Sometimes I see things better in word pictures. These come to me sometimes out of the blue and other times are provided for me by my observations. The current series of VISA checkcard commercials has given me a wonderful metaphor for our lives today. With all the people scurrying around in dancelike, trancelike harmony with everything and everyone juggling perfectly until someone chooses to pay cash or write a check, then everything goes to hell in a handbasket.
In our busy lives we are so much like this. We schedule things so closely that we need everything to go the way we planned or everything crashes down around us. We plan vacations for short school breaks to take our kids places that they only want to see because their parents think they need to, and they leave right after school and return the night before school starts back, and the "break" is definitely not a break for anyone but the bank. Why do we do these things? Why are we so busy? Another provided metaphor is from "Field of Dreams" with the famous line "if you build it, they will come". And come they did! If you offer it, they will sign up. Whether it's gymnastics or cheer or soccer or baseball, you name it, they'll come. They'll sign up and buy a uniform and commit a 3 year old to a year's worth of lessons when all she said was "I want to be a cheerleader, mommy". She doesn't have to start at 3 to be a cheerleader, or does she? Every parent thinks their child is going to be a professional at their activity, or at least get a college scholarship. The disappointment starts when Junior would rather climb a tree than kick a ball, or little Sally doesn't want to go to gymnastics anymore when she could be so good if she would just practice.
We've idolized sports. Not just sports figures, but sports in general. Parents are reprimanded by friends if they don't have their child signed up for at least one sport per season by the age of 3. Have you ever watched 3 year olds play soccer? Or play anything? Herding cats is easier than getting a 3 year old to figure out which goal he's supposed to kick the ball into or which way to run after he hits the ball off the tee (who invented tee ball, anyway?). The best that can come of such an activity is that you have the next Tiger Woods or Andre Agassi or Alex Rodriquez on your hands, you'll be set for life. But far more likely is you'll give up precious family time and freedom in your life and end up with a kid with a stomach ache or sore shoulder or chronic injury who was so good at baseball at 12 but now is either burned out or injured so that college scholarship is down the drain and you're stuck paying shrinks and orthopods to fix what you messed up.
Then there's school. Who doesn't want their child to excel in school? Let's start really early with Baby Einstein and teach her some Spanish and she'll be way ahead of the other kids. Guess what? She doesn't want to be way ahead of the other kids! She wants to be just like the other kids. So if you want your child to do some of the things you want her to do, and act the way you'd like her to act, don't send her to school until you have to. Once you let them have her, you're having to explain evolution and gay rights and tolerance and you don't even have solid opinions on these subjects yourself. You'll have to listen to "teachers" at preK tell you he has trouble focusing, or she can't sit still, or he seems uncoordinated. You'll bring them to me and I'll tell you they're fine but you'll have a friend who will tell you to take her to this or that doctor who will give them some therapy regimen and a diagnosis or medicine that then you want me to write the prescription for because otherwise your insurance won't pay for it and you'll say that you really trust me but you just felt like you had to pursue this, yada yada yada.
Face it, your child is probably not going to be a professional athlete or a national merit scholar. He or she is probably going to be just a normal person with normal intelligence and aspirations. If you set up your expectations in another way, you will be disappointed. You will also make your child crazy or depressed or anxious. They will sense your frustration with quitting soccer at 6 or not making the classic team or not wanting to spend 20 hours a week at the gym or ice rink to "go to the next level". Let them be kids! Enjoy them! Don't you remember? I do. I was the gifted piano player with perfect pitch but I wanted to climb the mimosa tree outside the piano teacher's house more than I wanted to play piano at age 6, so I quit, and now I wish I hadn't, but you know, it's OK, I'm OK with it. It would be great to know how to play piano, but not being able to play piano hasn't made life unbearable. I've made it just fine and found other things to do. I've channeled the tree climbing into more cerebral activities and I've been able to stick to some commitments long enough to see them pay off.
