Thank you mom

Procter & Gamble have this cool little campaign going to salute moms ahead of of the 2012 Olympics in London.

Inspiring stuff.

Have a look:

Tags: moms, olympics, procter & gamble, thank you mom

Pampers’ five-star panel

Press Release

Every parent wants to do what is best for their baby but there’s so much conflicting advice out there that it’s hard for  to know where to begin.

For this reason, Pampers has compiled a five-star panel of experts to identify how parents can best care for their little ones.

The Panel includes: Dr Mpofu (a dermatologist), Dr Hetan Hari (a paediatrician), Sister Lilian (a parenting expert), Leanne Manas (an award-winning TV presenter and mom) and Natasha Clark (a parenting blogger).

Sensory Alert – Dr Hetan Hari.

“Your little one’s sensory experiences shape the way in which his brain and nervous system grow and mature. Crawling, touching, smelling, seeing and hearing brings baby into contact with new sensory experiences that guide his development. By taking care of your baby’s skin, parents ensure that baby can explore his world without the distraction of discomfort.  An infant’s nervous system is more sensitive to touch than an adult’s, which means they experience most stimuli more intensely and every experience feels ‘larger than life’. The skin of a newborn differs from that of an adult or older child because it is thinner and more permeable, making it particularly susceptible to extrinsic factors such as dampness. As a result, discomfort in the nappy area can be quite an unpleasant and distressing experience for baby. Therefore a baby’s skin and sensory state requires extra special consideration, especially in the first few years.”

Sensitivity Zones – Dr. Mpofu

“Baby’s delicate skin is extremely vulnerable and as a result, nappy dermatitis occurs in 20% of children under the age of two. The good news is that it can be prevented by protecting baby’s skin, particularly in the nappy area. To ensure baby does not suffer from the discomfort associated with these forms of dermatitis, it is essential to maintain dryness in the diaper zone by limiting the contact of baby’s skin with urine and faeces. This serves to effectively prevent the resulting maceration, or saturation of the skin.”

Advice for Demanding Skin – Sister Lillian

“After baby’s bath, use an ultra-soft towel to gently pat dry baby’s skin and avoid rubbing as this could irritate baby’s delicate skin.  On sunny days, protect baby’s vulnerable skin by keeping them in the shade, clothing them in cool yet protective garments and ensuring they are wearing a high factor UV sun screen specially formulated for baby skin.”

Alternatively in winter, protect baby’s skin from cold temperatures and strong winds by ensuring they are well wrapped up against the elements if you go outside. And remember to dress baby in soft, loose fitting, comfortable clothes. This will enable baby to move freely, promote better air circulation and prevent your baby from feeling uncomfortable during the day and night.”

For more information from our 5 Star Expert Panel, tips on how to ensure the wellbeing of your baby’s skin or to share your own experiences, visit www.pampers.co.za.

Tags: bum, dermatology, nappy rash, pampers, parenting, skin

The switch has flipped…

…and thank Galactus it has!

What switch?  Well, you see, there’s this switch I keep hearing about. The switch where your spawn goes form waking up, like clockwork, at 6AM every morning to being okay with having a lie-in.

About two weeks ago, wifey and I were pleasantly surprised when Captain Awesome let us have a little extra sleep on a Saturday morning.  And it never stopped.  Cap has, consistently, been waking up at 7 every morning.  This is the first time since the squirt has been born that we’ve been able to “lie in” and wake up on our own time.

For those of you with younger babies. There is hope. It might only come two years down the line, but that mythical creature called sleep? It exists.

The “NO” phase

My son’s picked up a new word – “NO”.  Actually, it’s not a new word, he went through the first few months of his life thinking his name was “NO” but recently, his answer to every question we ask him is NO, even when he means yes.

Me: “Cam, do you want a cracker?”

Cam: “NO”

Me: “Okay”

Cam: “Cracker?”

Me “Okay, here you go”

Cam “OM NOM NOM NOM”

You can see he’s starting to figure out what “NO” means…because he’s using it in the right context.  But now that he’s reaching two years old (I wish I had R1 for every time somebody said “OOHHH, the terrible twos are coming”)  he’s starting to push his boundaries with the word “NO”.

Wifey “Cams, please pick up your toys”

Cam “No”

Wifey “WHAT WHAT WHAAAATT?”

Cam “No”

Wifey “Pick up your toys please”

Cam “No”

Wifey’s eyes glow red.

Cam picks up toys.

Apparently it’s quite normal and, according to the University of Illinois, it’s part of growing up.  Saying NO, pushing the boundaries, complete and utter disobedience.

This is when discipline and staying consistent in your actions and what you say is VITALLY important.

Interesting times are lying ahead I see.  I’ll keep you updated on this one.

