All About me – Page 26 – a hippie with a minivan

the Circ debate…

Well.. I did it again and got myself into a debate.. This time it was about circ and on Mothering. Isn’t that an oxymoron.. A NFL (Natural Family Living) site and people are actually advocating circ on the birth board. Luckily, it is MDC (Mothering dot commune) and I got help…

This is the first time I have ever really spoke out against Circ… It is not an issue I have brought up before because it saddens me and scares me that people would actually do that to their child and I just never really wanted to bring it up.. However, I truly believe in the position that the “Canadian Children’s Rights Council”has and that is that Circ is the genital Mutilation of children.

It is unnecessary, there are no medical reasons for it , it is painful and it should be criminalized the same way that female circumcision has been.

I hate the “Parents Choice” argument… Parents are parents and their role should be to protect their children from unnecessary harm. Sitting around the table and making a decision to cut a piece of your child’s genital organ off is not a decision that should be up to the parents to make… It is a purely cosmetic surgery and the only person ultimately involved in the outcome of that decision is the child. He and he alone should be the one to make decisions about his body… Children are not out property, it is not a decision for a parent to make.
The “look like others” argument” in Canada the numbers of circ are getting to be quite minimal so the circed boy is most likely to be the odd one out, the US is down to almost 50/50… I doubt the topic will really come up…

The Medical Argument: Has NO foundation.. pretty much it is like saying “hmmm… lets cut of his foot so that he never gets an ingrown toenail”or “lets cut of her mammary glands so she doesn’t get breast cancer”

The Cleaner Argument: Again NOT true… the intact boy is easy to clean… splash a bit of water and that’s it.. they should never be retracted and don’t retract naturally until about the age of 4-5 and even up to puberty… there is no special care and and pretty much no care needed for an intact boy… and beside, the foreskin has a purpose, it has good bacteria that keep it clean just like us women are not completely dry… that’s how it is made and how it works!!

The “look like dad argument”… OK how much time do dads and boys compare their penises… really? If dad had a finger amputated would you do he same to the child to look like dad? No? No they may not look alike… so what!!! You can just explain that dad had a surgery that removed part of his penis and that parents are now more informed and know better…

Circumcision isn’t just a little snip. It is a risky surgery and the it is not just a little piece of skin that is removed it is a organ in itself that has multiple functions.

Circumcision is Genital Mutilation. There is not way around that Fact. It should be criminalized as it has been in other parts of the world. It is not just another parental decision.

Here is a great article on Mothering.

The Case Against Circumcision.

great post…

There is a great post on Four little Birds called “the danger of parenting outside of the mainstream”

If you are a fan of Hathor then you have probably heard about the baby that was taken away because it was born uinassisted. If not, it is explained in the post…

She mentioned something that I have been thinking about often lately and she said it perfectly…

What is ironic is that there are so many parenting choices sanctioned by our society that are far more questionable in terms of violation of human rights or danger or neglect or cruelty: isolating infants and denying them comfort, even when it upsets them so much they vomit from the stress (Ferber,) hurting children physically in order to train them like animals (Pearls, Ezzo, Dobson,) removing sexually functional parts of their bodies for cosmetic or religious reasons without their consent (circumcision,) allowing narcotics into an infantâ€™s bloodstream (epidurals,) injecting foreign proteins and toxic chemicals into their bodies (vaccination,) separating mother and baby at birth so that chemical bonding cannot occur (still policy at many hospitals,) feeding babies a breastmilk substitute for convenience rather than medical need, etc. (And itâ€™s worth noting that none of these things are part of the natural wisdom of the natural human, but became popular only because they were and are advocated by â€œexpertsâ€.

I really can’t see how my views about parenting are radical.

