Aware parents accept the entire range of emotions and listen non-judgmentally to children’s expressions of feelings. They realize that they cannot prevent all sadness, anger, or frustration, and they do not attempt to stop children from releasing painful feelings through crying or raging.

– Aletha Solter

I’ve never really liked using distractions when Meredith is upset. For a long time, I wasn’t sure why I didn’t like them, I just knew they didn’t feel right. But they “worked”, so we used them from time to time when Meredith was really upset. As she got a little older though, they stopped working a lot of the time. I realized that just like I wouldn’t want someone to try and distract me if I was trying to air my upset about something, neither would she. (If I came home and told Kris I was upset about something that happened that day, and Kris tried to immediately change the subject and talk about something else or show me something cool he did without listening to what I had to say, I would feel like I wasn’t listened to. In a child’s case, they may also feel like it’s not okay to feel that way.)  There are times when I do find it useful though. Like getting her into her carseat. 90% of the time she’s fine now, but those times she’s not, often using a bit of distraction will get her in happily and once the straps are on she’s happy to stay in too.

It’s still something I struggle with at times. It’s hard to come up with alternatives sometimes. And sometimes there seems to be little difference between a distraction, or trying to engage a child’s attention somewhere else, or a compromise. For example, this morning while I was nursing her, she wanted to hold the pencil I was using. I was fine with that, and gave it to her and she happily drew in a magazine I was holding while she nursed. Then she decided she wanted to wave the pencil around in my face, which I wasn’t okay with. After a couple of times of trying to redirect her to draw on the paper or wave the pencil somewhere else, it became obvious that she was very adamant about wanting to wave it around near my face. I asked her for the pencil, and she gave it to me but immediately wanted it back and began to cry when I didn’t give it to her. Instead, I handed her something much smaller that I was okay with her waving around. She immediately cheered up and proceeded to wave that around for a few minutes before getting bored and moving on to the next game. Was the second item a distraction to distract her from the pencil, or was it a compromise, that she could continue doing what she was doing with a different item? I think it was a compromise, and one that we both could live with, but it seems like there is such a fine line at times.

I think it often comes down to respect for our children and their feelings. In the case above, Meredith wanted to wave something around in the air while she nursed. I understood that and was okay with that, and gave her something that she could safely do so with. If the second object hadn’t worked, I would have validated her feelings rather than try to get her to move on to another activity and waited until she was ready to move on.

I did find this article a while ago that explains some of the problems with distractions much better than I could: Solutions are not the solution. He talks about how children need to experience the whole range of emotions and that quick fixes to try and have a happy child 100% of the time should not be our goal as parents. We have only had one real “tantrum” so far, and it only lasted a minute or two before we bundled her up and took her outside for a walk (was that a distraction?), but it was a long minute or two. She ended up falling asleep almost immediately and slept more than 13 hours that night, so obviously the “tantrum” was more about her being tired than about the small thing it seemed she was upset about.

Solter helped me to question my need for “a constantly happy child” and my use of quick fixes. If I was honest, my rapid solutions and distractions were about trying to return to the veneer of peace and smiles as quickly as possible. I was behaviorally focused; deeper more significant content did not come into it.

It was really hard to listen to her scream and cry and see that she was so obviously out of control. I wanted to stop it, and I will admit that we actually did try and distract her (unsuccessfully) a couple of times before we decided that being in the house around what was causing the upset was too difficult for her and we left for our walk. I think if she had been okay with one of us holding her and comforting her, it would have been easier, but as it was she would only let me occasionally rub her back. Otherwise, I sat next to her, mostly quietly but using validation as well. But not even being able to hold her and listening to her being so upset felt too much like crying it out to me, even though I know validating feelings and being next to them for when they are ready to be held is much different than leaving a child alone to cry. One way you are showing that the feelings are okay to express, and the other the message is that the feelings should be stopped or bottled up.

While the implementation of my new tool kit is often crude and slow, the transformation has begun. I am facing the fear of pain in my loved ones. I am letting go of needing to “rescue them” or “fix things,” and I know that it is enough to be there for them and to love them unconditionally.

