I like this one – put the pot on and share it with the kids. Can’t tell you how many children love to stick their fingers – clean of course- into my coffee cup. Somehow Miss Judy’s coffee is a mysterious thing. I was Miss Stress America when I was pregnant and all of my children were trained before they were two. Brendan knew all his letters and Molly could recite the entire Night Before Christmas at two.

BOSTON — In medical news Wednesday, Heather Unruh had three stories just for mom, including one for those moms who’ve ever wondered if their child loves their day-care provider more than their parents.

Stress
If you are pregnant and stressed out, there’s one less thing to worry about.
Johns Hopkins surveyed women who were six to eight months pregnant and then followed up with them six weeks and two years after their babies were born.

They found the children of women who reported being the most stressed out did not have any developmental problems. In fact, children born to the most anxious and stressed women tended to be the most advanced by the time they were 2.

Caffeine
Any new parent could use a java jolt to offset the sleep deprivation that comes with a newborn, but a study in the New England journal of medicine shows premature babies may benefit from caffeine, too.

Small doses appear to reduce lung problems common in tiny newborns, at least in the short-term. Researchers plan to follow up with the preemies for a couple more years to see if the benefits last.

Preschool Bonds
If you worry your child is more attached to their day-care teachers than to you, don’t.
A review of dozens of studies shows even preschoolers who form strong bonds with sitters or teachers are still most closely connected to Mom and Dad. In fact, children who were most secure about their parents were more likely to grow close to their day-care providers.

This is an excellent article. I’ve heard providers say they are more important or the child is better off in child care, and those who maintain that should not be in the field at all. A parent/child relationship is absolutely sacred and the provider at best helps the parent rear the child. The parent is always the primary educator. The provider an image of the parent.

Day Care Providers No Substitute for Mom
By LiveScience Staff: 17 May 2006

Dropping an infant or toddler off at day care can be a wrenching daily experience for harried modern parents who feel they don’t see enough of their son or daughter.

One worry: The child will grow more attached to the day care providers than the parents.

A new review of 40 studies on this topic by European researchers indicates parents can rest relatively easy on this concern. The review involved studies of nearly 3,000 children with an average age of two-and-a-half. It did find reliable associations in how children feel about their parents and child-care providers. But significant differences were found, too:

Children are less likely to form secure attachments to care providers.

The longer children had been enrolled, the more likely they were to have secure relationships with their care providers.

A child’s feelings about a care provider is strongly related to the provider’s behavior toward all the children.

“In contrast to earlier concepts on childcare providers’ functions,” said lead researcher Lieselotte Ahnert, “we should not see care providers in public care as mother substitutes, dealing sensitively with individual kids, but understand how they regulate groups of kids while providing a harmonic climate to play and learn.”

Ahnert is a psychologist at the University of Berlin and the University of Applied Science. The results are presented in the May/June issue of the journal Child Development.

The study also found girls are more likely than boys to have positive relationships with care providers. It is possible that girls attract more positive attention from care providers, who are overwhelmingly female, the researchers speculate.

‘Auntie Pat’ Leaves Her Day Care After 39 Years

By Erik Zygmont

I’m including some articles I received this week from a site called Today’s Baby Fit. The articles are helpful, short, and easy to read. The site is written by a group of doctors and health experts.

What is the best way to do Kegels?

Here’s the scoop on Kegels (pelvic floor exercises).

First, make sure you are contracting the correct muscles (the ones that you contract to stop urine flow), not your buttocks or thighs.

You can squeeze and hold for 10 seconds; contract slowly to the count of 10 and relax slowly to the count of 10; or just do “quick flicks” of fast, short contractions.

All of these methods help strengthen your pelvic floor and reduce your risk of developing incontinence. The key is to JUST DO THEM!! Try to do some long contractions and holds, and mix in a few quick contractions several times each day.

Think of a time you’ll remember to do them every day, like when driving to work, showering, or brushing your teeth. Don’t worry too much about the perfect way to do the exercises.

Just try to include 20-50 contractions every day!

