Avivah Werner

Category: Parenting

  • Purim preps and the drinking issue

    Purim is around the corner and we’re in the full swing of preparations here!  A couple of days ago the kids baked 150 hamantaschen (with homemade chocolate filling), and cut out thirty sets of sugar cookies that spell out Purim in Hebrew (five letters in each word, so 150 letter cookies); each of the thirty sets will be part of mishloach manos that the family sends out.

    We have several container options for mishloach manos that they’ve made.  One is something that looks kind of like a small basket, made from card stock we were given over a year ago.  They taped them into box-like shapes and attached a handle; that was dd13’s idea.  Dd15 helped ds3 and ds7 make containers by stapling two paper plates together, folding down the tops of each, and attaching a pipe cleaner for a handle.  A number of them are wrapping theirs in cellophane, and it looks like I won’t be using any of the (heavily discounted sale priced :)) containers that I bought.  Dd15 printed out a bunch of colorful personalized labels, and everything is looking really nice.  Everything was packaged and finished last night, so no rush for Sunday.

    They also have been preparing their costumes.  This year I really wasn’t involved much at all.  They have the many costumes I’ve made to use if they want, and the older kids are all able to figure out something on their own.  When we placed our order for grass fed beef a few weeks ago, it came in a large box with thick layers of styrofoam on all sides.  We saved this and it’s become the basis for a costume for dd9, a traffic light.  That was finished yesterday.

    Now on to another kind of preparation.  I have a strong distaste for this topic but I feel it’s important not to stay silent on something I find of such great concern.    Purim is a beautiful holiday with so many special mitzvos.   However, one of those mitzvos is so easily abused that I think we have to be very, very careful about how it’s performed and what messages we give the impressionable children around us.  My concern is that too many people are using Purim as an excuse to drink and kids are picking up on this not so subtly expressed behavior.

    I watched this presentation with my four older kids (ages 11, 13, 15, 16) two or three weeks ago, and I think it’s worth watching with your kids who are preteens or teens, too.  It’s done by a frum organization who is trying to get the message out to Orthodox families that this is something our communities need to address.  My kids already know my very strong feelings on this topic, since I’ve discussed the concerns brought up in this presentation with my kids on several occasions, but alcohol abuse is an important topic and isn’t the kind of thing that one speaks about just once.  I also watched with them a couple of the videos on this site (for some reason only two of the four were loading for us or I would have watched them all).

    It’s good that all of our Purim specific preparations are done (except for cooking for the seuda) since I now have to get back to my kitchen to deal with 2 cases of napa that were on sale.  When I opened them up this morning and realized how many heads of napa were in each box (11 huge heads, at least five pounds each), I wasn’t congratulating myself on my bargain (7.99 case).  Rather I was mentally wondering why I did this to myself!   🙄   The only thing on my side is the cold weather, which will hopefully help keep them fresh for a while longer.

    Avivah

  • Getting toddler to try new foods

    >> My toddler is adamant about not eating certain things. We’ve dealt with a lot of food sensitivity issues with all 4 children, so it has been commonplace for different people to be eating different things at the same meal over the last few years. Gluten free foods were very expensive so we couldn’t all eat the same things. Different children have avoided different foods along the way. Now the new baby is super corn sensitive (as in I can’t even use sodium ascorbate that is guaranteed corn residue free because, even after I metabolize it and turn it into milk, he reacts to it). Again, I am trying new recipes, introducing new foods, etc. The two older girls are doing fairly well, but do complain a bit. My husband is finally on board with eating everything. The 2 (nearly 3) year old is the biggest holdout. She often refuses to eat anything when there is one thing on her plate she doesn’t like. She has figured out that she can avoid a fight if she is pleasant about refusing to eat at one meal and then eats more than usual at the next meal. I can force her to sit at the table, but I can’t force her to eat, and I’m not sure I should be anyhow. Any ideas? Thanks!<<

    There are plenty of parenting issues that require taking a strong stance, but hunger forces kids to eat so I never saw the point in insisting my kids eat anything.  When I put out food at dinner, I put it our family style and everyone helps themselves to as much as they want.  (The littles are very generous with their helpings,  lol!)  I wrote about dealing with picky eaters here.  As I said there, I figure that if a child is hungry, then he’ll eat.  I’d say that if your daughter is sitting at the table for the meal and is meeting her nutritional needs appropriately, don’t worry about it.