This is something I personally want to work on in myself, especially as Meredith gets older and starts to be able to verbalize her feelings. I hope it will get easier as we’re able to reason with her and she can help come up with compromises or her own solutions

Guidelines:

1) Link to Green Meme Bloggers. (use image if you like)
2) Link back to whoever tagged you. (no need to wait to be tagged!)
3) Include meme number
4) Include these guidelines in your post
5) Tag 3 other green bloggers.

1. Do you use baking soda toothpaste or baking soda shampoo? If not, would you consider it?

I use baking soda shampoo. My toothpaste is not homemade but does have baking soda in it and I would consider it a “green” toothpaste.

2. Do you make any home cleaning products?

Yep, pretty much all of my cleaners are homemade. Love them! And it’s so cheap.

3. What is your top green issue at the moment?

I really want to start composting but haven’t found a good composter for an affordable price. It’s something we’ll start this Spring though, even if it means having to buy one of the really expensive ones. I hate throwing away vegetable trimmings and food scraps that could be composted. I tend to freeze a lot of our veggie trimmings and either use them when I make stock, or bring them to the SPCA for the animals there.

4. Given unlimited cash, what is on your fantasy green wishlist?

An acreage I can homestead on. I’d love some chickens, a couple of goats, maybe a cow, and a lot of land to grow our own produce.

5. Have you implemented any new green act/behaviour/product this month?

We sold our car and chose not to buy another one. We’re going to try a car co-op instead.

I don’t know where I got the recipe from originally, but if you google the name it’s all over the internet. They’re also a really great cookie to make and give away with gifts. Enjoy!

English Toffee Shortbread

These cookies are crumbly with a nutty crunch and a hint of buttery toffee. Perfect to serve with tea.

• 1 cup flour
• 3 tablespoons cornstarch
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter
• 2 ounces (1/2 c.) almonds
• 2 ounces (1/2 c.) English toffee (I’ve used Skor bits too)
• sugar for cookie tops

Mix the flour, cornstarch, salt, and brown sugar in a food processor. Add the butter and mix until it resembles a fine meal. Add the almonds and toffee and process until finely ground. Roll out between 2 sheets of waxed paper to 1/4″ thick and cut into decorative shapes with cookie cutter or pastry roller.

Pour sugar on a plate, press cookies in the sugar on one side only. Bake cookies sugar-side up on baking sheet at 350 degrees for 18-20 minutes or until slightly browned. Makes 4 dozen cookies. Cool thoroughly before packaging.

1) Name two motivations for being green?

I have always loved Canada and the fact that there is forest, mountains, ocean, etc. all around us. I want my children to grow up to appreciate nature as much as I do and I want it to be there for them to appreciate. So many people don’t realize what an impact we have on everything around us.

Also, I enjoy living simpler and trying to live in harmony with everything around us. It’s cheaper, often easier, cleaner, healthier… It just makes more sense to me!

2) Name 2 eco-UNfriendly items you refuse to give up?

My dryer. I’ve lived without one and it wasn’t the end of the world, but since I have one, I won’t not use it.

Our computers. We have three of them, one of which is never off (it’s our server) and the other two are on a lot during the day.

3) Are you at peace with or do you feel guilty about number 2?

I’m at peace with it. I have experimented with our dryer settings and we dry most things at low heat for a short amount of time. Diapers are often still a bit damp at the end and I hang them to dry them the rest of the way. Most of my clothes I hang to dry anyway because it’s better for the clothes. So it’s not like I’m setting everything on hot for the maximum length of time. One day maybe I’ll have an outside line, but right now I just don’t see that being realistic for us.

As for the computers, we actually tried to sell one of them and were going to live with just 2 (the server and one other), but it didn’t sell and I’m kind of glad. Sometimes when Meredith is sleeping/napping we each will go on one and it’s nice to have that option. I’d love to get a laptop instead of my desktop. We’ve been talking about getting rid of our server and hosting our websites on another server though.

4) What are you willing to change but feel unable to/stuck with/unsure how to go about it?

I would love to start gardening more and growing our own produce. I am not a gardener though and my yard is tiny (I want there to be some left for Meredith to play in!). I feel like I don’t have the knowledge, skill, or time to actually make that happen.

