Respond with Sensitivity – Page 53

Healthy boundaries

At our home there is a continual rotation of people. We have interns in and out pretty much all year round. Most of these people are temporary, staying anywhere from 2 weeks to 6 months with us. Just recently we had a young man, the brother of my brother in law, stay with us for a prolonged period of time. He recently left for school. He and my son had been quite close. My son had not shown much distress in the first couple of days or weeks of this young man leaving. In truth I thought he had pretty much forgotten all about him. Turns out I was in for a bit of a shock. A week ago we went to pick up a few new interns. When I returned home with them my son started asking for this young man. He quickly escalated from asking for him and then crying for him; very soon he was in a state of semi-hysteria. I was shocked. He was inconsolable. I ended up calling the young man on the phone and having my son talk to him. That did the trick. He calmed down and hasn’t asked for him since.

All this time I did not know that my son was dealing with grief in some way. I have spent this last week coming up with ways that my son is able to interact with the interns that are in our home and sharing our lives and yet creating healthy and firm boundaries.

My son is not at an age where he can understand why people are coming and going but I am able to create an atmosphere in which he can learn to attach himself to people and yet do so in a way that when they leave it will not bring on the large amounts of grief demonstrated earlier this week.

One of the biggest difficulties I have experienced with the interns is that they want to become close with my child even though they will not be staying for a long period of time. They want something more than just friendliness from my son. They want a firm attachment. I have recently had to step up and remind these young people that they will not be staying and that for the sake of my son it is good for them to be friendly and to enjoy each other but to create a deep bond is not with my child is not what they are here for. People love for children to be affectionate and most people even like it when a child expresses distress when they leave even though that child is not theirs, not realizing that their gratification is costing that child.

My job as I see it this summer is to help my son create healthy boundaries with people while still enjoying their company.

Jasmine is a co-housing, home birthing, missions minded, community living mama with a passion for fierce writing. She blogs.

Photo from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/vizzzual-dot-com/2226095398/

Baby Top Ten List: What your baby is really trying to tell you

Ah, if only all our mothering moments could look like this. Perhaps it's best if we choose to remember these images of babyhood and not the less happy ones? — Ah, if only all of our parenting moments could look like this. Perhaps it's best if we choose to remember these images of babyhood and not the less happy ones?

Falling in love with your baby is easy, taking care of a fussy baby… not so easy. All that crying really is your baby’s way of communicating. Now, what on earth is he or she trying to say? And why didn’t anyone warn you about this before you had children? Don’t be tempted to call it colic just yet. You can discover what is wrong.

As a first-time mom, I wrote these instructions for my husband so I could take a break. He was always able to figure out our babies’ cries by using this as a checklist. Once your baby is on a consistent routine, you will eliminate a lot of crying and fussiness by meeting needs before they become urgent. In the meantime – if you’re at your wits end – take a deep breath and try each of these until you find the right one.

Ten things your baby is trying to tell you:

Change my position. Or change your position; stand, bounce or sway. (While back sleeping may be considered safest, many babies are uncomfortable sleeping on their backs. Research other safe sleeping positions for fussy babies.)
Burp me. Try different positions, not just on your shoulder.
Feed me. If I’m really hungry, I may resist a bottle at first. And if I’m usually breastfed, I may not take kindly to a bottle. Be gentle but persistent. It also helps to use a wide-mouth bottle with a medium or fast flow. (Fussy babies are often fussy because we are unable to digest cow’s milk in any form; whether in mom’s diet passed through the breast milk or in dairy-based formula… please try eliminating cow’s milk.)
Talk to me and sing to me. Let me know you love me.
Help me sleep. If I won’t look you in the eye, I may be really tired. Take me to a dark, quiet room and rock me to sleep.
Hold me in the “pooping position.” When I’m semi-reclined in your lap, gently push my knees to my chest or rub my belly. Gas drops or Gripe Water may help relieve gas pains.
Check my diaper. Cloth diapers may need to be changed more often than disposables, but disposables are more likely to irritate the skin. If diaper rash is severe and not related to a food allergy; try switching to cloth.
See if I’m too hot or too cold. I probably don’t need a hat, jacket, booties and mittens inside the house.
Swaddle me. I feel more secure when I’m wrapped snug in a blanket.
Hold me. It’s what I love most, and I even produce growth hormones when held. Carry me in a sling or other carrier to make both of us happy.

You will know when you’ve been stricken with baby love. Your heart melts at the sight of one tiny grin and the weight of the world seems to lift at the sound of a contented baby sigh. Caring for a baby is exhausting, sometimes frustrating work, but baby love is fierce … and can inspire you to accomplish anything you can imagine. Keep up the great work, you really can do this, and all these challenging stages will pass long before you are ready to give them up.