    However, I’m going to suggest that you make one meal that everyone can eat.  I know that can be hard when dealing with multiple allergies/sensitivities since it probably feels like it leaves you with about three foods to choose from! 😆  But you’re only one person with four little kids, and it seems like making multiple foods for each meal is going to become draining pretty quickly.

    And it’s not only a question of your time and energy.  It’s normal and reasonable for kids to pick up an idea that they can have custom made food and turn down what’s served if they don’t like it when there are so many options available to them.  Also, as they see everyone eating the same foods, there’s a kind of nonverbal encouragement at work that helps give over a message that everyone else likes this, so it must be okay!

    We don’t have serious allergies to deal with here, but for health reasons I tend to naturally avoid foods that are the most common allergens (very little gluten, corn, no soy), and I’m pretty comfortable cooking for just about any kind of dietary restrictions.   There are recipe alternatives for just about everything!  For example, coconut milk is a good replacement for dairy, nut flours are good for baking (if you can have nuts – otherwise there are gluten free grains and coconut flour), arrowroot powder or potato starch are good substitutes for corn starch, et.

    Also, the more simply you cook, using just basic ingredients and not fancying them up too much, the easier it is.  For example, some quinoa cooked in a bone broth with some protein on the side along with roasted or sauteed vegetables is a nice dinner that would work for most allergy considerations. Trying to make quinoa flour muffins that appeal to everyone would be more challenging.  I’m not saying not to experiment – I enjoy trying new things myself!  Just don’t tie yourself into knots trying to make happy.

    I’ve just started reading Gut and Psychology Syndrome, by Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride.  In it, she gives suggestions for encouraging young children to eat new foods.  She basically suggests starting with just one bite of the new food at a meal, and reinforcing that bite with something very positive (stickers, praise, excitement, a treat).  Though this isn’t the approach I would take, I can see how this could work, so I’m sharing it here in case it will be of help.

    Good luck!

    Avivah

  • More sleep for your baby (and you!)

    When I wrote about sleep issues for young children several months, a number of you requested that I write more specifics about the topic of sleep and infants.  It’s taken me a while to get around to this; as I mentioned then, this is a topic that I tend to avoid because I don’t like to be taken out of context.  In this post I’ll try to give a basic explanation of how I approach this with my young infants, and then respond to several specific questions that were asked.

    Firstly I have to explain that I never set out to develop an approach to get my babies to sleep through the night.   There are things that I’m structured about but this wasn’t one of them!  I don’t mind if babies wake up once or even twice a night; my concern was more about helping my infants get the amount of sleep they needed. And it works out quite nicely that in doing the best thing for them, it makes for better rested parents, too!

    The easiest thing to do is to establish healthy sleep habits from the beginning.  In order to do this, you need to learn to read your baby’s cues and respond to them in a timely manner.  The problem is that most of us recognize only the most obvious signs of exhaustion, way after the signs of being tired first appear!  Learn to recognize the signs that your baby is winding down; they start to look droopy and less alert.  If you’re holding him, he’ll often put his head on your shoulder and rest it there.  This is the time to put them to sleep – not when they are rubbing their eyes and starting to cry from tiredness.  There’s a window of opportunity when putting your child to sleep is very easy – he is generally relaxed and mellow, ready to sleep and not yet at the point of being overwrought from crying.  Whatever stage you’re at with your baby, start paying attention to these cues and responding – don’t think it’s too late if you haven’t done this since birth!

    How does a baby learn to fall asleep?  I like to put a baby down when he is in the tired and in the ready state that I described above, very relaxed but still awake.  (Remember that you’re putting him to sleep when he needs it, not when it’s convenient for you!)  I think a big part of the problem most parents have is that they get their baby to sleep (nursing, rocking, holding) and then he pops right up when he gets put down.  It’s like those few minutes of sleep refreshed him enough to keep him awake for a while longer!  And he suddenly finds himself in bed, very alert and totally not ready for sleep.  It’s much easier on him if he has the chance to gently drift to sleep on his own.

    There seems to be the view that either you let your baby ‘cry it out’ and neglect him emotionally, leaving him with psychic scars that will last forever, or you’re a nurturing parent and you hold twenty five hours a day so that he never whimpers.  :) Just exaggerating a little to make a point.  :lol: There’s actually a possibility between those two extremes that is nurturing and loving towards both the baby and parent that many mothers are unaware of.