So...relax and let life come to you. You don't have to "grab for the gusto". Don't worry that you'll miss the chance for your child to excel at something. Rather, enjoy life. Enjoy your kids. Come home and kick the ball in the yard. Ride bikes. Teach them to hit a ball. No teams, no practice, no schedule. Do it because you like it, and they'll like it, too. You were not allowed by God to have children to schedule every minute of every day just right and if you don't you're going to hell. You were given children to enjoy, to instruct and train in what's right and in the truth about Who created them and this marvelous planet we live on and why we want to be nice to other people and let them ahead of us in line sometimes and share, and not be so tightly scheduled that if your kid breaks his arm or gets pneumonia you'll be more concerned about your child than the plans their misfortune messed up.
Thursday, November 22, 2007
x rated
OK. Teaser title, I know. But it is about 'x's.
What season is upon us? Christmas, right? So when you see Xmas, the X stands for Christ, right? All my life I've avoided using this abbreviation. I'm sure someone told me it was wrong or bad or something, but whatever it was, it stuck and to this day I write out the whole thing, not wanting an 'X' to stand in place of Christ. It's kind of funny how there are things like that, things that have become a part of me of which I do not know the origin, but I feel very strongly about and would defend even without good reason because I grew up with that thought or belief. That's another topic too vast to study today.
Now I find I'm faced with another 'x' dilemma. It's been around a long time, too, but has just started burrowing into my conscience and consciousness. My address ends in Crossing, and the post office even abbreviates it 'Xing'. One could use the same logic I used with Christmas and say that the cross is what Christ came for to this earth, and it is no more appropriate to substitute an 'x' for it than for the name of Christ. But there were crosses and crossings long before Christ's death on the cross, and the word cross is used regularly without any blasphemy in describing a mood, a journey, a meeting of two roads, and so on.
I must admit that using 'x' instead of cross in crossing in my address is much easier, and since the post office seems to be approving of it, even encouraging, I'm tempted to continue.
But there is a difference. To substitute 'x' for Christ is not a good thing in my opinion. Maybe it makes sense in making signs, fewer letters, easier to spell. But the 'x' in xmas stands for Christ, and to my knowledge, there weren't any Christs before Jesus and none after, and the word means what it means and stands for the Savior of the world, so to leave it out for the sake of signage and spelling when it is the sole reason the holiday is celebrated is to insult the One who came and died on a cross, spelled out or 'x', for me and you, so I'm staying away from xmas in favor of Christmas, but if it's ok with the US Postal Service, who now seem not to even care about the city where one lives as much as the 5 or 9 digit zip code attached, I'll keep abbreviating Crossing as Xing.
What season is upon us? Christmas, right? So when you see Xmas, the X stands for Christ, right? All my life I've avoided using this abbreviation. I'm sure someone told me it was wrong or bad or something, but whatever it was, it stuck and to this day I write out the whole thing, not wanting an 'X' to stand in place of Christ. It's kind of funny how there are things like that, things that have become a part of me of which I do not know the origin, but I feel very strongly about and would defend even without good reason because I grew up with that thought or belief. That's another topic too vast to study today.
Now I find I'm faced with another 'x' dilemma. It's been around a long time, too, but has just started burrowing into my conscience and consciousness. My address ends in Crossing, and the post office even abbreviates it 'Xing'. One could use the same logic I used with Christmas and say that the cross is what Christ came for to this earth, and it is no more appropriate to substitute an 'x' for it than for the name of Christ. But there were crosses and crossings long before Christ's death on the cross, and the word cross is used regularly without any blasphemy in describing a mood, a journey, a meeting of two roads, and so on.
I must admit that using 'x' instead of cross in crossing in my address is much easier, and since the post office seems to be approving of it, even encouraging, I'm tempted to continue.
