I have discovered the parenting equivalent of the New World. Our daughters got flu shots recently, and neither kids nor mom walked away from the experience in abject terror. We didn’t need to resort to blankie time or heavy doses of chocolate.
Sorry, folks. My discovery isn’t one that I could have taken advantage of before now. You’ll need to wait it out too. My repertoire of vaccination-related pain minimization strategies is the usual, the list your doctor and other parents told you about in preparation for your kids’ first well baby visit:
- Don’t schedule your appointments anywhere near nap time.
- Give your child Tylenol, or whatever the safest kid-approved pain reliever and fever reducer is where you live, 30 minutes before your appointment. This minimizes pain and the chance of a fever over the next day or so.
- If your child is old enough, promise a treat after the visit, and follow through on your promise. Give yourself a nice big reward too.
- If your child has a lovey, a toy or blanket–my sister had a washcloth–bring it with you
- Use all your limbs and available personnel to hold your children down during the act of vaccination.
- Ask your medical service provider what formulations they have available to minimize the number of pricks your children must endure. A lot of vaccines now come packaged in a single vial.
- Seriously consider investing in earplugs for yourself.
The new information I have to offer is the observation that inoculation is crazy easy at age 5. This year, we walked into the clinic, and I filled out the requisite paperwork while the girls read Alice in Wonderland. When they started to express some concern, I told them that the flu shot would hurt, but only for a second. It would feel like like a brief bug bite. I illustrated by quickly tapping their skin with my nail. When we saw the nurse, the girls clambered onto the examination table in turn, selected a bandaid, got her shot, said “That didn’t hurt so much,” picked a sticker, and jumped down. No tears. No flailing. No new bruises for me from trying to hold them still.
I’m usually the very first in line to get my girls their shots. Having grown up in a developing country and being allergic to the eggs in which many vaccines are grown, I am all too painfully aware of the risks of foregoing vaccination. This year, however, navigating the medical system in our new town has been fraught with challenges. It has taken me until just recently to figure out when and where to take J and M for their flu shots.
My husband has been deployed during all but two flu seasons since our daughters were born. In addition to the regular vaccines pediatricians recommend for all children, the girls got monthly RSV shots for 7 months in a row as infants. I consider myself well-versed in the ways of solo parent/double child vaccination.
I’d hold both children in my lap, one on each knee, and thank my lucky stars that my children did not outnumber my knees. The nurse would make smalltalk, but as soon as she reached for the syringe and vials, the thrashing, kicking and screaming would start. M suffers from more anxiety than J, but it never mattered who went first. M would scream in anticipation as soon as we reached the exam room, and J would sob in sympathy. I would set the phrase “This too shall pass” on repeat in my head. The tragic response would last until the girls cried themselves asleep or, once they were old enough to appreciate them, they could select stickers at the front desk of the office.
Sound familiar? It did eventually pass, after all.
Sadia, her husband and their 5-year-old daughters moved to El Paso by order of Uncle Sam last year, after having done all their child-rearing in the Austin area before that.
Well, we made it. We are half-way through the preschool year with my boys in separate classrooms. Remember how nervous I was in the beginning? (If not, you can read my earlier post here.) And those of you who have been through this experience and shared your words of wisdom were so kind with your reassurances–thank you!
My boys have just blossomed in separate classrooms. My more reserved boy has gained new self-confidence and new friends. He was the one I was most worried about academically and felt he needed extra help in in all the kindergarten social and academic skills. I knew my more outgoing boy would be fine. He went into school knowing his numbers, letters, and most letter sounds. He know benefits from having his own set of friends and space from his sibling. Although the boys share playground times several days a week, they more often than not choose to play independently with their own classmates.
When they return home they are happy enough to be together for some moments of mommy bliss–peaceful play and cooperation–before the sibling rivalry starts. They are meanest to each other and love one another deeply. I am amazed at how strong their relationship is to withstand the fighting and hurt feelings to always come back to love.
Rainy Day
There have been some sticky situations–sometimes one boy is asked on a playdate and I can not find the other boy a playdate at the same time. We have had a couple of cases where only one boy was asked to a class birthday party and the other was not. Although tough on the afternoon of the party, this is a good learning experience for the upcoming kindergarten year. Special mommy dates help ease these growing pains.
