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In her post on My world had been very different before I had a baby. The freedom! Oh I could do
absolutely anything I wanted at anytime. I worked really hard (sometimes too
hard) and played really hard too. I didn’t have anyone else to think about
except myself.
Now she's got one. As Bart Simpson would say: "Heh,heh."
Read my latest post on Voiceboks.com :
Welcome to the Parent Club. Now, Have a Seat!
On this week's "Family Matters" segment of the Ric & Suzanne Show on CJAD 800AM, we talk about:
Enjoy:
Her newborn son was feverish, lethargic and irritable.
Her doctor initially told her not to worry, but her instincts told her something was not right.
She insisted on a further examination of her child, after all, at one week old, there was little margin for error.
It was after a second exam that Furakh Mir's son, Sulayman, was diagnosed with bacterial Meningitis.
The little boy recovered after receiving a course of aggressive antibiotics at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto.
This was the story Ms. Mir told during the opening minutes of yesterday's webinar organized to help raise awareness of the dangers, signs, and preventative measures associated with meningitis.
Today is World Meningitis Day.
Being a parent means being constantly vigilant. But it also means managing your attention - focusing on what's important, and prioritizing.
Meningitis was not high on my priority list.
Like so many parents, I keep a watchful eye when sitting by the local pool; make sure my kids eat don't eat too much junk food; and see to it they complete their homework.
Why would I attend a webinar related to World Meningitis Day?
The startling facts I learned yesterday about the disease answered that question.
Before I relay that information, here's a video produced by Meningitis Relief which encapsulates the reasons our focus should shift to include Meningitis:
Hearing loss, brain damage, learning disability and possibly death within the first 24 to 48 hours.
We take such precautions to get the flu shot, and wear our bicycle helmets, yet we barely hear of Meningitis from our doctors or our children's schools.
It is not yet part of the lexicon. Yet it presents a grave danger.
While it first presents with flu-like symptoms: fever, nausea, headache, neck pain and vomiting; it can spiral quickly downwards.
About 1 in 10 with the disease will not survive.
These are some of the facts put forth by the World Health Organization on their information sheet.
Dr. David Greenberg suggested yesterday that one of the best ways of assuring your concern about your child's health is being taken seriously by your doctor is to point out changes in your child's behaviour.
He points out, as many parents have experienced, that one child may have a fever of 40 degrees and still be energetic and active; another may register 38.2 and be grey and lethargic.
Trust your instincts. You know your child, don't shy away from letting your doctor know you feel there is more going on.
Meningitis is spread through direct contact with an infected person through the droplet route by means of respiratory secretions when air or liquid secretions are shared. - Meningitis Research Foundation of Canada
It does not spread through casual contact.
In other words, similar to flu prevention. Hygiene is key.
No shared drinks, or lipsticks; cough into your sleeves, wash your hands.
While younger children may respond more easily to an adult warning them not to share a water bottle with their friends at the park, teenagers can be more of a challenge.
Refusing a shared cigarette, or telling a friend: "No, you can't have a sip of my drink" may result in a teen being teased by their peers. This naturally discourages young adults from putting hygiene first.
During our one-on-one conversation after the webinar, Parenting Expert Alyson Schafer stressed that getting rid of this sort of stigma is exactly why meningitis prevention must become part our daily conversation.
She pointed out how, at one time, proper hygiene - even after a visit to the washroom - wasn't something people focused on. Now, washing your hands before leaving the bathroom is (hopefully) routine.
Ms. Schafer pointed out that meningitis awareness and prevention should become as much a part of routine conversations as flu vaccines, and washing your hands during cold season.
It's never too early to being that conversation.
Talk about meningitis vaccines, and prevention with your family, your friends and your schools
When it comes to meningitis - knowledge is power.
Here is a short survey, where you can discover how much you know, or don't know about the disease - it is live until April 29th, 2013.
Visit the Meningitis Research Foundation of Canada, or Meningitis Relief Canada in Facebook website for more information.
I'd like to thank Dad of Divas for making me their "Dad in the Limelight" this week.
Here is the link to a page which includes all the things about me I was too lazy to put on my "About Me" page:
Kenny Bodanis - Dads in the Limelight
Men Get Pregnant Too is a regular contributor to The Good Men Project.
Today's post was inspired by the memory of the only slumber party I remember attending.
It was 26 years ago.
