Archive for February, 2010

by Hailey Fudu a mother of two, a childbirth educator and labour/birth doula practicing in Johannesburg, originally from California, who loves moms and babies!:) For more information on active and natural birthing in Johannesburg, please visit the Genesis Clinic website.

In today’s busy world many mom’s rush through their lives and it all becomes a blur. This blur often begins when the pregnant mother decides she can’t wait for her baby to arrive and books in for an induction or elective C Section.  I would like to share some information that women deserve to know before making a final decision regarding their birth choice.

I have had the privilege of working with mothers through their pregnancies, births and after they are settling in at home.  Adjusting to a new baby is a challenge, but this challenge can be approached with tranquillity, or chaos. When a mom lets her labour happen naturally her baby is best prepared to enter this world. Few women know that 35 out of every 1000 babies born by caesarean suffer from breathing difficulties, while only 5 out of every 1000 babies born naturally.( National Collaborating Centre for Women’s and Children’s Health. Caesarean Section: Clinical Guideline. London: RCOG Press; 2004). Babies with breathing difficulties end up in high care and lose out on the essential first hours of breastfeeding and skin to skin contact (which ironically helps the baby absorb any access fluid in their lungs). My hope is not to spend a lot of time going through the statistical benefits of letting babies come into this world without the rush.  I only want to encourage mom’s to do their homework and if they do, they will find that the World Health Organization, National Childbirth Trust and other highly reputable sources of research, overwhelmingly show the benefits to mother and child of birthing naturally unless clear medical intervention is necessary.

I have assisted in many births at the Genesis Clinic in Johannesburg. This clinic is a very unique environment for birthing. More clinics like this are beginning to open in South Africa. At Genesis each woman has her own private room, bathroom and garden for her labour and birth. There is no feeling of being rushed, and the woman can listen to her body and is allowed the space to move and do whatever feels most effective.  When this type of atmosphere is created, the child’s entrance is gentle and well supported. The result: a happy and calm mother, and a non-stressed baby that is ready to begin breastfeeding. Rooming in with one’s newborn should not be a privilege for the rich. When a qualified midwife delivers a baby, the cost goes down rapidly. Women don’t always know that gynecologists /obstetricians are trained in dealing with surgery and complications; they do not specialize in natural birth! The first 24 hour period after birth is critical for the establishment of the breastfeeding relationship and after nine months in the womb, shouldn’t that closeness and ability to feel mother’s loving touch and heartbeat continue?

When mothers and their babies get off to the right start and begin to work together in the calm, slow pace of the early days of motherhood, the stage can be set for a healthy and balanced lifestyle.  I would like to wish all the mommies to be many blessings!

by Zelna Lauwrens, founder of Equal Zeal Training, an organisation that specialises in self development programmes for young people and their families.  For more information visit Equal Zeal .

Your child is born amidst teddies, new clothes, bouquets of flowers and many visits from excited family and friends…when the hustle and bustle dies down and your happy family returns home from hospital, you are left hoping, praying, and wishing that this child will be an easy one.  That your child will cruise through the journey of life without a hitch or a problem.  That your child will be different from all the ones that you hear about in the media that make bad choices or are exposed to negative circumstances.  That your child will be the one where homework is always done, suitable friends are chosen, manners are good and model behaviour is displayed.

As baby grows steadily and the developmental stages are ticked off one by one, you shower the little soul with so much love and affection that there is no doubt that they will grow up into anything other than your special and gifted child with so much good to offer the world.  Then school starts, and so the uphill battle of homework, bullying, pressures of tests, strict teachers and reduced playtime steps in.  Your once precious little soul that adored being with mommy and daddy and loved hugs, kisses and piggy back rides now pulls a face at the thought of mom dropping them off at the classroom door.  Fights and arguments are reduced to having the latest gadgets and toys and which clothing labels are the best to wear alongside why fast food is way better than vegetables.

Before you know it, your once adorable 6-year old with two front teeth missing turns into a revolting teenager adorned in black clothing and enough piercings to resemble a Christmas tree. Your beautiful daughter insists on wearing skimpy, provocative clothing that relays the message that she is no longer a child.  The cheekiness and sullen behaviour steps in and nothing you do is good enough and so the endless cycle of habitual arguing in the household begins.

