Measuring Up – 2

I asked a question in my previous post “Does your child measure up?” Now, I would like to rephrase that question and ask, “Do you measure your child against other children and for what purpose?”

My son, Jeremiah, is my first child. He took his first unaided steps at 9 months of age, which is really young. This happened soon after watching his 3rd cousin, who was 6 months older, walking. (I searched on Google to find out exactly how they were related.) However, sometimes he would wet his bed up until around 6 years of age. He played hard all day and slept deeply at night, so deeply that he couldn’t wake himself up when he needed to urinate, not even when we took him ourselves. Was something wrong with him? No, and he eventually outgrew this problem. Some things just take time and don’t need medical attention or parental pressure.

The same morning that I pondered on this topic, I began to read the 1st book of a trilogy that my daughter, Samantha, borrowed from the library. The book is called, The Wind Singer, by William Nicholson and is the 1st of the Wind on Fire trilogy. I haven’t been able to put these books down. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw that the theme in The Wind Singer is about the lie behind measuring people by using exams on certain subjects. The people in the story are living inside a large city and are tested every year to prove their intelligence and their worth from as early as 2 years of age. (By the way, these books are not for sensitive readers as the author doesn’t sugarcoat his storytelling, although I do recommend them.)

My thoughts on this subject are best expressed through an encounter I had with a near stranger. Earlier this year, we had a visitor whom we hardly knew. For some reason I was talking with our guest about the education system. I told him how school systems are only able to measure certain types of intelligences, like mathematics and language, but how there are many children sitting inside these schools who might be good in other areas. As an example, I suggested that a child who is good at gardening would not be recognized in his or her area of intelligence. Our guest then told me that his son struggled in school, but was now happy as an adult doing landscaping.

I hadn’t known this about his son before the conversation, but I don’t believe the example I gave was a coincidence. I believe the Holy Spirit was speaking through me even though I wasn’t aware of the significance of my words until he shared his own son’s experience. If you would like to read more about the Holy Spirit then you can start by reading my post in my blog, Happy Moms, Happy Homes called “Discovering Your Potential – Part 3 of 5.”

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Listen to Your Child

I’m sure that we’ve all heard how important it is to listen to our children. Usually it’s in light of the fact that they will eventually become teenagers and the teen years can be challenging. So, if you haven’t been listening when they were small then they won’t talk to you when they’re big. It’s a good message, but not quite the angle I’m taking today.

I’ve already done a couple of posts on the value of listening to your child and I’m sure I’ll be writing more in the future. This time I’m going to share from my own mistakes with Amanda, specifically on two different occasions. Both times I thought she was just exaggerating. The job of a mom can be tedious and so it’s easy to want to brush off complaints made by one’s child as being no big deal. Both times I was slow to respond to Amanda’s complaints and both times it was a big deal. My bad.

The first time happened in 2010. I was dressing Amanda and as I was pulling on her pants, she began to protest loudly. I was thinking, what could possibly be the problem? So, I told her to settle down, because I had to dress her. This was me being slow to respond. When she didn’t calm down, I took her pants off in frustration. Something fell to the floor, but it took some investigating to actually find out what it was. It turned out to be a bumble bee. The strange thing is that it had never made a sound. I called my husband for help and we got it out the window. I was shocked to find six stings on her leg and I immediately applied sting ointment. I later googled it and discovered that bumble bees, unlike honey bees, can sting more than once.

At this point, you might be wondering how it got there. I also wondered the same thing. We hang all our washing outside to dry unless it’s raining. We live in South Africa and electricity is very expensive here, so washing lines are standard at most homes. It had to have gotten trapped inside her pant leg when we brought the washing in off the line the night before and since it never made a sound, I never knew it was there.

The second time I was slow to respond to Amanda happened just a few days ago. We went for a short, fifteen minute walk with the dog and were about six minutes away from our house when she complained that her shoes were hurting her. To protect her feet from thorns and such, we make sure she has something on her feet. It was a warm day, so she wasn’t wearing socks. I figured we were almost home, so she could endure a little bit more. She didn’t say anything after that, so I thought I had made the right decision. I forgot that little people have very fragile skin. Once we were home, I was shocked to find that her skin had chafed open at her one heel and the other one was quite red. Again, my bad.

I hope that you can learn from my mistakes and be quicker to respond to your child when he or she complains about something. Yah, I know, kids do a lot of complaining. It’s part of growing up. But, the thing is, they might be complaining for the right reasons. Life is full of interruptions. Allow yourself to be interrupted. Your kid is more important than the flow of the day.

P.S. She liked picking out her Disney Princess Band-Aids. Ariel was the winner.

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Yikes! Pinworms!

The other day I mentioned that Amanda had a nosebleed episode at night just before she went to sleep. Nosebleeds can be quite common in children, so we didn’t let it worry us. We just kept an eye on her. The day after, she had another nosebleed incident and she also complained about a swollen lower lip.

She had been to the doctor about a week prior to the nosebleeds. We had her checked because she had been complaining about her stomach and discomfort in her private areas. We had noticed inconstancy with her urine and constipation. It seemed to the doctor that the constipation was the only thing causing the other problems and so we had nothing further to go on.

With these latest developments, I had a feeling that she was in fact showing signs of having an illness, but what it was I did not know. I went on to Google and typed in her symptoms and came across this fantastic website called (PBC) Pregnancy and Baby Care. I went on to their "Toddler" page.  The sore lower lip helped narrow down my search and what I discovered is that Amanda most probably had pinworms. One of the symptoms mentioned on the site was that toddler’s infected with pinworms can have behavior changes. Amanda was particularly stroppy these past few days and she got into trouble for her bad attitude a few times. Now we just blame it on the worms! (If only we could always blame our negative behavior on something/someone else!)

My husband went to the pharmacist and now we are all on de-worming medication. I know it’s not the nicest of topics, but these things happen even to parents like us who insist that everyone wash their hands regularly, especially after going to the bathroom and before eating.

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