Tags: growing up, no, speaking, toddler, vocabulary

Teach your kids sign language

Now, when I say “sign language” I don’t mean the sign language you use on your commute every morning because the same bloody taxi pulls the same stunt and there’s never a Metro Cop around to see what’s going on.

I mean, kids can’t speak for the first few years of their lives, but they understand a lot more than you give them credit for, which is why my wife and I have been hammering (in the nicest possible way) good manners into Captain Awesome from just a few months old.

He’s now not only the stud of his school, but he’s also earned the reputation as the kid with the best table manners at lunch time.  Score.

The trick is starting early, and I’ve said that before on this Blog.  Start as early as possible (we started when Cap was 4 months old) and make and example of yourselves too.  you might think your spawn is clueless, but you’ll see, one day something will click in their head and all of a sudden you’re conversing with your child…

We taught Cap a few basics that he’s mastered now and it’s helped us a lot in times when, for example, he’s been grumpy because he’s hungry.

We’re also teaching him “Sorry” now that we’re approaching the “Terrible Twos”….

Teaching Cap sign language was one of the best things we ever did and you should do it too.  You’ll be surprised how much your kid will pick up…but it takes time.

From when we started at four months old, Cap only really started talking to us around 11 months.  Just stay consistent and determined and your sprog will pick it up.

This also forms part of a very good parenting course we did as a follow-on to Babywise by Gary and Anne-Marie Ezzo.  It was called Toddlerhood Transitions and, like Babywise, has definitely helped us a lot to help Cap grow so far.

(*Sidenote: The Ezzos are Christian and a lot of their teachings on bringing up kids are based on Christian principles, but there are non-Christian version of their work if you prefer.  The basics and logic behind what they teach is the same and has benefitted my family greatly*).

Tags: conversation, eat food, finished, more, please, sign language, speak, teach, thank you

Monkeys need Jungle Gyms

We’ve been saving for a while to get Captain Awesome a nice Jungle Gym.  We didn’t want to settle for an el-cheapo metal one because they rust and they get fraking hot in the sun, and the plastic ones are mad when it comes to price.

We wanted a wooden one, one that we could add to as he gets older and, let’s face it, the wooden ones just look classier don’t they?

After months of saving (and generous contributions form family and friends), we finally had enough to put up a basic Jungle Gym for Cap that he’s still be able to grow into.

After a lot of phoning around, we settled on a nice little plaything from a company called Monkey Worx in JHB.  The owner, Farrall, was quick to deliver, his workers were neat and tidied up after themselves and the Jungle Gym, we think, is very impressive for what we paid.

Typically these Gyms come in components and you pay per segment, so you can basically build anything you want and the price you pay depends on what features you want.

Cap’s just barely 20 months old, so we opted for a tower, slide (which also doubles as a water slide), some swings, a drum and a ramp with a rope to climb up.

Total with installation was just over R6,000 which is not bad, considering that a substantially smaller plastic gym, which can’t be expanded and he’ll outgrow in a year or so costs close to R5,000.

Later we’ll expand with a suspension bridge and possible a fireman’s pole and maybe a tyre tower.  We’ll see.

Tags: garden, jungle gym, monkey worx, play, toys

The School debate (Part 2)

Sorry it’s late.  My 9 – 5 has turned out to be quite a needy slag recently so I’ve had to concentrate on doing what I’m paid to do and then sleeping the rest of the time.

You’ll recall my post a few weeks back about our troubles to find a good school in JHB that isn’t already full for 2016 and also doesn’t cost a liver every three months.

Wifey and I were doing the research, round about the time that the unruly mob of latecomers descended on the University of Johannesburg hoping to “late register” for classes.

People were injured, property was destroyed, people pointed fingers, and in the end it took the death of a parent in a stampede to get the ass-hats that run our government to sit up and go: Shit, we have a problem.

Too many people *want* to be educated.  Not enough places to accommodate them all.

That, for me, was a serious wake-up call.  Our country’s not getting any better with the brain donors at the top running it, and I seriously worry for Captain Awesome’s future. 

Don’t get me wrong, I love this country and nothing short of a civil war will force me to pack for Perth (or wherever else in the world saffas are flocking to these days).

BUT…when I see stories in the media that only 60% of the country’s Matrics (which only constitute about 10% of the kids that started school at Grade 1) managed to scrape through their exams and that the going rate to pass these days is 35%, it makes you think…

When I was in varsity, lectures were NOT teaching sessions.  They were Q&A sessions.  You were expected to come to lectures having read the day’s work, only to get answers to questions, not to be spoon-fed the material.

The scary thing is that primary and high schools in SA aren’t grooming kids to think for themselves.  They’re grooming kids to chase the 35% pass rate.  And when they reach university or college, they suffer badly because they haven’t got a clue about how to study properly, or even how to apply what they learn to the real world.