    By putting my babies down when they’re ready to sleep, I’ve found that they don’t cry a lot. They’re not being left in a crib to scream for long periods of time until they fall asleep exhausted.  Occasionally my baby will cry for a few minutes after he’s put in (about 2- 4 minutes), but usually he snuggles right down and falls asleep within a few minutes with no crying at all.  If he cries more than a few minutes, I know that I misread his sleep cues and he’s not really ready to go to sleep and I take him out.

    Not only does he not cry a lot when he’s put down for a nap or for the night, but he doesn’t cry a lot when he’s awake.  Part of that is certainly temperament, but a very, very large part of it is that a well rested infant is a happy infant!

    What about nursing a baby to sleep?  Remember, every time a baby cries, he isn’t asking to be nursed!  Sometimes he’s crying from exhaustion, and learning to read his cues will help you to respond appropriately to what he’s telling you.  That being said, I think nursing babies to sleep is fine.  My only caution is that when a mother does this all the time, the baby becomes dependent on her to fall asleep instead of developing his ability to fall asleep. I usually nurse my baby until he was almost asleep, and put him in his crib when he was still awake but on the verge of sleep.  At this point I can nurse him to sleep fully and put him to bed afterwards and he hardly stirs.

    If you’re past the stage of being able to do this from the beginning, don’t worry, you can fairly quickly get your child used to a new routine.  A friend told me several months ago about this book and was happy to find it was something I’d recommend.  It’s similar in many ways to what we do.  He has a moderate approach and is able to give more specific and structured suggestions than I am, since I’m just not structured in that way regarding bedtimes.  For me, our babies sleeping schedules have naturally evolved from being in tune to them and respecting their needs.

    Something I found interesting was the author’s explanation that infants reach the ability to sleep through the night at about age six weeks from the original due date.  This was especially interesting to me since my current baby slept through the night way earlier than any of his siblings.  Many of you may remember way back eight months ago to when he was born, that he was three weeks overdue; all the rest of my kids were born on the earlier side of the due date.  He slept for seven hours at night at the age of three weeks, something the others didn’t do until 7 or 8 weeks. All of them lined up with the six weeks from the due date guideline, though I didn’t learn of it until he was two or three months old.  Interesting, isn’t it?

    In case you’re wondering more about my baby’s current sleep schedule, at about age 5 – 6 months he began waking up once or twice a night.  That was when he was teething, and then he went back to sleeping through the night.  He generally goes to sleep around 9 – 10pm and sleeps until about 7 am.  He takes a long nap in the mid morning, and another long nap in the afternoon.  This is his general routine, but it’s not something I schedule and I can’t give you a specific time this happens every day because it goes according to him, not the clock.

    As far as bedtimes for both my other littles, ds2 (29 months) and ds3.5 (46 months) go to sleep around 8 pm and wake up around 7 – 7:30am.  They both take a nap mid day, around 1 pm.  Ds2 goes in a little earlier and sleeps longer than ds3.5.   Ds2 sleeps around 2 – 3 hours, and ds3 sleeps around 1 – 1.5 hours.

    Now for a few questions:

    >> How do you put them down into a pack and play without them waking? I can barely reach down into one, let alone gently deposit a sleeping baby (I’m very short).<<

    Since they’re usually not sleeping when I put them down, this isn’t generally a problem!  Sometimes my baby does fall asleep when nursing, and I don’t worry about if he wakes up when I put him in bed since he’s learned how to fall back asleep on his own.  I actually assume they will often wake up somewhat.  But if they are basically ready for sleep, they will settle back down to sleep within a couple of minutes.  If you make it a point to handle your babies very gingerly when you put them down, they become overly sensitized to movement and it gets to be almost impossible not to do something to disturb them.  I don’t take any special pains to keep from making noise or moving and very often transfer my almost asleep baby from me to an older child to take upstairs to bed.

    As far as height, I’m guessing my dd9 is probably shorter than anyone reading here!  She routinely puts the baby down (and was eight when she started doing it several months ago), and now ds7 is also starting to put the baby in for the night.  They’re tall for their ages but not that tall!