I want to listen to my child, I do not want to talk down to my child, I want my children to love and respect me because they want to, not because they told to… I want to give the best to my child emotionally and physically. I do not believe that they are manipulating me when they communicate in the only way that they know how. I don’t find that wanting to be held is a bad habit, I don’t find that nursing them to sleep if that is what they need is a bad habit either.
I don’t believe in mutilating a childs gentials for whatever the reasoning behind it and think it is sad and barbaric those who do… I want them to get the best start in life healthwise so I give them the best by breastfeeding, I continue to give them the best until they no longer need it, not only phyically (I couldn’t imagine caring for a sick 3 year old that won’t eat or drink anything for a few days if I wasn’t breastfeeding) and emotionally also.. I also believe in feeding my kids healthy and whole foods to give them the best nurition possible…
Why are these ideas so radical to the mainstream Formula feeding, vaxing, circing, CIO loving society? I really can’t understand.

Sweet little man…

It has been a bit over a year since my dad died and for the last few weeks Xavier has been talking about him more and more… he talks about what they used to do together an what his Pops liked doing… he also remembers the funeral and talks about that also…
A few days ago he asked to have a picture of his Pops to put next to his bed… and we will be doing that soon together…

I still have trouble believing that he is gone. Even though Xavier didn’t get to know him long, I am so happy that he remembers him… It makes me sad that Colin will only remember him through our words and pictures…

I miss him so much…

more sleep talk…

A few blogs that I read on a regular basis have in the last week talked about how they have turned to Ferber to train their kids. Reading these stories made me cry. I understand that they have been fighting with their childrens sleep for a while now and I understand that they don’t want to deal with it anymore. However, I can’t understand why they believe that making their children feel abandoned and Cry themselves to sleep is the way to resolve their “sleep issues”…

In their posts they make it known that it feels so wrong yet they “know” that it is the right thing to do. How can someone believe that? How can someone justify making their kid cry themselves to sleep… Oh yeah….. they believe that babies are better off in their cribs in a seperate room and beleive that they should be happy to sleep there, they wouldn’t dare let baby sleep in their arms or in their bed…. so they turn to making their children fall asleep from pure exaustion after having cried for however long…. of course the reasoning is that it works…. of course it works… the child cries and cries and nobody comes, night after night nobody comes… so why bother crying anymore.

I really think that the people that turn to these awful and sad “sleep solutions” really believe that their intentions are good and really do beleive that it is best for their children.This is what I find sad. How can crying yourself to sleep and giving up be the best thing.

There was an article that I quoted recently on my blog written by Dr. Gabor Mate.

Here are a few parts of the article…

Ferberization is the process of “training”an infant to sleep by ignoring her crying. As a family physician, I used to advocate the Ferber technique and, as a parent, practised it myself. Since then, I have come to believe that the method is harmful to infant development and to a child’s long-term emotional health.

Ferberization seems simple: “After about one week, your infant will learn that crying earns nothing more than a brief check from you, and isn’t worth the effort. She’ll learn to fall asleep on her own, without your help, reads Dr. Ferber’s advice. The question is, what else does a baby learn when treated this way and what is the impact of such learning?

People cannot consciously recall what they “learned” in the first year of life, because the brain structures that store narrative memory are not yet developed. But neuropsychological research has established that human beings have a far more powerful memory system imprinted in their nervous systems called intrinsic memory. Intrinsic memory encodes the emotional aspects of early experience, mostly in the prefrontal lobe of the brain. These emotional memories may last a lifetime. Without any recall of the events that originally encoded them, they serve as a template for how we perceive the world and how we react to later occurrences.

Is the world a friendly and nurturing place, or an indifferent or even hostile one? Can we trust other human beings to recognize, understand and honour our needs, or do we have to shut down emotionally to protect ourselves from feeling vulnerable? These are fundamental questions that we resolve largely with our implicit memory system rather than with our conscious minds. As psychologist and leading memory researcher Daniel Schacter has written, intrinsic memory is active “when people are influenced by past experience without any awareness that they are remembering.”

The implicit message an infant receives from having her cries ignored is that the world “as represented by her caregivers” is indifferent to her feelings. That is not at all what loving parents intend.

Unfortunately, it’s not parental intentions that a baby integrates into her world view, but how parents respond to her. This is why, if I could relive my life, I would do much of my parenting differently.

