We had a spectacular day yesterday. I liked the music best. Mr Ty, an outstanding first grader, and general – let’s leave the word there – was eager to sing Jingle Bells. Most of the little kids are happy to sing the chorus, but there are three verses we have been working on, and he seemed delighted with all the words. We will be sending our music home as I think to do it.

We start with the two French songs, and then move to a selection of children’s music and classical Christmas carols. I am eager to see what this year’s group can do. Last year, we had a group of children who just didn’t want to sing. It was interesting.

It’s a lot like food. There are applesauce years, corn and rice years, cottage cheese and orange years. This year, the applesauce is an all time poo poo, and the favorite side dish is green salad with cheese.

We are desperately trying to get an art show together for next week. It won’t be a party, just a show when you come in. There will be little framed paintings on the tables with a little price tag for parents to buy for Christmas. This will pay for our Christmas field trip. Are there any suggestions about field trip?

The toy contest was fun, but something else happened that is the kind of thing that’s just fabulous. One of the toys was just plain cute – Snorta. We all sat down again and again and played Snorta. The kids just love the animal sounds. Well I wrote something about the game, and it was seen on one of the web sites where I’m published, and the maker of the game sent me an email. We’ve been writing back and forth, and he has sent the school a few games. His name is Matt Mariani. It’s such a nice thing for him to do. We will all take time out to thank him.

Things are really rolling at school. We are working on so many projects, I just hope to be able to get it all done by Christmas. I hope each and every one of you is delighted.

Please take a look at your child’s angel string about next week. Every day your child can win an angel or more. He has to keep his medal, and then he can do something nice for someone else. Every angel a child wins inches his way toward the big Santa prize.

We will be looking for a new teacher until we find one. We are looking for someone who will take an interest in our program and understand that the care and the feeding of children is our primary goal, and that care is “an enhancement of home.”

We are also looking for someone who is interested in the world around them. I’ve fudged a bit on this lately, but realize that an interest in the world and a basic knowledge is important to the academic running of the place.

Here’s my little academic test:

Geography: Can you pick out Iceland, Ireland, Israel on the map and tell me why Ivory Coast is not a soap product.

History: Which was longer the Renaissance or the Middle Ages – which came first?

Literature: Read Jabberwocky out loud

Science: Tell me about the earth’s water cycle.

Fine art: Define it.

When we interview someone, we take it for granted that they can do simple math and read simple words and have been trained to teach these things to children. But it is not always the case that someone has an interest or a knowledge of other things children should know. Teachers should read more than catalogues and more than news stand junk. Teachers should read great books and worthwhile novels – that’s just an opinion.

So onward and upward. Good grief I’m cheery for the Christmas season!

The Garden School is looking for a new teacher. If you or someone you know would like to interview for this job, please contact us tomorrow after 6:15 a.m. at 812 – 475-0277.

The GS is an academic based early childhood year round school for children ages 3-7. For more information, call us. We are an equal opportunity employer.

Everybody’s going to get sick. If it isn’t the flu or a cold, it’s bronchitis, sinus infection, elephantiasis, beriberi, and pox are some of the delights of living too close in over heated rooms wearing skimpy clothes and eating a host of nutrition-less food while being sleep deprived.

Let’s track illness. In an adult, there is a sudden sluggishness. We just don’t feel quite right. We’re more than tired; we’re pooped! Then there’s that little nagging cough, or headache, or that peripheral nausea or scratchiness in the throat. We consume a couple of analgesics.

By the next day, two things have happened. Either we are confoundedly ill, or we’ve beaten the bug, and it takes a day or so of care to get back to a normal high.

The truth is, we have either accommodated the impending infection by refusing to care for ourselves, or we’ve bombarded it with sleep and hydration and our immune system has over ridden it.

It’s the same with children. The difference is most likely in the fact that children will wake up with the sudden sluggishness. It’s at this point the choice of sending them to school, to day care or to babysitting with other children and keeping them at home will make the difference between encouraging the illness to blossom and wellness.

