Even though we don't really celebrate Christmas, it is still my favourite time of year. The hubby accuses me of being a closet shopaholic so I guess I ought to confess that I love going holiday shopping. If you do celebrate Christmas, then I'm sure this is probably one of the most expensive times of the year - what with Christmas presents to buy and holiday trips to plan over the long break...
Well, guess what? eBillme is running a shopping confessions contest where you stand a chance of winning the grand prize of $15000. I'm sure it goes without saying that the extra cash will really come in handy for the holidays. All you have to do is share a secret shopping experience that you want to confess and enter it to: http://www.shopandconfess.com/.
You can write a story, post a video (uploaded to Youtube), or use photos for your confession then submit your entry to the website above.
All I ask in return for sharing this news with you is that you name my blog: http://figur8.net/baby as your referring website. Good luck! For more details about this contest, check out the video below:
Gavin has this habit of breaking out into dance every time he hears music on the TV that he fancies. Lately, his favourites happen to be tunes from his favourite tank engine, Thomas.
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It was Ah Kong's birthday last weekend. Gavin decided to put his taster's hat on and check if the cake was finger-licking good. From the pictures, I think it passed the test - what do you think?
Hubby took a trip to Kelantan for work, so Gavin and I took the advantage to tag along for a holiday at Tanjung Jara. Needless to say Gavin had a blast, except for one not so pleasant episode when I tried to sneak away for a massage.
Ever since I was a kid, I have wanted to travel around the world and own property around the world. My brother and I would play make-believe where we would fly to our various holiday homes from Monmouth County to the French Riviera.
Now, a little more grown-up and realistic, I still believe in the idea of owning various properties, however, I don't think I would keep them all has holiday homes - it's just not very practical asset management. I would also opt for more real estate in more advantageous locations, for instance, I would consider aspects such as the convenience of access to public transportation, dining, shopping, financial, medical and recreational services - aspects I would consider for myself if I were looking for a house to live in.
Similarly, if I were looking for commercial properties, such as a location for a dental practice, I would be sure to look for professional & medical class A office space - one located near a shopping mall would be great since it offers patients the one-stop convenience of being able to get their groceries and other daily chores while getting their dental check-up done.
Of course, I still dream about my ocean front luxury condos and waterfront homes, and I'm sure I would have at least one of my own in my most favourite part of the world that I would be able to take the family along to for the summer holidays (when money becomes no object, of course ), but I think I'll settle for investments in commercial, retail and high-end residential properties first.
On Thursday, I took Gavin to his second Kindermusik class at Kizsports. To encourage him to stay in the class, I brought along his Take Along Thomas trains to play. Another boy arrived with his grandma and he took a keen interest in Gavin’s trains. Thinking it would be a good opportunity for Gavin to learn to share, I encouraged Gavin to lend his trains to the boy.
Gavin behaved admirably, offering the boy all of his trains. He didn’t even make a fuss when the boy kept the trains throughout the whole session and didn’t even let Gavin play with his own trains. Neither did he seem to mind that the boy was refusing to give back his trains at the end of the class! Although I commend Gavin for his generosity, I thought that last was going a bit too far.
I tried to bribe the boy to give back the trains by making him two animal balloons – one for each hand. He took the balloons but kept Gordon. Both his grandma and I tried to negotiate with the boy to return the trains to no avail. I tried to reiterate the concept of borrowing and that Gavin would be upset without his train but that didn’t work either. It probably didn’t help that Gavin didn’t seem the least bit upset that he wasn’t getting his train back.
We eventually got the train back - his grandma managed to slip the train out of the boy’s hands when he tried to hide the train behind his back. He wailed and screamed and his grandma snatched him up and took him away, trying to console him that she would buy him another train. I felt awful, but I didn’t really know what else we could have done.
Has anyone ever encountered an experience like this before? What happened and how did you manage it?
If you had been in my shoes, what other tactics would you recommend to use to get the train back? Do you think it should be the other child’s parent’s responsibility to make the child give the train back or do you think I should have taken a more active role in getting the train back?
Although I was sorely tempted to just take the train from the boy’s hand, I didn’t want to convey the wrong message to Gavin about snatching toys from other children. So what else could I have done to get the toy back?
Ok, ok, so I've been quite good with the declining of plastic bags whenever it was unnecessary, but I can't exactly say I've been plastic bag free like my BFF who has been going green and strong for some three months. Although we have those green grocery bags from Safeway that my SIL bought for us to use, they are pretty bulky and rather cumbersome to carry around. Usually I end up forgetting to bring it along and then we have to use the plastic bags provided by the supermarket.
Recently, my BFF gave me a reusable bag she bought online from reusablebags.com which is much more practical because it folds up into a compact case that I can attach to my handbag. Now I can bring it along with me everywhere and use it whenever I make a purchase.