So really, it was mostly my issues with separation (my babies!) than their issues. Separating them during the 4s year of preschool, at their loving cooperative nursery school was the right choice for our family. Yes, they had to hug each other goodbye at the beginning, but now they run off to class with barely a concern for what the other brother is doing. I even have asked for them to be apart in extracurricular activities, when we can. I am so excited that separate classes worked for my twins and hope that we can continue this success for kindergarten in the fall.
Leslie H. is a freelance writer and mom to a spunky eight-year-old girl and two very independent four-year-old boys.
I decided my theme for 2012 is going to be New Year, New Me. Original, I know. Doesn’t everyone try to reinvent themselves at the first of the year and peter out about two weeks later? Not me. Not this time. Toward the end of last year I was feeling burned out. The day to day detritus of chores and child-wrangling was wearing me down. I was feeling bad about myself, my parenting, my health and my weight. I didn’t want to take my boys anywhere because they were testing their boundaries and making outings really difficult. Our house was a mess, and I didn’t have the energy or desire to remedy it. I know I indulged in way too many cookies and sweets around the holidays, and my too-tight jeans told that tale loud.
Last summer, I quit my job to stay home with my twin boys full time. They turned two in November and are curious, energetic, enthusiastic, smart little boys. Which is to say they can be exhausting. (In the most wonderful, once-in-a-lifetime experience with 2-year-old twins kind of way.) So I made an Epic To Do List, which included the regular things I wanted to accomplish with the kids, around the house, etc. But also included lots of “Take care of Mommy” items as well.
Now we are a month into the new year, and my plans for New Year, New Me are still going strong. I am making a conscious effort to do more things for myself, even if that means the dishes sit in the sink or the laundry remains unfolded. The thing is, though, I am doing my own things and find that I am still getting the chores done too. I have renewed energy and enthusiasm for my family and our home when I take a break from them. I am eating better and exercising regularly. Since the end of December, I have lost 11 lbs, and completely quit eating sugar, bread, rice, pasta, potatoes, fried food, fast food. I joined the MYFA contest Liz at Goddess in Progress set up. (I am sure I am a long shot since I just started exercising in the past three weeks, but I am motivated to get up and do it so I can report my weekly stats and be proud. This week I logged 195 minutes of exercise, impressive only in that I have not exercised regularly in years.)
For Christmas, my husband bought me a new sewing machine and starting in January, I signed up for a sewing class at a local fabric store, six weeks, start-to-finish quilting. I am happy to say that I just finished the binding on one of the two toddler-bed quilts I am making simultaneously for my boys in the class. I really enjoying sewing, can’t wait to start my next project, and I use nap time to unwind and clear my mind in front of the sewing machine. Plus, super cute quilts!
My boys are newly potty trained (as in we are in week three and I still wear shoes around the house just in case). But I did take them out to a playdate recently. When they were not listening to my directions and insisted on playing in the public restroom, we packed up and left. But at least we went. We don’t go far or for long, and if we go out to eat as a family we can expect at least 5 or 6 trips to the potty.
This is all to say I am giving myself some time outs now, taking much-needed breaks that help me refresh and be the best me. Is it perfect? Far from it. I have found that staying at home has just as many challenges in balance as working, they are just different. I was struggling to find time for me and not taking breaks. I was always on duty, and wasn’t taking care of myself. I still struggle to fit my needs into our day. I had been getting up before the kids to work out and shower. They started waking up earlier. So I got up earlier, and so did they. And now we’re at an insane still-dark wakeup time that is two full hours before the time they have woken up for more than a year. I have tried to do a workout video while they eat their breakfast, but they protest and beg to watch something else. I know I don’t spend enough quality time with my wonderful, amazing, supportive husband. I would love to do things one-on-one with each kid. At least I have a to-do list for the life I want us to have, and I am checking off things gradually.
Jen Wood is a stay-at-home-Mom to adorable, wonderful, amazing, newly potty trained 2-year-old twin boys who exhaust her indescribably. While she is attempting to achieve the perfect balance of home and family and her own sanity, she enjoys spending time together as a family, photography and new-found love of quilt-making You can follow along with their adventures at http://goteamwood.com.