It’s at this point, many parents think, “Well, he’s not too sick, and if I give him a couple of pain relievers, nobody will notice.” And the parent sends the child to a crowded room of children whose parents had the same idea.

If five children in fifty are incubating the flu, colds, bronchitis, and a sinus infection, how many children will be targets for the same illnesses? Probably thirty more. The other fifteen kids have parents who care, and when their child wakes up with a headache, stomach ache, a sore throat or a cough, they keep them home and these children fight it off.

Ever wonder why some children are rarely absent because of illness? First, look at their eyes, watch them eat, and look at their clothes. These things are signs of wellness.

The eyes will tell you just how much sleep a child has had. Children need twelve hours in twenty-four. Sleep is real rest. If it’s regular, and consistent, and in the same bed seven nights a week, a child will have bright interested eyes. He feels good. He has energy. Energy is the body’s green light for growth and development – development of an immune system that can fight off illness easily.

Diet and sleep are strongly interlocked. Tired children can’t eat. They pick at everything and can’t seem to get the fork into the mouth; it’s too much effort – except for sweets. If a child picks through nutritious foods and seems to survive on junk, his diet is catch up. He’s surviving on empty calories. His body is moving, but his development is nominal.

Another signal for well children is their clothes. Short sleeves and shorts in winter means houses are too hot. Hot dry houses are breeding grounds for infection. Well children play well without the furnace cranked up to 70 degrees.

Try turning the heat down one degree a week for six weeks. Most children will adapt to longer clothes and be more comfortable. They will sleep better and therefore eat better. Then, when they wake up feeling ill, they will have an easier time fighting off a virus or infection.

Take care of the child from the inside out.

Well it was a bear of a day. We lost a teacher today. It’s always sad to say goodbye to someone, especially someone special, but at the same time, it’s good to know that one of our teachers will go on to do great things out in the bigger world. I am always proud to know that we have launched yet another bright light in the world.

But back down in the sand box, we have a lot of changes to make. Mrs. St. Louis will move into Miss Rachel’s room, and Miss Judy will teach the kindergarten class. I tried it today and loved it. I’ve taught for years, preschool, nursery school, pre-K, and of course the French, Music, Geography, and History to the whole school. So being in a classroom with a small group was really exciting. I love the children and we had a really nice day. We practiced writing our names using spacing and letter size. We did a lot of math today sorting, counting and fun with the numbers on the calendar.

We worked a lot on matching upper case letters with lower case letters, and we had graham crackers and milk as a snack. The only thing we failed to do was art which is what I wanted to do best, so tomorrow, after Officer Friendly comes, we’ll do a lot of art.

In French class we prayed en Francais, and sang Il est ne le devin enfant, and Unflambeau Jeanette Isabella. And then sang Jingle Bells, Away in a Manger, and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. We will add one song to our repertoire every day until we sing Santa Claus to school on the 22.

We had spaghetti at the last minute with fresh fruit and salad and bread. Tomorrow it’s ham for sure.

Since the play, we’ve been ruthless about taking medals. They are not re-earnable. Every day a child keeps his medal, he will get a paper angel. The boy and girl who win the most angels will win the Santa Prize on the 22. Good deeds win angels as well.

Beve Pietrowski will be taking pictures on the 12th of December. It’s her only free date. She said she will have the pictures shortly after Christmas. What a neat New Year’s gift! She’s a great photographer. Please view her work in the front hall of the school.

Still thinking about Narnia as a field trip – any comments about that? Is it too scary for the little guys?

Here’s a question frequently asked:

Q: My child was sent home from his child care situation three times one week because he was not feeling well. He had a headache but no fever. Is really necessary to send him home for that?

Answer: Yes. Good child care situations will always send children home when providers even suspect a child is ill. It’s not a matter of choice. It’s a matter of responding to the child. And good parents are also quick to respond to the needs of their ill children.

The first and best reason for sending children home where they can be watched one on one is a good provider doesn’t know if a child has a headache because he’s tired, is getting the flu or has the beginnings spinal meningitis.