Do you have a consistent routine yet? At the very least, get up at the same time every morning and go to bed at the same time every night. You can ease a fussy baby simply by giving them a consistent, loving environment. Crying generally boils down to three basic needs: FOOD, SLEEP and COMFORT. The top ten list addresses all these needs.

Mom Dare: Your challenge this week is to make sure you are meeting your own three basic needs. Are you eating healthy meals at regular intervals, sleeping whenever possible and depending upon someone close to you for moral, spiritual and physical support? Taking care of yourself is the best defense against the frustrations of parenting. So take three things off of your To-Do List and pencil in a nap, a healthy meal and time with someone you love instead.

Sharron Wright is the work-at-home mother of three girls, ages 2, 5 and 7. Her mission is to help other new parents feel empowered and to instill in them the confidence to care for their babies in a loving, positive way that respects the uniqueness of all children. Visit her at www.babylovecarebook.com.

Should We Wait to Cut the Umbilical Cord?

Anatomy of the Umbilical Cord

I came across a very interesting article via Science Daily that delves into whether or not one should wait to cut the umbilical cord immediately after birth.

According to the article’s research “In pre-term infants, delaying clamping the cord for at least 30 seconds reduced incidences of intraventricular hemorrhage, late on-set sepsis, anemia, and decreased the need for blood transfusions.”

In another article on ScienceDaily.com concerning cutting of cords, studies suggest that delaying the cutting simply by two minutes, decreases the infant’s risk for iron anemia and boosts its reserves.

For more research and references on cord cutting please see below:

Cord Issues at GentleBirth.org

“Umbilical Cords Clamped Too Soon, Researchers Say” at Yahoo News

“Natural Childbirth: Delayed Cord Clamping” at Eco Child’s Play

– Danielle Buffardi is a freelance writer and editor. Visit her on the web at http://www.PenPointEditorial.com

Spring Mini Series Installment #3 – De-moralizing mom

I will start with a direct quote from Babywise because when I read it I actually had to re-read it several times to make sure that I had read it correctly. I quote from page 150 of Babywise “Mother’s decision without assessment can be dangerous… They should not be driven by their emotions.”

It isn’t only Babywise that erodes the confidence of mothers but culture as a whole. We start as soon as a mother gets pregnant; she must be seen by a birth specialist (OB) so that they can be told what to do and when to do it because mothers can not trust their bodies and they can’t trust their emotions. It just gets worse.

When a mother goes to birth her child she is (normally) told when, many times she is induced, then she is not trusted to be able to “handle” things so she is “assisted.”

Because her confidence has been completely demolished, “good” mothers pick up a book to read to assist us with raising a child, not knowing that we are going to wrap our eager hands around is something that is going to demoralize us even more by telling us, in a nutshell, that we are over-emotional and not trustworthy.

Now I know that many of us learn very helpful things from books and from other people but I do believe that there is no replacement for the mothering mind and there is definitely no replacement for the mothering emotions. The statement that mothers must assess all of their actions because they may be “dangerous” is demoralizing. What is dangerous is demoralizing a mother, eroding her foundations and ignoring her emotions.

The real danger is not the mother. We, as mothers, have housed and protected our children from the beginning and will continue to house, nourish and grow them up throughout childhood. Then, when they’re adults, we’ll be a shelter that continues to be emotional confidence and stability for our children.

Jasmine is a co-housing, home birthing, missions minded, community living mama with a passion for fierce writing. She blogs.

Photos used from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/proimos/3524157411/

Riders on the Tantrum Storm (Part 2)

In Part 1 of this two part series on tantrums, I talked about the reasons you might want to sometimes “ride out” your child’s tantrums. While it is sometimes therapeutic for kids to simply vent their feelings, more often parents need to work to find the source of the frustration and put a label on the child’s feelings. But dealing with tantrums is not easy, and many of us (myself included!) may sometimes be uncomfortable helping our toddler work through their big emotions.

Allowing Children to Feel Their Emotions

In Naomi Aldort’s book, Raising Our Children, Raising Ourselves, Aldort discusses parents’ “need” to stop tantrums. A parent may believe that ending a tantrum is in the child’s best interest, but it is usually based on less altruistic motives: avoiding an unpleasant “scene,” a desire for the child to be happy, the parent’s own discomfort at seeing her child in pain, or the parent’s discomfort in being out of control or in the presence of intense emotions.