J is grieving, an emotion too big for one so small. The dog next door succumbed to breast cancer today, and J is heartbroken.
“I’m mad because I’m sad,” she told me. “I’m mad at you and I’m mad at M and I’m mad at the neighbour and I’m mad at God. It’s not fair. Our cat is alive and she is old and Chloe is dead and she is old and it’s not fair.”
According to the pop psychology I know, J’s expression of her pain, while hard to watch, is healthy. We talked about how much pain Chloe was in toward the end, and how her pain was now over. We talked about how the combination of sadness and anger that fills J right now is called grief. J asked if I would sleep in her bed tonight so she could feel snuggled. I agreed. She wanted me to go to bed when she did, she clarified. I agreed. Dishes can wait, and I can make up my workout.
J’s grief extends beyond Chloe’s death to another dog’s cancer. A close friend’s dog, Pumpkin, is also suffering from cancer. This friend, however, lives some distance away, and it’s unlikely that we’ll have a chance to see Pumpkin again. Wrapped up in J’s feelings about Chloe’s death are also the grief of Pumpkin’s illness and pain of the vast distances between us and the friends we left behind when we moved last year.
I’ve been holding J, listening to her, and acknowledging her feelings as best I know how. In the intensity of J’s grief, I’ll admit that I was glad that M was holding her own. As J moved from anger towards a quieter sadness, however, I began to worry at M’s complete lack of emotional response to the news of Chloe’s death. Instead of prodding her about it, I decided to let her deal with it in her own way, in her own time.
Over dinner I began to see what was going on. M was too busy caring for J to deal with her own emotions. She made fart joke after fart joke in an effort to get J to laugh. She got up, unprompted, to throw herself over the back of J’s chair. Her silly action turned into a long and heartfelt hug.
They’re only 5, but they shared a womb and every step since. They have a far deeper understanding of how to give one another comfort than I have at 32 years old, with 9 years of talk therapy under my belt.
Addendum
I had the opportunity to speak briefly with M at bedtime. She told me that she, too, was sad and worried.
“Who are you worried about?” I asked her. “Chloe or J or Emily or …?” (Let’s call Chloe’s elderly owner Emily.)
“I’m worried about Emily’s sister. I didn’t think life would let this happen.”
Emily inherited both Chloe the dog and the house next door when her sister died of cancer this summer. She had promised to care for Chloe. It had been clear to me, and apparently also to M, that her fresh grief was as much from the loss of her sister as of the dog.
“I have a picture in my mind of Emily’s sister. She looks like Emily, but younger. In my picture she is beautiful.”
In the flood of emotion surrounding her, M empathizes, in her own way, with the story of the sisters next door, one still here and one gone but in her sister’s heart and the picture in my daughter’s mind.
Sadia is the mother of identical twins M and J, aged 5. She comes, in part, from Bangladesh, where death is discussed with children as a matter of course. She has shared her past neuroses at Double the Fun, although she has since taken her personal blog private.
Traveling with small children is tough for every family. Oh how I have dreaded flying with twinfants–you know what I mean!
Our family recently made a two day January car trip through flat prairies land as far as the eye can see, and we have more travel coming up this spring. While we prefer to drive over fly with three kids (and their stuff, and their carseats), and our kids are older, it doesn’t get any easier. We have tried everything to entertain the kids: new books and toys; games and candy; lots of stops at McDonald’s. In the end, we fall back on handheld game devices and DVD players–all three kids playing on watching with headphones means peace for the driver. Extremely bad parenting according to the experts in the books, magazines and websites. But I’m want to absolve you of all the guilt and tell you to do what you need to do to get to your destination safely–with your sanity intact!
As my kids get older, it becomes almost as much about the journey as the destination. At the end of the trip, while we all emerge from the crumb encrusted car tired and frazzled and sick of each other’s company, I can’t help but notice that there has been some bonding between siblings–some good has come from the hours on the road. An “we’ve been through this together” camaraderie. A “remember when we saw the giant airplane wings on the back of the truck…” reminiscence that continue to be discussed for hours as we drive. My husband and I join in with our memories of long car trips as kids: when there were no DVD players or ipods or carseats(!), when you could ride backwards in a station wagon or sleep on the floor of a sedan, where stopping for a bite to eat was not convenient as it is today and was always an adventure.