But there is a difference. To substitute 'x' for Christ is not a good thing in my opinion. Maybe it makes sense in making signs, fewer letters, easier to spell. But the 'x' in xmas stands for Christ, and to my knowledge, there weren't any Christs before Jesus and none after, and the word means what it means and stands for the Savior of the world, so to leave it out for the sake of signage and spelling when it is the sole reason the holiday is celebrated is to insult the One who came and died on a cross, spelled out or 'x', for me and you, so I'm staying away from xmas in favor of Christmas, but if it's ok with the US Postal Service, who now seem not to even care about the city where one lives as much as the 5 or 9 digit zip code attached, I'll keep abbreviating Crossing as Xing.
Sunday, November 18, 2007
parent used to be a noun
When did "parent" become a verb? Sometime before I started pediatric practice 20 years ago, but not too long before. It used to be that you were a parent, it was something you were vs. something you did.I guess when you were a parent back in the day you did it, too, but maybe you weren't so conscious of the doing part, more just the being part. The realization of the daunting task of being a parent and doing the job of parenting has made for some interesting problems. Every decision we make could affect our children now or in the future. We hear about people whose lives were affected by things their parents did and said. Some of those people were damaged irreparably, others seem to have made lemonade out of their experiences. Some are nondrinkers because their dad was an alcoholic, others are alcoholics, too. It seems to depend less on the experience than on the person.
To look ahead as a parent of an infant and to think of the many decisions that will need to be made and the things that need to be done in order to make sure this child grows up to be a mature human being who is socially and fiscally responsible and God-fearing and a good wife/husband/mother/father, can make even the bravest person cringe in fear. I don't think God does things like that to us, we do it to ourselves. He hands us "bite size" pieces of life to handle, then He hands us the next thing, and so on throughout life. Maybe what we are doing to ourselves as "verb" parents who think we really control our child's destiny is to believe what the serpent told Eve in the Garden - that we can be gods, like God, and know right and wrong. To see, or to think we see, the future and what must be done, that's what the serpent was offering, and it probably sounded good to Eve at the time, and it still sounds good to us. Maybe nowhere does it become more obvious than in the anxiety of parents.
To look ahead as a parent of an infant and to think of the many decisions that will need to be made and the things that need to be done in order to make sure this child grows up to be a mature human being who is socially and fiscally responsible and God-fearing and a good wife/husband/mother/father, can make even the bravest person cringe in fear. I don't think God does things like that to us, we do it to ourselves. He hands us "bite size" pieces of life to handle, then He hands us the next thing, and so on throughout life. Maybe what we are doing to ourselves as "verb" parents who think we really control our child's destiny is to believe what the serpent told Eve in the Garden - that we can be gods, like God, and know right and wrong. To see, or to think we see, the future and what must be done, that's what the serpent was offering, and it probably sounded good to Eve at the time, and it still sounds good to us. Maybe nowhere does it become more obvious than in the anxiety of parents.
Saturday, November 17, 2007
it happened back then, too
I'm reading a book set in the 14th century when monks were the doctors and nuns were the nurses and people who needed medical attention were either treated by these monks and nuns or by the barber/surgeon who knew how to fix things like bad cuts and broken bones or the "wise women" who knew about potions for pain relief, bellyaches, etc.
Since the Church sanctioned the monks and nuns and not the barber surgeons and wise women, guess who were considered the experts? Of course, monks and nuns. But, just as today, as 80% of people in the US are using some sort of alternative or complementary medicine, like supplements and herbal treatments and chiropractors and naturopaths, and many others too numerous to mention, people in the 14th century had their own opinions about the experts and the braver or more rebellious of them voted with their feet and went to the alternatives for their fixes.
The monks at that time "bled" people and felt that would cure illnesses by releasing "bad humours" and probably like today, people got well despite their treatments, rather than as a result of them. Poultices with goat dung and other ingredients were applied to wounds and burns to "bring out the pus". It's so easy to criticize that ancient method of bad medicine. But it was the prevailing theory at that time. Some physicians from muslim countries were figuring out things like contagion and sanitation, but of course they were "heathen" and their treatments were regarded as such.