So what are we debating here? Are the swift changes in technology to blame for a value shift and decline in positive behaviour in our children, or is it the lack of distinct traditional parenting, perhaps we need to look to the media to find a scape goat, or is it the overwhelming toxic influence of alchohol, sex and drugs that are impacting on our children’s precious lives along with not enough exercise, poor diet, role models in the form of singers and scandalous movie stars and crime statistics on the upswing?

We can point fingers, we can allocate blame, we can raise our hands in the air in frustration, but as parents we need to realise that it is reasonable to assume that a generation shaped by this new fast paced world of ours will be different from those who have gone before it.

Albert Einstein said that “Setting an example is not the main means of influencing others; it is the only means.” Let us acknowledge that times are changing and that we need to move with the times rather than stay stuck in the rigid confines of parenting with blinkers on that can sometimes exacerbate problems in our children.

by Philippa Cross who would rather be outdoors than in, alone than in a crowd. She prefers dogs to cats, with a major leaning towards bulldogs. She hopes to win the Pulitzer prize for her yet unpublished novel. She started Thumb Media with a partner in June 2009. Visit her blog

I bet you have a fancy job doing something useful and fulfilling. Are you a dentist? Or a business analyst. Maybe you’re an astrophysicist. Or a fabulous home exec. No matter what you are in your professional capacity nothing you’ve ever done will compare to working with plaster of paris.

I recently began volunteering once a week at my son’s nursery school. I take an arts and crafts class on a Friday morning, alternating between age groups. (I had an urge to give back, God knows why, as it was his idea.)

For my very first class of my craft-teaching career, I decided to do plaster of paris hand prints with the 2 – 3 year olds. That involves mixing plaster of paris, pouring it into a pliable shallow plate, pressing a 2 year old hand gently into the mix, producing a perfect hand print, removing the hand, letting the mixture dry, and painting it before removing it effortlessly from the pliable shallow plate.

How hard can that possibly be?

Well. I can tell you emphatically, it is hard. I used 6 litres of plaster of paris mixture, and had to do each child’s hand 3 times. My advice is, don’t even bother trying it at home.

But if you’re dead set on the idea, are up for a challenge or want to add plaster of paris in small letters after your name on your business card, consider the following:

However,  I must share that after our third try, the little hand prints actually came out beautifully, and the children had fun. That perhaps is the point. They don’t care whether it actually works or not. It’s only you who has any expectations.  Children don’t mind at all. They have fun, they love making a mess, and they love getting involved. They enjoy texture, they adore mess. So my advice when tackling any kind of craft is to follow their lead. Make a mess and laugh a lot. The best part of arts and crafts is doing it together.

Corinne Lamoral is a freelance writer and media consultant and mother of three children 3-9yrs. She reviews books and movies for a living which has sharpened her eye to spot out the must see’s  and must reads out there.

1. DANDYLION
by Lizzie Findlay (Random House)

This is a gem of a book – beautifully written and illustrated and sharing a message that will make your soul sing.  It’s OK to be different! Dandylion is the new kid in class and right from the start he stands out. With his fun attitude to life and zany way of doing things, he spills paint in his eagerness, brings sweet sandwiches to school and finally gets the whole class in trouble by going wild with a Koki pen… Dandylion learns a big lesson but so do his classmates when they ask him to stop being so wild and he decides to stay at home. This is great for provoking discussion about how everyone does things differently and how we can all learn from each other.
Age: Good for children aged 3 up to around 8.  Older children will find it too simplistic.

2. HERE COMES FRANKIE
by Tim Hopgood (Macmillan Children’s Books)

With a burst of sound and colour Frankie finds his true calling in this gorgeous book by the award-winning author of books like Our Big Blue Sofa and A Dog Called Rod.  The cover illustration of a little boy playing the trumpet grabbed my attention as I fished it out from behind the other books on the Exclusives shelf.  What a find.  My nearly four-year old son Joseph loves trumpets and the delight on his face as he watched Frankie making colours with his sounds was wonderful.  The story follows Frankie and his very quiet librarian parents who read books and do the crossword everyday until Frankie announces LOUDLY that he wants to learn to play the trumpet.  The story introduces the concept of Synaesthesia –the mixing of the senses that allows some people, like jazz trumpeter Miles Davis, to perceive colours, shapes and smells in music.

