It’s been ages since my son was a baby, but there’s one thing we did with him that I’m really glad we did but have never written up. It’s still not entirely common but is gaining more traction all the time.  It’s the idea of baby led weaning!

You’ll also see it called child-led feeding, baby-led feeding, baby-led weaning, BLW, etc. but it basically amounts to letting baby self feed solids instead of doing it for them, and keeping the solids in solid form rather than mashing or turning it into purees.  Skip the mushy cereals and go straight to things like bananas, avocado and steamed sweet potatoes.

It just made so much sense to me the more I learned about it. Just how the child has controlled their intake when breastfeeding, they control their intake of solids. They can’t accidentally ingest anything their body isn’t really ready for (e.g. can’t handle things like beans until they’ve got the pincer grip and precision to pick things up, can’t take bites until they have teeth, etc.). Plus, you want the baby to learn to manipulate the food in their mouth and chew, not just suck it down.

Baby gets to experience new textures, shapes, etc. along with just the colors and tastes. They get to feel like a part of the family, eating things that look like what everyone else is eating, which may make a difference in how much/well they eat. They may not consume a lot, but that’s not important in the beginning anyway. It’s really all about trusting the baby’s instincts!

The Baby Led Weaning Wikipedia page is great for explaining the basic concepts, but one of my best sources throughout was Kenniscentrum Borstvoeding (don’t worry, it’s in English). They have a chart on the site that explains what to introduce and when, put together by a nutritionist. The person that is known in the Western world for introducing the technique is Gill Rapley. She has books, a DVD, and more on her site that are also good.

My best tip, that I still remember after all these years, is to use a crinkle cutter when cutting things like vegetables (we got ours through Pampered Chef) as the edge it produces makes it easier for baby to hang onto things once they get all slobbery. 🙂

All in all, BLW was a great experience for us and I believe it made a big difference in our son’s good appetite, variety of foods eaten, and early mastery of a regular cup and utensils.

If our son were a school-going kid, today would be his first day of Kindergarten. Instead, it’s our first official “Not Back to School” day.

Overall, today looks like any other to him, and this is just how it should be. He’s following his interests, learning as he goes along, just like he’s done since he was born.

It’s a little different for me since I’m still de-schooling myself. I’m fighting the urge to do something to mark the event, like having him pose for an official first day picture.

We’ve talked a bit about the fact that other kids have to go to school now and so far he’s not expressed any interest in going too. Maybe he remembers his disastrous few weeks of preschool (before we looked into homeschooling) or perhaps it’s that we’ve got such a good thing going on at home that it hasn’t even crossed his mind.

It seems that one area where many natural-minded parents break ranks is on the topic of “screen time”. Some consider it a badge of honor that they don’t have a TV or limit their child’s computer time. They quote articles about how damaging it can be and how it ruins a child’s concentration. Some even send their kids to preschools such as Waldorf that forbid it!

We’ve taken a different approach. In our house, visual media is a just another activity choice. We have a TV, but without cable. It really only gets PBS channels plus one or two others. Some days our son watches many programs in a row, other days not so much. He rarely chooses the TV because he can’t watch what he wants, when he wants it, and will usually opt for a DVD or something from the computer so that he can fast forward/rewind, pause, repeat or skip parts as he chooses.

The majority of the time he’s doing one or more other things while he views a show, but sometimes he’s watching intently. Sometimes he even abandons the program or forgets it’s on. Often the choice is to play games, type or draw on the computer instead, still forms of screen time though. In getting his shows from the Internet he has so much to choose from!

Full episodes of nearly any show or movie, from many different countries, can be found on YouTube (though sometimes you have to be cautious about what you get). Almost every kids show has a web site with games, educational or otherwise, filled with fun activities.

I watch with him and pick up on what he’s most interest in to try and bring more about those topics into our lives. I can’t even count the number of things he’s learned about via watching or playing that I wouldn’t have thought to introduce or that wouldn’t have interested him in the same way.

He likely wouldn’t have been building oar fish out of Legos or telling Grandpa about the Midnight Zone this early in life without the Octonauts! And he wouldn’t have been using gestures he learned from Curious George to help him get his point across as he was learning to talk. We’ve had numerous interesting conversations featuring things that have come up on Spongebob. Plus he’s learned a lot of complex language concepts from the Alphablocks (it’s fun to hear him explain how “silent e” transforms vowel sounds). And you should see him laugh hysterically at the antics that Garfield gets up to with John and Odie! 🙂

Whether to allow TV and other forms of “screen time” into your child’s life is a highly personal decision and depends in large part on your parenting world view. For some additional reading on the topic of TV and Videos that I found interesting, including commentary on whether to forbit or limit access, check out some of the articles and shared experiences on Sandra Dodd’s TV page.