Fast forward to today, where the standard treatment for a common problem, high cholesterol, is a medicine which causes a deficiency of coq10 which weakens the heart muscle so the patients die of heart failure and not the high cholesterol. Or the medicine causes problems in thinking in the elderly, a population with enough problems thinking without the help of medicine. Superbugs are being "created" and then the hungry media eat it up and scare people into thinking every pimple is a deadly disease.
But the current medical establishment is very much in favor of a pill for every ailment and a test for every symptom, and even with no symptoms, a screening test to look for problems you might not know you have. All this with the assumption that man can fix all of his problems as long as he has a diagnosis. And that diagnosis can probably be blamed on someone or something which you can sue or at least blame for your condition.
So, 600 years ago the medical establishment offered bleeding and goat dung poultices in the name of science, and now we offer statin drugs and antibiotics and mri's and genetic screening tests in the same name. My wife is very wise and says that what we are doing is the best that we can do with the information available, but are we? John Mayer, a singer-songwriter of a younger generation, has a line in a song that says 'if you trust your television, what you get is what you got, 'cause when they own the information they can bend it all they want'. In the 14th century it was the church that owned the information, and today it's big medicine and the media, and together, wittingly or unwittingly, they are making people sicker, or so it seems to me, and the brave and rebellious are seeking help outside of the "normal" channels and are questioning what we, as medical practitioners, are doing. Are people getting well because of or in spite of what we do?
I like to tease a naturopathic doctor of mine that we have our box of treatments and tests, and that "they" have theirs, but that over the years we, as allopathic "western" physicians, have taken things out of their box and made them ours and take credit for them, whereas they are limited by the lack of prescriptive privileges from stealing anything out of our box (if they even wanted anything out of it!). Examples are probiotics, omega 3 fatty acids, antioxidants, just to name a few of the "newer" more popular things now touted by md's who a generation ago said they were hogwash. And I'm not innocent here, lest you think I've known this all along.
More to come on this most definitely radical thought.
Since the Church sanctioned the monks and nuns and not the barber surgeons and wise women, guess who were considered the experts? Of course, monks and nuns. But, just as today, as 80% of people in the US are using some sort of alternative or complementary medicine, like supplements and herbal treatments and chiropractors and naturopaths, and many others too numerous to mention, people in the 14th century had their own opinions about the experts and the braver or more rebellious of them voted with their feet and went to the alternatives for their fixes.
The monks at that time "bled" people and felt that would cure illnesses by releasing "bad humours" and probably like today, people got well despite their treatments, rather than as a result of them. Poultices with goat dung and other ingredients were applied to wounds and burns to "bring out the pus". It's so easy to criticize that ancient method of bad medicine. But it was the prevailing theory at that time. Some physicians from muslim countries were figuring out things like contagion and sanitation, but of course they were "heathen" and their treatments were regarded as such.
Fast forward to today, where the standard treatment for a common problem, high cholesterol, is a medicine which causes a deficiency of coq10 which weakens the heart muscle so the patients die of heart failure and not the high cholesterol. Or the medicine causes problems in thinking in the elderly, a population with enough problems thinking without the help of medicine. Superbugs are being "created" and then the hungry media eat it up and scare people into thinking every pimple is a deadly disease.
But the current medical establishment is very much in favor of a pill for every ailment and a test for every symptom, and even with no symptoms, a screening test to look for problems you might not know you have. All this with the assumption that man can fix all of his problems as long as he has a diagnosis. And that diagnosis can probably be blamed on someone or something which you can sue or at least blame for your condition.
So, 600 years ago the medical establishment offered bleeding and goat dung poultices in the name of science, and now we offer statin drugs and antibiotics and mri's and genetic screening tests in the same name. My wife is very wise and says that what we are doing is the best that we can do with the information available, but are we? John Mayer, a singer-songwriter of a younger generation, has a line in a song that says 'if you trust your television, what you get is what you got, 'cause when they own the information they can bend it all they want'. In the 14th century it was the church that owned the information, and today it's big medicine and the media, and together, wittingly or unwittingly, they are making people sicker, or so it seems to me, and the brave and rebellious are seeking help outside of the "normal" channels and are questioning what we, as medical practitioners, are doing. Are people getting well because of or in spite of what we do?