Age:  3 to 10yrs. Older children will get the concept more, but Hopgood’s illustrations will talk to everyone.2

By Angel Swemmer, a  mom to a teenage-almost-adult ADHDer who says that what she writes is purely her opinion on things she feels strongly about, based on my experience as an ADHDer parent. Author of the blog Angelsmind

Make no mistake- I think most teachers are superheroes- but they can make bad calls when it comes to treating ADHDers!  Here’s an example of a mistake a lot of teachers make.

At the end of the last school year, one of the ADHDer moms I “mentor” (lets call her Jane) gave me a call. Jane’s son’s teacher had asked her if she could please return the unused Ritalin that Jane had sent to school.

Jane’s son (lets call him John) takes a Ritalin tablet in the morning and then another one later in the morning, which the teacher had agreed to give to him. All through the year Jane had been asking the teacher if she was giving John his second dose, because there were days when he came home more hyper than usual, and would then battle to get his homework done or get ready for bed and so on. The teacher swore that she was giving him his meds, even though John told his mom that some days she didn’t.  The poor ADHDer almost always gets the short end of the stick  because they have a tendency to tell stories the teacher is usually the one believed!

In this case, come year end, the teacher sent home almost  5 weeks’ worth of Ritalin tablets!

Jane was furious. When she confronted the teacher about all the extra medication, the teacher admitted that there had been days she felt he didn’t need it “that much” and decided not to give it to him.

Jane made an appointment with the school principal to discuss it with him and to ask him to follow up with John’s teachers in future, but it was the end of the school year so not much was going to come of Jane’s measures.

The implications of an ADHDer not having his correct medication dosage is huge- and it doesn’t only affect the school day. John’s teacher had no idea.

In the new school year, Jane was sure to give the teacher more information and explain why John needed his correct and complete dose every day- but the fact remains that South African schools do not have advanced ADHD “care” programs like the IEPs in the USA, and we have to rely on our children’s teachers’ willingness and good will to help in our ADHDers care, rather than be assured that their schools will follow up on a properly formalised plan.

Follow up with your ADHDers’ teachers and with the headmaster and division heads on a regular basis. Provide them with reading material and books as and when you can.

Talk to her every time you take new meds to school and remind her why your ADHDer has meds.

With a class full of children, she will forget!

And good luck to you.

by Sally Cameron, midwife, mother of 2 and co-owner of earthbabies . I am passionate, creative, trying to be Green unschooling single mom. It’s a journey

I became a single mom when the kids and I moved back to South Africa a year ago from the UK. Their dad and I are separated and he has chosen to stay in the UK. He wants to get a British passport so can only be out of the UK 30 days a year. His contact with them is therefore very limited. He has not seen them since June last year. One of the main ways he maintains contact is through Skype which I encourage.

He keeps asking that I am not present when he speaks to them. They are 5 and 2 so I feel I do need to be in the background so that if something goes wrong with the computer I can help as they invariably fiddle with it. Besides the 2 of them trying to both get their faces in the camera view often results in fighting. I am not sitting there on the camera, I just move in and out of the room while in ear shot in case they need me.

The one time I left the room I came back to the ex telling my daughter how he was planning a trip for them to the UK which never happened and he had not spoken to me about it first. I had to deal with the fall out and disappointment, so there is part of me that does not totally trust his motives when he speaks to them.

Am I being over protective, what would you do?

Nikki Bush, a self-confessed parenting adventurer.  Married with two strapping sons aged 14 and 10.  Nikki’s clients call her a creative parenting expert.  She is an inspirational speaker and author of bestselling parenting book, Future-proof Your Child (Penguin, 2008).

