Leap Day for Frogs 28 February

Leap Day for Frogs

If we don’t have frogs, we’ll all croak!

Frogs were so much part of my every day when I was growing up. We used to hear them croaking away as soon as it was dark, and after it rained, there were always frogs jumping around in the garden. I always imagined them having some sort of a concert under the roots, leaves and trees. It was a comforting sound of the night. We don’t hear frogs croaking anymore.

Did you know that they’re a threatened species? When did you last hear or see a frog? Not only is it climate change that’s contributing to frogs disappearing, it’s chemicals and habitat destruction that’s interfering with reproduction.

Children are so focused on their smart-phones, i-pads and other AI gadgets. 

Leap Day for Frogs is happening on the 28^th February. If you want to read more about how this special day has come about, take a minute to google www.leapdayforfrogs.org.za

Find out where there is a wetland in your area and take your children your children to experience the mud, the reeds and learn more about amphibians.

Then turn to https://za.pinterest.com/margaret6614/amphibians-reptiles/?lp=true to get some ideas on fun things to make and bake with your children. If we don’t teach them about the environment, who will?

Teach your children about nature conservation by:

• Watching National Geographic and other nature channels
• Getting them to help you with recycling: paper, glass, plastic, tins, bottles and vegetable peels
• Let them help you in the garden or grow their own vegetable pots
• Find out about Nature Conservation Societies in your village or town
• Take them to the library where they can get books about nature
• Get older children interested in reading Gerald Durrell’s books e.g.

The New Noah

Island Zoo

Look at Zoos

My Favourite Animal Stories

Bedwetting

don’t tell anyone

Getting your toddler out of night-time nappies can be a mission – but it’s more serious when children are bed-wetter’s at school-going age. The latter can be symptomatic of a learning problem, bladder problems, weak muscle tone or even the first sign of diabetes (a grappling problem today).

If your child is normally dry at night and then starts bedwetting, trouble-shoot by eliminating some possibilities.

• What’s happening at school? Is your child being bullied, not coping with the school-curriculum or new teacher?

• Is your child constipated?

• Does your child have any symptoms of a bladder or urinary-tract infection?

• Has anything happened at home? A new baby, moving, couple separation or divorce, work issues, financial problems?

Emotional issues affect children too. Working couples are stretched for family time to listen to their children. Too often, when children have a problem, they don’t talk to their parents – or they tell-all at an inconvenient time (usually on the ride to school – or when its time for bed).

Here are a few suggestions:

• Make an appointment to see your family doctor just to make sure there are no medical or other underlying problems.  All being well …
• Make time to talk. You may need to follow this up with an appointment to see the school teacher
• Minimise liquids in the late afternoon and nothing to drink at bed-time (some people say that this makes no difference)
• Leave a night-light on
• Toilet your child when you go to bed (sometimes they sit fast asleep on the toilet - sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't).
• Invite a friend for a play-date (possibly a sleep-over too)
• When there are no physical, medical or emotional problems, bribery also works
• For sanity sake, cover the mattress with a plastic sheet.

 Luckily, this is a problem that most children outgrow. Some just take longer than others to do this.

Ante-natal care and Pregnancy Education Week

Pregnancy Education Week - Mommy-hood trophies

There are no ‘Grammy-awards’ for women who survive pregnancy, childbirth and breast-feeding, snotty-noses, potty-training and toddler-tantrums – at the cost of a slim waist, firm breasts and dainty calf-muscles. Rather, women who are wrung through this process emerge wearing droopy boobs, silver stretch-marks and a spare tyre.

This is “Pregnancy Education Week”. While we celebrate magic moments that make motherhood so worthwhile, let’s step back and think about how safe pregnancy and childbirth has become compared to when the word pregnant was whispered or disguised as ‘in the family way’. Travel writer, Carole Chester, writes the following in her book: ‘Traveller’s Treasury – New York’

“Doctor’s hardly touched Hiram’s life – but the deaths! Page after page of deaths. Letter after letter recording them line by line. The gravestones of wives and infant children haunt the cemeteries. Hiram was the first son of his father John’s first marriage; my great-grandfather, Amasa, was the second son of John’s second marriage; seven children by his first wife, eleven by his second; fourteen surviving to adulthood. There are 105 graveyards in Gloucester and 135 next-door in Burrillville, monuments to childbed fever, consumption, pneumonia, the epidemic diseases that raged the land, typhoid, smallpox, measles. For each husband, a tatter of wives – dead at twenty-three, at twenty-eight, and twenty-seven. To be a woman was an almost fatal early disease.”

Pretty scary stuff. Thanks to good ante-natal care today, pregnancy problems can be identified and treated before they become problematic. The focus of ‘Pregnancy Education Week’ is to make all women – irrespective of their social status, income, age and culture – aware if the importance of going to her local clinic, doctor, gynaecologist or obstetrician ASAP when her pregnancy test is positive.

Why?

This is so that her medical and obstetrical history can be recorded, blood tests taken to identify her blood group, haemoglobin (testing for anaemia) and the presence of various viruses that can affect her baby’s development in the first three months (possibly the most important trimester of pregnancy).

