Category: Parenting

Top Child Safety Tips

I previously posted about my scary moment of Hide and Seek with my toddler at a store. We couldn’t find her for a few minutes and it seemed like an eternity. This prompted me to research more about how to keep my child safe and I came across a few websites that gave detailed tips to follow. Here is an edited version of some tips:

    • Keep the following records updated in a safe place: Custody papers, photographs of your child, height and weight, description of your child’s scars and birthmarks, dental records, fingerprints and passports.

 

  • Parents with children that are allowed to go to a friend’s house should follow this protocol: Know the names, addresses and phone numbers of your children’s friends and their parents. Have your child tell you where they will be and to tell you when they are coming home.

 

 

  • Give children a the list of people they have permission to go with and that they must tell you before going with someone not on the list.

 

 

  • If you are a divorced parent get a clear custody order that specifies visitation rights clearly, and know the non-custodial parent’s social security number, date of birth, current address and employment. Also let your child know if that parent is in the safe list, and when they are allowed to go with that parent.

 

 

  • Explain to children what a “STRANGER” is and what they look like. Also teach them not to speak to strangers and don’t put your children’s names on the outside of their belongings.

 

 

  • Discuss abduction prevention strategies with children without the fear factor and approach them with the issues of abduction the same way you approach them with fire or earthquake safety.

 

 

  • Encourage dialogue about their feelings, how their day went and what people they encountered. This will help you assess any potentially dangerous situations they have encountered.

 

 

  • Teach children to keep a safe distance away from strangers and strangers’ cars even if they seem like nice people. Also if they need to, they must run in the direction opposite of what the stranger’s car is facing.

 

 

  • Check that the school has a callback policy if the child does not arrive to school within thirty minutes when the child is expected in school.

 

 

  • If your child is old enough to stay home alone, teach them to never convey they are alone if a stranger calls the house phone and never open the door to a stranger. They can just brush them off by saying “Mom and Dad can’t come to the phone/door right now.”

 

 

  • Children computer usage must be monitored. Keep an eye on what they are doing in the computer and teach them that it is not safe to give their last name, address, or phone number to a person on the Internet. Children must understand that meeting Internet friends in person without a parent’s supervision is not safe.

 

 

  • At last Review your safety rules regularly. Test your children’s understanding of the rules with questions like, “What would you do if your bicycle broke and a neighbor offered you a ride home?”

 

 

For additional and detailed tips check out http://kidshealth.org.

 

 

Is my daughter too Independent?

As my daughter goes getting older I enjoy seeing how she is becoming an independent little girl. Lately she likes to do everything on her own. She is only 3 years old and she already tells me she wants to play alone in her play area and calls me only when she starts getting bored. One of her new things is opening doors for daddy and me when we go to stores. I guess she sees daddy doing this often since  I’m always carrying her baby brother. This was perfectly fine until she decided to run ahead of daddy one day to go open the door at the store we were at, but we didn’t know she was going to do that.

It was a scary five to ten minutes of my husband screaming her name around the store looking for her, until finally he gets paged by one of the cashiers to go to the front of the store. My daughter had been at the front of the store at the outside door opening the door for people as they were coming in. The cashier had noticed my husband screaming her name for a while and decided to ask my daughter what her name was. Thankfully she answered and the cashier figured out she was the little girl we were looking for and paged my husband.

Now when I go to a store I am always holding my daughter’s hand and don’t let her go ahead of me. She hates it and tells me she is a big girl and she can walk next to me, but I’m still very hesitant to let go. I still want her to be independent, but I want her to be safe too.

How much is too much independence? How can I keep her safe without taking away some freedoms? I’ve started researching on products that I can use to still give her freedom and keep her safe. But I think that we need to teach her some safety rules when it comes to strangers, getting lost in a store, and how far is too far away from mommy and daddy. I wish that daycares and schools would take some time to teach all kids about these safety rules. Also how to differentiate who is a safe person to talk to and who isn’t. Our kids are so vulnerable when little that we need to have safety rules in place at all times.