Have you ever realised that you are always trying to market to, or sell your child/ren something – an idea, a value, a point of view, an action to be taken etc:

With this generation, authority does work (sometimes), particularly in the early years when “because I am your parent and I said so” still has some magical power to it, or if you have actively positioned yourself as a hero in your child’s life story.  But, as children get older there is a tendency for them to either think or, even worse, verbalise “Says Who?” or “Who cares anyway?”. Living in a reward-based culture as we do, where it’s so commonplace for us to be rewarded for swiping our credit cards, being loyal to the same airline, store or restaurant, visiting the gym etc, our children could be forgiven for thinking:  “If they want me to do this, what’s in it for me, what do I get?”

This is a very real challenge for 21st century parents.  Of course the desired end result after years of parenting is for our children to be self-motivated rather than relying on some form of external bribe etc.  But, from time-to-time, it may be necessary to utilise various “marketing tactics” to get the message across to your child in a fun and playful way, or to get their buy-in until it becomes an adopted habit, value, thought or behaviour pattern.

Star charts, treats, promises and bribes are all in a parent’s marketing arsenal – to be used wisely, of course.  And do watch what the marketers are doing – you could pick up an idea or two to add to your toolkit.  Try these “promotions” for size, my kids loved them:

by Joy Robyn Dembo, married, with an 18 year old son and a 25 year old daughter.  Addicted to the www, particularly Twitter. Recruitment Response Handling Consultant and Freelance Copywriter, vegetarian and animal lover.  Here’s her blog.

With almost 8 years between my two children, it was beginning to feel as though I had been at school forever, so you can imagine my elation when my son passed Matric last year and I left school forever!!

My son had decided many years ago that he wanted to be a chef when he left school.  So, not withstanding the fact that he had never cooked anything other than 2-minute noodles and scrambled eggs, hated washing dishes and didn’t know the meaning of hard work, I filled in the 10 page application form for the Hotel School, signed the 21 page contract, paid the obscene fees, bought the R7000-00 worth of books (I always thought you could buy an entire library for R7000!),  paid for the hideously expensive uniforms (1 x suit and 2 times chef uniforms plus accessories),  bought the set of knives that look as though they came out of a serial killer’s boot (I watch the Crime & Investigation Channel a lot!), and paid for all the other incidentals!  You will notice that the words “bought” and “paid for” feature quite prominently in this paragraph.

Day one eventually arrived!

The first two days were taken up by a Wine Course (At an additional cost of R1200-00), and I am proud to say that I am now very knowledgeable when it comes to useless wine, port, sherry, brandy and sparkling wine facts. (If all else fails, I think I am fully equipped to apply for a job as a Sommelier)”

The second two days were dedicated to a Level 1 First Aid Course.  Apparently, by law, you have to do at least Level 1 before you are permitted to work in a hotel kitchen. My son is not a light boy and after spending two days on his knees practicing CPR on a dummy, he was almost crippled.  After taking truckloads of Voltaren and Myprodol, he was finally able to walk again (but only just!!).

Ryan is doing the 3 yr Diploma in Professional Cookery and Kitchen Management, which is divided into academic and practical sections, on a block release basis.  Ryan has been allocated to do part of the practical section first, and has been assigned to a 5-Star Rosebank Hotel.

Horror of horrors!  He is currently doing the 6:00 am (as in getting up in the middle of the night) – 2:00 pm shift.  As you can imagine, after doing this for almost 3 weeks, we are all floating around like Zombies!  But, despite the fact that Ryan has almost cut his finger off twice, and he finally knows the meaning of HARD work, after being on his feet for 8 hours straight, on a daily basis he is learning what it means to take your place in the “working world” and he is actually enjoying his course and savouring the experience of learning something new every day!

Me?  I am spending hours boiling, bleaching, soaking, washing and scrubbing an entire gourmet menu out of his WHITE chef uniform, on a daily basis, rushing to fetch him at 2-00pm, helping my hubby out with the morning lifts (I didn’t know it was possible to “sleep drive”) and fervently hoping that he will get his driver’s license soon and I will, at the very least, be served a Cordon Bleu meal, in the very near future!

by Paul Jacobson , dad, husband, lawyer, geek, blogger, evangelist, maven. He blogs at Paul Jacobson and Web. Tech. Law

I have become acutely aware of how my stress impairs my ability to relate to my family and to our son, in particular, in a constructive or even meaningful way.  My law firm has seen a number of changes over the years since I founded it.  One thing that hasn’t really changed all that much is the amount of stress I am under almost all the time, particularly about financial matters.

