Dear Santa…Please Keep My Family Safe

Last updated on March 16th, 2021 at 02:52 pm

Every year children all across the country and the world make lists to Santa. Wishes for new bikes and dolls and don’t forget the very latest toy. Childhood wishes and childhood dreams. Every year though children are poisoned by holiday plants; are electrocuted by holiday decorations. Parents die in drunk-driving collisions.

As a paramedic my partner and I responded one Christmas morning to an unknown medical. When we arrived we walked past a Christmas tree completely surrounded by presents as well as two young children eagerly awaiting both parents arrival so the day’s festivities could begin. The husband met us and led us to the master bedroom. Mom was dead- had died several hours earlier. The holidays are hard times for many people even people with love, and family and friends. Some people make choices during the holiday they might not make during other times of the year. There was nothing we could do and not a more helpless feeling we could feel.

What’s amazing to me is that this call was over 20 years ago. I had no other involvement that what I stated yet I still remember it- every Christmas season. The children would be grown by now. I bet that they too still remember. I bet they still feel different about Christmas than do many of their friends.

I bet if those kids could go back in time their wishes would simply be to have Mom with them for many more years to come. So please place safety at the very top of your Santa list. As adults we need to assure the health and safety of our kids and we can’t afford a break over the holiday season.

The lyrics of one of my favorite holiday songs perhaps say it best.

My Grown Up Christmas List

….”As children we believed
The grandest sight to see
Was something shiny
Wrapped beneath the tree

But heaven only knows
That packages and bows
Can never heal
A hurting human soul

No more lives torn apart
That wars would never start
And time would heal all hearts
And everyone would have a friend
And right would always win
And love would never end

Oh, This is my grown up Christmas list”

Mindful Meditation for Families – Calm the Chaos

Last updated on March 16th, 2021 at 02:57 pm

One path toward shifting your thoughts, particularly your judgmental or negative thoughts is through sustained non-judgmental attention or meditation. Meditation is the experience of sustaining one’s focus on a thought, word, sensation or sound in order to calm the mind. Mindful meditation is the act of calming your mind and body through non-judgmental sustained attention.

If you are prone to rumination, negative thinking or catastrophizing, mindful meditation is a skill you may wish to explore. If you find that you are overwhelmed with work, life, people, finances, holidays or parenting cultivating a sense of peace and calm, developing more neutral thoughts, and appreciating what you have in the moment will likely help decrease your experience of stress. Health benefits abound for families.

Let’s say you are ready to feel better, to think more positively and to feel less distressed. Begin by simply adding ten minutes of mindful meditation to your day. You can do it in the morning right when you wake up, in the evening before you go to sleep or anytime you feel fidgety, anxious, overwhelmed, sad, angry or depressed. Meditation can take place anywhere, in the mall, in the swimming pool, or in your car. You need not “go somewhere” to meditate. Meditate where ever you are.

Start with your “Beginner’s Mind” allowing yourself to relax into the experience as though you have never been in this moment before.

1. Sit in an upright position with your ribs aligned over your hips and your shoulders aligned over your ribs. (I prefer to lie down, you can as well, if you wish)
2. Close your eyes to reduce distraction and breath.
3. 1-2-3 in, 1-2-3 out, in through your nose out through your nose or mouth.
4. Bring your focus into your breath, feel your breath moving in and out, see your breath, color your breath, feel your breath oxygenate your blood and feed the cells of your body.
5. When your mind wanders in a relaxed manner, bring your focus back to your breath.
6. Feel your body relax, experience your minds reflections.

For children who are restless, consider having them lay with a warm blanket or a heating pad. Often the warmth and containment in space help them relax. Music from Stressfreekids.com is also a great help. In fact, I use their stories and sounds in my office regularly.

After about fifteen minutes you may slowly open your eyes and note how you feel calm, refreshed and ready for what life has in store for you. Over time you may choose to extend your mindful moments. You may choose to meditate up to 45 minutes a day. You may choose to meditate or pay mindful attention when you grocery shop, pump gas, or talk with your neighbor. Feel the intimacy in your relationships grow as you give your conversational experiences with friends, your undivided mindful attention.

You may bring mindfulness into your parenting by increasing your undistracted, sustained attention with your children. Through mindfulness, you will naturally experience being more “present” with your children. You may lose your keys less often and even yell less, as your mindful experiences allow you to live more peacefully and non-judgmentally in the moment.

Peaceful moments to you.

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For books and resources you may choose to visit The UCLA Semel Institute and The UCSD Center for Mindfulness.

Teach Gratitude & Give Your Child a Healthier, Happier Life

Last updated on December 20th, 2020 at 04:09 pm

Research shows us that adults who are grateful report having more energy, fewer health problems, and a greater feeling of well-being than those who complain. Most studies show that the more gratitude we show the healthier and happier we are.

