Controversy over a Breastfeeding Doll?

No, I do not listen to Fox News, but someone at work sent this to me and I thought the angry reactions were interesting. A doll that “allows” girls to pretend they are breastfeeding. Some folks seem to be rather upset by the idea, saying that it could traumatize young girls, or lead to teen pregnancy. I work with lots of teen moms, and while most got into the situation by accident, I've met a few who just wanted a baby to love. I've never met one who got pregnant because they were so excited about the idea of breastfeeding though. I'd say many of them are afraid of, or at least freaked out by the idea.

Besides, when a mother with more than one child is breastfeeding the baby, surely the older ones are aware of the fact. So it's not like the doll is introducing the concept. It's just a normal part of having a baby. And how is feeding a baby an "adult concept" anyway? Personally, I find it amusing to think that kids need a special doll to let them pretend to breastfeed. My kids (both male and female) were perfectly happy to pretend to nurse stuffed bears, giraffes and elephants in addition to baby dolls. This is not because any of these toys were marketed that way, but because we hung out with families who had breastfed babies. It wasn't a big deal because they saw it all the time in everyday life. When a baby cries, someone picks them up and takes them to the mom to nurse, then the baby is happy. It's pretty simple really, and they never felt the need for a cover up either.

Baseball

I am not a sports fan, never have been, but somehow I really get a kick out of my kids playing baseball. This has been their second season with the Junior Giants- a low key, instructional league that suits us well. They don't officially keep score (although often the kids do,) the players skills range from never having played before to very experienced, and amusingly, the parents have to take an oath that we won't be bad sports, yell at the kids, or speak badly about the coaches in the children's presence. My son's coach also warned all of us parents not to show up drunk to pick our kids up. OK... good thing he gave that warning.

As a kid, I pretty much hated baseball. I dreaded baseball in PE almost as much as I dreaded dodgeball. Standing there with a bat while some kid hurled a baseball toward my head was not something I wanted to be doing. It terrified me. I always stood at the end of the batting line up, and would let the gung-ho kids bat again until the teacher caught on and forced me up there. Thankfully, my kids have not inherited my aversion to baseball. Of course, they are choosing to play, not being forced, which makes a big difference.

Last year, both of my kids were on the same co-ed 8-10 year old team which was very convenient. This year, my daughter moved up onto the 11-13 year old team, and it was quite a step. First of all, many 13 year old boys are giants, and they throw the ball really fast. My daughter got a black eye during her second practice, but brave little soul that she is, she kept playing. That would have most likely scared me right out of the game personally, and I am rather proud of her spirit in continuing. It's been great to see what good sports all of these kids are, and watch them getting better with each game. They cheer each other on, find positive things to say and are generally much nicer than I remember the other kids being when I was one. They have all improved at the game, and best of all, they have fun. The last game they were stealing bases and sliding (or trying to slide anyway.) Very fun to watch and cheer on (while being cautious not to coach from the sidelines. Is yelling “RUN, RUN!” coaching or encouraging? The lines get blurry sometimes.)

With only a few games left for my kids this season, we had a chance to go see the Giants play in San Francisco this last weekend. Even though they lost rather badly, we still had a good time. I thought it was good for the kids to see that these pros who make millions strike out too, and more often than not, they don't make it to base. I think the players did not have a good nights sleep or eat a good breakfast because when they did get a decent hit, they weren't running fast enough to make it to the base before the ball did. My kids' coaches would have told them to “Hustle up!” I found myself occasionally shouting positive encouragement like “Good try!” which probably would have sounded pretty ridiculous to the players if they could have heard me from our far out seats. At least a few other fans looked at me a bit oddly upon hearing “Oh, you almost got it! You'll get the next one!”

We're looking forward to the last few games, and two nights of pizza parties and trophy ceremonies this week. Today, while practicing, my son pegged his sister in the eye with a ball, so she will be ending the season with a black eye as well, poor kid. Maybe baseball won't be her thing, but I sure admire her attitude and determination. It's been a great season.