    >>Oh, and I’m curious how you arrange naps around your other kids outings? You have older kids, so maybe they stay home and babysit, or take the younger kids to their activities… <<

    When my babies are little up through the age of about 2 or 2.5, I don’t mess around with their napping schedule.  I think it’s very important that they get to sleep when they are tired, just like I think they need to be fed when they’re hungry.  That means that activities are scheduled around their nap times.  Everyone is much happier when the baby and young children in the home are well rested so this isn’t much of a sacrifice!

    >>With nightmares, teething, taking to bathroom in the middle of the night, illnesses, etc., with so many kids,  Avivah, I cannot imagine how you get any sleep, since with two I barely seem to.<<

    I should get to sleep earlier than I do, but my sleep limitations are because I choose to spend too long online (like writing posts for my blog ;) ) than because of my kids.  As you see from above, the baby/young child part of the equation is fine!  My husband and I unofficially split the nighttime responsibilities years ago; I take care of the nursing baby, he takes care of anyone else that needs it.  He doesn’t have to get up very often, though!  They don’t usually need much once they’re in bed for the night – sometimes someone isn’t feeling well or wakes up suddenly crying, but that’s not common.  And now that they have older siblings they share rooms with, usually a sibling will hear them and help them before we get to them.  He also helps out with the baby in the night if there’s a need, like changing the baby if it’s necessary.

    I hope this was helpful!  If I didn’t address a concern that you have or something was unclear, please feel free to share questions in the comments sections below.

    (This post is part of Works for Me Wednesdays.)

    Avivah

  • Couldn’t breakfast be cheaper?

    >>Maybe it’s because by 7 -7:30 every one but me has to be out of the house, but our breakfast is always fresh bread and spreads, and you have what I’d call “fancy” and varied breakfast every day. Why? Wouldn’t you save time (and maybe expenses) by having only bread and bits for this meal?<<

    I responded to this question in brief in the comments section, but wanted to bring it back up here since there are a couple of other issues that I didn’t respond to there.

    It’s true that if saving time and money was my highest priority for breakfast, I could  cook differently.  For example, I can buy 50 lb of oats for under $25, and at that price I could easily serve oatmeal every day and spend less than $1 total for the entire family for breakfast!   It doesn’t get much cheaper than that!  And as I’ve written in the past, oatmeal can be a fast meal to prepare.

    However, I see mealtimes in a slightly different way than just a time to fuel everyone as fast and cheaply as I can.  Food has emotional power in addition to providing physical nourishment.  When you eat foods that taste good, you tend to have positive associations surrounding the food.  Making different foods that our children enjoy is an easy way to use the emotions associated with food to connect our children with us and one another when we sit down to eat.

    Also, I’m sure everyone has noticed that there’s a widespread belief that healthy food isn’t appealing and the ‘good stuff’ is the typical fare that most Americans are eating.  Along with that belief is the idea that having less to spend on food means being deprived.  My kids don’t see other people eating or shopping like us.  We rarely buy processed foods, and when we do, it’s the kind of processed food that most people consider wildly healthy, we integrate traditional principles of food preparation into all of our meals as a matter of course, and our food budget of $600 monthly (family of 11) is less than anyone I know.

    Every time I serve a meal I have the opportunity to show my kids that healthy foods are delicious and not a reason to feel deprived; that’s daily mental programming towards their attitudes and outlook on food!   And it’s working!  Despite the fact that when kids feel different there’s a tendency to feel like the mainstream view is better and resent being put in the position of not being like everyone else, my kids feel happy to eat the way we do.  They’ve told me (kids ages 10 and up) that when they were younger they thought their friends who could have frozen pizza three times a day were lucky, but now they see it differently.

    Lastly, though I’ve often thought how much simpler my weekly menu planning would be if I just made the same things week in and week out, I enjoy the variety!

    Avivah

  • Responding to questions about family size

    Many people are bothered when others comment on their family size, but it really doesn’t bother me. I often get comments, probably more than most people, since we homeschool and often kids are out with me when I go out.  But I can’t remember any negative comments.  I think most people are just genuinely curious since large families in the secular world are uncommon.   Just questions like, are they all yours?  Usually everyone isn’t with me and I honestly say, “no, there are one/two/three more at home”.  Some more of the questions I often get, and my responses, all said with a smile:

    “How do you manage?”  With a lot of help from G-d!

    “Your hands must be full! Better full than empty.

    “You sure are busy!” Isn’t everyone?

    “Are you planning to have more?”  I’m not making any plans but it would be wonderful!