The Power of TV

Every morning it was a battle to get my daughter ready for school. It was always me explaining to her why she can’t wear her pajama to school and why we have to brush our teeth every morning.

I started to turn on the TV and put Disney channel before getting her out of bed. I was using the TV as a distraction while I dressed her. It worked a few times, but then the tantrums continued. One morning I changed my tactic and started telling her that we needed to get ready to go outside to see the birds and the squirrels before they went to work. That morning she was cooperative and we even got to school on time.

The next morning she woke up too early so I let her watch TV until it was time to get ready. When it was time to get ready, tantrums began again. What happened, why was she moody again? I tried to figure out what was different. I still took her outside to see the birds after watching some TV, so I couldn’t figure it out till my husband said it was all the TV. How can a few minutes of TV affect her? I couldn’t believe that the TV could affect her mood so much. Then I tested the theory by not turning on the TV the whole day and I saw the difference. The TV had become my competition for attention and she also gets more moody when I am trying to get her to do something while watching TV. Even my mood had changed, the house was more peaceful.

I had heard before that a TV absorbs your energy and alters your mood.  That it is recommended you don’t put a TV in your bedroom because even if you sleep with it on, it is not a restful sleep. Now that I have seen the difference in my daughter, TV has taken the back seat in our house. My daughter is not even asking for it as much anymore. She prefers to be out in the yard with her toys.

 

 

Is My Toddler Under Control?

I was at the gym today and they had that show The View in one of the TV’s. I occasionally toon in just to kill time while exercising. Normally the topics of discussion are pretty interesting or entertaining to my taste, but today more than entertaining I found it a little offensive.

Barbara Walters was talking about a Rhode Island mom that was kicked off a JetBlue flight because her toddler was fussy and refused to sit on her seat. I was offended that Barbara Walters was laughing before showing the video clip. In the video you see the toddler talking to her dad while the mom is talking to the host of the show. Ms. Walters found it funny that the mom was claiming the child was under control in the flight and the child, according to her, seems out of control during the Today Show interview. Being a mom of a toddler, I felt that the child was not out of control during the show, she was just doing what a typical toddler does. Yes, she was talking while her mom is talking, but she was not throwing a tantrum. She was sitting on her father’s lap while talking and singing, but she wasn’t all over the place. How can Ms. Walters criticize this mother claiming that she doesn’t have her child under control, when the child is not doing anything out of the ordinary for a two year old. Yes I agree that the parents should teach her that when adults are talking you need to be quiet if she has to sit there with the adults. But having a toddler and going through similar situations, I can tell you that it takes time to teach a toddler to behave. I think that she is actually well behaved for a child that age compared to many others that I have seen in stores running around, throwing tantrums and sometimes even hitting there moms. According to our society, what is considered a child under control and one unruly child? What do we expect moms to do when a toddler is throwing a tantrum in public, crying during a flight or any other occasion when we are suppose to be well behaved?

I flew out of Miami to Spain with my toddler last year. At the time she was 2 1/2 years old and going through some terrible twos. Considering that this was an international flight about 8 hours long and the last time she was in a plane was when she was 6 months old, my daughter behaved very good according to my standards. She also refused to sit on her own seat, and the flight attendant did tell me that I had to sit her in her seat for departure and for landing. My daughter started throwing a fit when I sat her in her seat and I forcefully buckled her down. The flight attendant still came to me and tried giving my daughter some crayons and coloring pages to calm her down, but nothing worked. She then told me – “Wow, she really has a strong personality. She needs a strong hand and some discipline.” I decided to ignore the comment, but it did bother me. I felt like she was basically telling me I didn’t know how to raise my child and I was bothering the other passengers. If you are a mom of a toddler you know that there are times when you cannot stop them from throwing a tantrum or screaming like someone is killing them. If you let them cry, you are a bad mom; and if you give them whatever they want so they stop crying you are still a bad mom that is raising a brat. So tell me, what are the rules to follow in public scenes? What was this mother of Rhode Island suppose to do with her daughter in that flight?