I like to tease a naturopathic doctor of mine that we have our box of treatments and tests, and that "they" have theirs, but that over the years we, as allopathic "western" physicians, have taken things out of their box and made them ours and take credit for them, whereas they are limited by the lack of prescriptive privileges from stealing anything out of our box (if they even wanted anything out of it!). Examples are probiotics, omega 3 fatty acids, antioxidants, just to name a few of the "newer" more popular things now touted by md's who a generation ago said they were hogwash. And I'm not innocent here, lest you think I've known this all along.
More to come on this most definitely radical thought.
tornado time outs
OK. I'll catch heck for this idea, but what's a blog for?
You know those "safe rooms" everybody seems to be putting in their houses? I'm really talking more about the concrete rooms above ground in the house than the "fraidy hole" basement rooms, but they could work, too.
How about making those rooms work for you year round and year in and year out instead of just when the weatherman says to "take cover".
When designing the room, put a drain in the center of the floor and slant the floor toward it for drainage. Pad the walls like in gym at school with something like wrestling mats. Splurge on a video monitoring system for the room if you like. A metal door with a small slot in it is a necessity, too.
So, in infancy, at the fussiest time of the evening and he won't quit crying and you've tried everything and you're beginning to understand how people could shake their babies, put the baby in that room in a nice crib or pack and play, shut the door, and go take a shower or weed the garden or listen to some music. Not neglect or punishment, just a little separation for sanity's sake.
Toddlers will do well in time out in such a room, with the drain and the padded walls and video surveillance, and making a child's room safe for time out is pretty hard and moms often wonder if they will associate their room with punishment, so this is the ticket. This technique will work through early childhood.
In the grade school years, maybe something could be put in there for a good study place. The distractions could be kept to a minimum and homework might be easier and more separate from the rest of the house. Staying on task would be easier away from the TV and the bustle of the home, and perhaps the child would be more likely to want to finish quicker to be able to join the family activities - not that homework is punishment, but that it needs to be done and done in a timely fashion, and distractibility is on the rise! I'll write my opinions on how much homework kids are asked to do in a later blog.
Now for the teenager: either a cool place to get away, listen to music and not bother the family, or a good place to do a more serious "time out" if needed. I've got friends and patients dealing with kids who are not bad enough or old enough to go to jail but are continually getting in trouble and causing the family anguish and endangering themselves. In these cases, the metal door and padded walls and the slot in the door would come in handy. This is probably illegal, and I'm sure many child psych folks could shoot holes in this idea for this age group, but it sounds good! Put him or her in there when they won't stay home or when they are threatening suicide, lovingly tell them it's for their own good, then shut the door and let them out to use the bathroom and you can put food through the door slot. Well, it sounded good.
Maybe it's a little much for the teenage "prison" but the quiet room and the time out room and the study room and the crash room are certainly things that aren't impossible to do. Give it a thought.
You know those "safe rooms" everybody seems to be putting in their houses? I'm really talking more about the concrete rooms above ground in the house than the "fraidy hole" basement rooms, but they could work, too.
How about making those rooms work for you year round and year in and year out instead of just when the weatherman says to "take cover".
When designing the room, put a drain in the center of the floor and slant the floor toward it for drainage. Pad the walls like in gym at school with something like wrestling mats. Splurge on a video monitoring system for the room if you like. A metal door with a small slot in it is a necessity, too.
So, in infancy, at the fussiest time of the evening and he won't quit crying and you've tried everything and you're beginning to understand how people could shake their babies, put the baby in that room in a nice crib or pack and play, shut the door, and go take a shower or weed the garden or listen to some music. Not neglect or punishment, just a little separation for sanity's sake.
Toddlers will do well in time out in such a room, with the drain and the padded walls and video surveillance, and making a child's room safe for time out is pretty hard and moms often wonder if they will associate their room with punishment, so this is the ticket. This technique will work through early childhood.