    I really think a big part of the reason that the feedback that I get is almost uniformly positive (or at the very least neutral) is that I’m not apologetic or embarrassed at all – I love having a big family and people are very influenced by your attitude.  Also, my kids are well behaved and we get a lot of compliments about them and their behavior; I think this also influences the response people have.  I’ve had people tell us we should keep having more (“people like you should be having more kids”), that raising good children is the most valuable contribution that a person can make, etc.

    I almost always hear: “You don’t look like you have nine kids!”  That used to always leave me wondering what they would expect a mother of a big family to look like, so often I now ask them to explain themselves. The answer always is: “You look so young/happy/calm!”

    Avivah

  • When to push child

    >>And another big topic that comes to mind is — when do we push children to take on something that is hard for them, and when do we let them make their own decision on whether or not they want to pursue a certain area? Examples in my family: one daughter decided to drop out of a class she was taking. Another daughter would rather not study a certain subject that I feel is important. Etc.<<

    I’ve had this dilemma a number of times over the years in our homeschooling.  The choice I’ve come to is that I’ll insist on something if a) I know it’s something they need and they’ll later be disadvantaged; b) it’s something that they won’t need but will regret not having the skills for later on.

    The first tends to affect academic type issues – I want my kids to have the skills to navigate life successfully.  There are things that I think are important to that goal – for example, because I feel that strong reading, writing, and math skills are an asset and a person is disadvantaged without it, I’ll insist on this regardless of whether a child wants to do it or not.  However, I’m very flexible about at what age I expect a child to do certain level work.  I also try to help the kids find ways to impart the information in as enjoyable way as possible.  So insisting doesn’t mean making a child miserable and being rigid.  There’s a lot of flexibility and personalizing that goes along with this.

    So let’s say a young child hates writing.  I’ll back off this and let it be for a while – this means knowing your child and paying attention to their cues.  I did this with ds7 and he’s just now finishing the lettering for the ABC.    I know the readiness wasn’t there before this and pushing wasn’t going to help and probably would be damaging.  But with some time, the resistance generally fades and the readiness builds.  At that point I’ll start them off slow and pay attention to how it’s going for the child in question.

    To do this, you have to be confident that 1) your child wants to learn and 2) will learn when given the chance, or you’ll get hung up on what kids in school are up to and put yourself and your child under lots of unnecessary pressure.  This gets easier to do with time, but is sometimes agonizing the in the beginning, as you’re going out on faith that the principles of true education and relationship building will work before the results are there.  At this point it’s much easier for me since I’ve gone through this so many times, and seen that in the end they get where you want them to be- happily.

    The second area to think about pushing is regarding things that they don’t need to do, like lessons you sign them up for in the spirit of fun.  Years ago my ds16 had an unpleasant experience at swim lessons (at age eight) and refused to go back.  I didn’t see the point of pushing it, and since he continued to be resistant to the idea over the years, he didn’t go back for lessons.  It would have been a mistake to make him go back right away, because it really was a frightening and unnerving situation he was put in.  But looking back I think there was a point where I could have encouraged – pushed – him to try lessons again, maybe two years after the initial trauma.  I didn’t, though, because I was unsure about how much to push, and now despite the fact that he’s an extremely athletic young man, his swimming skills remain weak.

    Several months ago ds10 told me he wanted to quit piano lessons.  I grappled with this, since this isn’t something he needs to be able to do long term.  After asking him why he wanted to stop (answer: he wasn’t progressing at the rate he wanted because he wasn’t putting in enough practice time), I told him that he needed to continue and to find time to practice more frequently so he’d see progress.  How did I decide on this?

    Aquiring competence is a discipline – it’s wonderful to play music well, but it doesn’t happen by itself.  I know that, but he doesn’t.  I didn’t want him to give up and years later, instead of a skill he would have taken pleasure from would be the memory of giving up.  I told him that he didn’t have to stay with it if he didn’t like it, but that I didn’t want him to quit without really making a fair effort.   He’s now really enjoying piano and is very glad he didn’t quit.  He had a recital last week and is at the beginning intermediate level, now able to play simple classical compositions and performed duets with each of his sisters in addition to his own two pieces, and gets so much satisfaction from it.

    Again, it’s critical to know your child.  A general tip I would say is, if you’re feeling the desire to push because you feel fearful, then wait.