How to Read a Nutrition Facts Label

Solve One of the World’s Greatest Mysteries — By Laura Bofinger, Staff Writer

You know that, as a mother to be, it is actually healthy to gain around 25-35 pounds before you deliver your baby. So you head to the grocery store and scour the aisles for the good stuff, the healthy food that will satisfy your tastes and nourish your body, as well as your baby’s. What do you look for when you’re checking out the nutrition facts on that macaroni and cheese box?

Whether you’re one to zoom in on total calories or total carbs, you might be missing the real picture. Nutrition facts should be a part of your decision in what to eat or even what to buy. But interpreting the facts requires a bit of know-how, so make sure you aren’t misleading yourself.

Understand the Power of “Serving Size”The most important rule is to know your serving size and the number of servings in the package or can. If the labels says “one cup” for serving size and “two servings per container,” that means there are two cups in the whole package. If you know you’ll eat the whole package by yourself, you are going to consume two cups (1 cup x 2 servings/container = 2 cups).

That means that you must double all the nutrition facts measurements to know your total intake of each nutrient – the good and the bad. Using the mac and cheese example, eating the whole package means you will have consumed 500 calories, 220 of which are from fat. You will have consumed 24 g of fat, of which 6 g is saturated fat. That’s not exactly a balanced meal to fuel yourself for the day.

The only time you can avoid doing the math is when you eat the exact serving size that is listed. Always compare the listed serving size to how much food you think you’ll eat and compute calories from there.

Crack the Code in “Percent Daily Value”Confused by what all those percents really mean? The percents refer to “percent daily value” and they’re a bit trickier to interpret. The FDA bases these percents on a 2000-calorie-a-day diet. Only problem is that your caloric needs increase. By your second and third trimesters, you will need an additional 300 calories each day. This will throw off the percentages. It will require a bit of mental adjustment to correct for this. Just use the given percentages as a frame of reference, realizing that you’ll need to be above the percents shown, per serving. You may find it simpler to keep track of grams and milligrams instead of the percents. The Nutrition Facts footnote gives a scale in grams and milligrams for recommended amounts of fat, cholesterol, sodium, carbs, and fiber based on a 2,500 diet as well.

Looking at cholesterol on the mac and cheese label, the FDA says that you are getting 30 mg and this is 10% of the recommended amount of cholesterol for a person eating about 2,000 calories per day. (Remember, you’re getting 20% if you ate the whole package.) So how do you know if 10% is a good or bad number?

For ease of explanation, let’s break this down into a guide that will helps us look at a percent and immediately know if it is high or low for one food source. The magic numbers are 5 and 20%. Anything listed in the percent daily value column that is 5% or less is a low number for nutrients. This is a good range for things that you want to limit (fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, and sodium), but too low for things you want to eat plenty of (fiber, calcium, and vitamins).

Anything listed as 20% or more is high. This is a bad range for things that you want to limit (fat, saturated fat, cholesterol and sodium), but a good range for things you want to eat plenty of (fiber, calcium, and vitamins). Use 5 and 20% as benchmarks when interpreting numbers between 6 and 19% (look at what is closer to “high” or closer to “low”).

Look at “Total Fat” on the mac and cheese label. The 18% daily value is close to the high point, but if you ate the whole package, you actually ate 36% of the recommended daily amount of fat (well above our benchmark of 20%!). That amount, coming from just one source of food in a day, contributes a lot of fat to your daily diet. It would leave you 64% (100% – 36% = 64%) of your fat allowance for all other meals, drinks, and snacks you would eat that day.

The percent daily value also offers a great way to watch your diet without completely giving up your favorite foods. For example, if you ate one serving of macaroni and cheese but ensured you had a low fat intake for all other foods you ate that day, you made a successful trade-off. When you really want a food that is high in fat, always balance it with healthy low-fat foods in the same day.

Quick Interpretation Guide

Start at the top with Serving Size and Servings Per Container. Adjust all measurements below this point according to the serving size you will eat.

Look at the number of calories per serving (including how many calories are from fat).

