I was watching TV the other day and I saw an ad for something that made me want to yell at the box. It was for a “system” that teaches your baby how to “read.” They showed 1-3 year olds reading words off of flash cards clearly. So what’s wrong with that?
ONLY EVERYTHING!
As I watched the ad further they explained how it worked. Your baby watches the TV! they show a word, say the word and then a picture or action of the word. It is memorizing the words.
Here is my issue with it.
They are not teaching children the fundamentals of reading. No phonics, no context. Just rote memorization.
What happens when that child comes up with a word that wasn’t on the flash cards? Or better yet… what happens when that child is asked to explain what they just read?
Why do parents feel the need to force their children into this? What happened to teach them when they are ready? Is it for party tricks? What gives.
This may sound rather hypocritical since we’ve been working with the boy on reading for almost a year now. The difference is that we are working on phonics and we waited until he showed signs of readiness. We didn’t do it just for shits and giggles.
So what do you think. Teach your child to read that early for fun or wait until they are ready? And what is the best method for teaching them?
You know me. I’m a big children’s welfare advocate. So why do I choose now to keep my mouth shut about something that is so near and dear to my heart? While the whole of the world is up in arms about the Tory Ann Hansen (links to the google search for her name rather than any one single article) case I’ve been decidedly quiet. Part of the reason is because I have elected to not become involved. Most of me is numb over the whole thing. I’ve yet to pull my head out of the sand and read or participate in forum discussions about the whole thing. My knowledge of the situation is only what I’ve heard on the television news. I know, that is bad. Truth is, I’m not currently in the process of a Russian adoption so it doesn’t directly effect me. My charitable organization is not in the business of Russian adoption so it does not effect that. What it does do is make me want to hold my son and not let go.
I’ve been there.
I’ve been on the waiting end of someone elses fuck up. If you will recall a one Peggy Sue Hilt (also a google link). That case broke 2 weeks after we got home from meeting Alexander. That case is what snowballed our Russian adoption process into a giant 2 year nightmare. It wasn’t the main factor, but right up at the top. So for every parent waiting for their child… I’ve been there. I know exactly how you feel.
Here is what I do know or don’t understand. I don’t understand how a human being can do that to a child. It doesn’t matter if you’ve attached to this child or not. You do not send a child on an airplane across the world into the unknown. I would have trouble doing that with my high school graduate going off to college let alone a small child. I also know that what I see coming from the Russian government is probably not all that it is cracked up to be. I watched a segment on GMA yesterday morning where they interviewed a child welfare government official and they claim there is nothing mentally wrong with this child. This may be the case, however as a parent to a post institutionalized child… there is something wrong. A person can not come out of that environment unscathed. I’ve been there. I don’t understand why this woman does not man up and either admit that she was wrong or attempt to defend her actions (as horribly wrong as they are).
There are many unanswered questions about the whole thing. My heart breaks for the little boy and the families waiting for their children. As for my feelings for Tory Ann Hansen… I have none. I hope the outrage from those families waiting is punishment. I hope she realizes that she stood in front of a judge and swore to protect that little boy until the world ended and she just threw him away like a piece of trash. No child is trash.
I have much more to say on the matter, but for now I’m going to go hold my son. The son that I love so dearly. The son that I would walk over fire and die for. My son… from Russia.
It all started a year ago when I was enjoying my breakfast. Behind me on the TV there was a commercial playing. I guy on the screen walking around a grocery buck naked talking about the benefits of sugar. Really? We are to the point where we are freely advertising something that is making us fat? Sugar. Cavity causing, heart disease increasing, obesity making, diabetes inducing sugar.
A few weeks prior to seeing that we (the trusty husband and I) talked about challenging ourselves to removing all sugar from our diets for 1 month. It didn’t work because I can’t get the trusty husband to eat Adams Peanut butter or any other peanut butter without sugar. We let it go.
Last month my newest issue of Wondertime Magazine arrived in my box. I love Wondertime day. Their content has started to slide a little in the past few months, but I always get something interesting from each issue. In this particular case I happened to get this post out of it. For hidden in the pages was this:
Click on it to make it bigger and you’ll see why I’m all in a twitter.
