ILX Parenting 5: I'm a big kid now

btw Ken L I've been meaning to ask you -- why would you have guessed that Keren would be the name?

Just that it is a really common name for Israelis- maybe the most common name for girls these days?- and it is the name of the wife of a friend of mine who my aging brain sometimes confuses you with.

Hmm interesting. I checked a list of top Israeli girl names and it's not in the top 10, thankfully. One of our choices, Noa, was #1.

We got the idea from the artist Keren Cytter, who my wife likes a lot.

It basically met all our checks: works in both Hebrew and English, sounds good with my last name, not laden with biblical weight, nice meaning ("ray of light"), etc.

Thanks, that's a much better explanation than mine:)

Can someone explain this to me?
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7203/6933170213_eaf360cc29_z.jpg

I believe that's the shirt you get for your baby boy when he bangs a bunch of chicks and writes a book about it?

lol

sooooo

how do you tell another parent - one that you like and that you've known since your kids were in diapers - that their kid needs professional help

am considering some kind of group-intervention-style scenario

Why do you think the kid needs professional help?

shall I list symptoms? Kid is 4.

- until fairly recently, vocabulary was quite limited. would express frustration with furious arm-flapping (he is speaking a bit more now, but still does this as well)
- can't hold or draw with a pen, crayon, or pencil
- throws tantrums/fits on a regular basis. full-on wailing/flailing/punching & kicking fits.
- has very specific fixations/obsessions in terms of what he will do/play, limits play to a small number of social activities.
- physically combative, emotions/reactions of other children don't seem to register.
- won't eat anything except peanuts, prunes, some other fruits and I think crackers/bread.
- refused to relinquish pacifier until just a few months ago

that's all I can think of right now. I have noticed that a lot of these types of things are commonly cited in autism studies. but I am not a professional, I just see how this kid interacts with our kid and as he can be disruptive/abusive these things have caught our attention.

I imagine his parents have to have thought the thoughts but haven't had to face the facts yet.

I think every time they've been confronted with these issues they have just switched schools (he is on his third preschool)

ugh, that's bad news. Do you think he might be dangerous for other kids to be around?

Shakey Mo, I have no experience in breaking that kind of observation to parents. But I've worked with a lot of kids of that ilk and... you should tell your friends to send their kid to a screening. Not a professional, mind you, but just a kind of neuropsych check-up. For the kid's benefit. All the signs you observe are, indeed, flags (although for autism or something else is super hard to predict) but allowing the parents just the possibility of a screening as a release, and a maybe transitional step toward greater intervention. If they're resisting, it's likely they know that something is wrong, and fear medicalizing/diagnosing/Rxing/stigmatizing their kid, and that pointing them in the direction of a specific pathology may make them resist more. IOW just kinda say 'better to do it now and be reassured or risk the possibility that maybe maybe there's something time-sensitive you aren't catching, and w/o early intervention these situations can rapidly degrade.'

no WmC I don't think he's dangerous. I mean, he's only 4 he's not really capable of inflicting serious damage on anyone (besides himself I guess). and it's not that he's mean or cruel or abusive it's just kinda like other people don't, I dunno, exist to him, in some ways...?

and thx Remy - yeah at the moment what we're wrestling with is how to convince the parents, without ruining our relationship with them (we like them! they are nice people!), that this is maybe something that they should check out, and the sooner the better. But I think even broaching the subject is problematic, we don't want to appear like we're disparaging their parenting or stigmatizing the child or anything like that. it's... tricky.

id be really v. surprised if a caretaker hasn't brought it up already.

theres no way you can broach this and come out unscathed. its their kid after all.

I don't know, but we used to have this thing that was like basically two wedges of foam rubber covered in white cloth and it created two little "walls" that kept the baby from rolling over

yeah, ours was called the "lil snuggler" but it may not be sold anymore, saw something similar called the snuggle nest. should be able to get one fairly cheap.

Thanks, Buzza and Hurting...putting it on the list.

FINALLY easy, convenient compostable diapers: http://www.earth-baby.com/summary.php?go=products

the whole toxic-disposable-diaper thing really bothered me

So, Ms. BLAM and I are having a daughter. She's scheduled to arrive July 5th, but if she's anything like either of us, she'll be early.

I am so very very stoked, but also so very very freaked the heck out. This board has made me feel very good today, though.

Congratulations, T&JS, and H2!

congrats blam!

congrats!

(her name better have nothing to do with the ravens)

Thanks guys!! Nope - No Ravens references, but I have offered a bonus payment to those who provide any Ravens swag to the little miss.

I will be forthcoming with her name when she arrives. Kind of want to keep it a secret until the day. We are entirely sure its going to be a girl, however - the sonogram tech was like "Its basically like she's sitting on a glass table. No questions here!" And I hope this is true, because her "aunties" have been extremely generous in providing a Pepto Bismol themed wardrobe thus far.