I think these trips form the foundation of our children’s lives and become part of our family history together. I end up being grateful for the excuse to to travel, grateful for the hours on the road, grateful for the whining, and the bad food, and the “he’s looking at me” and the “are we there yet” statements. I’m grateful once we are all out of the car!
How does your family handle car trips?
Leslie H. is a freelance writer to a spunky eight-year-old girl and two adventurous four-year-old boys.
M and J were born 7 weeks premature. When we found out we were having twins, my ob/gyn told us, right off the bat, that we could expect them to arrive early. She offered to help us find a new doctor who had privileges at a hospital with a neonatal intensive care unit. My husband and I agreed that we wanted her to care for us during the pregnancy, even if she wouldn’t be the one to perform the delivery if it was early.
We didn’t know the first thing about prematurity. When the doctor said, “privileges at a hospital with a NICU,” we were so naïve that we just looked at her blankly. She had to spell out that a NICU was a neonatal intensive care unit and we should prepare ourselves for an extended hospital stay. This pregnancy was high risk, all the more so because I was 5’0 and weighed 112 lbs. There wasn’t exactly a lot of room for expansion, at least up and down. The prospect of gaining the ideal 60 lbs over 9 months seemed challenging, and turned out not to be a goal I could accomplish.
Still, the pregnancy was so relatively easy on me – not so my husband; my temper was terrible! – that I was sure I could carry the girls to at least 35 weeks. I had no morning sickness, and I was floating on air during the second trimester. Thirty-five weeks was our goal, because twins tend to gestate about two weeks faster than singletons, and therefore 35 weeks for them was as good as 37 weeks for a singleton.
We went through the motions to prepare for preemies. An aunt got the girls preemie-sized outfits at the baby shower the family threw for us, even though I couldn’t attend. (My doctor highly recommended that I not fly to Oregon.) We took our Lamaze class with a group of couples 2 to 3 months farther along in their pregnancies than I was. Despite these steps, we hadn’t prepared emotionally, and I was still deeply attached to the idea of a natural birth. I had made a list for my hospital bag, but hadn’t actually packed, when my water broke at 33 weeks, 1 day.
The actual birth was a haze. J weighed 3 lbs 6 oz, M 3 lbs 9 oz. J had a patent ductus arteriosus (PDA), or a hole in her heart. It’s a common condition in infants, and resolved itself within a couple of months. Neither M nor J needed any help breathing. They didn’t need oxygen treatments. Unlike some of the other preemies in the NICU, they didn’t have any issues with apnea of prematurity, which is essentially what happens when a preemie forgets to breathe.
They were really small, though. They couldn’t regulate their own body temperatures because their baby fat hadn’t come in yet. They had to stay in their warmed isolettes, although they were strong enough that we were allowed to hold them for several hours each day, and keep them warm with our own body heat. When they finally downed 31 mLs (1 oz) of formula and breastmilk in one shot, I cried for joy, because that was one of the criteria the NICU had set up for release from the hospital. Days earlier, my husband had fought for my right to breastfeed, fighting formula and the feeding tube while I was being moved out of the operating room, until a doctor kindly, but firmly, told him that our babies were really, really sick, and all our plans were going to have to wait.
We had the healthiest preemies in the NICU, but still, they were tiny.
In the picture above, J and M (in the matching white onesies) are a day shy of a month old. D, a dear friend’s son, is two weeks old. That’s half their age. He was born on his due date at 40 weeks gestation, compared to M and J’s 33 weeks. His legs are twice the size of theirs. His arms are twice the size of theirs. Each of his hands could almost contain one of theirs. M or J would disappear inside the newborn-sized onesie D is wearing. What you can’t see is how baggy their preemie-sized onesies are on them.
Remember, M and J are twice as old as he is, if you count from their birth age.
I actually learned not to measure their age from their birthday. When I did use their birth age during their first year, I felt like I had to keep explaining why the girls were so small, or why they weren’t holding up their heads better at their age. Not only that, but my poor friend kept having to defend little D when we were together in public. “He’s not fat! He’s not huge! The twins are just really really tiny!”