I’ve been researching stuff for this post for a few days now and had planned on writing it yesterday. I just ran out of time. Then, ironically enough, Jen posted something about the same subject today. If you’ll notice… that ad above, the one I pulled out of my Wondertime Magazine, is for corn syrup. Not just any ol’ corn syrup I might add. HIGH FRUCTOSE Corn Syrup.
It claims that high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is nutritionally the same as sugar and honey. While that may be true in a round about manner it is so far from the same thing it isn’t even funny. Yes, sugar, honey and HFCS all have 4 calories per gram. But that is where the similarities lie.
The website cited in the ad* claim that all 3 (we aren’t counting “artificial” sweeteners) are natural. I beg to differ. If you cut down a stalk of sugar cane and chew on it it is sweet. If you had the balls to stick your hand into a bee hive and pull out a chunk of raw honey… also sweet. If you pulled an ear of corn off of a stalk that is bound to become HFCS or some other corn by-product, you would spit it out. I know. I’ve eaten it.
True, corn is a natural product. But the stuff they make into corn by-products is so far removed from it’s natural state by the time it gets into that food like substance you can’t call it natural. It takes many steps to convert corn into HFCS. It is broken down, treated with enzymes and other chemicals. Not to mention that the corn itself is genetically modified and two of the enzymes used to create HFCS are also genetically modified. So tell me how that is natural.
If you want to learn more just read this interesting article about how HFCS is made.
The sweetener of choice in our house is honey. I’ll put that out there. Why? Because it is the least processed of the 3. This isn’t to say that I don’t have a bottle of pure unadulterated HFCS sitting in my cupboard (what do you think those Sweet Hope Truffles are made from). I also have a tub of refined white sugar, a package of sugar in the raw and a box of Sweet n’ Lo. But given the opportunity to sweeten my tea or bread I will pick honey. Not that I drink sweetened tea. I also don’t salt most food, but that’s a different topic all together.
I’m just asking you to think about where your food comes from and how it got into the form it is currently in.
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*I won’t link the website advertised.
I have nothing of thrilling value to contribute today. No photos (bad mommy) and nothing of particular interest. I could tell you about how I dug up 10 primroses and moved them from one side of my sidewalk to the other. Wow! Isn’t that fast breaking news. I’m boring even myself.Ok, how about… the boy’s birthday is Sunday and we are having his party on Saturday. In true Elle fashion I haven’t even begun to prepare. I sent out invitations (that I made, I know you are jealous) and then ordered the birthday cake from a local bakery. I’m smooth like that.
The trusty husband and I agreed that we would only invite a select number of people. Not because we are snobby like that, but because our house is so incredibly small a million children and their accompanying adults wouldn’t fit. We tried last year for the boy’s second birthday and it was a little tight. Not to mention the entire time the boy napped (which was a miracle) I spent cleaning up the 3 inch thick layer of scum off of every floor in my house.
So this birthday un-planning brings me to a point. Children’s birthday parties. As a kid I remember having parties with my bffs and playing pin the tail on the donkey. Mom made my cake and served neopolitain ice cream. We wore stupid pointy party hats and friends brought knock off barbies or coloring books as gifts. These days kids parties are all about extravagance. To a point of being ridiculous.
A few years ago my dad was in the hospital and my aunt was there visiting. She was talking about how she was hosting her grandson’s birthday party and how much she spent on goodie bags for all the kids. I sat there stunned. Goodie bags for all the kids? What the hell? We got a few pieces of candy from a craptastic pinata if we were lucky. After that encounter I went home and told the trusty husband about it. We both agreed that things would be different when we had kids.
We were lucky enough to get away with not giving out anything last year because we were celebrating the boy coming home, his birthday and baptism all at the same time. It wasn’t your typical birthday party, but rather an open house.
This year we are sticking to our plan. A limited number of friends, no goodie bags and we told Oleg’s friends that if they would like to bring a gift please consider a new or gently used book that we can donate to the library. That’s only because we couldn’t tell grandparents not to bring gifts and I am slowly being taken over by the plastic overlords. It comes down to kids (theirs or mine) not needing more crap.
