Childhood Eczema?

Hi, everyone.

How're the school runs going?

I've been thinking of bringing up this topic on the club, as perhaps some nice Mum or the other here may have experience with childhood eczema, seeing that it's becoming so common. Have any of you mums out there have children/infants with eczema?

My 1 year old has atopic dermatitis (=atopic eczema) and I'm wondering when it'll get better :-(. I use the emollients and steroid creams. (And lots of prayers, which might indicate my desperation). In spite of these, there isn't much change in her condition at 1 year. It's about the same as it was at 5 months of age. I had an impression that it would improve as she got older..... but she's still as scratchy as ever. She can't live outside babygro's (full baby suits) because she literally mutilates herself. If my watchful eyes stray from her for longer than a few minutes, I return to a bloodied arm or leg (she scratches herself till she bleeds). The mitts/socks on her hands are useless now because she can pull anything off.

If any of you have experience with a child with eczema, would you share your experience(s) about it? What meds/preparations did you find most useful and not? When did the eczema start and when did it get better? Did anyone try dietary modifications or not? Any tips you can share? And most importantly, did steroid use leave the child with any side effects like discoloured/pigmented skin? I admit that it's the steroid ointment use which has me scared the most. I've been reassured by my dermatologist that at that small dose, she won't come to any harm, but I still worry.

I would appreciate it very much and look forward to hearing from you.

[Now if nobody here has dealt with eczema, you're one lucky bunch :-)]

First Parents Night and some Art for School

A couple of days ago I went for my first Parents Night at little S’s daycare/pre-school. This was the first time I was going for such a thing. I had been to a Parents-Teachers meet before but that was more like a one-on-one.
This I had no idea about and D was not in town, so I went alone and was thus heavily influenced by solely my own views.

Apparently it was an introductory sort of an evening where the teacher discussed her intention and goals in life and also in her classroom. She gave us printed sheets, materials and even made us do hand on stuff like painting apples and cutting them up and discussing them !!!

Now before I go on my rant, let me tell you I am the kind of person who is not very comfortable with “change”. So I was very upset with this whole transition thing where S was moving on from her pre-school class to pre-K class. I was getting comfortable with her teachers when this announcement came and I was really sad that S had to move on from Ms. A’s class. I even wanted to cry on her last day…yes I am weird.

Now again S is not really supposed to go to a Pre-K class because she is a December born and all schools here have a September or October cut off so she cannot make it to Kindergarten next year. However her teacher(Ms. A) and me both thought that it is better if she moves on to Pre-K than Pre-School2 (an intermediate) class because there is more stuff done in Pre-K and she can benefit from that. That being the case she is the youngest in this class.

The teacher for her Pre-K is a young woman(Ms. K) just done with undergrad in Child Ed and as a result very enthu to put all her theoretical knowledge to work. In fact, too enthu I felt. In her discussion she kept stressing “how she will get the kids ready for Kindergarten” by next year and blah, blah, blah….At a point I told her that a kindergarten in a public school does not really expect a lot from the kids but she insisted that it did.

The thing I disliked is she went on to say that she will start giving out homework to these kids starting November. “Homework” at this age ??? But why ? Most of these kids spend at least 8 hours with her (this being a daycare) and I thing that is ample time for her to “get them ready for kindergarten”. Why give them homework ? I do make S practice her name etc. at home but nothing regular and it is more in a fun way, like she makes cards and signs her name on it and such stuff. Don’t you think Homework might not be a good idea at this age ?

This put me off. Next I noticed this young woman was too animated, not in the warm way but you know the kind who move around their hands daintily and make amazing faces while they talk. It is all very fine in many situations, but for a teacher for smal kids I prefer someone with a warm & kind smile and then you can flay your hands as much as long as you do not hold your fingers straight daintily.

I know I am being judgmental but hey come on I need to judge when it comes to my daughter’s teacher. I do not also want to dislike my daughter’s teacher. I want to be sad and misty eyed when my daughter moves on from this class. I want to like her teacher. Let me hope she turns out to be fine and her exuberant theoretical knowledge gives way for more love and tender care for these kids.

Ok she also made us do a family project which I grumbled about. The end result was nice though. All you artsy-crafty moms can try this out for your next project

The Me Board

For this “Me Board” you need the following

1. A posterboard
2. Cardborad or posterboard to make cut outs of your kids hands and feet
3. A paper plate to make the face
4. Lots of pics and other stuff to glue on the posterboard
5. Decorate the face with hair, googly eyes, beads etc.
6. Paste the feet and hand cut out as shown
   
   

Memory Cards

[posted by Sheela at The Joy of My Life. Many thanks to Sandeepa for reminding me to post it at our DMC! ]


Concentration or Memory is a simple game that helps improve memory in children (and adults). There are several versions of this game. Some involve objects, but this here is for little Ana, with home-made cards.