    Avivah

  • Messages we tell ourselves

    >>Can you share what you tell yourself that differentiates between you being tense or calm?<<

    This is a great question! What I’ve learned is that the situation that you’re faced with really isn’t what makes the difference.  It’s the messages we tell ourselves that make the difference.

    Here are things that will make me tense:

    • “I can’t take it.”
    • “It’s too much for me.”
    • “No one is listening to me.”
    • “No one appreciates me/no one cares.”
    • “It’s not fair.”
    • I do all this work and no one says ‘thank you’.

    You get the idea, right?  Lots of negativity and globalizing.  Thinking how awful and unbearable something is, is a guarantee to get upset, resentful, and hostile. Poor, poor me.  There are ways to see the negative and to either reframe it entirely or to put into a more helpful perspective.   I like reframing but when there’s a big change from one thought to another, often there’s resistance to accepting the new positive thought, and it evokes another more hostile thought.

    I find it helpful to mentally work things down.  It’s very hard to go from feeling very reactive and angry/hurt to feeling filled with love and joy – there are steps you need to take in the middle to get from the first floor to the ninetieth – you can’t just make a huge leap! That means reaching from a negative thought for one that feels a little less negative, and then another that is less negative, and so on – this takes just a minute or two, once you’re used to it.

    Here’s a theoretical example of what I mean:

    1. ‘My husband sees all the work I’m doing and never helps; he’s selfish and doesn’t care about me.’  (very reactive and hostile, judgmental)
    2. He does occasionally take out the garbage if I ask him. (begrudging but recognizing that global statement that he ‘never’ helps is inaccurate)
    3. Actually, he does other things, too. (feeling a little more positive)
    4. He works hard all day to provide for our family, so I can be home with our kids/so we have what we need.  (see how husband is helping with his efforts out of the house)
    5. He loves me but doesn’t offer to help since isn’t sure what will be most helpful. (feeling understanding)
    6. He’s helped out plenty of times without me asking. (feeling more loved)
    7. He does that because he loves me.
    8. He’s a great guy and I’m lucky to have such a terrific husband.

    And then it’s not hard to say to yourself, ‘ I can show my appreciation and ask for what I need directly without making him feel attacked and unappreciated. ‘

    So when faced with things I don’t like, I try to get perspective and that always means looking for the positive and the good, and making the effort to feel more joyful even when it’s not my initial response.

    Avivah

  • Awareness of personality types

    >>i am so amazed how in tune you are with your children, i often felt like my parents barely knew me beyond a surface level. i hope to be more aware of my children’s strengths and weaknesses and guide them accordingly.<<

    A big part of being in tune with your children is taking the time to get to know them.  It’s much easier when you spend lots of time with them every day!

    Several months ago one of my kids picked up a book from our shelf about the Myers-Briggs personality typing system.  It was given to me by my roommate when I was 17, since I had been so fascinated by it at that time.  This system consists of 16 basic personality types.  Then I learned about the eneagram (a complex nine point personality system), and when I combined that with the Myers Briggs system, it added significant depth to my understanding of personality types.

    Dd15 (then 14) read through the book we had on our shelf, and took it to NY with her for her camp reunion.  She explained it to all the girls there and to others who weren’t there when she spoke to them on the phone, lol!  This has become a regular topic of table conversation since she has explained the basic info to her siblings (who have also found it interesting), so now when someone references a ‘type, everyone understands what that means.  It gives us more things to joke about, too!

    When I’ve discussed careers with my children, I’ve tried to guide each of them according to what their strengths are.  I had been trying to find a book that broke down potential careers according to personality types and wasn’t having any luck, even though I knew it existed – I had picked it up and flipped through it about five years ago in the library.  Then one day dh came home from the library and without knowing I was looking for it, brought me that exact book – he said he thought it looked like something I’d like!

    The book is called Do What You Are, and it categorizes careers according to the Myers Briggs personality types.  Finding a field that allows you to work with your strengths is most conducive to long term career satisfaction, and this can be a helpful tool is helping a person know what direction to look in.  So far I can definitively ‘type’ only my older four kids – though I’m pretty sure about ds7 I’m still unsure about dd9, since younger kids can seem to have one aspect and then reverse as they mature with time – and reading the description of each type was fun because it so much described each of them.