When the infant falls asleep after a period of wailing and frustrated cries for help, it is not that she has learned the “skill”of falling asleep. What has happened is that her brain, to escape the overwhelming pain of abandonment, shuts down. It’s an automatic neurological mechanism. In effect, the baby gives up. The short-term goal of the exhausted parents has been achieved, but at the price of harming the child’s long-term emotional vulnerability. Encoded in her cortex is an implicit sense of a non-caring universe.

The baby who cries for the parent is not engaging in “tyranny”, she is expressing her deepest need.. emotional and physical contact with the parent. The deceptive convenience of Ferberization is one more way in which our society fails the needs of the developing child.

There is no lack of support for these moms either (on one blog there were hundreds of comments that supported CIO for a 6 month old). Even if it feels wrong to do it of they talk about it like it was their only choice and that it was the best thing to do, no one dare contradict them, they just get the stories of others that have done the same… and if someone does contradict them they are labelled as judgemental and “they have never been through it” blah blah blah…. Really, I think that the support is shared because of they really believe that this is the right answer and that because it felt so wrong, if they dare admit that they would have done things differently they would have to live with the guilt of knowing and that they potentially scarred their children for life based on their unrealistic expectations.

If so many children have “sleep issues” and have to be trained out of “desperation” then it is clear that the “sleep issues” are a norm. If they are the norm then it is clear that the real “sleep issues” lie within the parents expectations of the child and not what is physically and physiologically normal for the child. If people would stop fighting their children over when and where their children sleep, then sleep would not be such an issue. If a child wants to sleep in your arms, cuddled near your heart then so be it. Respect them and their needs. If you believe that your child must sleep in their own room alone and they do no want to because they want to be close to you, then recognize that it is not the child’s best interests that are served in such an arangement but it is yours. You are trying to force something that doesn’t feel right for the child, trying to force something that goes against the childs most primal needs. These unrealistic expectations are what leads to sleepless nights for so many people, the child just wants to be close to the person they feel safe with. Then of course, the only way to make the child conform to these expectations is to leave them there, to feel abandoned, to learn that no one will come, to retreat into their own space, to shut down, to give up.

I have to admit that I am “judgemental” when it comes to this and I am not sorry for it. (And no, Colin does not sleep through the night and still wakes up a few times to nurse, and occasionally so does Xavier) However, It is not really the mom that falls in the trap believing that this is the best for her child that I judge (though I cringe and tear up if I read it). It is whole movement in itself, the time-outs, the fear of “spoiling” the CIO…. All practices that work on emotional detachment in order to get what the parent wants while ignoring or denying the negative long term effects. All practices that make children know that their parents love is conditional. Conditional on behavior and time. It is a movement that has led us and will further lead us to a very untrusting and stressed out society.

the difference between boys and girls…

A comment on a post yesterday got me thinking about this more…

I have to admit that we would also like to have a child of the opposite sex this time, though happiness will come either way…

Before I had kids I would have believed completely that it is nuture not nature that makes such a distinct difference between the sexes, however I now believe differently.

I would like to believe that we are raising the boys in the same way as we would be raising girls. We do not believe that children should repress their feelings and we let the boys express themselves. We provide toys that are unisex and provide dolls and kitchens alongside cars and trains… However, the boys have a clear preference for the “boy” toys, they have times when they will nurture a doll but it is a rare occasion… It is not something that we have taught them but something that seems inherent. When we are with friends that have girls I can also plainly see the difference in the way that they act.

I decided to look for what physical differences could be found between girls and boys and among a large slew of articles on the net. I found a few articles that made quite a few of sense for me, strangely they are from very mainstream sources.

One article found here: has “10 key differences between boys and girls”
I think that they are really interesting (I shortened them a bit)

Language Lessons: One study found that parts of the female brain that process language are more densely packed with nerve cells than corresponding parts of the male brain. This may explain why girls often begin talking a few months before boys do and usually have better verbal ability.

