The Mom Crowd

My husband and I are saying “no” to a lot of invitations lately. A few months after my first daughter was born I read “Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child” by Dr. Weissbluth and the book recommends maintaining a consistent bedtime every night. For the most part we do keep bedtime consistent. She goes to bed within 30 minutes of the same time every night. Then along came baby number two.

I love how newborns sleep through practically anything and sleep anywhere. Of course, I don’t love their short erratic sleep schedule. Eventually newborns establish a bedtime on their own as they get older. Now at 7 months my boy starts giving sleep cues just before 7:00 p.m. and he is done for the day. He is ready to be nursed and laid down.

Maintaining a routine and a consistent bedtime has become even more important for us now that we have two kids. We realized this when we kept them up a little later than usual at a friend’s house. My 2 year old could be entertained while at the house, but once we got home she fought being washed in the bath and cried a lot before she fell asleep. She was a bear the next day and tired at Mother’s Day Out. That same evening I was holding and bouncing my son to keep him content. He kept bobbing his head on my boob to nurse. Then he screamed in the car on the way home. My children were put to bed 1.5 hours after their usual bedtime. My husband and I definitely agreed that the cost of keeping our children up late wasn’t worth the price.

Now in the evenings only one of us will go out at a time. We could hire a babysitter, but that isn’t practical all the time. It is certainly a special treat for both my husband and I to be out together past 7:00 p.m. Many times we have to say no to events that start at 7:00 p.m. It is just the phase of life we are in. I know it won’t be this way forever.

On the other hand, we love the early bed time. We have a great time hanging together around the house and creating date nights at home. I appreciate the break from my children. I also love that my children are well rested and behave better the next day. Our whole family is better for them getting their sleep.

How about you? Do you notice a difference in your child’s behavior if they have a consistent bedtime? Have you had to turn down invitations, because they are past your child’s bedtime?

*P.S. That is my boy in the photo. He fell asleep eating his teething biscuit at dinner! Maybe he wasn’t that well rested that day. LOL.

Christy’s post last week got me thinking about our family dynamic.  My husband works close to home (and even from home, occasionally), but he also does a LOT of traveling for his PhD studies.  He’ll be gone for anywhere from ten days to twelve weeks at a time.  The traveling can be difficult for him, with frequent travels through international airports (and their security), sleeping on couches at friends’ houses, and eating out every day (which he hates doing).  I’ve also witnessed how it has affected our children.

It’s hard on us when our husbands have to leave on business (or TDY), but it can even be harder on the kids.  When kids are young, they have little or no concept of time.  Saying “daddy will be home in ten days” or something along those lines just doesn’t register with them.  The first time my husband left us to do some PhD work at his university (in another country), he was gone for over two months.  Ten weeks?  Seventy days?  How was I supposed to explain this?  My four year old could only count to twenty!  Fortunately, I have a dear friend who was stationed overseas a couple of years ago, and during that time, her husband was deployed three times.  Her kids were also very young at the time, and she gave me some very helpful advice to get me and the kids through those very difficult weeks away.

Make a “daddy” book: Create a mini photo album filled with pictures of dad playing and interacting with the kids.  Let the kids carry them around, or prop it up next to their bed at night, so daddy’s right there with them. Some parents have put pictures of their spouses on the kids’ pillowcases (which you can order from Snapfish).

“Count” down the days until dad gets home: Whenever my husband leaves, whether it be for a few days or weeks, we create a Jellybean Countdown Container.  As you can probably guess, we take an old jar and fill it with jellybeans, and the number of treats corresponds with the number of days that my husband is gone.  The kids get one jellybean out of the jar every day, and that way, they know that daddy’s coming home when the jar is empty!

Let the kids use things that smell like dad: I would let my son use dad’s cologne if he wanted to smell like daddy.  Just dab a little on his wrist or spray his shirt, and he was good to go.  I, too, would occasionally use his cologne, spray one of his flannel shirts, and sleep in it at night.

Give them “kisses” from daddy: As an extra comfort measure, I would fill a jar with Hershey’s Kisses and place it on top of the counter.  Any time the kids got hurt or really sad, they would get a “kiss” from dad.