Limit these nutrients: total fat (including saturated and trans fat), cholesterol, and sodium.
Get plenty of these nutrients: fiber, vitamins, calcium, protein, and iron.

Use the % Daily Value to determine what is a high or low number for your daily diet. 5% or less is low; 20% or more is high.

Don’t just use the nutrition facts to track the nutrients you want to cut back on. Use it to track the nutrients you want to increase (like fiber, calcium and vitamins)! Whether you’re a stickler for tracking every fat gram and calorie per day or someone who just wants a rough estimate of her daily nutrient intake, the nutrition facts label is a handy tool. Learn how to use it for foods you eat frequently and anything new that you are tempted to incorporate into your regular meal plan.

Exercising While You’re Pregnant

A Pregnancy Fitness Guide

There was a time when exercise during pregnancy was discouraged-but not anymore! Times have changed and we’ve gotten smarter about women’s health. Most experts now encourage exercise during pregnancy.

In 2002, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists began recommending that pregnant women should exercise moderately for 30 minutes most days, if not every day (unless there are medical reasons prohibiting it).

Exercise benefits mom by:

Improving muscle tone and cardiovascular fitness
Reducing the risk of developing gestational diabetes
Preventing excess weight gain
Improving sleep patterns
Preparing you to hold and carry your growing child
Improving appearance and posture
Promoting circulation and stimulating the digestive processes (which help prevent hemorrhoids, constipation, varicose veins, leg cramps and swelling in the ankles)
Alleviating some of the discomforts of pregnancy, such as lower back pain
Strengthening the muscles needed for labor and delivery, which can ease delivery and labor time

Exercise benefits baby by:
Preparing the fetus to transition to the non-maternal environment
Increasing placental efficiency for blood circulation, which supplies oxygen and nutrients to fetus
Decreasing fetal fat without decreasing overall growth of the fetus
Increasing newborn’s readiness to self-calm and self-quiet
Increasing fetal movement, which possibly helps develop oral language skills by age 5

The exercises you can do during pregnancy depend on two things: your current health and how active you were before you became pregnant. If you were not active before, don’t use pregnancy as the time to begin a strenuous fitness regime; if you did exercise before pregnancy, you can continue your program with some slight modifications.

Before you begin (or continue) any exercise program, discuss it with your healthcare provider. Together, the two of you can plan an exercise program that is consistent with your current level of fitness and health conditions. It is mandatory that you consult a doctor first, especially if you have any of these conditions:
Anemia
Heart Problems
Asthma or chronic lung problems
High Blood Pressure
Diabetes
Thyroid Problems
Seizures
Extremely over or under weight
Muscle or joint problems
History of spontaneous miscarriages
Repeated C Sections
History of previous premature labors
Carrying multiples (e.g., twins, triplets)
Incompetent cervix
Persistent bleeding

A previously sedentary lifestyle NOTE: If you experience problems such as bleeding, premature labor, dizziness, severe abdominal pain, or feeling unusually tired, during or after exercise, you should stop immediately and contact your healthcare provider before continuing.

Swimming is probably one of the best all around exercises for pregnant women. The buoyancy takes stress off the joints, the water offers smooth movements, falling is not an issue, and the water prevents you from overheating. Other good activities include brisk walking, stationary bicycling, low-impact aerobics, and some forms of yoga. Many health centers offer special exercise classes for pregnant women. Below are demonstrations of a few exercises and stretches you can do at home to help you stay fit throughout your pregnancy.

Question: Is it safe to eat Asian foods and other foods that contain MSG?

Monosodium glutamate (MSG) is the sodium salt of the amino acid “glutamate”. It is used as a flavor enhancer in a variety of foods. Glutamate itself is found naturally in many living things such as our own bodies and protein-containing foods, such as cheese, milk, meat, peas, and mushrooms. Unlike salt or other seasonings, MSG does not alter the actual taste of food.