The cards are laid out face down. Each player takes a turn and flips 2 cards at random. If the cards match, they get to keep the pair. If they don't, they put it back exactly where they flipped them. The memory part is that, they should try to remember which position had which card, so, that as the game progresses, the matching act becomes less of a random guess and more of a test of memory.

For Ana, who is 2 years old, the maximum number of cards I use at a time is 12 - which involve 6 pairs, with each pair having a particular picture she easily recognizes and can match without any shred of doubt.

These are home-made cards, so, when I detect some wear, I make new ones. They are not as sturdy as the store-bought laminated cards, and the pictures are not as pretty and colorful. But, it serves the purpose :-)



Supplies I used: card stock paper, paper cutter, rubber stamps, rubber stamp ink pad, some construction paper and dye-cut punch, pinking shears, glue stick.



We don't use color cartridges in our printer, so, I didn't try to design graphics on my computer and print them out. At some point, I would like to print out just the black&white outline and color them, rather than using rubber stamps.

But, the reason I chose to use rubber stamps is so that I can make the cards with Ana. She likes to help me make things, even if she has no clue what I am making. "Let's make some memory cards, Ana" is all I had to say the first time, and when she saw me gather my supplies and settle down, she faithfully sat next to me, observing for a while, then asking to try and glue the flowers at the back and so on... Of course, I always go back and "adjust" it so it looks more uniform.

She is fascinated by the pinking shears and knows it as "Amma's soosuss" (scissors) and has her own plastic scissors with which she tries to clip her hair, her toys and such, of course, without success as it is just toy scissors.

And, while I try to rubber stamp her memory cards as uniformly as I can, she has a blast stamping on her "art" notebook. Her preferred ink color is the turquoise blue, for some reason!

Anyway, as she gets older, I hope to have fun having her design her own cards, and more of them - I can't wait to play with about 50 cards all laid out and trying to match them from memory with Ana...

D and I play with Ana. We don't really insist on turns, as sometimes Ana is so carried away with flipping that she does manage to get all the pairs. This can be played like Solitaire, so, if we can encourage her to get into this game, we could let her play on her own down the road and enjoy the "free time" we get meanwhile ;-)

Krazy Kays & their Knack for Krazy Knicks

Heh! Couldn't think of a "kornier" title :D

[Posted by CeeKay at My Two Cents Too]

Note: I had so much fun writing this post that I decided to "pollute" the club-space with it too :D

I thought I was tagged by someone to list all the silly (and embarrassing, in our case) nick names that we have given to our kids but patrolled the blog sphere up and down three times and still couldn't find the "tagger". So I am taking up the tag on my own because I just loved the idea (of publicly embarrassing my children)!! But if there is someone who indeed tagged me for this, please own up and appropriate credits shall be given!

Mitthi (translated to Punjabi, means "sweet") and Ninni (means "sleep" in kidspeak and can be taken as a twisted form of "naani" meaning "little" in Gujarati) are their “official” nick names. Simple, sweet and harmless. Then I also call S “Sweetie Mitthi Pie” and Mitthi Mouse while Ninni gets called by the nick "Cheeni* Ninni Pie" and Ninni The Pooh (created by big sis). Their Kaka (dad's bro) calls them “Dudu” and dadi has reserved the name “Ghappoodi” :D

* Cheeni: Sugar

Other nick names I use for them are – “Koochie koo” and Chikoo which has now turned into “Chika Mika Pika”. Then there is Sweetums, Jhagdoo (someone who fights a lot), Jhagdoo-Magdoo (you can see my penchant for rhyming here, can’t you? :D Another rarely used but embarrassing name is “Susu-Potty Baba” which came from the fact that this is what they did most of the time during the first three months of their life :P The credit goes to their dad.

Now on to the reeeally embarrassing nick names. There is a story behind them so I will narrate it first. Without it, those nicks just won’t make sense. When we were newly married, one day I called J “Sadela Gubrela” (Rotten beetle). Now J has a knack for playing with words. He can transform the sweetest, most innocent word into something wacky and funny in an instant. So pat came the reply “Sadeli Goo Bhareli”. To those unfamiliar with the middle classy word, it means poop (literally) and the last word means “full of” in Gujarati. So “sadela Gubrela” became “Sadela Goo Bharela” and then we applied this nick name to S (Poor, poor kid! Now you understand why I am saving for her therapy?) She is a good sport and didn’t throw a fit when we explained the meaning to her when she was old enough to understand. When M came home from the hospital, S very generously decided to share that nick name with her. She said she will keep the first part (“Sadeli") for herself, and generously hand over the second part (Goo Bhareli) to her little sis. Only, she mistakenly said “Goo Dhareli” instead of “Goo Bhareli" thanks to her broken Hindi. Now, I might not have the knack for witty/wacky names, but I do have a knack for translating ones that don’t have an apparent meaning. So I translated the second one as “Sitting like a poop” ( I know, I know – this post shouldn’t even have seen the light of the day) as “Dhareli” in Gujarati can be loosely translated to “dumped” in some instances. So now we have a Goo Bhareli and a Goo Dhareli in our house. And S has now generously donated “Sadeli/Sadela” to her mom and dad.