It’s the same with stomach ache. Is it upset stomach from flu, constipation, or appendicitis?
Leaving either of the worst scenarios to develop is neglect—even if it’s ignorance.

This is really a parent question more than a provider question. The one and only choice a provider has is to send any child home whose behavior indicates that he or she needs more than day care or school care. Teachers are not nurses, and other children are at risk.

Day care policies on illness might vary, but the state board of health does not. Children who are ill cannot be around other children. Illness is: fever of 99, stomach ache, vomiting, lice, earache or infection, and a host of other things too numerous to list.

The hard calls are the non specifics like “puny.” An old word to express the idea that something is not right. A child is puny while he is coming down with something, when he’s ill for sleep deprivation, or very upset about something he can’t talk about. He really needs his mommy.

Besides, sending Sarah home when she is puny will probably save ten children from coming down with what Sarah is getting. And if Sarah is sleep deprived, then a good rest in her own bed will do more for her than a nap on a cot at day care.

But sending a child home won’t help if mom doesn’t take the child home. Work is no place for a child who is ill. The child who at this point is hyper susceptible is ripe for double trouble.

Another hard call is the chronically ill child. Wentworth has thirty seven earaches every year. Then Wentworth may have to see his doctor thirty seven times. These kiddie complaints are real. They can’t just go untreated. A child losing his hearing or a child spending his energy treating his own pain is a child who is being neglected.

Anne has “allergies” that come with lots of coughing, sneezing, and visible drainage—all winter long. It’s amazing how many children catch Anne’s “allergies.” Anne needs to be treated if such “allergies” are infected—the first time—and again every time—even if it means five trips to the doctor. Anne also needs a note from the doctor that says she can play around other children.

The best thing providers can do for parents and children is to create a policy that says: When a child is having trouble playing, learning, or participating because she is obviously not in her usual healthy state — she goes home — to be observed by a loving adult.

The best rule of thumb a parent can go by is: if my child needs medication in the morning—Tylenol, cough syrup, antibiotics to bring down fever, Kayopectate, Peptobismal, or ear drops to stop the pain, any over the counter meds just to get him up and moving, he doesn’t belong in child care.

When illness strikes a child at the busiest time of the year, parents are often torn between trying to minimize his illness with over the counter medications or biting the bullet and taking the child to see his doctor.

Advice from public healthcare authorities is simple: diagnose the symptoms early and treat them properly. Seems simple enough, but let’s look at what the average parent must endure to satisfy this simple directive.

By the time a parent takes time off work to fight holiday traffic to see a doctor who may or may not see what the parent sees in his child, it’s already become more than simple. It’s become an aggravation zone.

The wait of an hour or two in a crowded office with other ill children sharing the same toys, then being told it’s an allergy when no one in the family has allergies, the child has never had an allergy, and the allergy is mimicking a severe cold is frustrating. Add an expensive medication that doesn’t work.

Perhaps the real issue begins with preventive medicine. Keeping a child well to begin with may just be the key to fewer doctor’s visits and a much healthier happier child.

Six things to think about and consider:

Everybody, especially children will stay healthier in cooler rooms. Turn the heat down. Try setting heat in the mid sixties. Still in simmer t-shirts? Newsflash – It’s winter; put on a sweater.

Fresh air every couple of hours refreshes and stimulates the body. Get kids moving outside as often as possible. A few minutes of cold air will increase breathing and that’s always a good thing. Airing out rooms, blankets, and pillows helps as well.

Drink water in place of sugared drinks. A steady stream of sugar makes a high demand on the body while water cleanses and renews the body. If you thought your doctor’s visit was helped along by soda pop, think of what soda is actually costing you.

When a child is half comatose on a sofa in front of TV, send him to bed. Any extra sleep a child can get, night or day, will help keep him well. Children who go to bed before 8:00 PM are ill less often than the night owls.

Learn to wash hands properly and do it frequently. Remind a child to wash his hands with soap throughout any day. No child should walk into a house, come to the table or leave the bathroom without washing his hands.