Turnover in the last state election, combined with the recession, means our legislature is struggling with some tough financing decisions lately. One big item on the chopping block is free preschool for 4-year-olds.

I can see why people think that is a good thing, and some of my Facebook friends have posted about how they find it so incredibly important that they can send their kids to these programs.

No matter what you think about the value of early childhood education though, what had me immediately scratching my head was the perceived list of benefits gained from the program to date.

The spokesperson for the faction fighting to save free preschool lauded the program for making marked improvement in kids’ readiness for Kindergarten. In her speech, examples given included that the children showed measurable improvement in the areas of listening to authority, lining up and doing what they were told.

Thing is, I don’t see how these are truly related to than the actual academic progress of a student!  Do these skills really give them a leg up when they learn to read or add numbers? Doubtful. Does it speak to classroom control and make things easier for the Kindergarten teacher and get students ready to spend their whole days doing something other than playing? Yes, absolutely.

And while I’m sure those things play a roll in how effective the learning environment is, and how likely a student is to succeed in that environment, it also speaks to a much deeper issue with our education system. The purpose of school these days seems not really to be for kids to learn, as much as it is to train them to function in our bureaucratic system!  It’s more important for them to fall into line than it is to think critically or acquire knowledge.

We tried our lad in preschool last year, and it didn’t work out well. We pulled him out with few regrets. And now I’m actually glad things turned out this way. Due to some of our other life plans, we’re most likely going to be homeschooling. Not sure how this will play out yet, but I’ve been doing a lot of reading and have some ideas. What exactly will his education look like? Not sure, but I know some things that it will not encompass.

Are we worried he won’t learn the aforementioned critical life skills? Well, he can learn to stand in a queue at the grocery store; to listen to non-parental authority at his swimming class; to socialize with others (of a much more diverse age group!) at the library.  Nope. not worried.

It’s a tough lesson, learning that your child is not invincible. When they’re young you’re told that if you live a natural lifestyle, do everything right, they’ll experience superior health. And it works, to a point.

But no matter how holistically you live, what kind of organic food you feed them, how long you breastfeed, it won’t necessarily be enough to cure all their ills.  Sometimes you may have no choice but to do something you’d hoped to avoid, to consider mainstream medical treatment, perhaps even on a regular or long-term basis.

Our son had been a very healthy kid, with no major illnesses to speak of in his almost four years.  Then earlier this fall, he had an allergic reaction to some pets at a friend’s house. It manifested innocently enough, at first as a runny nose, then quickly followed by coughing, eventually turning into wheezing. We should have left quickly, but didn’t quite know what was happening at the time.

We’d experienced wheezing once or twice before with colds, but this was different. We dealt with it as best we could, but eventually had to go to the urgent care, who sent us on to the ER. It’s a horrible thing, watching your child struggle to breathe properly.

They gave him some nebulizer treatments and sent us home with an inhaler/spacer and a follow up visit to our primary care doctor. We didn’t have to give him the inhaler that day or the next, so we hoped the worst was over and figured it wouldn’t happen again.

But then we had a similar episode, and several more have followed since. And now I’m finally come to the realization that this may not be something we can avoid or fix without meds. It’s quite possible our son may have asthma, and it might even be something that follows him his whole life.

Looking around for advice, while still trying to keep the treatment at bay, I found lots of mothers in a similar situation- most feeling like they’d failed, perplexed that they’d done everything right and still somehow this had happened to them and their kids.

It’s nothing but a positive thing to encourage good health, to get people taking actions that will help their families lives. However, I think we do people a disservice by promoting the idea that taking any particular action will guarantee a certain outcome.

Things happen. It’s not necessarily anyone’s fault and might not have been preventable. This is something I keep telling myself as we deal with yet another wheezing incident and I contemplate giving our son a “maintenance” medication. Sometimes breastfeeding just isn’t enough.

Awhile ago I came across some information that just floored me because I find it so repulsive I want to scream. The topic is a book called To Train Up a Child, written by Michael and Debi Pearl. It’s supposedly popular with religious homeschoolers, and most people that interact with homeschoolers say they know someone that uses the book’s methods or advocate for it. Indeed, this is how it ended up the focus of an article in a secular homeschooling magazine that I happened to read online.

As the author outlines in her piece, at times the book reads more like a primer in brainwashing, torture or animal training than it does parenting advice. The majority of the tactics are repulsive. I found myself repeatedly cringing and sometimes near tears as I thought about the children that are being subjected to these methods.