Then a plan is set for medical check-ups over the next nine months.

It is important that women stick to her re-visit dates, and that she follows through with her doctor/midwives’ advice and instructions throughout her pregnancy.

She can also help herself and her baby by:

• Not smoking
• Not drinking
• Exercising regularly
• Eating healthy
• Reading and learning more about each stage of pregnancy, how to stay healthy and prepare for the mammoth task of motherhood.

The effort is well worth it!

 

Children and 'stranger-danger'

Don’t touch my baby!

Isn’t it annoying when strangers treat you like a child with a new doll the first time you’re out with your new-born? It’s stressful enough just getting out of the house and going shopping with your precious bundle, without having to worry about people poking their germy fingers at your baby, giving you advice, telling you what you should and shouldn’t be doing – down to kissing your baby. Some people even pick your baby up or pluck him from your arms without so much as a ‘may I?’

Where I come from, many women still carry their babies on their backs. Not only does this keep them snug and safe, it also tells strangers ‘back off’. If people are getting too close to their babies, women simply turn their babies away from them. Push-chair babies are more vulnerable.

Toddlers are shy and weary of strangers – and that’s a good thing. Your tot is not being impolite when s/he doesn’t want to greet friends s/he doesn’t know or turns away when kissed. I don’t believe in insisting that your child kisses everybody. Respect and trust need to be earned. Parenting needs to be consistent. How can you warn your child not to take a sweetie from a stranger when you’ve taught them to be nice to everybody?

As children grow older, outgoing children like to greet friendly-looking strangers and talk to them. Although they instinctively have a ‘gut-feeling’ about who’s approachable and who’s not, some really nasty people with nastier intentions look safe and friendly. You need to be with your child, constantly reassuring them and talking to them about people you meet when you’re together. When children feel secure at home, they feel secure when they’re with you, even when they’re amongst strangers.

The big step into the unknown (for you and your child) comes when school-age children spend time out with their friends and stay for sleep-overs. You need to feel comfortable with their friends’ parents and trust that your child will be safe with them. Your child also needs to know that if they want to come home (even if it’s in the middle of the night) they can.

For 'stranger-danger' tips for parents and kids, go to: https://www.safety4kids.com.au/safety-zone_stranger-danger

  

Why does my toddler need a comforter?

I want my blankie!

All hell breaks lose when your toddler loses his blankie / dummy / huggee-bunny. Parents often feel humiliated when their child needs a comforter in public – especially when strangers give you ‘the look’. They worry that it’s a sign of bad parenting, insecurity or emotional baggage.

RELAX if your child sucks his thumb, fingers or dummy or clings to a tattered blanket writes Dr Christopher Green in his book Toddler Taming. It doesn’t mean that s/he will be emotionally scarred for life or is struggling with insecurity. “Little children do it for only one reason: they enjoy it!” he writes. Sucking becomes more intense when the child is tired, bored, frustrated or feeling insecure. Sucking helps them to fall asleep. Although most toddlers have abandoned these habits by the time they’re three, according to Dr Christopher “up to two percent still have this habit in their early teens.” (I was from that two percent)

We know from scans that babies start sucking when they’re in the womb. After birth, sucking is their survival. Babies also comfort-suck their fingers, fist or tongue. New parents have to learn not to pick babies up for a feed, believing this to be a sign that they’re hungry.

Of course, we introduce the comforter in the first place. The dummy, the soft toy with a silk ribbon or the baby blanket. Besides having a comforter, babies like to have a routine; where and when they sleep, how they’re put down to sleep, the ebb and flow of house-hold noise, the smell of their blankets. This helps them to feel secure. Its also a way they learn trust. Children who feel secure, want to explore and be independent when they’re toddlers. In their own time and pace, children are able to ‘let go’ the need for the physical security from a favourite comforter.

Every child is an individual. As a couple, you’re opposites. While one partner may be more adventurous and outgoing, the other may be shy, reserved and hesitant when it comes to trying something new.  Today we know that by ruthlessly taking away a ‘little people’s’ personal source of comfort, children can regress or take longer to recover and progress. They are, after all, little people for only a few short years.

Why do children cling to their ‘comforters’?

• It helps them to cope with the interruptions of daily life.
• It helps them cope with disappointments, or when they’re reprimanded, feeling hurt or rejected.
• Comforters are a big help when there are family upheavals: moving house, starting play-school, going on holiday, a new sibling or grandparent’s moving in with the family.
• When they’re ill.
• When they’re frightened e.g. thunder storm, a barking dog, or uncomfortable e.g. too hot or too cold.

Top tips:

• Don’t tease or make fun of your child or deliberately take the comforter away.
• Easy as it is to lose your cool when the comforter is lost – resist the urge to smack or shout.
• Keep him distracted when he has forgotten about his comforter (especially after a few days).
• Keep a spare ‘comforter’ for emergencies.
• Dummies are better than bottles (especially after a year). NEVER give your child juice in a bottle at night.
• Much to the embarrassment of parents, genital stimulation is also a comforter. This is NORMAL. Simply distract.
• Children soon ‘grow-up’ and adapt to the social rules of their peers. This exclude the need for comforters!