In the grade school years, maybe something could be put in there for a good study place. The distractions could be kept to a minimum and homework might be easier and more separate from the rest of the house. Staying on task would be easier away from the TV and the bustle of the home, and perhaps the child would be more likely to want to finish quicker to be able to join the family activities - not that homework is punishment, but that it needs to be done and done in a timely fashion, and distractibility is on the rise! I'll write my opinions on how much homework kids are asked to do in a later blog.
Now for the teenager: either a cool place to get away, listen to music and not bother the family, or a good place to do a more serious "time out" if needed. I've got friends and patients dealing with kids who are not bad enough or old enough to go to jail but are continually getting in trouble and causing the family anguish and endangering themselves. In these cases, the metal door and padded walls and the slot in the door would come in handy. This is probably illegal, and I'm sure many child psych folks could shoot holes in this idea for this age group, but it sounds good! Put him or her in there when they won't stay home or when they are threatening suicide, lovingly tell them it's for their own good, then shut the door and let them out to use the bathroom and you can put food through the door slot. Well, it sounded good.
Maybe it's a little much for the teenage "prison" but the quiet room and the time out room and the study room and the crash room are certainly things that aren't impossible to do. Give it a thought.
birthdays
Parents, listen to me, save your money. One year olds, two year olds, even three year olds really couldn't care less about a big birthday party. They sense your tension to provide the perfect party, cake, gifts, place, guest list. I'm really concerned about what these kids' weddings will be like when the mom spends so much time and money on a toddler's birthday!
My crass, "guy" idea is that for the first birthday you tell people to pick out the gift they would have bought, then give the child the money instead, put it aside, save it. Do the same for the second and third birthdays. By the 4th, the child may actually care about some of the aspects of the party, so spend some of the cash you've saved on a cool place or party or gift, or all of the above. There will be money left over. Continue having most of the relatives give money. Oh, 3 year olds seem to care more about the cake than the gifts or the party, so splurge on that at 3, otherwise keep it simple. By the grade school years, there will be friends from school, church, etc., so some sort of party is probably necessary, but this is not a "keep up with the joneses" deal. A simple party is plenty. Watch MTV "My Sweet 16" to see what kind of brats are being created by some parents with more money (or credit) than brains.
If you know my teachings, you know the concept of Frontier City before Six Flags and Six Flags before Disneyworld. Think of birthdays like this. You will always tend to try to top the last birthday so don't take your three year old to Disneyworld without considering you're going to have to get passports to go to Jamaica or Europe or something once you've set that precedent. And you may have more than one child, so think about "remember what you did for ....'s birthday?". There is a limit. Be kind to other parents. Maybe you should get together with your friends and discuss this subject before susie's mom has a princess party for her at the Disney on Ice performance and you're scrambling for something to top that!
Enough on this, just a final summation and admonition: Think about the long term, not just this year or this child. Think of other parents perhaps less fortunate who may well be pressured to go into debt to satisfy their little susie.
And one idea - as kids get older, try doing "giving" things for birthdays, such as organizing a yard cleanup for a little widow in your church or town, or picking up trash at a park and having pizza afterward. You'd be amazed at how memorable such a party would be, and not just to the kids and your wallet. Let your faith shine, especially to your kids. We tend, at least I do, to profess a faith that too quickly gets tossed aside when such things are facing us. Be creative
My crass, "guy" idea is that for the first birthday you tell people to pick out the gift they would have bought, then give the child the money instead, put it aside, save it. Do the same for the second and third birthdays. By the 4th, the child may actually care about some of the aspects of the party, so spend some of the cash you've saved on a cool place or party or gift, or all of the above. There will be money left over. Continue having most of the relatives give money. Oh, 3 year olds seem to care more about the cake than the gifts or the party, so splurge on that at 3, otherwise keep it simple. By the grade school years, there will be friends from school, church, etc., so some sort of party is probably necessary, but this is not a "keep up with the joneses" deal. A simple party is plenty. Watch MTV "My Sweet 16" to see what kind of brats are being created by some parents with more money (or credit) than brains.