The same goes for children. Children who express gratitude are more appreciative, more empathetic, kinder, more enthusiastic and generally happier. Grateful children look outside themselves and understand that others have needs too. They are more polite, usually better behaved and generally more pleasant to be around.

Kids who are not taught gratitude are forever disappointed and fight feelings of entitlement. They struggle with feelings that nothing will ever be good enough for them.

As parents, “Teaching our Children Gratitude” should be at the top of our to-do list. It doesn’t come naturally to our children. It is learned. Who better to teach, than us?

The first thing we might need to do is stop doing some of the things that parents have been doing for years. Avoid pointing out to our children that they are more blessed than others. That doesn’t teach them to be grateful. When it comes to meals, don’t tell them “you should be grateful for your food and eat it, kids in other countries are starving”. This won’t work either.

Instead…

We need to model gratitude ourselves. We must live lives of gratitude if we want our children to really learn to be grateful. That means they need to see us take care of others, including our spouse, write thank you notes, say “please” and “thank you” and show empathy. That means we need to complain less, criticize less, and strive to point out the positives, not the negative, in situations, and in people. This includes our children and spouses. We need to refrain from complaining about our children (and spouses), instead tell them how grateful we are for them. We need to show gratitude for adversity too. Remember, children will, for the most part, do what their parents do. That is why gratitude has to start with parents, in our homes.

Provide your family opportunities to take care of others. Start by encouraging your children to take care of other family members, and then help them find ways to actively take care of others outside the family. Let them help you as you take care of others. They will learn by example. The goal is to give them “grateful eyes”, so they begin to foresee the need before they have to be told.

Give your children responsibility. We are always more grateful for things when we have to do them ourselves. The same applies to children. Give them appropriate responsibilities. They will realize the effort and energy it takes to accomplish them, and become more grateful for the people around them that do things for them. (Like their mom and dad.)

Teach your children to write Thank you Notes. Insist that this be done. Teach them that it is part of life. Organize a thank you note station in your home that is always stocked with papers, envelopes, stamps and crayons, etc. (Let your children see you sitting there often also). Start when they are very small by having them draw “thank you pictures” and then you write the words to go with it. Then move on to notes that have most of the words filled in. Have children write what it is they are thankful for and sign their name. By the age of 7 or 8, it shouldn’t be a problem for them to write the entire notes themselves. Don’t worry about perfection. Worry that they are remembering to do it. And doing it.

Teach your children to be grateful for adversity. When things are hard, or uncertain, or don’t go as planned, we need to teach our children to be grateful. To recognize the blessings that comes from hard things. We don’t want to teach, “we are luckier, or better than someone else”. Instead help children see what can be learned, and how we can take what we learn into other situations to help others and ourselves.

Say “No”. Our children don’t need everything they ask for. It is important for us to be reasonable and say “No”. We also have to be careful rewarding our children for everything. We want them to do good because it is the right thing to do, and not because they get something, like a new toy or money.

Role Play. Practice saying “please” and “thank you” with your children. Role play situations (grandma gives you a new toy, or someone pays you a compliment). During the role play, talk about how others feel when we show them gratitude. Remember, children aren’t thinking about everyone else. They are thinking about themselves, so we have to teach them.

Point out the simple things. Teach children to be grateful for the creations around them, the seasons, the sunshine, the falling leaves and the rain. Children will quickly understand that there is beauty all around, and that it has come from something much bigger than we are. Celebrate creations. Jump in the leaves, splash in the puddles, and feel the sun on our skin.

With Thanksgiving on our minds, it is a great time to encourage gratitude in our children.

By starting new traditions now, we can hope to encourage gratitude year round. Here are some simply Thanksgiving Traditions that can help our families “think grateful”.

Make a Gratitude Chain

Cut long strips of paper in different colors. Each day have family members, or help little family members, write down something they are thankful for. Take your stapler or tape and hook the strips together to form a chain. Hang it where the family can see it everyday and watch it grow. On Thanksgiving have each person read what they have written throughout the month.

Fill a Gratitude Jar

Any jar will work. Cut up strips of paper and round up some pens and crayons. Put the jar in an obvious place in your home. Everyday until Thanksgiving, have everyone in the family write or draw a picture of something they are thankful for that day and drop it in the jar. Help small children. On Thanksgiving day, pull all the strips out and read them as a family. Talk about how it felt to show increased gratitude all month long.

Have Grateful Hands

Once a week, throughout the month of November, trace the hand of everyone in the family. Sit down every Monday and write down 5 things you have each been thankful for that week. We like to write one in each of the fingers, like feathers. Tape the hands to your kitchen wall throughout the month so everyone can see them. Use the hands as a centerpiece for your Turkey Table. You could even laminate them after the holiday and post all the old ones each year as your children grow. They will love seeing how their hands, and their gratitude has grown.