Instead, it enhances taste by exciting and increasing the sensitivity of taste buds. MSG works much like a drug, altering taste buds’ sensitivity. This affects the flavor perceptions of the person who has ingested food or drink that contain MSG. It basically tricks your brain into thinking the food you are eating tastes good. While not all people react to the current MSG levels found in foods, about 30% of the population does develop adverse reactions, including:

tingling, warmth and weakness
facial pressure or tightness
upset stomach
chest pain
headache
nausea
rapid heartbeat
difficulty breathing (in MSG-intolerant people with asthma)
drowsiness

MSG has been classified by the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) GRAS
(Generally Recognized as Safe for consumption) list, along with other GRAS substances such as sugar, salt, and baking soda. However, if you have had problems tolerating high MSG foods prior to pregnancy, it would be advisable to avoid MSG during pregnancy. Pregnant women are advised to use MSG in moderation and to drink extra water to help offset the high sodium intake of MSG-containing foods. When preparing food at home, check labels. Legally, MSG must be clearly documented. When dining out, some restaurants will label selections that are MSG-free, but you should also ask specific questions before making your menu selection.

Tanya Jolliffe, Babyfit Nutritionist

Lots to report:

Last week the totals on the Hop’ining for Easter Seals were announced. We won a $75.00 prize for collecting the biggest sum after 3 k-8 schools with 250 or more students. Our school has fewer than forty students and that’s quite an accomplishment. Thank you parents for your support for this worthy cause.

We took the gift card from Easter Seals and went over to Walmart and bought some of our summer equipment. As I went through the line, the price was exactly $75.00. We had a good laugh. We bought a big water barrel for dunking for apples, a bunch of swimming noodles, some “go fish” for the pool. These delightful 8″ fish are battery operated and are turned on and they swim around the pool, and the children discover them as they swim. We bought a rope for tug of war which the boys and girls will just love. We bought relay equipment for races, diving weights and goggles. Swimming is a most enjoyable and educational activity.

Summer is developing nicely. We are searching for some good local alternatives to long distance travel. I think parents will be surprised. One of the things we want to do is to take the children to an Amish farm. We are searching the possibilities. As ever, all parents are welcome to come as our guests.

Parents are welcome to talk to Molly about summer Garden School T-shirts.

This week we’ve been studying insects. The kids have had some fun with discovering hundreds of insect names and identities. They are particularly interested in spiders and the habits of spiders. And no, I don’t think we will get a tarantula for the pet room.

And speaking of things that could be pets, we’ve had five little guinea pigs born this week. The kids discovered some of them and were delighted.

Justin and Taylor have been putting a rather advanced King Tut puzzle together. There are five puzzles in a big book, and the children discovered they could clamp the pages shut until they had put all the pages together. These boys are focused on completion; it’s hilarious and heartwarming. Our next project is the five hundred piece!

We had a call today from a woman who had an abandoned child. She wanted to bring the child to the Garden School because the parent had not picked up the child last night and she needed to get to work. The bells and whistles went off on that one, and I suggested she call the sheriff’s office as her only legal option. Childcare is not a last moment, drop in idea. Childcare is a safe, loving chosen environment that encourages children to grow, not scare them to death because adults have been abusive.

Abuse is a common thing in today’s world, and children suffer as much today as ever. It’s sad to think that someone has a child and then finds every possible surrogate care option they can so that they are literally never with the child. So many of our parents lament too many hours in childcare, but we’re a family, and the children have bonded with us, and it’s a chosen understood option. I always know because I rarely if ever miss work, and today I had a check up and when I got back to school, the children all ran up and hugged me. It felt good. I get multiple hugs all day, and so do our other teachers. I count on those hugs.

Today we had breakfast for lunch. We had polish snausage, egg pie or quiche, taters, honey dew melon, cinnamon toast, a big salad with tomatoes and cheese, and milk. Then because the children were so quiet, we had Sunshines on the patio – 75% orange juice and 25% sprite. It would have been elegant if the plastic cups had had stems.

Tomorrow it’s pancakes and strawberries, and we bought the most wonderful cookies! Prizes for bug identifications and bug modeling. You can’t build enough bugs!

Life is a beautiful thing when it involves children. I’m a most blessed lady and my life is complete.