5) Do you know your carbon footprint for your home? If so, is it larger/smaller than your national average?

I’m not sure offhand, but I know it’s a lot smaller than the national average, especially since we just got rid of our car and don’t plan to buy another for at least a few months, if not longer. We turn off lights when we’re not in a room and turn off power bars on things that we’re not using.

6) What’s eco-frustrating and/or eco-fantastic about where you live?

Fantastic:

I can think of a few things. We’re near a grocery store so can walk for groceries. The bus system is decent. This city has a great soft plastic recycling program. We live on a green belt and have tons of pathways and forested area to walk along. And the car co-op is way up there too of course.

Frustrating:

Our windows suck and I’m sure it means the heat is on a lot more than it really needs to be, even though we actually keep our place fairly cool and wear layers. I have the same beef about sidewalks as Annie does: there really aren’t enough of them here and it makes some places hard to walk to safely, especially with children.

7) Do you eat local/organic/vegetarian/forage/grow your own?

I would love to grow my own, but it hasn’t happened yet. We do try and eat local and organic as much as possible, and eat seasonally as well. One bad thing about not having a car is it’s going to be a lot harder to get to the local food co-ops and farmer’s markets.

What do you personally find the most challenging in being green?

Um, the rest of the world? It’s hard sometimes to be green when companies are packaging everything in plastic, greener options are often more expensive (especially if you don’t know about things like how easy it is to make your own cleaners), and there’s still not a lot of support or understanding in a lot of the general population. The world is getting better, but being green is almost becoming a fad now, which has good and bad points. Companies are trying to profit off of it and I think people don’t realize that many things that seem like good, green ideas actually aren’t so much when you take into account things like production or shipping.

9) Do you have a green confession?

While I do believe humans have an impact on the environment and the world around us, I don’t really believe in anthropogenic global warming as such and I think Al Gore is a hypocrit and definitely someone who has cashed in on the green fad.

10) Do you have the support of family and/or friends?

I think so. Some of my family thinks we’re odd/strange for some of the things we do (like making our own cleaners), but none of them try and change our minds or anything. Most of my friends have very similar values to us about things like that too, so they are supportive.

The Guidelines:

1. Link to Green Meme Bloggers

2.Link to whoever tagged you

3.Include meme number

4.Include these guidelines in your post

5.Answer questions (erm - that bit’s quite important)

6.Tag 3 other green bloggers.

I tag:

Alice

Sarah

Amanda (whose blog I just started reading but am enjoying it so far!)

We have decided to hold off on buying a car for now and try out the car co-op for a while instead. It’s a good price, I think even if we were to use a car twice a week we’d be paying less than just the insurance on our last car, let alone the car payments. And twice a week we could get a lot done, grocery shops, playgroups, swimming lessons, all sorts of things we’d like to do. The only problem is that at the moment they don’t have a car within walking distance, so it involves bussing. It’s a pretty short bus ride, and there are three within very easy bus ride and quite a few more that are two bus rides away, so not a big deal except if I’m alone with Meredith I’d have to bring her car seat on the bus. But, it’s worth a try right? The nice thing about the co-op is that they have a bunch of four-door sedans, but they also have two mini vans and two trucks that can be used instead. I’m looking forward to it. I would actually love to be carless for a while.

We’ve looked at some other cars. We could wait until Kris gets his bonus and buy a nice, not-too-old car, probably an American one because they’re cheap. We’ve looked at a couple of really cheap cars we could buy now though. We went and saw a Mercury Sable last night. It’s older, but has relatively low mileage for the year and it was actually in really good condition. We weren’t able to test drive it though, because it isn’t insured and the roads have been so bad here. But we turned it on and had a look at everything. I think he’s going to arrange insurance so we can go back and see it maybe this weekend. We just want something that will be safe and run reliably for 3 or 4 years until we’re out of debt and can save up to buy something really nice outright. Like maybe a couple year old Accord or Camry. Or maybe a minivan.