Is this the education I want my kid to have?  Do I want him to settle for a pass or do I want him to grow his mind, feed his curiosity and look to make a proper difference in the world.

I certainly don’t want to be operated on by a surgeon who managed to pass with 35% in Matric and only got into medical school to fill some sort of quota.

Blame apartheid, blame inequality, blame the government, blame whoever you like.  The bottom line is that my son is innocent in all of this and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let this country’s circumstances destroy his future.

I messed around in school.  If I did better back then and I had the cash and opportunities that developed economies give their kids, I’d be a vet today. 

That’s my passion, helping animals.  I worked for a vet for over seven years when I was in high school and I wanted nothing more than to be a vet but it wasn’t until my application was rejected for Veterinary Science that I had to settle for a degree in communications and a life in the rat race.

(*Not that I’m ungrateful for my current circumstances. I have a good job working for an amazing company and I’m not by any means unhappy.  But everyone has something that they’d much rather be doing.  Mine is fixing broken animals.*)

I do not want that for my son. 

But the way things are looking here in SA…there’s no way I can afford to send Cap to a good private school and there’s also no way that he’s going to get a good education in the public school system filled with 50-pupil classes, demoralised teachers and a government department that couldn’t give two continental shifts about education.

I don’t think it’s time yet that I exercised my British Citizenship.  Goodness knows, schools in Europe already have so many of our government ministers’ kids taking up space in classrooms that I doubt that Cap would be welcome, or that we could even afford education up North.

The bottom line is I don’t know what to do.  Private schools are just completely out of our reach financially and sending him to a government school in our area of Joburg is sentencing him to an uncertain future.

What are the alternatives?  Move home closer to better schools?  Maybe.

What would you do in my situation?  I’d love comments.

Tags: college, confused, department of education, education, europe, government, high, matric, primary, public, school, south africa, university

The “Big” School crisis: Part 1

So if you’re in the process of brewing up a young version of yourself in your (or your partner’s) uterus, take a piece of advice form me right now…go put your as-yet-unborn child’s name on a list at a good school.

My wife and I are in the process of looking at schools for Captain Awesome and it’s proving to be a moer of a problem for three big reasons:

(1) Most public schools are shite

It’s a sad reality but it’s one that we have to face up to.  The schools we all went to as kids (yes, I’m the product of a Government school…in Germiston no less) aren’t what they used to be.  The government has royally screwed up the public education system and it’s near impossible to guarantee that your child will either get the educational attention he/she deserves and if the quality of their “pass” will be good enough to get them down the path to a career that they won’t regret taking up (or resorting to). 

With the threat of classes of up to 50 kids per teacher, the minimum pass mark being lowered to 35% and the diminishing population of teachers in this country, it’s no wonder parents are taking out mortgages and selling cars just to make sure their kids get into a good private school.

(2) There aren’t enough schools

There is a new private school that has just finished being built close to where we stay, which would have been the ideal candidate for Cap.  We called a few months back to see if we could get his name on the waiting list.  But…get this: The school was already full up to and including 2020 and it isn’t even finished being built yet.

We were told that if your child is born in 2010, don’t bother. But you can still put him on a waiting list and pay the non-refundable deposit of R5,000 if you’d like to “try and see if there’s a space that opens up”.

This isn’t just the case for one school.  We’ve tried a few already.

Sure.  Let me just find a hammer for this piggy bank here… And by “hammer” I mean C4 explosives…for the Cash-In-Transit truck I just passed.

Words escape me.

(3) Private schools are f**king expensive

You don’t realise how much you’re going to have to bend over in front of your bank manager until you see what even the most “modest” private schools are charging these days.

Cap is due to start Grade “R” – whatever the hell that means…I thought we went straight from crèche to Grade 1 – in 2016.  At today’s prices, the average monthly fees for Grade R at a private school are in the region of R4,000 a month.

That excludes:

• After care (because both my wife and I have to work for a living) R1,300 per month
• Extra-murals (like sports or cultural activities) up to R300 a throw
• Stationery R500 a year
• Field trips R300 a throw
• Text books up to R500 a year
• Uniforms – in the thousands I’m sure

…and I’m sure I’ve left a lot out.

To get your kid on a waiting list costs you about R350.  If your kid is finally accepted…you’ll be charge an acceptance fee of…wait for it…R15,000 (yes…fifteen thousand zed ay ronds) – that’s today’s pricing.  In 2016, you can bet it’ll be almost 2/3 more.

So, we’re sitting with a dilemma…and it’s one that’s seriously got me thinking about the viability to educating a child in SA.

But that’s a subject for another post… Part 2 tomorrow.

