new and buying an infant carrier with a higher upper weight limit, like the Peg Perego,” she says. “We have plans for a second child in a few years so for us it’s worth it to have something we can re-use. Peg Perego is on our shortlist because of its fit with the B.O.B. sports stroller that we have.”

When it comes to buying a used car seat, Karen echoes the warning I’ve heard from many professionals:

“The safety rating may have held back when it was purchased but what assurances would you have that nothing major happened to the car seat since it left the store?”

We were lucky that we were able to borrow an infant seat from a friend when Zacharie was born. Unfortunately the seat has since expired. (The plastic does have a shelf life. The expiry date of your car seat will be clearly printed on the seat bottom.)

The rental option is not something I was not familiar with, and Karen explained that some hospitals used to rent them back in the day, so it might be worth checking at the hospital you’re delivering with.

Karen added a PS:

“Also found an article about the Mico infant car seat, which is undergoing a safety review by Transport Canada. It’s sold under several brands so you may want to share this article with DadCAMP readers.”

What research resources have been helpful for you in picking a car seat and deciding between infant and convertible?

Flickr photo from Joe Shlabotnik

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Lest We Forget

admin — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 05:13:14 +0000

Today is Remembrance Day.

Canadians are reminded of the impact of the day each time we spend $10. The poem, In Flanders Fields, is printed on the back of the bill. There are millions of quarters emblazoned with poppies to help remind us that this day is about sacrifice.

My grandfather (above) was a member of the Merchant Marines in WWII. He escorted ships between Halifax, and New York.

My great-grandfather (right) served in the Middle East in WWI and was part of the liberation forces that rolled through Jerusalem in 1917. There’s a famous photo in our family of him in uniform at the base of the Sphynx in Egypt.

Both of them survived their tours in the military, but so many young men and women didn’t. Too many never to experience the joys of fatherhood and the thrills of being a dad.

Without great-granddads and granddads there couldn’t be dads or sons.

Thank you Grumps and Pop for taking the risk then so that I may enjoy today. It’s the best day ever.

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Got Kids? There’s An App For Them

admin — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 05:13:13 +0000

The iTunes Store stocked the shelves with its 100 000th app this past week and while there are dozens of apps related to bodily functions that amaze and amuse your kids, there’s a long list that will help them learn and kill time in a checkout line at the same time.

Along with the update to iTunes that better help you sort apps on your iPhone (making it easier to create an entire page dedicated to your kids) came updates to the store to better help find what you’re looking for. If you’ve got kids, the App Store Essential Apps for Toddlers page would be a great starting point. [link opens iTunes]

While watching tv may be nasty for your kids’ development, handing them a smart phone (even as young as 3) could make them smart.

Here’s a video report from the Boston Globe:

If you’re worried about your toddler dropping your iPhone or randomly making calls, picking them up an iPod Touch for Christmas might be a (luxurious) alternative.

Because the iPhone is perfectly sized for little fingers and is operated using colorful icons and an intuitive touch screen rather than a mouse or keyboard, the preliterate preschooler has no trouble making it his own. Before long, he’ll be swiping across the screen with the confidence of a college kid in a coffee shop, leaping from app to app. And he’ll be completely engrossed.
[Boston Globe]

An iPod for a toddler?

It’s not as ridiculous as it first sounds as the apps above are only the tip of the iTunes iceberg, there are hundreds more apps for kids.

What are your favourite iPhone apps for kids?

Photo from Flickr by abbybatchelder

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Toddler 101: Living In The Moment

admin — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 05:13:12 +0000

Despite all the recession and budget talk that dominates the news, our local community centre was able to secure funding to hold a series of parenting seminars. Toddler 101 was first on the program and I took some (lots) of notes.

The evening was presented by Gillian Ashley-Martz, a Registered Clinical Counsellor, a mother of two and Certified Canadian Family Educator who has been working with families for over ten years.

A few dads were dragged to the class, but it was mostly moms and I was definitely the only one liveblogging it on Twitter.

The program started with a brainstorm of words to describe toddlers.

irrational, short fuse, demanding, manipulative, selfish, whiny, sensitive, strong willed, testing, stubborn, loud, serious, impatient, persistent

Those were the first ones tossed out by the moms, til I joked that I was “sensing a trend.” The tide turned, we remembered these are OUR kids we were talking about and a few glowing words were added.

silly, loving, smart, funny, energetic, curious

Still, you get the idea: life with toddlers can be a battle and this class was going to try and explain why it’s a battle and how the whole family can come out winners.

After the brainstorm, Gillian explained to us that our “toddlers live in the moment. They dont have the ability to see into the future and realize what’s going to happen, so they are obsessed with the moment and the present.”