When my son was in China, one of the things he said upset him the most was the large number of beggar children. Dozens of children will encircle a foreigner in order to procure money. He said it is at times frightening. It’s a strange culture creeping out of a lost century very quickly.

Shanghidaily.com

Preschool kids to get education in death, life issues
Yan Zhen
2006-05-17

MORE than 12,300 preschool children will take part in a new program teaching them how to cope with emotional difficulties, and even death.

Accepting and talking about death – a topic shunned by many Chinese – is a major and controversial part of the program being implemented over the past three years. Children may even visit graveyards.

Zippy’s Friends, the education program developed by the UK-based charity Partnership for Children, began in 31 kindergartens yesterday.

It aims to compensate for lack of psychological education for children up to age 6.

Shanghai is the first mainland city to implement the program used worldwide, said officials of East China Normal University, the program implementer.

Based on the story of an insect named Zippy, the program is about a group of children facing everyday difficulties – making and keeping friends, communicating with others, loneliness, conflicts, coping with change and loss, and adapting to new environments.

Courses will be given for 30 minutes weekly in kindergartens where teachers have been trained.

Role play games

Activities, such as drawing, role-play and games, will teach children how to cope with difficulties, sadness and daily pressures.

For instance, teachers will hold group discussions about children’s reactions to their parents’ arguments or “cold wars.”

Children might be taken to graveyards to learn about death and loss.

Zhu Jiaxiong, director of ECNU’s preschool education research center, said a major aim is to develop realistic and accepting attitudes towards death.

“Chinese people always consider death something dreadful and unlucky. They always try to avoid talking about death with their children,” said Zhu, adding that some parents won’t take young children to grandparents’ funerals.

A recent survey by ECNU suggested that 63 percent of parents were uneasy about “death education” in kindergartens. Currently, no kindergarten has systematic courses about life, death and children’s psychology.

“But death education is needed to teach kids to cherish their life. That is important thing in a world of increasingly high pressure,” Zhu said.

The article shows how much we have in common all over the world.

Gaberones, Botswana

Encourage Children To Unleash Potential Freely
16 May, 2006

MOCHUDI – The Early Childhood Care and Education Programme is meant to provide a holistic approach to developmental needs of children in preparing them for primary education, says Acting Deputy Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Local Government.

Thato Raphaka said children should be encouraged to unleash their potential, freely express their creativity and knowledge at the early stages of their childhood.

Raphaka said Saturday officially opening Tapologo Day Care Centre in Mochudi that children come to daycare centres with different individual experiences and backgrounds and then learn, adopt and adapt new things in life.

We need to continue to search for ways and means of providing more of such facilities particularly with a view of reaching out to children from poor families and marginalised communities who are more likely not to access early childhood education and thereby remain socially and economically deprived, he said.

He said Youth for Christ and Apostolic Faith Mission should be congratulated for having joined hands in establishing Tapologo Day Care Centre for orphans and vulnerable children.

I am informed that the centre has received donations from different oragnisations in order to complete construction of the premises, as well as purchase educational materials and therefore wish to commend all those who contributed towards the development and daily operations of the center, he said.

We need to inject and maintain a transparent culture in our operations, which are in line with the national principles and ideals of vision 2016. We should comfortably continue to encourage other organisations to be compassionate, just and caring with a view to attaining our Vision 2016 pillar.

Raphaka said to realise Batswanas satisfaction, there was need to work with Non Governmental Organisations within a transparent culture to get honest feed back and avoid duplication of efforts in what the nation did or planned to do.

He commended Youth for Christ and Apostolic Faith Mission and all other stakeholders involved for their selfless effort in having appropriate strategic vision in implement the project.

He added that government was committed to providing children with quality and relevant education.

He said the government recognised Batswana as a major resource and on the other hand considers education as a fundamental human right.

As a result the nation aimed at investing in its people a quality education necessary for national development.

The partnership between non-governmental organizations, government and private sector was key and crucial to the proper development, upbringing and education of the children.

Raphaka said three stakeholders should be able to create a climate that was conducive to the practice of the nations norms and traditions but all the time ensure that its traditions augur well and were in keeping with the good that development and change brought.