Gratitude Tree

Head outside and find a few sticks and twigs. Put them in a jar and cover them with some rocks to hold them in place to make your own “tree”. Cut a bunch of leaves out of “fall colored” paper ( or just use tags, or small slips of paper). We have even used real leaves. As you write down what you are thankful for on your leaves, tape them, or tie them to your tree. Use your gratitude tree as your dinner centerpiece on Thanksgiving day

Thankful Tablecloth (My Favorite)

Find a big tablecloth. Or make one the size of your table. You will want a material that has a tight weave and that is smooth. On Thanksgiving Day, trace each person’s hand on the table cloth and write in the middle of the hand something they are thankful for and the year. Fabric markers work best. Each year, on the same cloth, enact the same ritual. Your family will love not only seeing how their hands have grown, but they will love to see what they were thankful for in the past.

Once thanksgiving is over, don’t let the gratitude stop.

• Each night over dinner, have family members express three things they are thankful for that day.
• Encourage your kids to keep a gratitude journal. Help them write down one thing they are thankful for each week. Or, have little ones draw pictures of things they are grateful for. Encourage them to move up to every night.
• Clear a “grateful space” on your fridge. Throughout the year, post anything your family members are thankful for. Encourage family members to contribute. It can become an everyday reminder of the people and blessings your family is thankful for.

Above all things, start by focusing on our own behavior. This in and of itself will help model and teach our children gratitude.

Keeping Kids Safe: Common (& Not So Common) Choking Hazards

Last updated on December 20th, 2020 at 04:09 pm

Keeping kids safe is top on the minds of most parents, but sometimes hazards are just not that obvious. Introducing foods to infants and toddlers can be great fun, but it also brings opportunities for danger. A little knowledge about how to avoid choking can go a long way in avoiding serious emergencies.

I wrote in a previous post about using pixie stix to get kids to take their medicine. I am going to co-opt this old favorite treat for our lesson about choking hazards. What does a powdered candy have to do with choking hazards, you might ask?

The text and photo from this blog demonstrates that kids can make nearly anything into a choking hazard:

“Looks like fun, right? Probably. But a tube of powdered candy of that size might as well be a loaded gun. It’s frickin dangerous. I know.

When I was thirteen and tried putting the whole mega-Pixie Stick worth of flavored sugar in my mouth, I laughed and inhaled and the moisture in my throat hardened the sugar into a moist sugar ball lodged squarely in my trachea.

One my friends knew the Heimlich maneuver and managed to dislodge the bright blue coagulation into a psychedelic pool of vibrantly scarlet regurgitated Big Red Cola. It was the [last] time I touched either Pixie Stix or Big Red.

It wasn’t my time but I think, when I’m ready, that is exactly how I want to go.”

I love this post for several reasons…

1. This photo is a pediatrician’s nightmare.
2. That someone could avoid impaling himself with the sharp plastic tube but instead manage to obstruct his trachea with powdered candy is a mark of real talent. It’s amazing that we have any children left unharmed.
3. I love the word “frickin” and will try to use it as often as possible in this blog and in my real life. Not to worry, I will avoid using it around kids.
4. Speaking of near-death-by-food, I almost poked my eye out with a loaf of bread once. That story will probably never make it into this blog, so contact me directly if you’re interested. It is as embarrassing as it sounds….
5. Though the Olympics was more than a year ago, swimming boys still make me think of Michael Phelps. I love Michael Phelps. I’m not the only one.

Seriously though, while pixie stix are not usually cited as top choking hazards, choking is a real hazard for children, and food is the number one culprit.

It’s amazing what a mostly-toothless little one can manage to eat. Starting at about 9 months of age, babies can begin to manage foods of a variety of textures and shapes. But remember, kids less than 4 years old may not chew, grind, or gum food well and are at great risk for choking. The most common choking hazards are round firm foods (hot dogs, grapes, nuts, popcorn), and sticky/gooey foods like peanut butter or sticky snacks and candies. Chunks of uncooked vegetables and fruits can also make their way down the wrong tube. Candy and gum top the list of foods that send choking children to the emergency room.

Tips for Parents:

How can you prevent choking? Here are a few tips…

• Take an infant and child CPR class: if you did not take one before your child was born, try to do so by 6 months of age, before your little one starts solids. If you have taken the class, review the course materials as a little refresher.
• To avert the need to perform these life-saving maneuvers on your child, avoid potentially hazardous food until your child is four to five years old. Cook foods well or cut firm foods into pieces less than 1/2 inch in size.
• Give your child small portions, adding to his plate as he finishes.
• Make (and enforce) a household rule that all food is eaten at the table. In a chair. And no eating while running (with scissors). Or playing. Or lying down. Or in a car (or a bus or a taxicab or hot air balloon).
• Limit distractions (tv, pets, games, clowns) at mealtime.
• Watch out for “chipmunking”: hoarding food in the cheeks of an eager eater. Kids really do this.
• Keep helpful older sibs from feeding the little one. They will not provide the same level of supervision that you will.
• And most importantly, NEVER leave a young child alone while eating.