We’re actually going to look at a Grand Caravan today too. It’s a 2005 but has a 170,000 km. It was used as a work vehicle for a salesperson. He says it’s been extremely well maintained and it’s pretty cheap. I’ve read that minivans are wonderful even with just one kid. Easy to diaper change and get in and out of. Great for trips. But I’m not sure I’m ready for a minivan yet. Plus, I think people would read too much into it. :p But we’ll look. You never know, maybe we’ll fall in love. There are other Grand Caravans that are cheaper and older but less km. I’m not sure if it’s better to go for newer and higher mileage or older and less mileage. Kris is thinking the newer and higher is better as long as it’s been well maintained. It will probably suck gas too. We’ll go look anyway. We thought at first it was missing a 1 from in front of the price because all the other ones from that year are $8-$10,000 more, but then we noticed the mileage. 

One of the things we decided when selling our car was that if we bought an older car and weren’t comfortable using it for trips, we could always rent and still pay less than our monthly payments on our current car. So even if we end up with a smaller car we could always rent a minivan for longer drives.

I have a couple of meme’s I’ve been tagged for that I would like to do at some point, and a few ideas for other posts. Otherwise, we’re doing well. Getting ready for Christmas, sort of… We haven’t actually really started gifts, and considering we want to handmake them all that’s not a good sign! I think I might make bathrobes for our nieces and nephew our of towels, and embroider their names on them. I’d really like to make one for Meredith too and they don’t look too hard. We’ll see though. I need more ideas for younger kids though. We have baskets planned out for most of the adults that should be good I think. I love everything about Christmas except the consumerism, so we started handmaking gifts last year and I think they ended up going over well with most people.

We are discussing selling our car. We bought it brand new 2 1/2 years ago and it has been great, especially when we lived in Sidney, but now that we’re in town we walk almost everywhere. It seems silly to be paying the payments on a car we use a couple of times a week. If it sells, we might buy an older American car (because they depreciate so fast, it’d be cheap), and just plan to rent a car for trips to Calgary. It would still be far cheaper than the payments on our current car. I put the car up yesterday just to see if there was any interest and already have someone coming to look at it today. If he decides to buy it I’m not sure what we’ll do, we can’t afford to buy another car until January when Kris gets his bonus. (We’ll just barely break even with what we have left owing on the car if it sells.) We’ll make do though, I’m sure. Maybe we’ll find we don’t really need a car that much anyway. In our ongoing efforts to declutter, I’ve also put a bunch of other things up for sale and had some interest in those too.

Meredith is really starting to become quite vocal. She still doesn’t have many “real” words but she makes a lot of new sounds and has started to string sounds together a lot too. She loves to say “uh oh”. She’s also making up new signs too. She will use the signs we use a few times, and then make up her own and stop using the one we’ve tried to teach. I’m not sure why but it’s pretty cute. I have a cousin who is deaf and was hoping Meredith would learn ASL, but even if not, at least it’s a way we can communicate with her.

Her favorite activity lately is to look through books, or have us read to her. She has one book in particular she loves. Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see? was cute the first time, and the second, and maybe even the third. But Kris and I both have it memorized now we’ve read it so much. She also seems to be teething again and has been less willing to play independently so I can clean up a bit or do dishes. I hate how messy that means the house gets, and would like to raise Meredith to appreciate a clean house (something I feel I didn’t get from my parents forcing us to clean our rooms once a week and otherwise our house was often messy), but really, I know that this is another phase and a messy house for a few weeks won’t hurt anyone. Sometimes if she gets really clingy or I’m tired of Brown Bear, Brown Bear yet again, I’ll take her outside and we’ll walk and explore. If it’s near nap time I’ll put her in the mei tei and walk until she falls asleep. A good friend just moved into our complex and she has a two year old son, so she will often come with us on the walks and the kids will play. It’s wonderful having someone so close by with similar parenting values.

 VANCOUVER — It’s time to pack up the pea purée and toss the baby rice. No more blending beans, mashing bananas or whipping sweet potatoes.

Fed up with rigid timetables for the introduction of first foods, a growing number of parents are giving up on spoon feeding and letting the kids set the pace.

The “baby-led weaning” movement, a term coined by a British former health visitor and midwife Gill Rapley, is mushrooming over the Internet. In the new book she has co-authored, Baby-led Weaning: Helping Your Baby to Love Good Food, Ms. Rapley argues that once a baby is six months old, parents should just cook up some vegetables, cut up some fruits and let the kid go crazy.