While today, I'm too tired to remember where I left my ball cap, or to stay awake past ten o'clock, at 15 years-old it was about the relationships strengthened and bonds formed in the wee hours of the morning.
Enjoy, and thank you for reading:
Secrets and Smokes at Two Minutes to Midnight
Image credit: sofia vizcaino with katherine sandoz
Given the recent trend of recruiting new workers who apparently perform tasks as efficiently at those already in place, but at a lower cost to the employer, I thought I'd treat myself. I will be temporarily outsourcing my job as Father. Interested applicants will be paid 50% of my usual salary, and should carefully read the following:
Dear Sir,
Mornings can be tough:
Clever Wall Mural in Yellow Springs, Ohio by UGArdener
Pickups and Playgrounds:
Molly on the Monkey Bars by Connor Anderson
Supper and Bedtime:
Low Battery by Cristiana Gasparotto
It's All Over:
Now, the evening is yours. Maybe the Canadiens are playing a 7 o'clock game. Maybe you can watch some PVR'd HBO with my wife. Maybe you're alone this evening and have found a great movie which starts at 9 o'clock. Tempting isn't it?
Don't do it! The fatigue just compounds itself during the work week. Do yourself a favor, be like a ninety year-old; go to bed early.
Of course, there is one advantage to watching that movie which only starts in half-an-hour: it will give you enough time to make tomorrow's lunches you had forgotten about.
I was born on December 29th, 1971.
I used to keep that date hidden from social media. Partly because I never cared for the caravan of drive-by birthday greetings on Facebook; but also as a method of fortifying that invisible border between what I felt was private, and what I was prepared to display on my digital front stoop.
Since Thursday last, I put less importance on guarding such insignificant details.
Thursday last, my wife and I began the process of assembling an official Last Will and Testament.
Reader by h.koppdelaney
We are both in excellent health; but, as we age, we receive more constant (and less subtle) reminders of our mortality.
Our children have already attended five funerals: two great uncles; a great aunt; a great-grandmother; and the father of my closest friend.
At each of these gatherings, conversation naturally sways away from what is new, and more towards what is old. My peers and I realize that, though most of us are only in our 40's, life's pace is no longer too slow, as when we were children and students, but now has a step or two on us.
We analyze our bodies not by what is growing, but by what is receding.
Being the architect of your Last Will forces you to shift from foraging to conservation: it is a time to consider not what is left to acquire, but rather what can be lost.
Leaving the notary's office, our intellects and emotions concocted a brew of logic and worry.
Although assuaged that our wishes were now clear, and that our children would be looked after according to our wishes, being asked so many questions concerning possible illnesses and inevitable death convinces one that such a fate will become you at any moment.
Getting on a plane without my children never seemed so foolhardy as after beginning the machinations of a notarial Will.
Our children are 8 and 6 years old.
Since becoming parents, we have been reminded at semi-regular intervals - mostly by our parents - of the importance of providing for the needs of our children should we no longer be alive, or able, to care for them.
"A Will??" we thought.
We've only just become parents!
Let us deal with sleeplessness, feeding, meconium, whooping cough, fifths disease, teething, walking, falling, talking, running and fevers first, OK?
Eight years into caring for our children, we finally realized how careless it was to not consider who might care for them when we are gone.
The notary's questions only emphasized the mess our families would have been left to tidy without any direction:
If one of you should die, do you want your spouse to have complete control over your family's assets?
If only one of you should be gravely ill, does your spouse have the legal power to make the ultimate decisions concerning life support or palliative care?
If you both die, who cares for your children? And where?
Who controls finances for your children?
At what age may your children control their own finances?
Should the people you have named as primary caregivers not be able to fulfill that role, what then?
And on, and on.
As important as these decisions are, it is most important to understand these measures may be required at any moment. Yes. Today, or tomorrow, or not for decades.
I am as relieved to have these questions answered for my children's benefit as I am saddened to imagine them being guided through the morbid process of packing suitcases and spending their lives in a home other than the one they know today.
Perhaps that is why this discussion, this visit to talk about sickness and death, was delayed for nearly a decade.
'Death' is an ugly word.
But, for an 8 and 6 year-old who have just lost their parents; two words are just as ugly: 'uncertainty' and 'loneliness'.
While this Will forced me to consider my own death; it also forced me to consider something far more important: my children's life.
This movie made my heart glad. It is filled with innocence, hope, and good cheer. It is also wickedly funny and exciting as hell. "E.T The Extra-Terrestrial" is a movie like "The Wizard of Oz," that you can grow up with and grow old with, and it won't let you down. It tells a story about friendship and love.