Hiking McCloud Falls

After my dear husband took our tender footed, long haired dog on a 12 mile free run along the Clikapudi trail of Shasta Lake, the kids and I spent hours brushing and cutting stickers out of the poor dog who had torn up his foot pads and limped for days. I also caught poison oak out of the deal, but I'm not bitter or anything.

Well, the dogs need still need exercise, as do I, so I decided to search for some hikes the whole family could enjoy. The goal is to keep them short enough to not tear up the dogs feet, shady enough to not kill us, and to try to avoid masses of stickers and poison oak which cause work and pain later. Luckily, Northern California is full of beautiful locations that fit the bill, and I'm finding some dog-friendly ones as well.

Near the foot of Mt. Shasta, along the McCloud River, are several gorgeous waterfalls. Nurum-wit-ti-dekki or “the falls where the salmon turn back” as the native Wintu people called it, is now known as the Lower McCloud Falls. Personally, I liked the original name better, even with the English translation, but my husband didn't think it had a good ring to it.

We went on a warm Saturday afternoon, and the beach was crowded with families enjoying picnics, swimming and jumping off the falls into the icy water. We prefer less people, so we headed up the trail along the river a couple of miles to the Middle Falls stopping to swim and snack along the way. We even came upon a patch of yummy wild raspberries growing in the warm sun along the banks of the river. At one point, the trail goes past a handy campground just above the river which I put on my mental list of places to stay in the future.

At Middle Falls, we all jumped in. It was beyond frigid, but we felt awfully refreshed once we got out. Only our huge hairy dog stayed in for more than a few minutes, and he actually seemed to enjoy it. He actually came out cleaner than I have possibly ever seen him. There were only a few other people up there, and even fewer who hopped in. My dog swam out to rescue them, even though none needed or desired to be rescued by a 120 pound beast. We saw one testosterone fueled teenage boy jump from a rocky cliff side halfway up the falls and land less than gracefully in the icy pool. Luckily, he did not injure or kill himself which would have ruined a perfectly good day for everyone around. The sun was high in the sky at this point, and we could tell the big dog wasn't going to enjoy hiking another few miles round trip to see the upper falls, so we headed back, again stopping along the way. Back at the car, we were able to drive to within a short walking distance to the upper falls- more gorgeousness.

The lovely day was topped off by cheeseburgers and fries at the Burger Barn in Dunsmuir. They probably had three times the amount of calories we burned on the hike, but were mighty tasty in any case.

All in all, we had a wonderful day at the beautiful falls where the salmon turn back.

Learn Nothing Day

Just great- yesterday was National Learn Nothing Day, and we didn't even know it until almost 4:00 pm. By then it was too late. Even though it was a pretty relaxed morning of lounging at home, I'm pretty sure we had already learned something. We'd looked up some garden pests and recipes on the internet (for two separate projects,) did a little reading, figured out how to alter the brightness of dark photographs on the computer, and then they still had karate class to go to. I told the kids that maybe they should consider skipping it- or at least trying not to learn anything new. It failed- they were trying new moves before half an hour was up. My daughter wanted to try a new drop-in soccer class for girls since she's never played before, and the first thing the coach says to her is “You're gonna learn a lot about soccer today.” What kind of a day off is this?
So, I guess we blew it this year. And I had really liked the idea behind this day of rest too. I guess my kids will just continue to get the sad looks when they say, no, they don't really take a break from homeschooling in the summer. Poor things are learning all the time.

Fundraising Fun

There have probably been fund raisers since kids first started being herded into schools and organized activities. Girls Scouts sell cookies, cheerleaders wash cars, the soccer team sells chocolate and the youth symphony has a bake sale. Fund raising pretty much comes with the territory of kids activities, which is OK because they're expensive, and I think it's a good idea to work for what you want. In some cases, the parents seem to do just as much of the work as kids, and while I do think it's good to be supportive and helpful, I also think kids should understand the theory of a work ethic by actually working themselves. Nevertheless, I've bought plenty of candy bars from the boxes my co-workers children have cleverly placed in the break room at work.