Make sure that half the snacks a child eats count as something valuable on the food chart. Some children’s snacks are not identifiable. If a child takes a cookie, put milk with it. If a child wants a candy bar, put an apple with it. If he is looking for chips, put a slice of cheese with it. Toaster pastry? Try a banana.

Know illness from complaint: Illness is a fever of over 99, vomiting, diarrhea, spots, pus spots on tonsils or throat, eye crust, earache, and most perniciously green mucus. Green means infection allergy or not.

The truth is, the sooner an ill child gets medical attention the sooner he will be well. Dragging out illnesses is hard on children. Know your illness and if necessary, call your physician. Don’t be afraid to speak to your doctor frankly; he should work with you.

Then start over again by turning down the heat, drink water instead of sweet drinks, wash hands frequently, eat well, sleep a lot and go out side as much as possible.

With the news scare about diseases like SARS, a new awareness of children’s health may be in order.

Keeping children home when they’re ill is always a battle of wits. Getting to work because of tough bosses and tougher schedules seem to be turning mother and fatherhood against caring for the child. Now we have a deadly respiratory disease to add to our worries.

The modern assumption is that illness is “any body ailment we can’t hide.”

Sometimes loading a child down with over the counter medications in hopes that he can get through the day care or school doors, seems the best choice. The child looks fine because the Tylenol has kicked in, the cough medicine has relieved a hacking cough, or the Kayopectate has momentarily stopped the uncontrollable diarrhea.

Ten minutes after drop off, the child reports to a friend or a teacher, “I threw up last night five times.” Or he runs to the bathroom and has explosive diarrhea, and then says he did that last night as well.

My favorite is the child with allergies. He has allergies that cause an indescribable and profuse drainage that is the color of grass. The allergies pop up about every two months even in a snow storm, and cause a fever, coughing, vomiting and diarrhea and end in an ear infection.

Allergies, of course, don’t need to be treated. Allergies are simply an idiosyncrasy of a particular child’s makeup. Interestingly enough, most of these allergies are contagious and spread not only to the other students, but to the teachers as well.

The question parents ask most often about ill children is, “Can the child make it through the day?”

First, it’s against the law to send an ill child to school. The state board of health designates that children who have a fever of 99, have vomited in the past 24 hours, have a festering cough, profuse mucus, diarrhea in 24 hours, or spots may not come to school.

Second, the child is not an adult, and often can’t express himself well enough to say, “Mom or Dad, I’m really sick, I just can’t go to school today.”

And third, over the counter medications are not made to hide illnesses. They are made to relieve minor discomforts for short periods.

When children come to school holding their stomachs, or walk in to find a table to lay their head on, or curl up on the futon because they can’t stay awake, they are ill. It’s obvious that they are suffering. And what was once minor stuff, has turned deadly.

Keeping children home from school when they are ill promotes a healthier environment at school. It may even curb something as deadly as SARS. Children make other children ill.

Here are some guidelines to help parents understand children’s illnesses:

• Keep a child home the first day of an illness; he will be ill a shorter time.
• Find a comfortable back up provider who will take an ill child or call sick bay at the local hospital.
• Make sure your child’s dinner diet contains fruit, vegetables, protein (meat, cheese, eggs) and whole grains (like crackers) every night.
• When your child runs a fever, he needs to see a doctor.
• When your child’s nasal discharge is more than he can blow out, see the doctor.

Here’s a really irritating article which takes business, parents, and doctors into account but seems to miss the boat on the subject of the study – namely the kids. If a child really requires medication when he first awakens in the morning, if he vomits, has diarrhea, a toothache, a stomach ache, a profound head ache or so much slimy or stuck mucus he or she can’t breathe or lift his head, no matter how many days he has had this physical complaint – keep him home. If he or she is running any kind of a fever (99 is a fever for my naturally 96.4 body) he needs to stay home. He simply doesn’t feel well, and school with other children is not only unfair to the ill child, it’s not fair to the well child. Parnets – my favorite typo – should remember that children feel worse ill than adults, and that a headache or a stomach ache they can’t reason with is just a torment. As far as the rash goes, it could be berryberry – so keep him home.

