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Posts Tagged ‘children’

Risky Business

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , on April 8, 2014| 1 Comment »

Raising a child today can be fraught with danger. There’s the fear of strangers to instill, not to mention all the little accidents that could end in bone or tooth shattering chaos.

I’m being facetious, sort of…it’s no wonder young working parents of today spend more time with their offspring than the last couple of generations ever did. Certainly my foster Mom Nell would let me bike around the neighborhood until dark, learning important lessons in survival. And I would deposit my kids at The Beach, where they could get into all kinds of mischief and usually did!

So I had to laugh when the Bride told me to read the latest article in the Atlantic, “Hey Parents, Leave Those Kids Alone!” It’s all about how children need to challenge themselves in order to grow up healthy and strong, emotionally and physically. They need to force themselves to do the thing they are afraid of, “…in order to overcome their fear.” http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/03/hey-parents-leave-those-kids-alone/358631/

Children need to:

  • Explore Heights – like I did when I walked alone across a log over a river and fell, and knew how it felt to have the air punched out of your lungs.
  • Handle Dangerous Tools – like the Rocker did when he fashioned a sword out of a stick (which he did often) and beat the crap out of a bee’s nest; he knew what dozens of bee stings felt like. Or the Bride zip-lining across our backyard.
  • Be Near Dangerous Elements – the Bride and Rocker both spent most summers around the ocean, barely supervised; so yes, they did learn how to swim.
  • Rough and Tumble Play – did I mention they were building forts with lounge chairs and climbing up lifeguard stands and jumping off and such?
  • Speed – yes, that was the Rocker’s middle name. For him it was ice skates and rollerblade hockey on the street, but the Bride could also rollerblade out of my sight in a quick second.
  • Exploring on One’s Own. Probably the most important element of all.

Things started to change around issues of child safety when lawyers started to sue towns and municipalities for damages resulting from playground equipment. Grassy areas became covered in rubber, some equipment disappeared entirely, like that metal merry-go-round that kids pushed and could eventually jump on. I can still remember the thrill of that ride. When I think about it, it was around the time my children were growing up that things started to change – the first handbook for public safety equipment was published in 1981.

I remember my nana allowing me to walk into the town of Scranton, PA to buy an ice cream cone by myself under the age of 10. The risky thing about it was getting the change right! The Bride walked up the street herself to her piano lessons in the Berkshires; the Rocker routinely disappeared at the beach. But like the newfangled idea of a semi-supervised, wild, junkyardish playground called The Land in the Atlantic article, a day at the beach offered many of the important elements of danger and excitement to fuel a young child’s growth.

I think if we are anxious parents, we will raise anxious children. When we scoop up our child to remove them from harm’s way, we do not allow them the opportunity to fix something themselves, to overcome an obstacle. And when we go out of our way to accommodate our child’s fears, we reinforce those fears. Of course this is all age-dependant. A toddler may need a little scooping every now and then. “Fear Not, Child,” by Jerry Bubrick http://www.nature.com/scientificamericanmind/journal/v25/n2/full/scientificamericanmind0314-46.html

Can you find the Corgi?

Can you find the Corgi?

 

 

 

 

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A Child’s Calendar

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on December 22, 2013| 1 Comment »

Christmas used to be tough for me. Once the kids left home, Bob continued to work on Christmas Eve and Christmas, and I was left to my druthers. Sometimes, a newly divorced friend might join me at the movies, but most times I was on my own to ponder the meaning of the universe. Now that the Bride has followed in her dad’s footsteps, she finds herself working on Christmas too. And lucky for me, I get to hang out with the Love Bug in Nashville, my own personal little Christmas elf.IMG_2317

Yesterday, she took me to the most amazing puppet show at the Nashville Public Library. http://www.nashvillescene.com/nashville/john-updikes-a-childs-calendar-at-the-library/Content?oid=1203840

Updike’s A Child’s Calendar is an illustrated collection of twelve poems describing a child’s life as the weather changes and the year goes by. This staging is the brainchild of Brian Hull, the Nashville Library’s director of children’s programming, who transforms Updike’s collection into a musical show populated entirely by child-sized puppets. Hull’s puppet fixation is part of a Nashville tradition dating back to 1938, when longtime library associate Tom Tichenor first began holding marionette shows at the main branch.