I also took a flight from Madrid to Paris during that trip, and the flight attendant had a different approach to my daughter refusing to sit on her seat. He let me carry her on my lap, but gave me the baby seatbelt that buckled to mine. That went much smoother and my child was calmly sitting with me. On the way back from Paris to Madrid, she had fallen asleep before landing. The flight attendant then just told me try to buckle her while she was lying down.

In my opinion we need to understand that parents do the best that they can when handling an unruly child in public. Depending on the culture, some parents are more stern with the child then others. I know that if it were a Latin parent, that child might have been spanked and forced to sit on her seat while screaming and crying. Here in the United States parents tend to give in more to their child. The parents of today have been influenced by the theories that we need to let our kid express himself and be more careful on how we discipline without affecting their self esteem. I don’t blame those moms that sometimes let their kids interrupt a conversation or throw a tantrum in the middle of a store. We are just doing our best and sometimes we don’t know any better.

Mommy in Training

Ever since I became a mother I always considered myself a Latin mom. By default I speak to my kids mostly in Spanish, feed them latin food and follow the traditional Latin customs I was raised with. However, sometimes I question myself about what Latin upbringings I want to adopt with my kids and what are just not me. For example, I am against spanking my kids using anything else aside from my hand and they must do something really bad to deserve a spanking or I have reached a point where nothing is working. It is very common in Latin America for parents to punish there kids using a belt or “the punishment stick”. I remember my grandmother used to have a belt hanging by the kitchen for using if any of her grandkids misbehaved. Perhaps it’s the fact that I came to the United States when I was just 12 years old, so I have adopted a lot of the American customs and I am also married to a Cuban American that is more American than Cuban. The American culture also frowns upon any form of spanking, and god forbid you do it in public.

I have a 3 year old daughter that speaks a mix of Cuban and Honduran Spanish, along with fluent toddler English. She does eat the rice and beans, chicken soup with tons of cumin and the occasional “Cantimpalo” chorizo. I find it funny how she has learned some Honduran spanish slang and some Cuban ones. I was petrified when I heard her say her first curse word “puta”,which means bitch, a curse word commonly used in Honduras. Then she learned the commonly used Cuban word “coño”. I was almost certain she was turning into a true Latin child, until recently that she prefers to speak to me in English.

When I found out that I was pregnant with my second child, I started researching on other ways of parenting. I needed to get my daughter under control before the second baby came, or I would go crazy. The Latin way of raising my daughter was just not working. My husband and I started seeing a child therapist to help us ease the process into bringing another child into the mix and get my daughter to listen to us.

I’m sure all moms from all cultures have the same dilemmas. Should we spank them when the “Time Out” is not working? Should we give in to the Mac n Cheese menu every day because they refuse to eat anything? These are all questions that have crossed my mind and I wasn’t sure how to answer.

The American way of parenting has many versions, which to a point become confusing. Should I apply the “American All Natural” approach and go all organic and feed only organic food to my child at all times or the more “American Practical” and be ok with the occasional “Happy Meals” or Mac n Cheese when I don’t have much time to cook?

My husband has introduced me to an interesting book called “Bringing Up Bebe: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting
” by Pamela Druckerman. This book has opened up my eyes on noticing more about how American kids are raised and I’ve noticed I have applied a lot of those practices without realizing. Now that I am more aware I am trying out some French ways of parenting described in this book while still keeping some of the American and Latin customs. To my surprise things have started to go more smoothly with the kids. My daughter is starting to listen to me more and there are less tantrums in the house and in public. My son that is only two months old has to sleep the night and wait four hours after each feeding to eat again.

There is no perfect way of raising a child, or the one culture that has figured everything out. I guess I can say that I’m not just a Latin mom, I am an international mommy in training.