    It was helpful for me to see some capabilities and tendencies that I was aware of in different children, but didn’t necessarily view them as strengths.  For example, ds16 has always had an interest in analyzing numbers (eg, baseball cards, stocks) – and I always looked at it more as an interest than an aptitude, so it wasn’t something I was significantly factoring in.  However, when I read about the unique ability of this particular personality type to analyze data (some of his ‘type’s’ career suggestions were stock analyst and investment banker), it helped me to not only see a tendency, but to value it.

    (On an a side note, it was interesting to see my type listed very few careers in the health care field, significantly less than almost every other personality; I’ve often thought that the only thing I could imagine doing in that area was chiropractics, holistic health practitioner, or nutritionist, and every one of these was on the short list.  It explained that my type sees the body as holistic and is open to alternative ‘healing approaches. )

    But don’t think that you have to read a book like this to know and understand your child!  This is merely supplemental; lots of love, time, and willingness to listen and really hear are the most important requirements.

    Avivah

  • Toys for littles

    First, a quick technical note – for the first time tonight I checked the spam filter and saw that a number of legitimate comments were there from first time commenters  who included some kind of link to their business or site in their comment.  I was able to approve those from Thanksgiving and on but suspect that if these comments were directed to the spam inbox, so were others.  So if you’ve commented in the past and you think I was ignoring you, I wasn’t.  I’ve never looked at the spam filter until tonight so I never saw any message that was sent there (most of them have been automatically discarded by this point and I can no longer access them).  If you still have a question you want to ask or something to respond to, go ahead and I’ll be sure to regularly check the spam filter to be sure this doesn’t happen again.
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    I was asked a while ago about toys that I recommend for the littles.   The truth is, I don’t buy a lot of toys.  I get games, puzzles, building sets, craft supplies, books, activity kits for kids who are above age 4, but the littles don’t have a huge amount of stuff.   A couple of months ago I was noticing that we were low on toys for that age range (thanks to my desire to declutter things I’m not currently using 🙄 ), so for Chanuka I got them a few new toys.  It’s amazing to me how little kids need to be happy and have fun, as I saw with just the newest additions.
    When I get something, I prefer for it to be good quality.  I don’t think it’s good to get dollar store items for young children that break the first time they’re used, and try to stay away from cheaply made toys.  My feeling is better to have less stuff but to get something that will last and be enjoyed for a long time.  I totally love wooden toys.  There’s something about them that just feel so authentic and wholesome.  Maybe it’s partially psychological, but I really appreciate well made wooden toys.
    This Chanuka, I got a couple of things for ds3- a set of kiddie tools (no, not wood :() and a large floor puzzle.  For ds2 we got a handmade wood train with five cars – a locomotive, a coal car, a flatbed car (loaded with logs), a tanker, and a caboose – we gave him a car each night. We also got a wooden farm like the one below for them to share.  Naturally, I didn’t pay 89.99 or even the clearance price of 59.99.  I got it at a thrift store for $11. 😆
    http://ep.yimg.com/ca/I/store3-store_2085_39671432
    I’ve been enjoying watching how much fun the two of them can have with just the train and farm.  They load the animals onto the flatbed car or coal car, put the logs down the chute of the farmhouse, and the train makes deliveries to and from the farm.  And I was pleasantly surprised to see how much the baby (7 months) likes the farm!
    We changed around some of the living room furniture for Chanuka and now the climber that I told you about getting a couple of days before the baby was born is now in a more accessible place.

    The above looks very much like our climber, with a few differences. Ours has one rung less heightwise, so it’s a little bit shorter.  You see the platform at the top of the picture?  That’s two separate pieces that can be adjusted.  We have four pieces, so we put two on the lowest rung for the floor, and the other two get changed from time to time depending on their interest.  Instead of a ladder and a slide, we had two slides but gave one of them away with the second climber we got, figuring we’d be unlikely to use both.   I don’t leave the slide out all the time, but once or twice a day we take it out and let them play with it.  They realized if they put the ladder on the second rung up, they also have a great track to play with their trains- they zoom down the slide and across the living room floor!  And any animals on it get an exciting ride, too.  🙂

    We’ve moved cross country and from overseas, and each time most of the toys didn’t accompany us, which is why some of the great toys we had in the past aren’t around for the littles now.  We’ve had two different mini kitchens, a FP (Fisher Price) dollhouse, LT (Little Tykes) playground for little people, FP barn, push toys (including a shopping cart), and riding cars.  These companies have nice quality toys, even if they aren’t made of wood. As far as smaller toys, I like the ones that you create or build with – bristle blocks, legos/mega blocks, gears, lacing cards – there are so many great toys!  I stay away from anything faddy based on movies or tv shows.  I find that educational stores or catalogs carry the kind of thing I like more than typical toy stores.