But how will our children ever be able to resolve emotional difficulties and become resilient if we do not allow them to experience the full depth of their emotions? Aldort discourages cajoling or distraction by using this analogy:

imagine that you have just learned that your mother is dying or your partner is filing for divorce. In desperation you visit a friend, yearning to talk, cry, or rage in a supportive environment. No sooner do you begin letting out your emotions than your friend offers advice or suggests a distraction: ‘Let’s go to a movie, that will take your mind off of it.’ You are more likely to wish that your friend would listen to you attentively, ignore telephone calls and other intrusions, and focus on you. A child is a person with the same needs.

Aldort lists several strategies parents use to avoid dealing with uncomfortable emotions:
Continue reading “Riders on the Tantrum Storm (Part 2)”

Bedtime Conversations

Elia went to a 4-year-old friend’s princess-themed birthday party yesterday. As you can imagine, it was very exciting. The girls were to arrive dressed up in their best princess dress, and at the party would get their hair & make up done, craft fairy wands, make jewelry and have a tea party. Elia was dressed and ready 5 hours before the party.

It was a day of friends, activities, sugar, and plenty of stimulation. That night, as I turned out the light after reading a chapter of The Sisters Grimm: Fairy Tale Detectives, and she flopped exhausted onto her pillows, she commented to herself, “Boy, are my eyes tired.” For her to say that meant that her eyes were REALLY tired.

Now those are tired eyes. We always cuddle at night and take the chance to talk about anything that might be on her mind. Last night, there were a few things on her mind…

Elia: “Mom? I really like talking to Will & Zoe because they can talk well and they are easy to understand. Some kids are hard to understand, like Aasha, I have a hard time talking to her because she doesn’t talk very well and I can’t understand her sometimes. Even Will is hard to understand but mostly I can.”

Me: “Yeah, as kids grow, they learn to talk better and better.”

Elia: “Yeah, I can understand Hannah and Haley really well because they’re a lot older than me, so they’ve already learned to talk. They’re big kids, and when you’re a big kid you already know how to talk well. Mom? If Flash and Superman were at our house, at this house, at our house that we live in now, and they raced to Sophia Park, who would win?”

Me: “I don’t know. Who do you think would win?”

Elia: “I think Flash because Dad said that Flash could get from our old house to our new house in 4 seconds. I had a few things that were my favorite things today. First, I really liked playing with Hannah and Will when they came over to play with Brownie [our guinea pig]. And I liked playing Cadoo with you. And I really liked the chocolate cake we had for Dad’s birthday. But what I didn’t like was when I was trying to get that flower to stick to the end of the stick and it wouldn’t stay on.”

Me: “Yeah, that was frustrating, you were trying really hard and it wasn’t working out.”

Elia: “Yeah, and I also didn’t like having to go close all the doors.”

Me: “Yeah, it’s hard when you’re in the middle of doing something and you have to stop to go close all the doors. That’s not what you wanted to do.”

Elia: “No. I wish we could just leave all the doors open so we could just walk right through them all the time and I wouldn’t have to close them later.”

Me: “The only reason we ask you to close the doors after you come in or go out is because we don’t like flies coming in here. They’re annoying. I don’t like them buzzing around my head and around my food.”

Elia: “Maybe we could just hang fly traps in front of all the doors so they could get stuck.”

Me: “Yeah?”

Elia: “Or maybe we could just hang a sheet in front of the doors so we could go right through and air could go through, but flies couldn’t.”

Me: “Yeah, or maybe close the screen door?”

Elia: “Yeah.”

At this point her covers are thrown off, her legs are waving around up in the air, and she is tossing her blanket up & down over her face. It’s a long way from those tired eyes of five minutes ago. But she is sharing so much! She is telling me about who she is, what she thinks of the world, and how she thinks of the world. And I am trying to take this opportunity to show her that I listen. Without judging. Without providing The Answers. I appreciate this moment for what it is…despite the increasingly late hour, I am (hopefully) encouraging my daughter to tell me who she is and paving the way for it to continue.

But the hour is getting later and later, so eventually I have to say, “OK. Now it is time to put your legs down, [check] roll over [check, check], get comfortable [done], and relax [eyes closed]. I’ll lay with you for one more minute, but it has to be quiet and no more talking.”

We are laying nose-to-nose. Everything is quiet for four seconds. Eyes pop open. “Can I just tell you one more thing?”

Yes! Of course! Please always tell me just one more thing! Keep talking to me and never stop. I want to know who you are, and I want it to be you who tells me, not me who decides for you who you should be. So tell me everything! I will always listen, and I will always love you for who you are.

Riders on the Tantrum Storm (Part 1)

Our son, Kieran, has been exceptionally tantrumless for the first 29 months of his life. Yes, he has screamed and cried. Once he fell and halfheartedly writhed on the ground. He’s even pulled the limp rag doll trick once or twice – letting his arms go up lifelessly so we almost drop him at the shock of his sudden heft. All 30 lbs of him.