- Excerpt from Roger Ebert's review of "E.T. - The Extra-Terrestrial"
Mr. Ebert's review of E.T. reflects exactly my emotional memories of watching the film the first time in 1982. Would it capture my children's 2013 imaginations as magically as it did mine 21 years ago?
This is a debate friends and I often have regarding our fond memories of movies such as "Star Wars" (Episode IV, not the Jar-Jar Binks atrocity), "Superman" (with Christopher Reeve), "The Wizard of Oz", and even "The Princess Bride".
Are these movies too scary? Are they too boring? Have movie effects become so technically proficient that a rubbery alien in a bicycle basket will seem laughable when seen through the eyes of my cynical children?
Only one way to find out.
Halfway through, it was clear two decades had done nothing to lessen the movie's impact on young viewers. My son was saucer-eyed and focused on the screen, my daughter expressed her excitement and trepidation in her usual manner: asking non-stop questions, and occasionally leaving the couch to hide behind my chair.
Then, "shit" happened.
Elliott had been hiding this little alien in his room which has been ransacked by an extra-terrestrial being eager to explore each textured surface, gadget, and plaything in this young boy's pied-a-terre.
As my mother was so often fond of saying of my boyhood room: the place was a disaster. Upon witnessing the disarray in Elliott's room (but not yet having met the cause of it all), Elliott's older brother exclaims:
"What is all this shit?!"
Uh-oh.
The T.V. just said shit, and my kids were there to hear it.
I was snapped out of my re-living-my-boyhood trance with terrible thoughts of my kids' childhood being spoiled by dirty cussing.
Shit. They'd heard "shit". Now they'll be saying "shit", and be telling me about all the things they think are shit. When they stub their toes, instead of saying "Ouch!", they're going to say "Shit!".
Later on, as the movie reaches its nefarious sub-climax, someone on screen says "Son of a bitch!"
Shit. Now my kids will be saying "bitch". Now they won't be complaining, they'll be bitching.
Shit.
Stupid movie.
E.T. (?)... Darth Vader and Yoda by stick_kim
Then, thankfully before I ruined the film's tearful ending for myself by drowning in my own parental hysteria, I got a grip.
21st century parents live in a strange, illogical duality.
More than any generation before us, we are students of parenting. We read books, and blogs, and medical sites, and take part in group discussions. From even before our first child is born, we worry about what music they're exposed to in the womb; what types of toxins are in the air; and whether the mobile hanging over the crib is too stimulating, or not stimulating enough.
Yet, we worry they will become irreversible corrupted by a little "shit" and a "son of a bitch" in E.T.
My son heard the "shit", and said nothing. Why? He's heard it before! Lo and behold, at 8-years-old, E.T. was not his first exposure to cussing. Grade 2 had taken care of that (as had two of his uncles, but that's another story).
My daughter heard it, too. She asked "What does 'shit' mean?"
I answered: "A very bad word for 'poo', I don't want to hear you saying it."
That was it. No one cared to discuss it anymore. After all, there was an alien in the closet.
We all grew up watching movies with nudity, violence, and swearing. I will grant they were more docile versions compared with what's available today, but, still I didn't cuss at my grand-parents after hearing the kid in E.T. say "shit".
Why? Because I had been taught differently by people who held more sway over my behavior than Steven Spielberg. Magically, despite what I was exposed to through media, I still learned what was innapropriate in public.
At some point, we have to trust ourselves, and trust our children.
When we were teaching my kids to swim, which overlapped with the period during which we trying to get them out of diapers overnight, my parents each expressed concerns that neither stage was happening quickly enough.
Their insinuations were: I was keeping them in a lifejacket longer than they should be, and that I should be waking them at midnight to go to the bathroom.
Finally, I defended my position by asking them the following question: "Will these kids be 18 years-old, wearing a lifejacket, and wetting their beds?"
No.
My wife and I are responsible for guiding them through the learn-to-swim and potty-training processes.
Will they be 'shit'-ting their way through second grade because of E.T.?
No. Because their sense of right and wrong, as well as the inappropriateness of potty-mouths, are our responsibilities, too.
If I don't want T.V. to be given credit for my children's litteracy and knowledge of the world; I shouldn't blame it for their misbehavior, either.
Not that they will be watching "Goodfellas" anytime soon...
