The Mom Crowd

At our son’s 4 year old check-up in June, our pediatrician dropped a bombshell on us… “he’s obese”.  How on earth could this perfectly healthy child with easily viewable ribs be obese?  Our pediatrician suggested that we see a nutritionist and get the situation “under control”.  We walked out of the appointment baffled by the thought of our thin child being obese.   

After talking to other friends who use the same pediatrician, I found that this was almost a common diagnosis.  We compared our children and all agreed that they look healthy.  Not too thin, not too thick… just right.  (And truthfully, we are the kind of friends who would say if things appeared differently!)  I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how this diagnosis could apply to these kids.  They were healthy, active kids! 

Then it dawned on me… Body Mass Index (BMI), the way in which obesity is measured, measures height to weight proportions.  It does not take into account muscle mass.  While most children aren’t teeming with bulging muscles, they can have significant muscle mass.  I take this to be a huge flaw in the overall diagnosing process.  BMI also does not take into account a growth spurt.  Some children gain weight and then grow in height and even out.   

Of course, we have taken steps to try and reduce Andrew’s overall weight, as with his diabetes he is more prone to developing other life-threatening conditions later in life, but now we are just amazed at how thin he looks. 

And then there is the flip-side… “they are too thin”.  Two of my friends have been criticized in their parenting because their children are by nature exceptionally thin.  They are healthy children, but just tend to be very thin, even when mom tries shoving cupcakes down their throats to get them where they are “supposed” to be. 

 My friends and I have all come to the same conclusion: while we trust and look to our pediatricians for support and guidance, there are just sometimes that we feel we need to throw their medical expertise out the window and trust our own parental instincts as to what is right and wrong for our children. 

Have you had a similar experience?  How did you handle it?  Do you feel comfortable at times not following your pediatrician’s recommendations? 

Photo Courtesy of webchicken

We all know that children pick up everything they hear.  When we converse, my hubby and I are constantly spelling key words, finding creative synonyms, or using parental code.  It is a hoot to watch my daughter listening with all her might.  She reminds me of myself when I am listening to people speak a foreign language I’ve vaguely studied – I know every sixth word or so.   When she does follow us, she jumps in with questions and responses.  She’s quick, that girl.

Lucy often calls her brother “Buddy” now, because that is a nickname we have for our son.  This makes us smile.  And hearing our son say, “Get down! Get funky!” at the dinner table is good for a laugh.  (We taught him that.)  But I am most proud when my children use phrases we want them to say without being told.  Here are just a few biggies:

• “May I please have ______________?”  Long ago, my daughter mixed up some of these words and now every request begins with “Please may I __________?”  I think she thinks “Please may” is one word, because I’m hearing it in other questions now: “Please may can we go to the bookstore?”  Regardless of the word order, I’m just happy to hear the “please” and the tone of a question being asked.  When the kids get forgetful, they get demanding, and their mouths produce all kinds of imperatives that I find rude, like when my son drops his cup and says, “Get my cup, Mom!”
• “May I be excused?”  We’ve been working on this one for about a year.  Often when my child was finished eating, she’d just get up and leave the room.  I didn’t care for that to become a habit, so we started teaching this request.  It’s still a work-in-progress.  My son has about outgrown his booster seat, so this will begin all over again soon.
• “Thank you.”  This is a no-brainer, yet small children don’t have the natural inclination to be grateful for anything!  They know how to say thank you – they just hardly ever do.  I am always shocked and delighted to hear an unprompted thanks. 
• “I forgive you.”  Our kids get plenty of practice saying, “I’m sorry” every time they are finished with time-out.  My husband and I feel it is equally important that they hear an “I forgive you” when they apologize.  It is becoming as natural as saying “You’re welcome” to a thank you.   When we coach our children through an argument, one of them always ends up saying, “I’m sorry.”  And the other is prompted to say, “I forgive you.”  Forgiveness is powerful.  Hearing and saying the words is a necessary part of conflict resolution.  I don’t want my children to grow up being unfamiliar with this phrase.  The other day, when my son apologized to his sister for pushing her, he stood there expectantly.  She didn’t say anything.  Eli said, “Mom, Lucy needs to say, ‘I forgive you.’”  Then she did.  I feel good about that. 

What phrases do you spend energy trying to teach your children?  What is something you say that your child has repeated?

I should be drinking whole milk while I’m pregnant?  And better than that is unpasteurized, raw milk?

I should stay away from a low-fat diet? Especially while I’m pregnant?

What is “carbage”?

It’s okay to feed my baby meat?

So, can I or can’t I eat fish while I’m pregnant?

Industrial fats like corn, sunflower, safflower, and soybean oil are making me fat and causing heart disease and diabetes?  You mean butter, coconut oil, and lard are better choices?

What foods are good to introduce to my baby?

You mean babies don’t NEED cereal when they first start eating? Are you crazy?