“Now that feeding guidelines are to start solids at six months, there is no reason to use purées or cereals,” Ms. Rapley explains by phone from Britain. “A developmental milestone at that age is for the baby to pick up an object and bring it to his mouth, so it’s a natural time for him to start feeding.”

There is no need to introduce foods in a particular order, or individually, she says. “Those guidelines were created because a four-month-old baby’s stomach is not ready to cope with food, and care needed to be taken.” Soft foods had previously been recommended for four- to six-month-olds to bridge the gap.

Her theory is that children will regulate their own intake, setting them up for future portion control and taking the pressure out of family mealtimes. In the process, children are less likely to use food as a control mechanism or become fussy eaters, Ms. Rapley says.

Common sense is advised: Don’t let your child eat unattended (though a baby’s natural gag reflex may be enough to prevent choking, you need to watch them) and be aware of family allergy issues.

“I don’t think this is revolutionary,” says Ms. Rapley, who adds that many hundreds of parents have been using baby-led weaning without realizing it. “It’s just never been written about before.”

Nevertheless, the movement is turning into an industry. Though part of its appeal has been the rejection of rules, the new feeding regimen is developing its own guidelines: In addition to Ms. Rapley’s book, a recipe database has sprung up on the Internet, and moms try to outdo each other in chat rooms with fancy recipes to tempt their little ones.

On Vancouver Island, Lindsay Wilson started looking into baby-led weaning when she saw her sister-in-law lose patience with baby food. “Her baby refused to eat it, so she just started with regular food.”

Ms. Wilson was preparing to introduce solids to her daughter, Meredith, when she turned six months. “I read all about baby-led weaning on the Internet and decided to try it.”

In the beginning, Meredith simply played with the food. “By 10 months, Meredith was fully feeding herself with finger foods and with a spoon.”

Now 15 months, Meredith eats a wide range of foods without fuss - while still nursing. “It makes it very easy to trust her and let her make her own decisions about what to eat and when, because any nutrients she’s not getting in solids are made up for in breast milk,” Ms. Wilson explains.

A Health Canada spokesman said that parents should refer to the guidelines for weaning and child nutrition posted on the department’s website.

Danielle Donders turned to baby-led weaning with her third son, Lucas, after having been through two different sets of guidelines with sons Tristan and Simon, now 6 and 4.

“With Tristan, it was cereals at four months, then vegetable purées introduced one at a time, wait a week, then try a new one,” she says. “With Simon, the guidelines had changed to starting solids at six months - and nothing but rice cereal for a while.”

By the time Lucas came along, Ms. Donders, an Ottawa-based communications officer, says she was just more relaxed about everything. “At 5½ months he was starving,” she says. “My mom was nagging me to feed him - so I put some Cheerios in front of him, not really thinking about what you’re supposed to do.”

Then someone posted about baby-led weaning on her blog, Postcards from the Mothership. “And I found out I was part of a whole movement.”

For Ms. Donders, though, letting Lucas, now 10 months old, feed himself was more about the demands of a large family and less about a new orthodoxy. “I realized that it just isn’t that easy to break him,” she laughs. “Although it is great to be able to feed him without feeling guilty that I’m not doing it the right way.”

Source: Globe & Mail

There’s an enormous picture of Meredith and I in the print version too. There are a couple really nitpicky things I could say, but I won’t bother. Overall I’m really happy with how it turned out. Hopefully it will get some awareness out there about how unnecessary jarred baby foods and spoon-feeding are!

So I agreed to the interview, and I think it went well. I’m a little nervous about the article, as there is often a lot of misunderstanding or misconceptions about baby-led weaning and I worry that I’ll be misquoted or something I said will be taken out of context. I don’t want to come across as this crazy mother who’s endangering her baby’s life to rebel against the baby food industry! When in reality I believe baby-led weaning is safer than spoon feeding and allows Meredith to control her own intake of food and decide for herself when she’s full or hungry. Overall though, the reporter was really friendly and nice, and seemed very open. I’m really looking forward to how it turns out.