The Math Equation: The part of the brain that handles space perception is bigger in males — and this may explain why boys are better at thinking about objects in three dimensions. In a French study, for example, 21 percent of 2-year-old boys could build a bridge of blocks, but only 8 percent of girls could. “Spatial ability is one of the most noticeable sex differences, and it gets more pronounced through childhood and adolescence,”

Motor Matters: Better 3-D thinking could explain why boys typically start walking three to four months earlier than girls do and usually outperform them in motor skills such as running and jumping, says Dr. Gur. However, parts of the brain responsible for fine motor skills mature more slowly in boys, so girls outpace boys in finger work such as holding a crayon, zipping a jacket, and learning to write the alphabet.

Girls and Dolls: Better spatial skills also appear to attract boys to toys that move, such as trucks, balls, and anything that can be propelled through space. It’s not just dads pushing guy gear at their sons: Male monkeys also choose action toys in lab studies, so it appears to be a programmed preference. Girls, on the other hand, really do prefer dolls (though not as single-mindedly as boys go for wheels and balls). One reason may be that girls pay more attention to people while boys are more enthralled with mechanical objects.

The Sensitive Gender: Girls’ brains are bigger in an area that interprets events and triggers complicated feelings like sadness and empathy. Boys’ brains are relatively larger in a more primitive area that handles raw, impulsive emotions like fear and anger. Boys are more direct and confrontational, yet they don’t take verbal — or physical — jabs as personally. In some ways, that makes boys better at handling conflict. “When boys fight, they quickly make up,” says Dr. Gur. “Girls remain enemies longer.”

Little Men on the Move: By age 2, boys are noticeably more physical than girls: They’re more likely to run, jump, and play rough-and-tumble games and less likely to stand around and chat. In studies of make-believe play, Dr. Scarlett found that girls tend to act out domestic themes and boys tend to act out death and destruction. “Boys play at power,” he says. “That’s why they love superheroes.”

The Safer Sex: Because they’re sharp analyzers of what goes on around them, girls are better at anticipating the consequences of their actions — which keeps them safer but also makes them more cautious than boys.

The Stress Effect: In animal studies, short-term stress improves memory in males but impairs it in females, suggesting that boys learn better in tense situations such as contests and timed exercises. Female brains, however, appear to weather long-term stress better, which may make a girl more resilient during, say, a bitter, dragged-out divorce between her parents.

All Ears: Preliminary studies suggest that girls tend to have better hearing than boys have. The differences are too subtle to pick up in early auditory tests but may make a difference in classroom behavior

An Eye for Color: Animal research finds that cells in the retina are primed to take in sex hormones, indicating that eyes may develop differently in boys and girls. Other studies suggest that male retinas are better at detecting motion, while female retinas are better at seeing color and texture. As a result, girls tend to draw flowers and butterflies using bright colors, while boys draw cars and spaceships using drabber hues. It’s also well documented that boys are more prone to color blindness than girls are. High-tech scans are letting scientists observe gender differences in parts of the brain responsible for emotions like sadness and empathy.

Here is another Article that is quite a good read…

One thing that stuck out in this article is that the author states this about finding sources that show what she believes

Not only do most of the books currently in print about girls and boys fail to state the basic facts about innate differences between the sexes, many of them promote a bizarre form of political correctness, suggesting that it is somehow chauvinistic even to hint that any innate differences exist between female and male.

Anyways… though I believe that there are very real differences between girls and boys I also believe that the differences should never be used as excuses for behaviours as many parents seem to do.

I believe that we should provide them with the same toys experiences etc and let them make the decisions for what interests them. We should also encourage their interests whether or not we believe that it is “gender appropriate”…

I remember a few years ago when the birth board that I participated on had moms that were scandalized by their nearing 2 year old boys wanting to play with kitchens or brooms… I also talked with a mom recently who is worried about her 2 yo son raiding her closet and wearing her high heels and is now making sure to hide such things from him…

Though I already believed that there was a difference between the sexes, I know that the way kids are raised has as much or even more weight on the outcome and the very real difference between the men and women in our society in the past and at the present moment.