The puppeteers are dressed entirely in black while they manipulate an old man puppet and a young boy going through each magical month around a growing tree on stage. Birds fly overhead, and blossoms rain down from the sky. At one point a real boy tried crawling up on stage to catch a blossom, and the puppet motioned him away! The Love Bug danced and watched every move with wonder, her eyes open wide. I wanted to cry, with joy. Because this is one of those things we’ve forgotten as adults. The sheer delight of everyday life as seen through a child’s eyes. Here is what Updike had to say about January:

The river is
A frozen place
Held still beneath
The trees’ black lace.

The sky is low.
The wind is gray.
The radiator
Purrs all day.

Christmas holds hidden delights for everyone with children of a certain age. Some are watching a little elf who appears on a shelf every morning. He helps Santa keep track of every single child, naughty and nice. Some are going to see the Nutcracker for the very first time. And some are attending puppet shows and cuddling with their Nana. Instead of sugar plum fairies, grandparents galore are coming to visit!

Have a very Merry Christmas everyone! And tornado warnings or not, don’t forget that family comes first…and after that an egg nog latte helps. Cheers.

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The Safest Home

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , on October 29, 2013| 6 Comments »

A twelve year old boy was killed on Saturday in our neighboring county. He liked playing roller hockey, video games and being outside in the woods in the fort he and his friends had built, His father was working, and his son was supposed to have been with a relative. Instead he was in the fort with a friend and a gun. http://www.dailyprogress.com/news/local/year-old-boy-dies-in-apparent-accidental-shooting-in-madison/article_f1e95c7c-3f63-11e3-aaf6-0019bb30f31a.html

The American Academy of Pediatrics writes in its policy statement on guns, “The safest home for a child or adolescent is one without firearms.”  I think this bears repeating:

“The safest home for a child or adolescent is one without firearms.” 

In a country where at least six states have put forward legislation that would actually prevent a doctor from asking his/her patient, or the patient’s parents, if there are guns in the home, this is the kind of local news that flies under our national media radar.

We childproof our homes when a baby is born. We buy gates, and locks for drawers and electrical outlet covers. We strap them into padded car seats. And yet, what the gun lobby does not want us to know, is that nearly 800 children under 14 were killed in gun “accidents” from 1999 to 2010 – and any research on recent gun violence, thanks to lobbying efforts by the NRA, is almost impossible to find.

We hear about mass shootings in schools, and we mourn as a nation. But what we don’t always hear about are the incremental, single, child by inquisitive child deaths that are happening every day in this country. Millions of children live in homes with guns, yet half of their parents or guardians do not keep them locked and unloaded.

According to the CDC, the rate of firearm deaths among children under age 15 is almost 12 times higher in the United States than in 25 other industrialized countries combined. American children are 16 times more likely to be murdered with a gun, 11 times more likely to commit suicide with a gun, and nine times more likely to die in a firearm accident than children in these other countries.

Of, course these statistics include suicides, homicides, and “accidental” deaths. But it turns out that children living in the South, in rural areas have a much higher incidence of unintentional gun injuries. And surprise surprise, boys are more likely to be the victim. Proponents of guns would like us to believe that gun safety is the panacea, that if they teach their children to respect guns, nothing will happen.

Bob said the latest study on gun violence shows “..that if there is a gun in the home, the chances of that gun killing or injuring a member of the household is 25 times the likelihood that it will protect a household member.”   

My heart goes out to that family in Madison County. And to the young boy who accidentally shot his friend, and his family, I cannot imagine their pain. Grief counselors have been on duty at their middle school.  Children will be children, and they are not bulletproof.

Wetsel school pic

 

 

 

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Read for the Record

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on October 3, 2013| 1 Comment »

Yesterday was Kale Day, but today is the official national book reading day for millions of children in libraries, homes and schools all across the country, and the idea is that we’ll all be reading one book. Well, you could read more than one, but doesn’t everybody love a tractor?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4uykLrVnu0

The book for Jumpstart’s 2013 Read for the Record campaign is Otis! Published by Penguin and written by New York Times bestselling author Loren Long, Otis is the timeless story of a friendship between a lovable tractor and a calf that live on a farm. On October 3, 2013 children and adults will come together to read Otis as part of Jumpstart and the Pearson Foundation’s Read for the Record campaign.