Tags: deposit, education, government, private, public, school, waiting list

Is it foolish to have kids?

This is an oldish article that I recently re-discovered on the TIME Healthland website.  I’ve edited it  for the purposes of this blog but you can read it in its entirety  here.

It’s quite contrarian, so brace yourself if you’re a serial procreator.

All parents know that having kids is a blessing — except when it’s a nightmare of screaming fits, diapers, runny noses, wars over bedtimes and homework and clothes. To say nothing of bills too numerous to list. Some economists have argued that having kids is an economically silly investment; after all, it’s cheaper to hire end-of-life care than to raise a child. Now comes new research showing that having kids is not only financially foolish but that kids literally make parents delusional.

Researchers have known for some time that parents with minors who live at home report feeling calm significantly less often than than people who don’t live with young children. Parents are also angrier and more depressed than nonparents — and each additional child makes them even angrier. Couples who choose not to have kids also have better, more satisfying marriages than couples who have kids.

To be sure, all such evidence will never outweigh the desire to procreate, which is one of the most powerfully encoded urges built into our DNA. But a new paper shows that parents fool themselves into believing that having kids is more rewarding than it actually is. It turns out parents are in the grip of a giant illusion.

The paper, which appears in the journal Psychological Science, presents the results of two studies conducted by Richard Eibach and Steven Mock, psychologists at the University of Waterloo in Ontario. The studies tested the hypothesis that “idealising the emotional rewards of parenting helps parents to rationalise the financial costs of raising children.”

Their hypothesis comes out of cognitive-dissonance theory, which suggests that people are highly motivated to justify, deny or rationalise to reduce the cognitive discomfort of holding conflicting ideas. Cognitive dissonance explains why our feelings can sometimes be paradoxically worse when something good happens or paradoxically better when something bad happens. For example, in one experiment conducted by a team led by psychologist Joel Cooper of Princeton, participants were asked to write heartless essays opposing funding for the disabled. When these participants were later told they were really compassionate — which should have made them feel better — they actually felt even worse because they had written the essays.

Here’s how cognitive-dissonance theory works when applied to parenting: having kids is an economic and emotional drain. It should make those who have kids feel worse. Instead, parents glorify their lives. They believe that the financial and emotional benefits of having children are significantly higher than they really are…

…the results confirmed Eibach and Mock’s hypothesis. Parents who read only the data showing how expensive kids are should have responded more negatively to parenting. But in fact they idealised parenting far more than those who were also given the information about the benefits of parenting later on…

…to confirm their results, Eibach and Mock conducted a second experiment, this time with 60 parents. The second study was identical to the first but added a control group that got no information about parenting at all. The second experiment also added measures of participants’ enjoyment of time spent with their kids and intentions to spend future time with them. And the subjects were asked to compare spending time with their children to spending time with their spouse or partner, spending time with their best friend, and spending time on a favourite hobby.

Once again, those who read only about how expensive kids are idealised parenthood far more than those who read about both the costs and the benefits of raising children (and far more than the control group did). They were also significantly more likely to believe that spending time with kids is more rewarding than other activities, even though researchers have found that when you measure how rewarding parents found any given day spent with their children, they rated that day worse than they had expected to…

So…are we suckers? Or are these psychologists trying to find something that isn’t there?  You can’t deny the scientific evidence, but maybe there is something deeper that science can’t explain yet.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge fan of science and scientific fact. I’m the last oke on Earth to believe in esoteric bull-crap and the unseen. 

It’s not as easy as saying “Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it”.  This isn’t exactly sushi we’re talking about here.  But…it does make you think. 

Either way, whether parenthood is genuinely perceived as rewarding, or if parents are happy to exist within their delusion, I guess it’s best to let it lie.  I don’t really see the point to articles like this, other than to make parents question and justify nonparents in their decisions to remain child-less.

It’s the same argument I have about Atheists.  If you’re against religion, you don’t have to fight it and use every single public forum to shout out your disagreement in the hopes to insult someone or strike up an argument. 

Just ignore it.  Goodness knows you’ll be a lot less stressed.

So, let parents be parents I say.  It’s their choice. You don’t have to convince them otherwise.

Comments? I’d love to hear them.

Tags: blessing, cognitive dissonance theory, delusion, parenting, psychology

Why you shouldn’t geo-tag your photos

A friend of mine sent me this video recently.  I’ve always been cognoscente about the potential threat of revealing your location in personal tweets and photos, but I never realised how easy is it for cyber criminals to find out so much from just a few pics on the Internet.

If you’re a parent, you should watch this.  Even if you aren’t it’s in your interest to take precautions and turn off geo-tagging your pictures.

 

Tags: children, cyber crime, geo-tagging, internet, location, online, photos, privacy, protect, scam, threat