I recently read Nina Planck’s book Real Food: What to Eat and Why based on the recommendation of a friend. Thanks Heather!  She also recommended Planck’s next book, Real Food For Mother and Baby.  When she told me that the book explains why mothers need more than iron and folic acid when they are pregnant and even trying to conceive a baby my interest was piqued.

This book will turn many of your thoughts about food upside down.  Nina is aon a mission to help people understand why it is important to eat “real food”.  Real food is food that people have been eating for thousands of years.  The kind of food that is minimally processed–meaning milk that comes straight from the cow, beef that is fed grass not soybeans and corn, grains that have been soaked, plain yogurt with your own added flavor, poultry that is allowed to roam and eat grass and bugs.  You get the idea.  Planck makes the argument that “industrial foods” are ruining our health.  Soybean, corn, safflower, and sunflower oils are commonly added into our foods.  They are also highly processed and increasing our bad cholesterol.  The information in this book will make your head spin because it demystifies so much of our wrong thinking about food.

This book addresses all those questions I wrote above. The first chapter is basically a summary of her first book Real Food.  I highly recommend reading her first book to get more of the science and information behind her food recommendations. It is eye opening.  Chapters 2 and 3 deal with pregnancy and nutrition during pregnancy.  Chapter 4 covers breastfeeding. This chapter may make your eyes get as big as saucers in some parts but it is interesting all the same.  She covers why breastmilk is best for baby, what she would do if she had trouble nursing her baby, how formula is made, some of the basics of getting baby to breastfeed and even some anthropological implications for why we have to nurse so often.  Chapter 5 covers first foods for your baby.  This chapter has seriously made me rethink how I want to introduce foods to any additional children we may have.

This book, along with her first book, has caused me to reconsider the kind of foods I want our family to eat.  One thing that I really appreciate about her approach is that she recognizes that eating a traditional, REAL FOOD diet can be pricey.  Time magazine just had an article covering the benefits of grass fed beef for farms, farmers, and consumers.  The article showed how it is cheaper to buy  unhealthy, industrial food than healthy, traditional foods. Many of us are on strict budgets and have difficulty paying for free range chicken and grass fed beed for every meal.  She encourages people to pick and choose wisely and get the best that you CAN afford.  Can’t find raw milk?  Then buy organic whole milk.  Can’t afford organic?  Then at least drink whole milk.  She does recommend that we stay away from all foods that come with industrial indredients and not to fall prey to marketing schemes that tell us that processed foods are good for us.

When we get to England I am planning on implementing several things in the books I have been reading in the last few months about food.  One thing I want to do is avoid ALL forms of industrial food: corn oil, high fructose corn syrup, soybean oil, white flours, processed grains, powdered skim milk…you get the idea.  It seems almost impossible but I’d like to try it for at least a week and see how we do.  I figure since we are moving to a different country it might be easier to stop buying some of our industrial food culprits.

Other books I’ve been reading on the topic of Real Food:

The Omnivore’s Dilemna

Nourishing Traditions

Real Food: What to Eat and Why

Have you read this book?  What do you think?  Does the idea of drinking whole (raw) milk freak you out? Eating whole, unprocessed, real, traditional foods has been getting a lot more press recently.  What have you heard?

There comes a time in every family’s life that you change churches for one reason or another.  Maybe it’s because you just moved or maybe it’s because you just felt God calling your family to serve somewhere else.  Either way, visiting churches can be extra tricky when you have young children. 

Late last year, my husband and I made the decision to change churches because we had been feeling for a while that God was leading us to another church family.  We loved the people at our old church and it was a very difficult thing for us to think about doing.  In fact, we waited for about 6 months before finally deciding to take the plunge and start looking for where we were supposed to be.  Our biggest hang up… our kids!  We truly felt that for our family to join a church, the entire family needed to feel a sense of belonging and comfort, so the decision was not ours alone, but rather that of us and our two young children.

Our biggest concern was how our son, Andrew, would handle the change.  He was only 3 1/2 years old and was incredibly emotional and shy at the time.  He did not take to change well and we knew he would miss his old Sunday school teacher whom he loved so much.  Add on to that his diabetes and being concerned that he was in good hands, and we were a nervous wreck!  We knew our daughter, Catherine, only 1 year old at the time, would do pretty well where ever we put her, but we still were concerned about her happiness as well.   

Luckily for us, we truly already knew where we were supposed to be and it was our first stop, but there was a lot of work behind the scenes before we made our first visit.  Here are a few ideas on how to make the transition time smoother for you and your children. 

 - Call the church’s childcare ministry and get information on the programming  in which your children will be involved.  Find out schedules and routines and make sure to ask if they serve snack or if you should bring your own.  If your child has health issues, make sure they are equipped to handle any special needs or accommodations.

 - To get an idea if you will like the pastor, check out their website and see if they have a video archive or live webcast you can view.  In doing so,  you can get a good idea if it’s somewhere you would really like to be or not.