Remind me to start a savings account for M’s therapy too, will you?

Edited to add: S has made up a song with the most embarrassing nick name for M. It goes like this -

Ninni, Ninni, Bahut Sadeli

Also known as Goo Dhareli

(Yup! She got the genes!!!)

Oh, and I tag all the moms (and dads, if any) in this club who haven't taken up this tag already, and who don't mind embarrassing their kids publicly :D

Do it yourself halloween costumes

I was looking at making halloween costumes and came across this site. It has instructions for the most beautiful costumes ever... And so easy to make.

I love this one particularly - the ladybug one. :)


and the blue butterfly.

I'd love to make one for my li'l one next year. (we'll be on an India trip this year) Anybody else making halloween costumes this year?

Frock designing and stitching

This post is written by Swapna Susarla of Susarlas kitchen.

I , myself desingned and made this frock by hand(not using a machine) for my daughter. My mother and all her sisters are professional in stitching.I never learned how to cut although i know how to make some small small stitches and how to stitch buttons.But never tried to cut cloth for stitching a frock.At first i thought of making some casual wears for my daughter.I bought some cloth and stitched .They were also nice.After that i took this cloth(2 yards) and planned to stitch a good one.I did lining also for this frock.(I don't know wether it is that great thing or not...but for me it is a very great achievement in my life:-) ). I was surprised to see the end result.I never imagined that i can do this.

My daughter is very happy to wear this.She is very excited and told everybody"my mom made this for me".Her happiness given me some more inspiration to do more things....Thanks and hugs to her....:-)

The race to nowhere

[Posted by Cee Kay. Also posted at my blog My Two Cents]

I just saw a Leap Pad Learning System's commercial on the idiot box that talked about learning skills for pre-school. I went "WTF???" in my mind. Pre-school teaches kids skills necessary for Kindergarten. When did things get so screwed up that babies need to learn skills to get into pre-school? Here, in the US, even pre-school is optional for kids. Parents don't have to send them there if they don't want to. Of course, there are certain skills a child must have before he or she enters kindergarten - like they should know how to read and write the alphabet, count to 20, know how to write their first and last name, know their address and phone number. THAT'S IT!!! It isn't too hard for a child to learn that. And that is exactly what S knew when she entered kindergarten. She is doing great in school despite the fact that she didn't know anything else. In fact, she is among the top five students in her class. And I am being very conservative when I say "top five". She could very well be on the top but we wouldn't know because no ranks are assigned to kids here. And we couldn't care less.

Every year, just before the November Parent-teacher conferences (that's when parents meet their kids' teachers to learn how their kids are performing in school and get the first progress report), and later before the March conferences, S becomes this pensive, stressed-out mass of nerves. She asks us 10 times each day "What will you do if you find out that I am failing? That I am not getting good grades?". And each year my answer is the same - "If you were to get bad grades, it would mean you need more help with your studies and we would help you. We would help you figure out how to improve performance". I don't care about grades at all. Not in elementary school. Later, when grades do matter, I will see to it that she is putting in her 100% in studies and even then if she scores low grades then I'll accept that - however hard that might be for me to do. All I want is for my child to put in her best efforts. I don't want to compare her to others and drive myself nuts trying to see who reads better than her or who swims faster or who is better at math. All I care about is whether or not she is making a sincere effort at whatever she does.

A friend recently mentioned to me that she is thinking of holding her son back from school one year because she thinks he isn't ready for it yet. That, in my opinion, is the smartest, and the toughest, decision to make. Only a parent can know their child's capabilities and if one honestly feels that starting a year later will help their child, I admire their courage. I say "courage" because this friend said she is expecting a lot of resistance from her entire family including her husband. We Indians, for some reason, place so much importance on starting school early. It is beyond MY comprehension. We don't seem to care how much the child understands of what has been taught, yet we are very worried about how early he or she can say the ABCs and recite the nursery rhymes or how far he/she can count.

At the beginning of this rant I was going to add the note that people shouldn't take offence to what I am going to write because I am not judging anyone. But then I realized - Heck yeah! I DO judge people who push their kids too soon too far to acquire skills that they might as easily learn in due course of time without being pressurized. How does it matter if a child can say the ABCs before going to pre-school? He/She is going to learn it there anyway, right? So, why not let the child sit back and enjoy life without any pressures of formal learning? They do a lot of learning while playing anyway. I am not against teaching them the alphabet, colors or the numbers during play. I am against sitting them down to teach these explicitly. I am against teaching them stuff just so they are "one up" against other kids in a gathering. I am dead against formally teaching anything to a child under the age of 3 years. I know this might not have gone well with the way things are done in India and for that reason I am happy that I live in a place where I can practise what I believe.