So let’s hear it. Do you go overboard on birthdays and do you feel a sense of obligation to give out overpriced goodie bags at your kids parties? Or what do you do different to not make your child’s party a lord of the flies-esqe free for all?
Since I’m on an intelligence kick I thought I’d give you a little more food for thought. So braincells get ready! Hold hands and form a line, Elle watched Ophra yesterday.
I’m not the Ophra* watchin’ kinda gal on most days. In fact, outside of a daily addiction to one particular Soap Opera I don’t watch any daytime television who’s cast of characters aren’t animated or puppets. However, I get bored easily and when that happens I will sit down and watch TV. There are far more constructive uses of my time, like turning the dryer on to fluff the clothes for the 40th time today, but stupid programming calls to me. The trusty husband has come home to find me sitting on the couch watching “America’s Next Top Model,” “Project Runway,” or even “The Real Desperate Housewives of Orange County.” Go ahead, think less of me. I know you already do. But this doesn’t always happen. Sometimes I’ll watch something highbrow like Ophra. Mainly it’s so I can yell at the TV and tell Dr. Phil that he needs to pull his head out of his giant ass and grow his own damn spine. Gawd how I hate that guy. Oh yeah, I yell at the TV a lot.
So the guide told me that Ophra’s show was about “Wombs for Rent.” I’m always in for a good show about infertility. (Better yet it was a subject that I later found out the trusty husband knew nothing about.) I found it interesting that this was the subject matter of the program seeing as I’m currently in the middle of that where am I on the baby making spectrum identity crisis. At the very least the show would give me something to write about. I was right.
Since most of my readers are adoptive parents, potential adoptive parents, infertiles and people with at least two braincells that are also holding hands and forming lines I’m sure you’ve heard of this. Infertile couples travel to foreign countries to participate in a surrogacy program with a woman of said country. In this instance India.
I don’t want to recount the entire show here. You can read Julie’s accounts of it. She writes a great article about it. Which I’m actually surprised because although I read Julie’s site with regularity I don’t always agree with what she has to say.
My exception with the whole scenario comes from the perspective of a person not willing to undergo the expensive process of Artificial Reproductive Treatments. I know there are many of you out there who did just that. It was your choice. But for me, I don’t get it. I don’t understand why someone would travel 1/2 way around the world to essentially rent-a-uterus. Granted, in the end the lives of both families are changed for the better. That’s not such a bad thing. But I find it far too extreme.
When we made the choice to either undergo infertility testing and eventual treatment or adoption we weighed all the pros and cons. Cost being a con on both sides. But the clincher for us was the end result. We wanted a child. The how wasn’t that important. We thought about it. And here are some statistics that helped form our decision. These are (outdated) numbers of children residing in orphanages around the world. 17,000-S. Korea, 20,000-Guatemala, 50,000-China, 100,000-Ukraine, 200,000-Haiti, 800,000-Russia and in the millions in Ethiopia. Millions here people. Those are children in orphanages. Children without parents. Children without anyone to kiss them good night or read them a bedtime story. Children who know no true love. Children like these.
I’m not out to tell those undergoing fertility treatments what to do. I’m not that asshat that says, “Oh why don’t you just adopt?” Rather I’m trying to figure out why people do this. I can’t imagine spending thousands of dollars on something that may or may not result in a child. Same reason I can’t justify spending that much on an IUI or IVF. I wanted to be a mom. I still want more children. I am not like some of the people out there. I don’t have that deep seeded biological need to procreate. If you can explain it to me please do.
On an end note, I did think the piece was well done and portrayed a positive tone. I do like the fact that the end result is two changed families, but I still don’t get it.
And Alexis Stewart. What the fuck is up with her? Talk about a woman with the least bit of affect of any person I’ve ever seen. And $28,000 a month? A month? Ho.ly.hell!
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*not a typo. I’m just being nice and not calling her my ususal. Okra.