Today a photographer came to take Meredith’s picture for the article. She was really nice and great with Meredith. Very understanding of the fact that she is fifteen months old and sometimes has her own agenda. Actually, Meredith has been eating a lot more solids all of a sudden the last couple of days, so it worked out well as she was more than willing to sit and eat while having her picture taken. (She’s been nursing a lot more too, as can be evidenced by that fact I’ve gained a cup size or two in the last week lol! She must be going through a growth spurt.)

At one point while watching Meredith eating yogurt with a spoon, the photographer said: “Parents don’t give their kids enough credit”, which I think is so true. We have video of Meredith feeding herself with a spoon at ten months old. It was a little messier than it is now, but no more messier than any spoon feeding I’ve witnessed. Especially when the kid is being tricked into opening his or her mouth so the parent can shovel more food in, while the kid tries to spit it out. I have video of her first time eating soup too, around 11 months, though that was messy haha. She seems to find it a lot easier now that the spoon fits in her mouth a little easier. We never “taught” her to use a spoon. We just gave her a spoon (or a fork depending on what we were eating) and let her experiment on her own. Below is the soup video.

The photographer also commented I was brave giving her glasses and ceramic dishes to eat out of, but she’s probably broken less dishes since she started using them than Kris or I have. We did use some plastic that had been given to us for a brief time when she was enjoying throwing it on the floor, but by the time she actually started eating she was well past that phase and is quite careful with any dishes we give her.

Anyway, I’ll definitely post the article here when it comes out. I’m looking forward to it! I don’t think I’ve ever been in the newspaper before.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - The exercise that babies get while suckling at the breast may be an essential component of the respiratory benefits associated with breastfeeding, new research shows.

Dr. Ikechukwu U. Ogbuano of the University of South Carolina in Columbia and colleagues found that by 10 years old children who were breastfed for 4 months or longer had larger lung capacities than their counterparts who had been nursed for a shorter amount of time or not at all. The breastfed children were also able to expel air from their lungs more quickly.

While the children’s speedier exhalations could have been related to the beneficial components of breast milk, “the lung capacity cannot be really explained by the immune factors in the breast milk,” Ogbuano told Reuters Health. Instead, Ogbuano and his colleagues argue, the harder work required of babies who drink from the breast rather than a bottle is a more likely explanation.

Breastfeeding is known to help protect babies from developing respiratory infections, but studies of whether it may reduce their risk of asthma risk later in life have had mixed results, the researchers write in the journal Thorax. To investigate, they looked at lung function in 1,033 children who were 10 years old, born on the Isle of Wight, and were followed since birth.

The average lung capacity, as measured by the volume of air a child could exhale forcibly, was 54 milliliters greater in those who were breastfed for at least 4 months than in those who were not been breastfed at all. Peak expiratory flow, or the maximum speed at which the air can blown out of the lungs, was 180.8 milliliters per second faster in these children.

The lung function in children who had been breastfed for a shorter amount of time wasn’t significantly different from the lung function of children who weren’t breastfed at all.

Ogbuano and his team note that the pressure nursing babies exert on the breast before milk begins to flow is triple that required when drinking from a bottle; nursing sessions also last 8 minutes, on average, compared with 4.4 minutes for bottle feeding. Nursing four to eight times a day “may also help to prepare these children for a lifetime of physical fitness,” Ogbuano said in an interview.

The findings suggest that babies who are bottle-fed with pumped breast milk may be missing out, Dr. Wilfried Karmaus, another researcher on the study, told Reuters Health. “We may go just in the wrong direction with the pumping and bottle feeding. That’s why it’s so important to really clearly consider what’s going on there.”

Karmaus noted that in Canada and Europe, generous maternity leave policies make it possible for women to directly breastfeed their infants for several months if they choose, while in the U.S. many women must return to work after only a few weeks. Giving U.S. women longer maternity leave might pay for itself in terms of health benefits, such as reductions in obesity, he suggested, calling for an economic analysis to address the issue.

Source: Reuters

My note: I would love to see longer maternity leaves in the US. It is so hard to raise a family on one income these days, but having to go back to work at 6 weeks sure doesn’t support long-term breastfeeding. I’d heard rumours that Canada was looking at the benefits of extending mat leave to 18 months, but I’m not sure if it ever went further than rumour.