Yeah that compostable diaper thing looks like a good solution -- I hate using mass landfill-fill diapers but the usual alternative is cloth, which is labor and water intensive, so imo not necessarily a great alternative.

Congrats, BLAM!

awww many congrats to you BLAM :)

Congrats! Someday you will get to have this conversation with your beautiful daughter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ry-LwxR746s

Oh yeah and congrats BLAM!

congrats blam!

more congrats blam! It's going to be a fun next several months for you!

earlier than july 5th? I believe this short video best conveys my congratulations

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGiYEWRzTik

thread derail:

my preschool co-op has monthly meetings about various issues, my wife and I alternate who has to go. The last two have been about dealing with race/cultural sensitivity, etc. While both of us found the facilitator and her tactics to be extremely irritating (trust circles! role playing!) even MORE irritating has been the exposure of some really unfortunate/unbelievably blinkered attitudes, most of which can be summed up with "rmde @ white people"

like, guess what, white people don't want to talk about race! People actually unironically parrot Stephen Colbert's "I don't see color" routine! White people have a hard time identifying ways in which they might be priveleged, have more power than others! White people don't understand why they should have to do this at all, cuz aren't we all sensitive, conscientious (ie, liberal) adults in this community? argggh

seriously made me want to stab

How culturally diverse is your preschool? I'm very interested in this topic concerning children.

Enrollment people clearly work REALLY hard to get a diverse mix of children in the school - while the majority is white, there are latino, black, asian, and a number of mixed-race children. I'd say the population distribution is roughly equivalent to the US as a whole. Even so, it's mind-boggling how it doesn't seem to register with various white people that the ones taking the "I don't want to discuss this at all" angle are all white. gee, why is that... like people actually say things like "my kid will just figure it out!", "I tell them skin color doesn't matter" etc.

like what fucking world are you living in!? so infuriating.

I find it difficult to teach our five-year-old about racism without teaching her racism, if that makes any sense.

Beeps has been doing this thing where she switches around phonic sounds and makes spoonerisms, kinda cute. She's also one helluva contrarian.

The other night, I told her to eat her chicken nuggets. She retorted They're chicken NIGGETS!

I turned to her and said, "Don't say that, please." She says WHY? I tell her "because they're called nuggets. Use the correct word."

"But I wanna call them NIGGETS."

How do I even cross over this bridge with a five-year-old? She didn't technically say anything wrong and she certainly didn't mean anything by it. Maybe I was being too sensitive. Still.

She finally got it out of her system, but I dread the phone call from school we're bound to get one of these days.

(Good thing they've got sunny's cell and not mine.)

lol, yikes! not racially unsettling, but my 2 1/2 year old has had some similar things she's said, where we just try to ignore it. like she went through a kind of gibberish-spouting phase where she was basically saying: "tittay tittay tittay" ... got some weird looks in restaurants for that one.

Veronica totally does that too, it's a verbal/language thing, just playing with sounds.

I woulda let that one go, probably. But if she inadvertently hit on a slur I would tell her not to use that particular combination of syllables and why.

xp

also discussing race is not quite the same thing as discussing racism, imho...? Like, acknowledging and recognizing differences in skin color, that's just teaching your child to be observant about race. This person looks like this, that person looks like that, you look like this = your child understanding the ways that people are different from each other.

How value is ascribed to that skin color is where the "racism 101" stuff comes in.

I think grown-ups' discomfort with talking about race stuff gives kids the feeling that it's bad!! They can tell when something seems off-limits, which is the same as when they do things that are shameful and you socialize them to do it in private: touch themselves, talk about pooping, pick their noes, I dunno, whatever it is. Anyway, lots of times adults shut kids down for talking about colors of people or w/e and it can make it seem "bad" to them. Probably there are more positive, open-ended ways?

otoh we are kind of at the end of a stage where we've taught Veronica that it isn't nice/polite to shout out characteristics of random people she sees. we try to emphasize that while she should recognize these things and feel free to discuss them in the proper context (friends, social situations, etc.) it's rude to just shout things at people. which is a good lesson in general.

xp

I think grown-ups' discomfort with talking about race stuff gives kids the feeling that it's bad!!

yeah this is totally what happens. And then they either make up their own weird theories or absorb the weird theories of their peers.

Beeps has done her fair share of yelling out "That little brown boy has a SpongeBob balloon!" in the parking lot. Shakey otm about just saying it's rude to shout like that.

also discussing race is not quite the same thing as discussing racism, imho…?

And this is true too. What I meant was, I didn't really want to teach her a new word while going on about how bad it is. We've gone over skin differences already with me making the comparison to differences in eye color, which is completely the same thing, amirite?

I don't know, does she need to know she said something similar to "a bad word"? It seems like a tenuous connection to try to make without confusing her.

We've gone over skin differences already with me making the comparison to differences in eye color, which is completely the same thing, amirite?

totally. hope you threw in that all redheads are demon children while you were at it lol

Congratulations, BLAM!