Examples of the Pearl’s advice:

Dealing with an angry child

“A proper spanking leaves children without breath to complain. If he should tell you that the spanking makes him madder, spank him again.” … “If a child flees, don’t chase him. Wait and allow time for the tension to go out of the air. Slowly pursue him, explaining that he cannot win. If it takes a long time, that’s fine. Go to his hiding place and laugh at his frail attempts.”

On breastfeeding and biting

“My wife did not waste time finding a cure. When the baby bit, she pulled hair (an alternative has to be sought for bald-headed babies).”

Attitude training

“Use whatever force is necessary to bring him to bay. If you have to sit on him to spank him, then do not hesitate. And hold him there until he has surrendered. Prove that you are bigger, tougher, more patiently enduring, and are unmoved by his wailing. Defeat him totally. Accept no conditions for surrender — no compromise.”

Water safety

“On a warm spring day I followed the first set of wobbly legs to the inviting water. She played around the edge until she found a way to get down the bank to the water. I stood close by as she bent over, reaching into the mirror of shining color. Splash! In she went. I restrained my anxiety long enough for her to right herself in the cold water and show some recognition of her inability to breathe. When panic set in…I pulled her out and scolded her for getting close to the pond.”

The book’s authors advocate pushing in children that are too cautious or coordinated to fall in on their own, and a similar technique can be used for fire safety!  Whipping, beating, and bullying are recommended to obtain obedience by kids of any age. Children should be battered into submission to the point that they recognize there is no chance of escape and stop trying.  And sadly, I am not exaggerating in the slightest. They really do advocate doing these things and openly label them that way.

I can think of no other description for their methods than disgusting. Absolutely and utterly revolting. Any yet, the people commenting on their online articles praise them and thank them profusely for their helpful advice. How can this be?? Are people that interested in having an excuse to beat their children into compliance? Using their religion (spare the rod) as an excuse? Simply lazy and can’t come up with a better way to handle their children??  I just do not get it.  The closest I can come to understanding is to speculate that people would appreciate the compliance it creates in their children. After all, I’m sure it easier to deal with them when you don’t have all that pesky childhood exuberance to deal with.

The article’s author gives examples of deaths that have happened with parents accidentally taking the Pearl’s techniques to extremes. She attributes it to the parents being unable or unwilling to think for themselves and in their inability to realize that they have taken things too far in letting someone else tell them what to do, often far past their personal comfort zone.

I think that speaks to a major area of concern with the Pearl’s approach. In addition to physical abuse, the book’s authors are out to make sure that people do not think for themselves, including the parents following their methods. There is no mercy, no discretion allowed. You must be unwavering in your position and recognize their  approach as the only way to do things.

The focus of the Pearl’s instruction is to create reliance on them (the authors) and only them as the single authority on parenting. They advocate that you extend this control into your parenting, creating this same level of dependence in your children, and suggest taking elaborate measures to make sure that kids are not exposed to outside influence.  This is where homeschooling comes in for them, but also the avoidance of media, close friends/family, and any others that don’t share your views. This includes making sure that the kids do not even have the personal time to contemplate an alternate position.

“[Your children] should always sit with you, never with their friends. If they go out to the bathroom, go with them. Never allow them to spend the night with friends or cousins. Slumber parties are sin parties. Never allow them to listen to music through headphones. Three-minute phone conversations, no chat rooms, no surfing the web for any reason. Parents should make it physically impossible for them to even access the web. We didn’t allow our children to spend time in their bedrooms unless they were working on a project or reading. Bedroom doors were always kept open, except for two minutes while dressing.”

And so it goes, on and on and on.

Reading about these types of things helps to solidify for me what I do and don’t want to do as a parent, forces me to think about how we want to raise our son. To be honest, I don’t want absolute compliance from him, especially not when it’s gained through fear.  I want him to be able to think for himself, to develop problem solving techniques, and question authority – up to and including the things  we ask him to do.  I don’t want to beat back his spirit with control techniques, ridicule him, or teach him lessons by injuring him. I want to guide him as best we can towards becoming an independent and self reliant person.

Where are the compassion, empathy and understanding for others in the Pearl’s approach? Isn’t that one of the principles of their faith?  If the parents following this advice don’t show compassion for their own children, and are willing to inflict this physical and mental pain on them, then what hope is there for their children to learn these skills?  I want our kiddo to develop into a person that has compassion for others, a man that would not use physical violence or coercion to get what he wants.  I want him to question his own decisions too, realize that it’s OK to rethink your position sometimes (and especially in situations that endanger others), and know that there is no absolute truth that should guide your thinking.

The article made me wonder, as the magazine article’s author did, What can I do about this?  Just like she, I decided to try to make others aware of these people and their repulsive work. I’ve also checked to see if our local libraries stock the book (they do not) and am prepared to discuss it should it come up with anyone I talk to in future. In a way I hope it never does.