Useful Links:

• For more ideas on avoiding choking on foods and other objects, check out this tip sheet from the AAP
• And since food is not the only thing that your kids can choke on, Safe Kids Worldwide gives good information about recalls on toys and tips for avoiding choking on toys.

Special Needs Kids Are All Around Us – Please Teach Acceptance

Last updated on December 20th, 2020 at 04:08 pm

Maybe I am sensitized to the topic, but it seems like everywhere I turn these days people are talking about special needs kids.  Sometimes it’s sad, like the Canadian boy who took his own life, and sometimes it’s joyful, like the radio DJ who asked, “What can we do better to help kids with special needs in our community?”

Clearly kids with special needs is a hot topic. I hope this is a trend toward acceptance.

Additionally just this past weekend, U.S. President-elect Joseph Biden Jr. said the following in his acceptance speech: “We must make the promise of the country real for everybody — no matter their race, their ethnicity, their faith, their identity, or their disability.”  What followed was a deluge of appreciation on Twitter – it was the first time a President or Prime Minister had included the disabled in their call for a better future.

Each time you see someone who is different you have a chance to teach your child that the person has rights in our society just by saying hello to them, holding a door open or even just smiling. Actions really do speak louder than words, and it may give you a chance to examine your own attitudes and prejudices.

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Editor’s Note:  The federal funding law for autism, was renewed in 2019 for another five years as the Autism CARES Act of 2019. The original law was signed by President George W. Bush and the 2011 and 2014 bills were signed by President Obama and the 2019 law by President Trump. Total funding under the act should exceed $369 million by 2024 for autism research, services, training and monitoring by the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Health Resources and Services Administration.

Taking Time to Celebrate Your Non Allergic Child

Last updated on November 8th, 2020 at 02:43 pm

Its funny how having a child with food allergies suddenly changes every aspect of your life. You no longer have the ability to be spontaneous- every meal, every trip and every outing has to be planned to a certain degree. Foods are checked and double checked and when one person in the family has food allergies, the rest of the family is a part of it too. But while you are trying to keep up with everyone’s safety, you also need to keep up with everyone’s individuality as well.

Everybody needs a little one-on-one time and this is especially true when you have children that have an allergic sibling. Being able to disconnect from the world of food allergies is important- it’s wonderful to be educated about their brother’s or sister’s allergies but it’s not their responsibility to be expected to live within the food allergy shadow. Let them understand food allergies, let them learn to help, educate and keep others safe but also let them see the rest of the world through their eyes as well.

As difficult as it may be to find the time, it is important to make sure that each child gets that bonding time as an individual. Is it possible, even in today’s hustle and bustle? Yes!

• Give special time  Create something that is special for that child- this could be a phrase that you use when you say good night, it could be a certain way of hugging or even a favorite story that you read together. Chances are that these memories will be part of routines that your children will share with their children in the future.
• Quality, not quantity  In reality, we all understand that plans tend to change beyond our control. Don’t dwell on how much time you put aside for each child but do make an effort to utilize the time that you do have focused on them (not your phone, not your computer, not even your spouse).
• Remember to praise  Children respond to positive feedback more than negative feedback so tell them they make you proud! Make a small fuss (or a big one), hang up that picture of the cat with three heads and declare that moment in time as stupendous. Your child will shine and they should be encouraged too.
• Take time off, alone  Nothing shows your child’s personality more than time alone with you- truly alone. Parents often don’t get to see that sparkle when their child talks around other siblings- they can tend to feel overpowered or not as important to be heard. A great example is when I was able to spend two days with my daughter while dad and son went away- I saw a side of my daughter that made me realize I need to do more with her (aka girl’s time out) details here.
• Laugh  Laughter is the easiest way to stay close to your child, always. Studies have shown that laughing reduces stress, releases endorphins (what makes you feel good), lowers your blood pressure and (the best thing of all) it’s FREE! Not sold? Next time your non allergic child is showing signs of allergy-overload tickle away and see how much a good belly aching laughter session clears the mood.

Food allergies can be stressful for any family but they don’t have to be. With proper knowledge, sharing of experiences and family-oriented cooking segments, food allergies can be used as something to bring everyone together during the process. Just as food allergies can be unique, your children are too. Remember to be as vigilant with your affection as you are with your safekeeping. Being safe is doing a job right but showing love is being an accomplished parent.

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