My own daughter has just started participating in her first fundraisers in the past year. Her scouting troop is taking an educational trip, and the girls are earning their way with garage and craft sales, selling used books on ebay and by selling snow cones on hot days at the park. She came up with the idea of selling sodas and cookies at kids baseball games, too.

Since this fundraising adventure has begun, our family has been talking about just what kind of fundraising efforts we would feel good about. To me, legitimate fundraising involves offering a product or a service in exchange for money that will be used toward a particular cause. I told my kids that if their grandma asks them what they want for Christmas, it is perfectly fine to say music lessons, but it is not OK to just ask someone out of the blue to pay for their activities or buy them things. They can ask people if they can water gardens, walk dogs or sell lemonade to earn the money, but they can't ask for handouts. The only exception would be if they are raising money for a charity- then they can ask for donations, but for their own personal use, no begging.

I am more than happy to support young business people and their ideas to earn money though. I think it's exciting to see the initiative and creativity people have when thinking of what they can do, rather than when they are looking for what they can get. So, I'm driving my daughter to Costco where I'll loan her the money to buy bottled water and fruit snacks she can sell at her brothers baseball game tonight. She'll pay me back at the end of the night. She priced the items, figured her sales price needed to make a profit, is keeping inventory, and doing plenty of math adding up products and making change. Not to mention merchandising her products and gaining people skills by talking to the public. I hope she does well with her little business venture. She is really excited and working hard at it. No matter how much she sells though, I can see she is learning a ton in the process. And that is worth buying a 50 cent bag of crackers, even if I'm not really hungry.

Food for thought...

I wonder how much of America realizes that much of what makes up their diet is no longer actually even real food? It's full of high tech, pasteurized, processed, chemical filled "food products," that have very little relationship to anything in the natural world. Sadly, as a nation, we continue to open our big mouths and stuff it in, wondering why we have such high rates of obesity, heart disease, diabetes and other health problems. Thinking about what we put into our bodies is probably one of the most important and obvious steps we can take towards health care. Here's a few easy tips... "froot" products are not actually fruit, and "cheez" is not the same as actual cheese. If you can't read it, you might not want to eat it, and petroleum by products are probably not good for you or your children to consume.

I am hopeful though, because there are people with the power of voice who are willing to speak up. The message is making it's way into the media. And, hopefully every day, more people will stop to think before they swallow the load of manure being sold and served up as dinner. I'm looking forward to the movie Food Inc. this summer which will undoubtedly sum it up better than I possibly could.

Self Directed Learning

For some reason, many in the field of education seem surprised by the idea that people have the capability to teach themselves, and don't need every detail broken down in easy to digest and well planned lessons followed up by a quiz. Learning for the sake of learning, just because you are interested, or it seems fun, rather than to get a grade, or piece of paper, or because some authority figure says you "should be learning that right now" is a foriegn concept to many. Really though, aren't we all more likely to retain something we were actually interested in than something we were forced to memorize? I know I passed many a test with flying colors because I knew I would get some prize, but if you asked me a month later, I probably forgot half of what was on the test because I only cared about the prize, not the knowledge.

Now that I am an adult, and a homeschooling mother, I am appreciating the opportunity to immerse myself and my children in studies that excite us. My own college classes may add up to a degree at some point, but the main idea is that I am interested and want to learn more about a subject, and that is why I am studying it. When I play with learning dance or music at 38 years old, I am fairly sure I will never be a professional performer, but I am having fun, and that is what life should be all about.