We started sending S to KUMON just before she started Kindergarten (a little before she turned 5). Even then we worried we might be pushing her too much so we decided to give it a try and stop if we saw any signs that she was being overworked. Fortunately, the owner of the KUMON franchise that S goes to, has the same philosophy regarding teaching kids. In her opinion, learning is only fun if the child doesn't feel overburdened. So, on occasions when we saw S taking a long time in finishing her KUMON homework (more than 15 minutes), she cut back the number of pages that were given to S for homework. She suggested we always make sure that she gets only as much homework as can be completed within 15 minutes. That really helped. S never felt overwhelmed. And we let her take a break from KUMON for one week 2-3 times a year. This ensures that S does her KUMON work willingly without us having to ride her constantly. Every year her teachers ask us if she feels pressured by the extra work. We don't think she does. For one thing, KUMON helps her stay ahead of the rest of her class at school. She was very proud of her math skills in Grade 2 when her classmates dubbed her the "Math Wizard". Small things like that keep her motivated to do the extra work. And we do see it paying off. Last year, by the end of Grade 3, S was already doing Grade 5 math (division and fractions). If all this can be accomplished without pressuring and pushing a child, then I think we are on the right path.

Once when we were at KUMON (S doing her classwork and I waiting outside in waiting room), an Indian lady came in with her 3 year old daughter. She wanted to sign her up for Reading. Professor P, owner of the KUMON franchise, tested that girl to determine the level she would start from and told the parent that she will be starting the child from the level that taught letter recognition. The parent immediately took offence to that and informed Professor P that her daughter already recognized all letters, thankyou. Upon being told that the girl got confused between lower-case p and q, and lower case b and d, the mom was furious. At her daughter! She started scolding her right then and there, demanding to know how she could confuse p with q and b with d when at home she always recognized the letters correctly. Now, I know children do get confused between these letters quite often and I don't think it is a crime punishable by public humiliation. The lady could very well have signed the kid up for the recommended level and if the child indeed was very comfortable with letter recognition, she would have sailed right through that level in no time anyway. That is MY thinking. We never pressured S into completing a level fast. In fact, on occasions we have requested that she be allowed to repeat a level so that her concepts become clearer (when we feel she is still a little hazy on the concepts). On other occasions, Professor P has recommened that we have her repeat a level and we have happily accepted because if S isn't a 100% comfortable with concepts taught at one level then she WILL face difficulties in future levels even if she scores good on the test. We do have a "positive reinforcement policy" under which S gets to buy a new board game or a book if she completes one level at KUMON. We NEVER associate having to repeat a level with failure. As a result, while friends tell me that their kids stopped KUMON after a little while because it became too boring or challenging or whatever, S is well into her 5th year at KUMON and wants to continue. Our original goal in sending her there was two-fold. One, she would gain self-esteem if she found she was better at something than the rest of her peers and two, it would help her in the (waaay) long term with SATs. We were bang on with the first one and seems like we might be correct about the second one too.

I actually pity a child when his/her parents start telling us how they taught their kid X, Y or Z at an early age. Or when they start comparing their kid with other kids "just to see where they are at". I am all for buying age-appropriate learning games for kids. But this commercial about teaching kids skills to get into pre-school got me. And the "Baby Einstein" DVDs get me for the same reason. DVDs and videos for 6 month old babies??? Come on! One friend of mine proudly told me (a few years ago) how her 6 month old was hooked on "Baby Einstein" videos. So much so that he whined and screamed if someone blocked his view while he was watching one. I guess she took it as a sign that he was a genius. I definitely took it as a sign that she needed to use more common sense in her parenting. (Hey Cee Kay! Bitchy much??! :P)

I think this race to get their kids to the top is all in the parents' heads. The kids will take their own time getting where they want to get, if they want it. And staying at the top once they get there is another matter. One can push their kid to the top, but they cannot keep their kid there if the kid him/herself is not motivated. And most kids eventually catch up to grade level learning. One might be able to push a kid to the top at an early age, but we also have to keep asking ourselves two questions.

1. Is it really going to make a difference in their lives 20 years from now? Will learning the alphabet at age 2 help them when they are 20 and in college?

2. Are they having fun (while learning things to "get to the top")? THAT, in my opinion, is the most important question of all. In my opinion, learning that is done while having fun stays with us longer than learning done under compulsion.

Note: A few comments on this post at my personal blog have prompted me to start another post about KUMON, its drawbacks and why it still works for us. I realized some parents might appreciate information on this topic from someone who has already had some KUMON experience. I hope to be able to put that post up soon.