Once we reached their due date, the day they would have been born full-term, I began to use their corrected age, that is, how old they would have been if they hadn’t spent the last two months of the gestational period outside the womb. It was so much simpler to tell strangers at the grocery store that the girls were a month old, rather than, “They’re three months old, but they were born two months early, and please don’t look at me like that because I’ve never done a drug in my life and maybe if I’d been on bed rest the pregnancy would have lasted longer, but I did the best I could, and I’m really trying to be a good mother.”
Yes, I was extremely touchy about the fact that the girls were born early. I felt like my first act of motherhood had been to betray them by evicting them from my body half-cooked.
Our pediatrician was fantastic. The entire practice has a lot of experience with preemies. In fact, all the twins I knew in our old town went to one of two pediatricians. (Not all twins are premature. My husband’s now 16-year-old triplet cousins were born full term. However, the rate of prematurity is high for twins, over 50 percent.) The doctor focused always on how M and J were doing compared to where they started, rather than looking at averages. When he tracked their growth on the growth chart, he used their corrected age. When it came to timing immunizations and the introduction of solid foods, we followed the guidelines of the American Academy of Pediatrics, again using their corrected age.
M and J are healthy. They only long-term effect of prematurity appears to be the state of their teeth, although we faced some challenges in the early years with their lung development. We’re the lucky ones, though. Others aren’t as fortunate.
Here’s what I would tell my pregnant self if I could:
Don’t be irritated with he doctor when she tells you that you need to quit working. Listen to her when she says that you’re having too many Braxton Hicks contractions, too early. Working part time and telecommuting was a great alternative to working full-time, but you could have afforded to stare at the ceiling for a few weeks to give those precious girls a better start. It might have made a difference. It might not have. You’ll never know.
I will never know what I could have done differently to give J and M another day or two in utero, but I will always wonder.
Sadia’s daughters, J and M, are now thriving in first grade. They’re a head and half shorter than their classmates, thanks to inheriting Sadia’s (lack of) height. A previous version of this post was published on Sadia’ personal blog, Double the Fun, on honour of the Bloggers Unite Prematurity Awareness event 2009 .
I had read a lot of books and felt that I was well grounded in the knowledge of parenting well before I was married or had children. I had strong ideas of what kind of a parent I would be. But what I lacked was the never ending- around the clock- always demanding- sometimes draining- mostly uplifting- experience of raising real children. Like my sister-in-law once pointed out in a not so sweet tone ‘once you get your own children you won’t be so perfect anymore’ OUCH! (I totally deserved it!)
Once I experienced motherhood I realized that my well thought plans and straight forward approach didn’t work quite as well in real life as they did in theory. Not that the theory was wrong but real life is so much more complicated and sometimes I am at a loss as to how to apply the book knowledge to a certain situation.
My most recent ‘complicated’ experience started a few weeks ago. Video games entered our home. I was so not prepared for that. One night when I was working my husband had introduced Mario Karts to our oldest. Couple weeks later, when they had opened every possible new track, a package arrived in our house that contained Sky Captain. Now it’s on to the Monster Trucks.
Clearly the boy enjoys playing them. And I’m not completely against them in the lives of children. There just seemed to be ‘too much’ of it. From the beginning my husband and I talked to him how playing games is a privilege and not something he should take for granted. And there have been days when he’s lost that privilege and have had to go without playing all day, sometimes two or three in a row.
Here’s where it became ‘complicated’. I was feeling guilty for letting him play that much (what ever that much is) and at the same time I was thrilled he had found something to do that didn’t require my attention. Better yet, Beth and Joshua loved watching him race so they left me be also. WELCOME FREE TIME! But the quilt was growing as was his addiction. I had to intervene, for both of us. I was tempted to throw the games away but realized that would not address the problem. Something else would take the place of videogames and we’d be in this situation again. (And I also imagined him to grow up to be holed up in a room playing videogames all day long, not being able to hold onto a job or a wife and blaming me for ruining his life by not letting him play when he was a kid .. kinda like the relationship I have with Finnish chocolate because my parents deprived me of that when I was growing up. Yeah, totally blaming my lack of self disciple on them!). So what I needed were guidelines. I had mentioned this to a mom friend and she told me about an other mom who has her children ‘earn’ their TV time. Sounded like a good idea. After struggling to decide how much one workbook page meant in video time I settled for 10 pages (about 45min) = 30 minutes playing, usually separated in two sessions (Nathan’s choice).