When is a Child Too Sick for Day Care?
Bloomberg News Service
Originally published November 25, 2005

If your child has a temperature of 100 degrees, do you keep him home from day care?

A survey of more than 250 U.S. parents, pediatricians and day-care providers found that about one-third of the time respondents were wrong about this and other questions regarding when to keep young kids home because of illness.

Pediatricians were inaccurate most often, failing 39 percent of the time to identify the right reasons as described in guidelines accepted by the American medical profession.

Parents needlessly are taking time off from work to stay at home with children they think are too sick to attend day care, according to the study led by Kristen Copeland, a pediatrician at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.

American workers spend about 25 percent of sick-leave days taking care of an ill child or other relative, according to a 2000 U.S. Department of Labor report.

“The most surprising finding is that pediatricians did no better than child-care providers and parents” in assessing which conditions required children to be kept out of day care, said Copeland. Her results appear in the November-December issue of Ambulatory Pediatrics.

Copeland’s study was based on surveys completed in 2000 by 80 child-care providers, 142 parents and 36 pediatricians. To evaluate their answers, the study relied upon the guidelines adopted jointly by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Public Health Association, and the U.S. government’s Maternal and Child Health Bureau.

Given a list of 12 common symptoms, the pediatricians gave the wrong advice 39 percent of the time, including 37 percent of the time in cases where they should have advised the parent to let the child attend day care. Child-care providers gave wrong answers, as measured by the joint guidelines, 37 percent of the time, and the parents were wrong 36 percent of the time.

The joint guidelines indicate that three of the 12 symptoms described in Copeland’s survey do not require children to be kept home: a new rash without other symptoms, five days of green or yellow discharge from the nose and redness of the eyes with watery discharge.

A majority of the pediatricians, 53 percent, incorrectly cited the eye redness as sufficient to keep children home, the study found. The guidelines recommend keeping children home if their temperature is 101 degrees or higher if measured in the mouth or 100 degrees or higher if taken under the arm. Pediatricians knew the former correctly 86 percent of the time, and the latter only 60 percent of the time, according to the study.

The high rate of incorrect responses among physicians could be due to several possible factors, including disagreement with the guidelines and variations in the types of patients seen by those participating in the survey, Copeland said.

Here’s another Union article. It’s the wave of the future. More than fifty percent of children who attend childcare outside the home attend a family day care. It’s big industry, and now it may get a voice.

At-home Child Care Operators to Join UnionWith Vote Providers Make Move Toward First ContractBy PAUL NYHAN
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Washington state at-home child care operators overwhelmingly voted to join the Service Employees International Union this weekend, taking a step toward their first union contract.
The vote does not mean people who run child care out of their homes will immediately open contract talks with the state. Instead, union membership gives these 10,000 operators leverage to push for a new state law that would allow them to start bargaining.

Providers said they needed leverage because the number of home-based child care centers is falling, partly, they say, because the state’s rate of reimbursement is so low that many make less than the state’s minimum wage of $7.35 an hour. The state pays providers for part of the cost of caring for low-income and disabled children.

“I think the most important (issue) is that the subsidy rate has to increase because all children deserve quality child care,” said Kathy Yasi, who runs Adventure Day Care out of her home in the Central District.

Providers voted 3,363 to 258 to join SEIU Local 925, according to a union tally released yesterday. The union now covers 10,000 home-based child care operators around Washington state.

Traditionally, people who run child care out of their homes are not members of organized labor — the union says this is only the second such vote in the nation. But, unions are increasingly targeting new industries as the nature of U.S. work shifts from manufacturing to services such as child care.

Like nearly every other U.S. union, the SEIU’s newest bargaining unit also must grapple with the rising cost of health care. Providers must now buy insurance on the open market, and that expense leads many to forgo insurance.

The campaign was about more than money and access to health care. Providers hope to push the Department of Social and Health Services for better training and scholarships for workers.

“We feel if we have a stronger voice, then we can improve the quality of child care for all the kids in the state,” said Donna Horne, president of the Washington State Family Child Care Association, who operates Kids of Heart in Everett.