That's also what I want my children's education to be- self driven and joyful. Of course there are a few basics you need to thrive, or even survive in our society, but I don't see why they all have to be learned on a rigid timeline. There is plenty of room for flexibility, and I've seen my own kids absorb countless concepts when they were ready. Their siblings and friends may have learned the same thing at a younger or older age, but in the end, as long as they get it, who cares? It makes me very sad when I hear of other great kids who are labeled and critiqued for not being on the exact arbitrary timeline some expert chose for them. I wish these experts would look at all the neat things these kids can do, rather than focusing on what they can't and making them feel bad about it. Most kids are not stupid, and can excel in something. But no matter how many special programs you set up, you are never going to get everyone to be good at everything because were are all unique individuals. We all need to read and understand math to handle what the world throws at us, but I'm really glad my kids know they can learn the basics at their own pace, and follow their own passions. It is a freedom we all treasure dearly.

It's nice when other experts back up my thoughts and opinions, and along that theme, here's an article from Psychology Today with more on minimally invasive education.

Free Homeschool Days at Monterey Bay Aquarium

Fun and educational opportunities abound for northern California homeschoolers! The Monterey Bay Aquarium is once again offering a series of homeschool field trip days this fall with FREE admission for homeschooled children, and their parents! There are five available field trip days in October and November, and pre-registration is required. This always fills up, so if you are interested, check it our soon.

My family has taken advantage of this wonderful opportunity in the past, and we loved it. There is a high adult to child ratio, and pretty much everyone actually wants to be there I appreciate the leisurely pace, and the time for interaction with whatever interests us. It doesn't have the insane, loud, rushed feeling that can come with large groups of energetic kids who just want to be out of their desks, and very few adults who have to keep them all on a schedule. I also of course, appreciate that it is free.

If you're a homeschooling family who would like to go, you can find out more information at :
http://montereybayaquarium.org/lc/teachers_place/field_trip_form_homeschool.asp

Enjoy!

Goodbye to the King of Pop

You know how sometimes you remember exactly where you were when you learn something big? I was standing in Subway the other day, waiting for the nice lady to make my sandwich, when I hear the news over the radio. Michael Jackson, the King of Pop has died. While I'm digesting the news and thinking he wasn't that old, I have a flashback to my childhood. I remember clearly being a little kid standing in the kitchen of my babysitter Mary. I am waiting for her to make my sandwich, when I hear the news over the radio. Elvis Presley, the King of Rock n' Roll had died. For some reason, this just strikes me as strange to have heard of both of these deaths of these two musical Kings on the radio while waiting for a nice lady to make sandwich. Yes, I realize that is totally random, but I found it odd, and after all, it's my blog, so I'm writing about it.

Thinking back on the life of Michael Jackson, I prefer to remember him before all the plastic surgeries, before the personal, emotional and mental problems became public, back when he was a cute boy with his original nose and a big ole' afro who could sing and dance. His music was the background for so many memories. I remember playing hand clap games to “Rockin Robin” and staying up until midnight to watch the debut of the “Thriller” video back when MTV was new. I remember my 7th grade cheerleading squad choreographing our halftime routine to “Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'” and singing "Bad" thinking we were so darn cool. (In hindsight, we weren't.) I remember getting teary eyed watching “We are the World” and thinking of all the starving kids in Africa (probably while eating a bag of chips.) At some point, it seemed pretty clear that Michael Jackson was a troubled soul. It's a prime example of the fact that being a child star, and having lots of fame and money do not buy happiness or peace. It makes me feel really sad for him. He was an entertainer like no other, and history won't forget him, that's for sure. The other day, someone on NPR said that Michael Jackson's music is the soundtrack for much of our lives. It's true that hearing his songs will always bring back memories- they are playing in the background of my mind as I recall chunks of my growing up. Millions of people around the world have the same experience; different memories, but with the same songs. I sure hope Michael can rest peace now.

Birth As We Know It

Here's a link to an article I wrote for North State Parent Magazine about a very interesting woman, and her work to make birth better for babies:

http://northstateparent.com/articles/be-the-change-column/299-be-the-change-elena-tonetti-vladimirova-chico.html