Transition was much easier than I thought it would be. Nathan seems to be proud that he can ‘earn’ his game time. After breakfast he asks for his book and does the required pages. So far he has been satisfied with 30 min /day. My quilt has disappeared. A win win in my book!
(I should add that when my husband is home and he wants to play with Nathan that time does not need to be earned. That is counted as ‘quality time’ between Dad and a son. Because clearly, it is.)
How are you handling tv and video games in your home?
Hanna is a mom of ‘one and twins’ who’s trying to strike a balance between theory and real life. And to not ruin her kids while figuring it all out.
Growing up in the UK and Bangladesh, I was raised on Mahatma Gandhi’s life story and words as the embodiment of a worldwide move towards civil rights and mutual respect between people and between peoples. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. embodied those same values, and today’s US-wide commemoration of his achievements is a reminder to discuss his legacy with our daughters, now aged 5.
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t taking full advantage on an extra day off work and school. We let J and M stay up an hour past bedtime last night to watch The Empire Strikes Back for the first time. Do you remember the first time you heard the line, “Luke, I am your father.”? It was quite something to see the looks on our girls’ faces! We’re showing the Star Wars films to the girls in the order in which they were released. We’re old-school nerds like that.
Before I read Nurtureshock by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman, I hadn’t given much thought to talking to the girls about diversity. I figured that our multicultural, interracial, international, interfaith marriage would speak for itself. Bronson and Merryman’s chapter on talking about race influenced me deeply, however, and I committed to discussing these issues with our daughters.
M was the one to bring up MLK at dinner last night. “We watched a movie about King Martin Junior at school,” she told us.
We clarified Dr. King’s name, and talked about his accomplishments. We boiled it down to something pretty simple: Dr. King helped people understand that everyone could be friends, regardless of the colour of their skin. “Oh!” observed M, “Like we’re a family, but you have dark brown skin and me and Sissy and Daddy is peach?” She has previously described her very fair-skinned White grandmother as “pink.”
That seemed like a decent enough introduction to the lessons of MLK Day, so we left it that for dinner time. Later, however, J brought up MLK, and I had a burst of inspiration.
Me: You’ve always had a sister, right! And that’s pretty special. Does that mean you can’t have friends who don’t have sisters?
J: No. [Classmate] has no sister, and he is my friend. I don’t know very much about having no sister and brother except you have to play by yourself and that is sad.
Me: You and [Classmate] are different when it comes to having brothers or sisters, but you can learn from each other.
J: I love [Former neighbour] and she has no brother or sister.
Me: I love her too. It would be pretty sad if you only had friends who were exactly like you.
J: I would miss [Former neighbour].
Me: What Martin Luther King, Jr. and his friends taught us was to be friends with people who are different in all kinds of ways.
I could use that reminder myself. It’s time for me to stop complaining about how rude and insular people are in our new town, and make a real effort at understanding the culture here. It’s time for me to embrace differences. As is so often the case, teaching my children reminds me to a better person.
In what ways has raising your children reminded you of your values? Are you a better person for being a parent?
Sadia is working US army wife and mother of 5-year-old twin girls. She and her family recently moved to El Paso, Texas.
My husband has a very physical job, and our daughters, M and J, are incredibly active kids. It takes a little more effort on my part to fit exercise into my day, since I have a desk job, but I do my best. I will admit that I haven’t been good about working out since we moved to El Paso, so I’m thankful for Goddess in Progress‘s weight loss contest giving me the push I need to get back in shape. I like aerobics and Pilates, with the guidance of exercise videos in the privacy of my home. The twins and our cat join in with differing levels of effort.
Alongside intellectual curiosity, critical thinking, social responsibility, and self esteem, my husband and I believe that it is our responsibility to teach our children about physical well-being.