If you know my teachings, you know the concept of Frontier City before Six Flags and Six Flags before Disneyworld. Think of birthdays like this. You will always tend to try to top the last birthday so don't take your three year old to Disneyworld without considering you're going to have to get passports to go to Jamaica or Europe or something once you've set that precedent. And you may have more than one child, so think about "remember what you did for ....'s birthday?". There is a limit. Be kind to other parents. Maybe you should get together with your friends and discuss this subject before susie's mom has a princess party for her at the Disney on Ice performance and you're scrambling for something to top that!
Enough on this, just a final summation and admonition: Think about the long term, not just this year or this child. Think of other parents perhaps less fortunate who may well be pressured to go into debt to satisfy their little susie.
And one idea - as kids get older, try doing "giving" things for birthdays, such as organizing a yard cleanup for a little widow in your church or town, or picking up trash at a park and having pizza afterward. You'd be amazed at how memorable such a party would be, and not just to the kids and your wallet. Let your faith shine, especially to your kids. We tend, at least I do, to profess a faith that too quickly gets tossed aside when such things are facing us. Be creative
why every mom should spend a day with me
Every day, moms come in and it is obvious that they think they are the only moms with the concerns they have. Whether it is an illness or a behavior problem, to them it seems that their kid is the only one with the problem or illness. Many problems are not things moms admit to each other at the gym or the soccer field or at school or work with other moms - things like bedwetting or suspected depression or drug use in a teenager, or a toddler whose fits are bringing her to tears. To show weakness in our world today is considered poor form. To not have all the answers and all things under control in your world is somehow a sin.
So, if it weren't for the almighty privacy laws, which could probably be waived under the right conditions, I wish moms would spend just one day with me. Some might need more, some less. But about the 3rd checkup where the baby isn't sleeping or is sleeping with the parents or the toddler keeps getting up and coming into the parents' room or the child is always sick when he goes to his dad's house or the grandma is driving her crazy pressuring her about the potty training or the child not eating or...you get the picture. I think it would be enlightening for them. Freeing in the way that finding out other people struggle with the same problems and thoughts that you do is freeing. This is not to say that I can solve the problems, but as I get older I realize that the acknowledgment of the existence of the problem and that it may suck, but it's shared by many others, is better than a quick fix. The visiting mom may gain insight from another mom's ideas, or have an idea about the problem that the other hasn't considered.
It's just an idea, one that may never materialize, but I think there's merit in the thought. Parent groups meeting after hours meet some of the need. But so many "regular" people don't come to those, only those who recognize or admit they have big problems, and are willing to seek help from others. I would love to have well child check counseling sessions for different age groups as a group format, to teach and answer questions and let the moms answer each other's questions. Just an idea.
So, if it weren't for the almighty privacy laws, which could probably be waived under the right conditions, I wish moms would spend just one day with me. Some might need more, some less. But about the 3rd checkup where the baby isn't sleeping or is sleeping with the parents or the toddler keeps getting up and coming into the parents' room or the child is always sick when he goes to his dad's house or the grandma is driving her crazy pressuring her about the potty training or the child not eating or...you get the picture. I think it would be enlightening for them. Freeing in the way that finding out other people struggle with the same problems and thoughts that you do is freeing. This is not to say that I can solve the problems, but as I get older I realize that the acknowledgment of the existence of the problem and that it may suck, but it's shared by many others, is better than a quick fix. The visiting mom may gain insight from another mom's ideas, or have an idea about the problem that the other hasn't considered.
It's just an idea, one that may never materialize, but I think there's merit in the thought. Parent groups meeting after hours meet some of the need. But so many "regular" people don't come to those, only those who recognize or admit they have big problems, and are willing to seek help from others. I would love to have well child check counseling sessions for different age groups as a group format, to teach and answer questions and let the moms answer each other's questions. Just an idea.
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