    Whatever you buy, look for things that are made to withstand a lot of use!  For example, we got the LT musical set (tamborine, maracas, xylophone) years ago and it is still in great shape.  The other tamborines and maracas we had that were cheaply made cracked and found a new home in the garbage can.  grin.gif When getting puzzles, I look for ones that have sturdy pieces – I’m biased towards Ravensburger puzzles (and games) but I’m sure there are other great companies.  I stay away from the ones with flimsy pieces that don’t fit together, or the pieces are so generic that many have similar shapes and can all fit into the same spots.

    Do any of you have toy recommendations to recommend for the 2 – 4 age group?

    Avivah

    PS – edited to add that I don’t like most electronic toys because I have a low tolerance for toys that make noise, and I like when the kids are the actively creating their fun with the toy, not being passively entertained by it.   There’s enough noise that the kids make that I don’t welcome more of the artificial sort!  This is where I draw the line for gifts that we receive.  When a grandparent once gave us a toy that made an obnoxious amount of noise (already knowing that I really don’t like these toys), I kind of jokingly but not jokingly said we’d keep it at their house for the kids to play with there.   And it went back home with them.

  • Unschooling and the role of limits

    >>the question, and your answers made me think about unschooling, as sort of a polar opposites, and how both hope to produce the same sort of person at the end. I’m curious how you view the ‘no rules, just principles’ aspect of radical unschooling… allowing children to pursue what they find they want to, without limits (I am not including hurting themselves, or running in traffic, or other dangerous things like that) and not requiring behaviors/chores of them. I’m sure I don’t completely understand the theory, so I’m having trouble encapsulating it here. When reading on it, I get the impression that rules/limits are damaging a child, emotionally.<<

    The term ‘unschooling’ was coined by John Holt, who wrote several books on education.  His definition can be summed up here. I’ve read all of John Holt’s books and he doesn’t advocate educating children without guidance, limits, or saying ‘no’.  In fact, one of the first things I ever read about homeschooling was in Mothering magazine – it was an article by a homeschooling mother whose family was close to John and tried her best to integrate using his principles.  In that article, she described how he helped her daughter understand the mathematical concepts she was then struggling with.  He didn’t tell her that her daughter shouldn’t be learning math because she was frustrated and didn’t want to!  What he did was try to connect with her desire to learn and provided guidance according to her learning style.

    The unwillingness to provide any structure/guidance/limits is where my main disagreement with radical unschooling lies.  While I know of several families who unschool and are bringing up lovely families, every one of them has clear guidelines and expectations, sometimes in the academic arena but definitely in other areas.  They don’t have a laissez faire, let the kids do whatever they want, when they want mentality that is part and parcel of radical unschooling.  Unfortunately the definition of unschooling has been co-opted by radical elements of the homeschooling world and it’s become very confusing to sift through the variances in different approaches.

    To quote something I once heard on a parenting cassette: “Discipline without love is harsh.  Love without discipline is child abuse.”  I think that parents who won’t say ‘no’ to their children are misguided and harming their children in the short and long term, but one person’s opinion really is of minimal value.  What matters is what are the results these parents are getting?  Are parents who raise their children without boundaries raising giving, kind, and concerned individuals who are making the world a better place?  (When I read this  article six months ago, I saved it to share here –  it’s relevant to this discussion now so don’t skip reading it!)  Start paying attention to the families you see – look for parents with older kids because that’s when you see the long term results of a particular parenting approach.

    Life inherently has limitations. Being a religious Jew means limitations – we live a life structured by G-d’s rules, and true freedom paradoxically comes with structure.  Otherwise you become a slave to your own desires, and that’s the farthest thing from freedom!  While unschooling can be compatible with Torah, radical unschooling can not.  I’ve said again and again that you must lovingly set and clarify boundaries – because there have to be limits.

    A person must have some guidelines in life except doing whatever they feel like, when they feel like it, how they feel like it.  It’s wonderful to follow your passion, but kids who haven’t learned some inner discipline won’t be able to sustain the necessary effort to follow through – and success in any field requires effort.  Even when you don’t feel like it.

    Avivah