Skype before bed: If your husband’s involved with the kids’ bedtime routines, arrange for him to call around bedtime.  He can tell the kids a story (or, in our case, my son can tell HIM a story), sing them a song, etc.  If your husband is in a place where he can’t do this, have him record a few videos reading the kids’ favorite books.  Then, play the videos at night so daddy can read them a story before bed.

Does your husband travel a lot for work?  How do you handle this time in your house?

Related posts:

Trina’s post about being a (temporary) single mom

Disney and PBS recently aired two new shows in their fall lineup. Animals on wheels have joined the playhouse and dinosaurs on trains lead in Sesame Street.

Jungle Junction

In Jungle Junction a community of animals with wheels as feet live in a road filled jungle and solve problems together. I really enjoy how the show interacts with preschoolers asking them questions and its intentional education. In the episode of “The Treasure of Jungle Junction” I heard them count several times and learn how to share one item.  As a mother of a 2 year old I appreciate the counting reinforcement.

The stories are interesting for both parents and adults. The animation and colors of the jungle are pleasant to watch. I also like the non-American accents of the characters. My daughter was entertained while watching the show and I look forward to letting her get to know the characters of Jungle Junction better. Grade: B

Dinosaur Train

Dinosaur Train combines preschoolers’ fascination of trains and dinosaurs. The series follows, Buddy, a Tyrannosaurus Rex who is adopted by a Pterandon family. Pterandons are a flying dinosaur. Buddy asks lots of questions and hypothesizes about nature. His family uses the dinosaur train to travel through the Mesozoic era to meet different dinosaurs and answer Buddy’s questions.

I was super excited about this Jim Henson Production and set my DVR for the first week of shows. My 2 year old daughter recently fell in love with trains and we had been reading the book, “Dinosaur Train” by John Steven Gurney every night. She practically has the book memorized. I knew before the show aired that the show was not like the book, but I still had high expectations.

Dinosaur Train is a great show if your preschooler is into dinosaurs. The show is not interactive, but tells a slow moving story.  Preschoolers learn a lot about nature and dinosaurs in the Mesozoic Era, but not much else. Overall I would say the show is average. Grade: C (The theme song gets a B with its funky country western vibe.)

What do you think of these 2 shows? Do your kids love them or are they ambivalent?

Studies have shown that fostering a second language in your child has extremely positive cognitive and cultural advantages. However, as most of us live in a mono-linguistic society, it can be difficult to start and maintain language learning.  Less than 10% of all Americans can speak a second language fluently.  Also, the amount of exposure to a second (or third) language will vary drastically from place to place.  As a former resident of South Texas and Southern California, I probably had much more exposure to Spanish than, say, someone from Caribou, Maine.  Now that I’m a mom, and I live overseas in a non English-speaking environment, I’ve seen firsthand some of the trials and triumphs of learning another language – the things that work, and the things that don’t.  For the mom who doesn’t want to wait until high school to get her child started with a new language, I’d like to share a little bit of my experience in this area.

Educational Programming

I’m sure many of us wonder, how much are all these hours of watching “Dora the Explorer” really helping my child learn a second language? There are a variety of opinions on this subject, with shows like Dora the Explorer and Go Diego Go! continually gaining popularity.  Some linguists think that these shows should not offer the English alongside Spanish, and that by doing so, they are actually inhibiting a child’s language learning ability.  Their reasoning is children don’t think like adults when it comes to language learning.  Kids can hear the word vaca, for example, and automatically associate it with a cow without hearing it reinforced in English.  Others believe that these shows are a great introduction to foreign language, and give parents an opportunity to interact with their child in another language.  I tend to side with this opinion.  My son has learned some basic Spanish skills from these shows, which is helpful when he interacts with my husband’s side of the family.  While this is by no means a complete education, it gives the child a great chance to learn the different sounds that exist in another language and to construct a few basic sentences in that language.

Music

When we first moved overseas, I was so frustrated at how resistant my son was to learning Arabic.  Then, his teacher at preschool had the brilliant idea of loaning us a CD with some children’s songs in Arabic.  My son LOVES them!  He can do all the dance moves that go along with the songs, and he has learned body parts, animals and verbs by listening to one CD.  He’s even starting to teach his sister some of the things he knows.