 - You and your spouse can take turns visiting while one stays at home with the kids.  If you aren’t quite ready to jump into taking the entire family to a church you aren’t sure you will visit again, take turns with your spouse visiting so you both can get a feel for it and then decide from there if you want to continue going and take your children the next time.

 - Always consider the emotional development of your children.  Some kids will fit in well anywhere and it won’t really be an issue for you, whereas other children may take longer to adjust and feel comfortable.  Take into consideration their feelings for the environment and listen if they say they are overly uncomfortable.

 - Ask if you can visit your child at some point during your time at the church.  For us, it is necessary that we check in on our son between our Sunday school and Worship service for health purposes, but honestly, we’d do it anyway!

 - And as always, pray about it!  It’s a big decision on every level and the best thing you can do is pray about it before making any big steps.  You can’t go wrong if you are going where God wants you! 

Have you had to make a church change since having children?  What things did you do to prepare them for the change?  How would you do things differently?

Photo courtesy of NathanReed

I don’t know about you, but sometimes life wears me out.  Our family is pretty busy.  My husband works in a church (he’s the Youth Director), so we call church our second home.  We’re there every Sunday and Wednesday for a variety of activities.  Additionally, my kids’ pre-school is a ministry of our church.  When I add it all up, they spend over twenty hours a week on the church campus. 

When we come home from church/pre-school, everyone is pretty tired.  It takes a lot of energy to get everyone dressed, packed up, transported to & fro, and unpacked each day.  These are our regular activities, and our routine serves us well – especially when we all get a decent night’s sleep.

Most of my friends’ families are in the same boat.  Some of them have also begun enrolling their children in extra-curriculars.  A lot of my kids’ friends are joining swim team, taking a dance class, or enrolling in soccer.  I’ve gotta be honest about this and say, “NO!  Not yet!  I am not ready for this!”  The thought of researching programs that my daughter or son would enjoy, paying for it somehow, and shuttling them to even more events would fry what’s left of my brain.  I don’t know how my mom friends do it!

Sometimes I hear moms complain about their kids’ extra-curriculars.  One lady bemoaned to me:  ”I have to take my daughters to a cheering competition in [a city three hours away] for the whole weekend!”  Her girls were 6 and 9 at the time.   On and on she went, telling me about the cost of the uniforms and how they had to stay at this ritzy hotel and how the girls were getting unnecessarily catty with each other at that young age.

I wanted to ask, “Why are you doing it, then?” 

My husband and I have discussed the topic of extra-curriculars for our kids quite often, considering what is necessary, what isn’t, how much is too much, how much is not enough, etc.  We are excited to see our kids grow in different areas – will they be inclined to take up an instrument or join a sports team?  It’s exciting!  We do not want to prevent them from exploring what the world has to offer.  At the same time, we want to guard ourselves from overscheduling our already-busy family, and adding unnecessary stress to our lives.  We also have to watch our budget.  Uniforms, dues, and gas can get costly.

Since school is starting/has started for most of us, here are my suggestions for making healthy choices regarding extra-curriculars for your children:

• Discuss the issue in advance.  If not communicated, this is one of those subjects that could cause arguments with your spouse.  One parent might want their child to explore as many activities as possible, and the other might want to go into extra-curriculars slowly.  It’s good to hammer it out sooner than later, so compromises can be made.
• Know your priorities.  While conversing about it, make a list of what the family’s goals are with its time.  For example, our family prioritizes church events over most others.  If an event comes our way and it conflicts with a church commitment, we are likely to say no.  We also want to make sure our family has enough down time each week, and ample together-time. 
• Have a plan and set some limits.  In your discussion, it would be good to formulate a standard to work with.  Are you willing to enroll your child in 1 or 2 classes a week?  How much money can you set aside for each activity?  Knowing your parameters will be helpful when the kids start asking to do things.  You can tell them in advance, “Hey, your dad and I discussed it, and we feel it is okay for you to join one team this year.  What sport would you like to do the most?”  Or, you can have your answer ready when they ask to do something else: “Honey, it’s great that you want to take Underwater Basket-Weaving with your friend.  However, we have already committed to your piano lessons, which you chose to do first.  Let’s wait till next year to try something new!”  This is healthy decision-making that teaches kids responsibility – even if it elicits a few tantrums grumbles.
• Be flexible.  Alright, so you’ve paid for Jimmy’s football activities and he looks adorable in his uniform.  One problem:  he hates it.  This is where changing our minds is helpful.  We want our children to be challenged, to work hard for their successes – but we don’t want to damage their ever-changing psyches.  This is where communication with your spouse, your child, their coaches & teachers will come in handy.  Nothing ever has to be set in stone.  Life does require a lot of do-overs!

I am curious what my kids will want to do with extra-curriculars in the (near!)  future.  It will add some stress, but a lot of joy, too!

What are your kids currently doing for extra-curriculars?  Do you have limits in this area?  What has worked for you, and what has been a struggle?  Do share, and have a great weekend, Mom Crowd!

first picture courtesy lambchops

second picture is me, in the 7th grade