Unfortunately, our daughters’ school isn’t helping. Although they have daily physical education, they’re teaching the kids all about junk food. Cookies and slushies are available to purchase at lunch time. No carrots. No sliced apples or bananas. After school, there are cupcakes and cookies on sale, tempting the kids right before they exit the school and are handed over to their parents. On Halloween, each child was asked to bring a bag of candy for the school trick-or-treat event. Every classmate’s birthday heralds cupcakes with neon icing.
The other day, J volunteered to accompany me to the grocery store while M stayed home with Daddy. As I reached for the box of Cheerios M had requested, J asked whether she could choose her own cereal.
“Sure,” I told her, “But you have to choose one that has 6 grams or fewer of sugar per serving. Any more than that makes it a treat cereal instead of a breakfast cereal.”
I showed J the nutrition facts on the side of cereal box I was holding, pointing out where the sugar grams were. She picked one brightly coloured sugary cereal after another, rejecting each one for having too much sugar. I suggested that she’d have better luck if she looked at some granola boxes. She finally settled on Kashi Honey Sunshine.
“Mommy,” J asked me, “can I teach M how to look at sugar next time when she comes shopping with us?”
She had her chance tonight at dinner, when M asked for a third serving of Welch’s sparkling grape juice. My husband told her that he thought she’d had enough sugar for the day, and offered her water instead. J showed M how to read the label and exclaimed, “38 sugars! That’s a whole bunch.”
“That’s true,” I told her. “This juice is a treat. We drink it for the flavour, not because it’s feeding our bodies. It’s fine to have a treat every so often, but it’s very important to make sure that we get all the different things our bodies need. We need protein to be strong, and fiber not to have hurty poops. Our body needs some fat to stay healthy, but not too much.”
For the rest of meal, the girls pored over the nutrition label on the juice bottle, asking about the different nutrients. My favourite was J’s reading of calcium as “Colosseum.” There was something quite lovely about the image of ancient architecture bolstering our bones.
I taught myself about healthy eating in my early 20s. Both my parents developed high blood pressure in their 30s, and I didn’t want to go down that path. Rich, fatty Bengali curries with massive quantities of rice must have contributed to their cardiovascular issues and my father’s subsequent Type II diabetes.
It certainly helps that both my husband and I love to cook. It’s hard to put too much junk in our bodies when we’re aware of every ingredient we eat. We don’t tend to count calories, and we’re not averse to eating out, but we try to be responsible, while allowing ourselves our treats. I’m fond of chocolate, and my husband of red wine.
I hadn’t planned to teach our girls to read nutrition labels at 5. I imagined that the model we set at home would show them how to make good food decisions. Peer pressure, though, is a strong force, and M told us today that she had bought 6 cookies at lunch to share with her friends. We don’t want the girls to feel like they need to diet or deny themselves the occasional sweet treat. However, we do want them to understand that while eating is a social and pleasurable activity, nutrition is the primary role of food. Food for taste alone is an extra, and to be taken in moderation.
Are you surprised to hear that junk food is being sold in elementary schools? What would you do if you discovered this in the school your children were to attend?
Today, I went into the local Army medical center in an attempt to untangle a sitcom-worthy set of mixups of appointments, referrals and prescriptions. While I was waiting, I got to talking to the visibly pregnant lady next to me. She was 25 weeks pregnant with twins, and wasn’t looking forward to her appointment. Since one of her babies was low on amniotic fluid, she was anticipating being checked into the hospital, something she really didn’t want to have to do quite yet. We happened to leave the clinic around the same time, and she gave me an update. Although she wasn’t being hospitalized, she was being put on bed rest. She lamented not being able to be more available to one of her soldiers whose wife is also expecting twins.
In the few minutes I had, I told her that I also had twins, and that I’d delivered them 7 weeks early. Although it was scary at the time, they spent less than 3 weeks in the NICU, and are now flourishing. If bed rest was what her babies needed, maybe holding on to the thought that she’s doing it for them would help the time pass faster. I told her that I’d be thinking of her, and that I hoped that her babies stayed healthy and in her womb as long as they could.
If you had just 2 or 3 minutes to comfort a scared mother-of-multiples-to-be, what would you say to her?
Sadia is an army wife and working mom of 5-year-old identical twin girls. She and her family live in El Paso, TX, where her husband is stationed at Ft Bliss.