I packed a box full of toys and books for the Love Bug’s arrival. And her parents brought her favorite books with them as well. I’m even working on a children’s book inspired by the Bug, so here’s a little clue:County Fair 009

We started reading early to the Bride and Rocker, almost as soon as they could sit semi-steadily on our laps. And I’m happy to see the tradition continues. I found a beautifully illustrated book, I’d Know You Anywhere, My Love by Nancy Tillman. It’s about how we parents would always see through any animal disguise in pretend play, and recognize our beloved child.

And while talking all things literary today, let’s jump ahead to the next book on my list. I cannot wait to dig into Elizabeth Gilbert’s new book, The Signature of All Things. I follow this author on Twitter so I was aware of its release date, then I caught her on the Today Show and later heard her interview on NPR.

http://www.npr.org/2013/10/01/225719994/fghfgh

The heroine is a botanist in the early 19th Century, who travels to Tahiti and discovers herself, along with “…varietals of vanilla pods; a sky-high waterspout; abolition…” and so much more, including a bit of Victorian pornography. Gilbert’s book, Committed, helped the Bride and many of her friends in their understanding of modern marriage. So I had to smile when Gilbert said she married a man who believes a wife belongs in the kitchen…”with her feet up and a glass of wine, watching her husband cook dinner.”

We read around here for the love it, to escape and be challenged, to learn and to laugh. For the record, ebooks, podcasts and iPads have their place, but in my life, nothing will replace the feel of a real book in my hands!  photo

 

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Amber What?

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , on August 10, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Maybe we need to come up with another type of alert when a teenager goes missing. Let’s call it the Black Cherry Amber Alert. Because while network news has been plastering the pretty blonde face of a 16 year old girl from California who was, granted, horribly abducted by a family friend, our local news story is just that, local.

Last weekend, a beautiful African American 17 year old girl from Nelson County VA was going shopping in Lynchburg and never returned home.  2ileopiAlexis Murphy was looking forward to starting her Senior year in high school; she had many friends and was supposed to play in a volleyball tournament this week. Instead, her white Nissan Maxima was found right down the road in Albemarle County, deserted in a movie theatre parking lot.

“Deputies with the sheriff’s office, the Virginia State Police and agents working with the FBI are all working to locate Murphy…” But what would activate an Amber Alert in Virginia? According to a VA government website:

1) The abducted child must be 17 years of age or younger or is currently enrolled in a * * * secondary school in the Commonwealth, regardless of age, and the law enforcement agency believes the child has been abducted (unwillingly taken from their environment without permission from the child’s parent or legal guardian).*

2) The law enforcement agency believes the missing child is in imminent danger of serious bodily harm or death.*

3) A law enforcement investigation has taken place that verified the abduction or eliminated alternative explanations.*

4) Sufficient information is available to disseminate to the public that could assist in locating the child, suspect, and/or the suspect’s vehicle.*

5) The Child must be entered into the Virginia Criminal Information Network (VCIN) and the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) missing person files as soon as practical.

A local rapper, J Willz, posted this “Gone Missing” music video to YouTube (above, please click to the wordpress website to play) trying to bring more attention to Alexis’ disappearance. And I thought I’d post a picture of black cherry amber. Our prayers are with the families of ALL missing children.

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To Camp or Not to Camp

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , on August 8, 2013| 2 Comments »

I was listening to a program on the plight of the helicopter parent vis a vis sleepaway camp. One would think that summer presents the opportunity for a reprieve; parents might relax and let go just a little. Instead, camps today employ photographers who are tasked to just wander around the campgrounds taking pictures of kids being kids – preferably happy and smiling campers – to be immediately uploaded to said camp’s social media pages! And so the phone calls begin to camp directors: “Why is junior’s shirt so dirty, didn’t he get my care package?” Or worse yet, “Why are there no pictures of my kid?”