It is usually around month-end and the beginning of the next month (“that time of month” for me) that I notice my patience wearing really thin in general and my personality shifts to the Dark Side (with a side order or Super Grouch).  Despite my hope that I can keep the stress to myself and deal with it in some way (still looking for that magic wand to turn the stress into euphoria and bliss …), it leaks out and taints everything and everyone near me.  I get angrier quicker and lose my temper when pushed.  In short, I behave terribly and a big part of my anxiety is watching how my stress affects Aaron, in real-time.  Sure he has his moments (he had a doozie this morning) but he is still a child.  I mentioned before that I have started to see him begin to withdraw a little and me getting angry doesn’t help at all.  Then, after the anger has passed and the tears are drying as he sits on my lap apologising to me, the guilt and depression sink in.  My worldview just shifts from red to deep blue and that isn’t much fun either.

I think what I am slowly getting to is this: we all get stressed out and we take it out on people around us in varying degrees.  Although it often makes me feel worse, becoming more aware of the causes of my stress and the reasons why I am such an ass at certain times of the month is essential to dealing with the stress a little better.  At the very least I am slowly getting better at recognising that it isn’t our son’s tantrum that sparked my anger but something wholly outside his control or even his little universe.  It isn’t his fault that a client is 10 days late on a big fee and all my debit orders have bounced.  He’s upset because he had a bad dream or because we can’t rewind Peppa Pig for him.

We all know we shouldn’t take our stress out on other people but are we all as aware of the causes of our stress as we could be?  Perhaps if we were more aware of those causes we’d recognise the triggers sooner and behave a little better next time our children start pressing buttons.

Robyn Cameron, entrepreneur, firedancer, self employed domestic worker, chef at home. Passionate about education, philosophy, music, nature, animals, crafts & South Africa. General manager and shareholder at Hire Education. You’ll also find her on twitter.

If you are in the same boat as me, 2010 has kicked off to such a rapid start I think I might have missed it altogether! Generally I come to the end of January and feel like I should have done more, but this year I’m feeling that if January was this crazy, look out for the next 11 months ahead!

I once read a quote which seems appropriate:

“Don’t worry about tomorrow. After all today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.”

Easier said than done? Right?

Maybe not. What I’ve learnt is that multi-tasking isn’t always best as we tend to divulge our focus. This leads us to complete a few things at once, but in double the amount of time and of a lesser quality, had we been concentrating on one thing at a time. Ever tried helping the kids with homework whilst trying to cook dinner? The outcome – homework that looks like a dogs breakfast or possibly dinner that doesn’t look much better!

So, for this year, my aim is to take things one at a time and worry less about what I’m not doing so that I can focus on what I am doing.

My first attempt at living in the present will be to compartmentalise (yes that is actually a word) my time. Oh wait, I think that me googling compartmentalise whilst writing this post still counts as multitasking? Anyway, most of you will have so many tasks to accomplish in one day that just trying to figure out what to do next will leave your head spinning. Whilst you are at work you might be thinking – I have to fetch the kids from school, then go to the shops – what do I need from the shops? Which leads to – what will I do for dinner? And then, before you know it, you have not progressed at all on the task at hand.

So, when you decide to do something, keep bringing yourself in check when your mind wanders. Even if it means turning off the phone, closing your email and anything else open on your computer. Allocate time to tasks – even set a timer on your phone! When that timer goes off stop whatever you are doing and move onto the next thing.

At first it may feel like you are leaving things open ended, but as time goes by you will get into a routine that works for you and start seeing the benefits of dedicating your focus on one thing instead of many. Once you train your mind to concentrate on the task at hand, you will soon start to have less panic running around in your brain about all the other things you need to do, which will lead to less stress about things you can’t change at that point in time.

What are your ways of coping in with this demanding, high paced society, where it’s now or never that seems to be ruling our waking hours?