This “in the moment” behaviour causes a struggle as the toddler relies on instinctive behaviour instead of thinking things through. Parents are, on average, pulled in to a power struggle of some kind with their toddler every 20 minutes.

Gillian reminded us that “never again will you see such a passionate child. They havent developed any defenses around their emotions. It’s all they’re about. What they feel, is what you see.”

Coming soon .. Part 2 of Toddler 101: the toddler job description.

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Raising Free-Thinking Kids

admin — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 05:13:11 +0000

Back in the mid-1970s when I grew up in Vancouver, almost all the stores were closed on Sundays, because of a piece of legislation called the Lord’s Day Act. Every day before class in elementary school, we said the Lord’s Prayer. These were vestiges of a general assumption, made since British Columbia was colonized a century earlier: even if everyone in B.C. wasn’t Christian, the province would still run as if they were.

But Metro Vancouver has become remarkably secular in the three decades since then. In the 2001 Census, 40% of the population identified itself as having “no religious affiliation,” and the proportion is probably even bigger now. (That’s two and a half times the average across Canada.) My wife and I fit the trend: we have raised our two daughters, ages 9 and 11, in a non-religious household. Like us, few of our friends attend a mosque, temple, or church.

Buzz asked me to write this post because he saw that I just joined the Facebook group for Parenting Beyond Belief, a website run by Dale McGowan from Atlanta, Georgia. I signed up not because I needed much advice about raising children without religion (something many of us now do, especially in Vancouver), but to note publicly that it’s been the approach in my family since our kids were born.

Changing times

Until the 1970s, fewer than 1% of Canadians declared no religious affiliation—but it’s likely that social pressure simply kept the number of families who admitted no religion much smaller than the number who actually lacked it. As the numbers of non-religious have grown, so has our comfort with saying so.

Still, while non-religious families are common in Metro Vancouver today, that’s a relatively new development, one that mirrors the growing diversity of religious and non-religious philosophies among our region’s families:

In Surrey, for instance, there are more Sikhs than Catholics.
In Richmond, more Buddhists than Anglicans.
Celebrations of Diwali, Ramadan, and the Lunar New Year—not to mention the ubiquitous car flags if the Canucks reach the playoffs—overshadow what, decades ago, would have been far higher-profile Christian events, such as Easter or Lent.
The Christmas season has (for better and worse) become a catch-all celebration, encompassing not only the Christian holiday, but also the winter solstice, various other cultural and spiritual traditions, and a lot of shopping.

Yet raising children without religion is still something few people talk about. I think that is, in part, because many of us who do it don’t have a particular approach or philosophy about it. Non-religious families are unlikely to be militant atheists. Instead, here are some things we don’t do:

Pray.
Belong to churches, mosques, or temples.
Study religious texts.
Observe holidays as religious events.

…and so on. Indeed, we may dip in and out of the religious parts of society at our convenience. Just as I went to Sunday School as a child without it having much impact on my thinking about the world, my daughters attended a local preschool run by a church. There they not only played and learned to share, but heard Bible stories and said grace—along with other children whose families held a wide varieties of beliefs and non-beliefs.

By the time they were in a church-run after-school care program, our girls began to find the prayers a little annoying, which was one reason that, once they got older, they asked not to go anymore. Decades earlier, I’d become bored of Sunday School too, and decided it wasn’t for me. I haven’t been to a church service in many years.

Thinking critically

We’re not a dogmatic family, but when my kids ask me what I believe, I answer honestly. That is, I’m an atheist, and I see no reason to believe in gods, demons, or spirits of any kind. I also have cancer, so talk of death is unavoidable. They know that I expect no afterlife once I die—that anything that remains of me will be in their memories. More importantly, they know that doesn’t scare me.

That raises a key point. My wife and I have tried to raise our daughters to think critically and reasonably. We didn’t restrict their television viewing much, but one of the first things we taught them is that every commercial is trying to sell you something. We want them to extend that awareness to the rest of the world too.

People—including me—make all sorts of claims, but I hope my daughters learn to evaluate those claims on their merits, and on the evidence. Many claims in politics, business, religion, or even love might be unjustified, or might hide an agenda, just like TV commercials.

Of course my daughters are different from me, and they might develop or adopt spiritual beliefs as they grow up. I want them to make decisions about how they view themselves in the universe, rather than having a viewpoint imposed on them. I hope they do so as free-thinking individuals, with as much knowledge as they can accumulate. And I want them to understand why I’ve come to hold the views I have.

I joined the Facebook group in part to raise my hand and say, again, “Yes, good people can raise good kids without religion.” And I also wanted to support Dale McGowan’s attempts to communicate that message, without being malicious or offensive, to the many religious and spiritual people with whom we godless parents share the world every day.

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