For many years, I dreamed of my camp experience. These were my most cherished memories. I attended Camp St Joseph for Girls at the age of ten for a full 2 months, and went back every year until I was finally a counselor-in-training (CIT) and waterfront boating and canoeing counselor on the lake my 16th year. In the years before Title IX, this was the one place that allowed me to excel at sports. It may be hard to imagine, but PE at Sacred Heart School consisted of jumping jacks next to our desk, when we weren’t practicing hiding under them in case of a nuclear attack.

Most school days found me just sitting at my desk, hands folded carefully in front of me, counting the bricks in the wall of a car dealership across the street, and the days left until summer, dreaming  about camp. About the first frozen chill of the crystal clear lake water, about the sound of jacks being played on the cabin’s porch floor, about the pungent smell of the auditorium at a basketball game. And about nuns singing Ave Maria in a sun dappled procession to Mary’s Grotto in the woods.

It was a place to forge friendships, to be empowered when I was shuttling back and forth between two homes. I guess I was sent there since the Flapper had to work, because in those days, only kids from “broken” homes or those who’s parents were so wealthy that they were always flying around the world went to sleepaway camp. So it was a mix of the well-to-do with the down-and-out. And at camp, we were all equal, our best and only competition was the color of the team we played for, each year.

We never received phone calls or packages from home. I might have been homesick the first week a little, but I don’t remember that. My only memory is crying my eyes out at the end of each season. I never wanted camp to end. One day was set aside for Parent’s Day, I remember one summer the Flapper bringing her new husband, the Judge.  We were  expected to perform our duties raising the American flag, horse back riding, shooting arrows, playing tennis or basketball – my personal favorite. The nuns were large and in charge, no one would dare ask for special treatment. We went to mass every morning of every beautiful day.

Camp was a haven, the one place in a changing world that expected the best of its girls, where the rules were clear and laughter was the our constant companion. Here is a montage of the few pictures I could muster up this morning, One at an ice cream parlor, a treat with the Flapper outside of camp. She is standing in the dark sweater, while I’m petting a puppy. I wonder if 11 year old girls today like having their pictures posted all over Facebook from camp? I feel sorry for parents who can’t let go, and let their children grow up.

I am 16 in the picture with the flip, and the confidence you can see is all due to Camp St joseph. Just don’t ask me about the altar boys, and the golf course between the boys and girls camp…

CLR Montage Web 20130808

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“Life is a Luminous Halo”

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , on April 7, 2013| 2 Comments »

I love it when writers write about writing. I want to hear where they write, and when; is it first thing in the morning with a cup of coffee, or deep into the night with a glass of wine? Once i even bought a calendar that featured the desks of famous writers. I would scrutinize the still life each month like it was a new moon. After all, if Eudora Welty could create amid chaos, I should certainly find my muse on a white oak built-in…

And it was this morbid curiosity that led me to join the twitter-sphere. Yes, I know i said i’d never do it. Feeling like the queen of 500 words or less, what could I possibly say in 140 characters or less, including spaces? Exactly. I had an aversion that seemed nonsensical. Wasn’t I the friend who taught my friends to text so they could communicate with their newly departed college-bound children? Didn’t I have to teach my teaching peers how to incorporate technology into their lesson plans? 

Still tweeting was a non sequitur to me. I admit I wondered at the value, and not wanting anymore emails popping up in my inbox. Who would I follow, or worse yet, who would want to follow me? I heard about the American kid who was arrested in Tahir Square, and because he tweeted in real time about being stuffed into a van his family was able to free him. A tweet can transform itself into a gps-driven life raft! But that wasn’t the reason I gave in and joined.

I wanted to sign up to a writing site called “Medium.” https://medium.com Its subtext is : “Sharing ideas and experiences moves humanity forward.” So there you have it…the only way to sign up was with a twitter account, pragmatism wins in the end. The Writer House in my town was offering a class this weekend on using twitter effectively, as a writer, and I thought to myself – what writer can’t craft 140 characters? Then I thought it’s like surgery, sending out a tweet is distilling your innermost thoughts in some rational and possibly humorous way. Something that might catch someone’s attention, might make you stop amid all the noise of day to day existence, and think.

Virginia Woolf said: “Examine for a moment an ordinary mind on an ordinary day. The mind receives a myriad impressions — trivial, fantastic, evanescent, or engraved with the sharpness of steel…Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end.”