P-I reporter Paul Nyhan can be reached at 206-448-8145 or paulnyhan@seattlepi.com.

My husband sent this to me, and I thought it was excellent.

Manners and Virtue in a Modern World
Nov 20, 2005
by George Will
Townhall.com

WASHINGTON — Let’s be good cosmopolitans and offer sociological explanations rather than moral judgments about students, The Washington Post reports, having sex during the day in high schools. Sociology discerns connections, and there may be one between the fact that teenagers are relaxing from academic rigors by enjoying sex in the school auditorium, and the fact that Americans in public soon will be able to watch pornography, and prime-time television programs such as “Desperate Housewives” — and, for the high-minded, C-SPAN — on their cell phones and video iPods.

The connection is this: Many people have no notion of propriety when in the presence of other people, because they are not actually in the presence of other people, even when they are in public.

With everyone chatting on cell phones when not floating in iPod-land, “this is an age of social autism, in which people just can’t see the value of imagining their impact on others.” We are entertaining ourselves into inanition. (There are Web sites for people with Internet addiction. Think about that.) And multiplying technologies of portable entertainments will enable “limitless self-absorption,” which will make people solipsistic, inconsiderate and anti-social. Hence manners are becoming unmannerly in this “age of lazy moral relativism combined with aggressive social insolence.”

So says Lynne Truss in her latest trumpet-blast of a book, Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door. Her previous wail of despair was Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, which established her as — depending on your sensibility — a comma and apostrophe fascist (the liberal sensibility) or a plucky constable combating anarchy (the conservative sensibility).

Good punctuation, she says, is analogous to good manners because it treats readers with respect. “All the important rules,” she writes, “surely boil down to one: remember you are with other people; show some consideration.” Manners, which have been called “quotidian ethics,” arise from real or — this, too, is important in lubricating social frictions — feigned empathy.

“People,” says Truss, “are happier when they have some idea of where they stand and what the rules are.” But today’s entitlement mentality, which is both a cause and a consequence of the welfare state, manifests itself in the attitude that it is all right to do whatever one has a right to do. Which is why acrimony has enveloped a coffee shop on Chicago’s affluent North Side, where the proprietor posted a notice that children must “behave and use their indoor voices.” The proprietor, battling what he calls an “epidemic” of anti-social behavior, told The New York Times that parents protesting his notice “have a very strong sense of entitlement.”

A thoroughly modern parent, believing that children must be protected from feelings injurious to self-esteem, says: “Johnny, the fact that you did something bad does not mean you are bad for doing it.” We have, Truss thinks, “created people who will not stand to be corrected in any way.”

Furthermore, it is a brave, or foolhardy, man who shows traditional manners toward women. In today’s world of “hair-trigger sensitivity,” to open a door for a woman is to play what Truss calls Gallantry Russian Roulette: You risk a high-decibel lecture on gender politics.

One writer on manners has argued that a nation’s greatness is measured not only by obedience of laws but also by “obedience to the unenforceable.” But enforcement of manners can be necessary. The well-named David Stern, commissioner of the NBA, recently decreed a dress code for players. It is politeness to the league’s customers who, weary of seeing players dressed in “edgy” hip-hop “street” or “gangsta” styles, want to be able to distinguish the Bucks and Knicks from the Bloods and Crips.

Stern also understands that players who wear “in your face” clothes of a kind, and in a manner, that evokes Sing Sing more than Brooks Brothers might be more inclined to fight on the floor and to allow fights to migrate to the stands, as happened last year.

Because manners are means of extending respect, especially to strangers, this question arises: Do manners and virtue go together? Truss thinks so, in spite of the possibility of “blood-stained dictators who had exquisite table manners and never used their mobile phones in a crowded train compartment to order mass executions.”

Actually, manners are the practice of a virtue. The virtue is called civility, a word related — as a foundation is related to a house — to the word civilization.

George F. Will is a 1976 Pulitzer Prize winner, whose columns are syndicated in more than 400 magazines and newspapers worldwide.