But for the most part, we’ve not had to deal with “typical” toddler tantrums. By typical, I mean the ones harried veteran parents always stop to warn you about when they see you cuddling a sweet, drool-soaked little bundle of baby chub in the supermarket. And you would smile and nod sympathetically, edging closer to the clerk (because the parent’s wild eyes and twitchy left nostril are making you nervous) all the while knowing that your child will never be “typical.”

For 29 months we’ve been blessed with this easy-going little dude. Well, aside from the fact that he is rather attached to my side 23 hours of each day and would prefer something closer to, say, 24. But still, he’s pretty laid back. I attribute this primarily to Kieran’s extensive signing vocabulary. We are convinced that Kieran’s ability to communicate what he was thinking, wanting, and needing through sign language made his pre-verbal days pretty cakewalk.

Now that he has a great verbal vocabulary too, we still haven’t had a “tantrum,” but he is quicker to boil over with a flood of emotions when he is tired or overloaded. My husband and I have shared several bewildered glances, typically to express something along the lines of:

“Where in the world did that come from?”
Continue reading “Riders on the Tantrum Storm (Part 1)”

Meeting Barbara Nicholson and Lysa Parker

A few weeks ago I received an exciting phone call from my co-leader Ivana Lombardo for our Northern Virginia chapter of Attachment Parenting International. Her news? Barbara Nicholson and Lysa Parker, founders of API and authors of the new book Attached at the Heart, were coming into town. Barbara and Lysa planned to promote their new book and meet with the U.S. Department of Health to discuss the attachment parenting lifestyle. Our group had been called on to host them while they were in town; I was psyched to meet API’s founders and was able to help out by making a strawberry and almond salad for an intimate dinner with them. Below are a few photos that I took during our dinner (with alotta help from my half pint assistants Diego and Annabelle).

API founder Barbara Nicholson, who is a mom of four and a wonderful lady. She is so excited that theU.S. Dept. of Health literature is promoting AP principles like breastfeeding, responding with sensitivity to our children, and much more. I have to say that I was a little surprised at her news but am super excited to see that our government is acknowledging that AP parenting works.

You’ll notice that in this photograph of Barbara, there is a bottle. I have to admit that I felt a bit strange meeting the founders of API while bottle feeding my son Levi. While I know that feeding with love and respect (which I am doing with a bottle) is an AP principle, I remember that once upon a time, this principle was called “breastfeeding.” I so badly wanted to breastfeed my son Levi and I did for the first month of his life. I shared my story of experiencing severe postpartum depression and how breastfeeding was something that I needed to let go of for sake of my mental health. I tell myself, whenever I am feeling bad about not breastfeeding Levi, that at least I am here, functioning and loving him.

Let me tell you: Barbara and Lysa didn’t judge me for how I am feeding my baby and I thank them for that. Moms need other moms to support them, especially when hard decisions are made.

Lysa Parker cozied up with all of our kids. Here she is with leader Krystal MacDonald’s son Diego. Both Lysa and Barbara were so warm to our children and to us mammas too. I felt like I had known them both for a long time.

Annabelle took this photograph of Lysa. Isn’t she a beautiful lady?

The infamous Diego, who is a budding violinist and (I think) photographer. His mamma is homeschooling him. He is just the sweetest, smartest kid ever.

I let the kids play with Nikon. Let’s just say that they had a great time having their own photo session:

Annabelle photographed Diego “taking a nap” while they played together upstairs in his room.

and I think she took this photo of Diego’s train mat.

This photograph belongs to either Diego or Annabelle. I loved that they immediately wanted to photograph the toys.

My co-leader Ivana Lombardo and her baby Philip. Ivana and I gave birth around the same time. Ivana is such a positive role model and support for our local group. I look to her for advice since her older son Alec is almost 2 years older than my daughter Annabelle. I have to say, having our AP support group has made such a difference in my life . . . in how I parent and how I love others too.

At dinner, we invited everyone who could come, including Diego’s tadpoles.

Krystal McDonald opened her home and her heart to all of us. She is an amazing mom, a La Leche League leader, an API leader, and a good friend too. I learned everything I know about cloth diapering from her, 🙂

and this beautiful window is nestled in on a stairwell in Krystal’s home. Just gorgeous, isn’t it? I think it really speaks to who Krystal and her family are: a connected and loving family.

Meeting Lysa and Barbara was an amazing opportunity to spend the evening with wise, loving women and our children too. I certainly felt honored and learned a lot just from listening to everyone talk about parenting, life, and making changes in the world. Definitely a night I won’t forget.

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Jessica Monte is a budding photographer and author of the blog Days of You and Me (once upon known as Green Mamma). To see what Jessica is up to these days, visit http://www.greenmamma.org