ImageOur minds are permeable, some more than others. Bob and I had the pleasure of witnessing 2 young children experience a Cirque du Soleil performance for the first time, and I marveled at how their imagination was captured by aerialists in silk ribbons. The purity of music and motion, without words of any kind. IF I had downloaded the twitter App to my phone, I might have said: ” Quidam makes magic reel” because a part of the show uses mime and audience members to produce a silent film. And seeing the look of wonder in the eyes of children at a circus is magical. Even digital native children!
 
And so I follow writers – here is one of my favs:

Chilling words: “If there’s anything I can do to help, let me know.”

 

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A Gun Gag

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , on January 9, 2013| 2 Comments »

I remember the first time I went to see my regular doctor at UVA for a general physical exam. The Bride had recommended him and it turns out he is a real life Dr McDreamy. Handsome and smart, plenty of time to answer my questions, not in any rush to shoo me out the door. Maybe this is what academic medicine is all about? I was surprised that he ordered tests for blood and bone density, mammography – and he didn’t actually touch me. I guess my Irish ancestors get the prize for giving me all the right numbers in blood pressure, and remember I didn’t come in with a problem. But my first surprise was the nursing assessment before Dr McDreamy walked in; she asked me if, “I feel safe at home?”

Bob tells me that this is a relatively new question in the battery of things we patients must divulge when we are putting our lives into the hands of someone. I understood, I suppose if I was a battered and abused woman maybe I’d feel safe enough here to break down and tell? It made me wonder what protocol they use if a woman or man answered that question in a different way. How much do we drink, do we smoke, and btw how do we feel in our home? I remember when Bob worked on a baby who had drowned in a hot tub. I’m pretty sure they weren’t asking questions back then about pools and hot tubs.

Last month I accompanied the Love Bug to her 4 month Peds check-up. How’s the nursing going, sleeping? And political junkie that I am, I thought about the small battle that was waged last year to gag doctors in FL. Legislators there were fighting to silence their pediatricians’ general wellness questions; in particular, one question, “Are there guns in the home?” Yes sir, politics has slipped inside that HIPPA protected wall of the doctor/patient relationship – one I liken to a priest/confessor – and is yet again telling our health care professionals what to do.

“The way some doctors see it, asking patients whether they own a gun is no more politically loaded than any other health-related question they ask. So when a Florida law that prohibited them from discussing gun ownership with patients passed last year, they moved to fight it. A federal judge issued a permanent injunction blocking enforcement of the law in July.” http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/11/27/165985266/taking-aim-at-restrictions-on-medical-questions-about-gun-ownership

I relaxed. I thought this will never do, it just can’t happen, if a federal judge in FL blocked this inane law, then it’s over. But no, it isn’t over.
http://edition.cnn.com/video/#/video/bestoftv/2013/01/09/ac-acosta-gupta-health-care-guns.cnn?iref=allsearch

A little known 5 sentence provision was slipped onto the end of the Affordable Care Act. Legislators agreed to slash the language of the bill until all health care professionals could do was ask about guns – there is to be

NO documenting of their conversation about guns,
NO collection of data on guns, and
NO research on gun ownership as it relates to injuries…

Legislators argued and preened around the policy, taking out the part about doctors being jailed if they so much as ask about guns, or even losing their license. As many as 8 states are still fighting to reinstate this criminal provision. Remember the good old days when all we worried about was a transvaginal ultrasound? http://edition.cnn.com/video/#/video/bestoftv/2013/01/09/ac-acosta-gupta-health-care-guns.cnn?iref=allsearch

Why should we care? 1 in 5 deaths of children in our country under age 20 is directly related to firearms – 1 in 5. In a 2 year study, for children ages 5 – 14, guns were shown to be the third leading cause of death. And now, the powerful NRA has basically stopped all research into this public health and safety problem. Let the newspapers print the names and addresses of gun owners. How many more rights are we willing to give up for the almighty money of the gun lobby?

Here is a picture of the graffiti that has appeared on our new bridge over the Rivanna River. “Love” on one side, and “Peace and Faith” on the other. I hope it stays there for awhile, that free speech travels upriver.
photo

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