Tutoring

For the parent who wants to do more in-depth learning, tutors are available to help kids learn another language.  These programs usually take place after school for an hour or two a week, and they can involve intense, one-on-one language learning or group learning.  Ask the head of the language department at your local high school (or university) if there are any programs like that available in your area.  For us, tutoring has proven extremely valuable.  We are NOT native speakers here, and while we can help our son a bit, he doesn’t really like speaking with us in Arabic – and to be honest, he doesn’t learn very much!  Having a native speaker who talks to him only in Arabic has really improved his communication skills.

Language Education Programs

Did you know that there are foreign language immersion schools in the US?  Right now, there are over 200 of these special schools located throughout the United States.  Some teach completely in a foreign language, some have some classes in English and some in the foreign language, and some are “two-way” programs with a mixture of native and non-native English speakers learning from each other as well as their teachers.

Being Creative

Sometimes, we have to step out of our comfort zone to get this going and try to get those brain muscles working, too!  There are places that offer mom & child language learning programs to help those of us that want to take an active role in the language learning process.  For those of us that have a bilingual family, having each parent speak in their native tongue can cause language learning to be a little slow in the beginning, but has tremendous benefits long term.  If you feel comfortable doing this, ask abuela or abuelo to speak with your child only in Spanish.  I knew someone who made a deal with her neighbor – my friend spoke only English to her neighbor’s kids when they came over, and her neighbor spoke only Spanish to the kids when they were at her house.  Pretty neat, huh?  There are endless possibilities in this category if you want to get your child rolling with a second language!

Some more information:

Kids Source has a great FAQ page about the benefits of children learning a second language

Center for Applied Linguistics home page

Worry has been following me around lately.  I know how to combat it – I posted about praying for peace mere weeks ago – yet I am still being pestered with a fear about this or a worry about that.  It is so annoying!  And it’s a domino effect this time around; when one thing is resolved, another issue arises, giving my weary soul minimal rest in between.

At the moment, my worry is for my son.  He’s kinda accident-prone.  He’s a toddler, so saying he trips up on his own feet doesn’t mean that much.  But he does.  Trip up on his own two feet, that is.  Regularly.  This has resulted in some pretty nasty bumps on his head.  (People actually look surprised when they see he is bump-free.)  Last week, he fell on his face again, and the bump is an ugly combo of red, purple, blue and yellow.  I can’t tell you how many times I have prayed over his little head, yet I cannot shake the worry that comes with being his mom.  I seriously break down in sobs whenever he hurts himself.

Max Lucado’s latest book, Fearless, has a chapter about worrying for our kids’ safety.  He says,

We tend to forget this fact, regarding our children as “our” children, as though we have the final say in their health and welfare.  We don’t.  All people are God’s people, including the small people who sit at our tables.  Wise are the parents who regularly give their children back to God (58).

Lucado says we have two choices when faced with our childrens’ struggles (health or otherwise): to despair over what can happen, or to believe in Jesus’ power to love and care for them.  Now, I realize that a bump on my son’s head is small potatoes compared to what else can happen to him – maybe compared to what has happened in your child’s life.  Yet the despair I have felt is very real, and dealing with it is not easy.

As one might expect, prayer is the key remedy.

Prayer is the saucer into which parental fears are poured to cool.  Jesus says so little about parenting, makes no comments about spanking, breast-feeding, sibling rivalry, or schooling.  Yet his actions speak volumes about prayer.  Each time a parent prays, Christ responds.  His big message to moms and dads?  Bring your children to me.  Raise them in a greenhouse of prayer (60).

I believe in this advice, and I have been stubbornly giving my fears about my son’s injuries to Jesus, again and again, each time I feel them.  Even though I wish I could put the boy in a plastic bubble and roll him everywhere in a cocoon of safety, I turn to God to increase my trust in Him.  I involve my kids in this praying, too, saying prayers aloud while Eli plays and inviting both of my children to pray aloud for his head during bedtime prayers.

If my worries are going to persist, my prayers must persist as well.

Jesus, thank you for keeping watch over our children as they come and go.  Thank you for standing beside us as a protective shade.  Thank you for being our help.  We depend on you.  Amen.

What Psalms comfort you during your time of worry (mine was paraphrased above, Psalm 121)?  Is your prayer time proportionate to the time you spend worrying?  How do you work through your fears?