Today was my first day experiencing the plastic bag free life - I went shopping with my son and declined two bags. One small step for Mummy, another leap forward for the green life.
Currently, I've been using the plastic Avent bottles for Gavin - which is probably somewhat better than the water they give us from outside. What I should start doing is bringing my own water for me, too - now that's something I've been rather slack with.
Yes, I've taken the moral high ground and gone and written this blog post in my crusade to raise the awareness against the ill-effects of hitting children in the name of discipline. For the sake of those who can't be bothered to go to my other blog to read it, here it is in full:
I confess, I was never always against the idea of corporal punishment. At one stage, I even believed that if you "spare the rod", you "spoil the child". My only defense lies in the fact that I believed it back in days before I became a parent. I used to think that juvenile deliquents existed because their parents failed to discipline (read: smack, because back then discipline to me meant smacking, spanking, hitting or whatever name it goes by under the umbrella term of corporal punishment) them adequately when they were younger, and that was why I was all for corporal punishment.
And then I became a mother.
And the maternal instincts kicked in.
Okay, okay, perhaps it started a little before that. I was pregnant and the dog was misbehaving and while I was threatening to smack him for being "bad" that was about as far as I could go. I couldn't bring myself to inflict harm upon him.
Even as I look at my son, I don't think I could lay a hand upon him and justify it under the term of "discipline".
I decided "to each his own". Corporal punishment may be the way for some parents but it wasn't going to be for me.
That was when I started reading to educate myself on what other options existed besides corporal punishment. How else could I raise a well-behaved, confident and socially well-adjusted child?
Reading led to the discovery of the mounting evidence against corporal punishment and the ill-effects of corporal punishment on the developing brain of a child. I was alarmed. If my decision not to discipline my son with corporal punishment was born from an instinct, my conviction for that decision had been cemented by the evidence. Where I once told the hubby that he could discipline our son as he saw fit and I would do as I saw fit, I now felt compelled to convince him of the dangers of corporal punishment.
Why is corporal punishment so damanging to a child?
Because corporal punishment causes stress in a child that is no different to the stress a child experiences when being bullied or suffering from child abuse. Brain scans show structural and biochemical changes that affect social behaviour.
Cell death in the anterior cingulate gyrus affects a child's ability to moderate fear and to empathise. Changes in the brain's pathways affect a child's ability to manage stress and being more prone to being impulsive, agressive and/or anxious. Long term changes to the adrenaline systems in the brain affect the ability to think clearly. Impairment in the brain stem has been linked to ADHD, depression and impaired attention. It also leads to more aggression and irritability.
Other changes to the brain have also been observed:
decrease in size of the corpus callosum causing manic shifts in mood states
reduced amygdala and hippocampus resulting in depression, irritability and hostility; and poor memory function
affects the GABA system making a child feel unsafe and constantly living in a state of alarm
A common argument for the corporal punishment camp is one that goes something along the lines of, "I was spanked as a child and I turned out okay."
A couple of other arguments stem from this point as well. Firstly, what is okay? Could it be that if we weren't smacked we might have more deeper and meaningful friendships? Better relationships? Lasting marriages? Feel less depressed? Perform better at work? Have a better outlook and attitude towards life?
Jordan Riak cites an excellent example that articulates the fallacy of this belief rather aptly (incidentally, each and every one of these examples apply to my own childhood, too):
Let’s test the I-turned-out-okay argument by examining a few real-life examples from my own childhood. See if they apply to you.
There were ashtrays in every room of our house. My parents smoked, as did most adult visitors to our home. The aroma of cigarette, cigar and pipe smoke was always present. Nobody minded. In fact, not one day passed in my early life when I was not exposed to tobacco smoke. I was even exposed in the womb because my mother smoked when she was pregnant with me. And I turned out okay.
The first family car I remember was a 1937 Chevrolet sedan. It had no seat belts. When we traveled, I was merely plunked down on the back seat with the expectation that gravity would keep me there. It did. And I turned out okay.
All the places in which I lived as a child were painted with lead-based paint. And I turned out okay.
I used a bicycle throughout my childhood and teen years, but never wore any kind of protective headgear. And I turned out okay.
Was my family wise or just lucky? Today, we don’t do those things anymore. We don’t take such risks, and we don't expose our children to such risks – not if we know the facts.
Quite possibly, one of the uncomfortable notions about bashing corporal punishment is that many of us (at least in the circle of people that I know) were smacked at some stage when we were children. The idea that our parents did wrong against us can be a rather uncomfortable one to face. I'm not bashing the way we were raised by our parents. They did what they felt was right at the time because they lacked the awareness of the possible side effects. All the examples listed above are other ways our parents did "wrong" against us but they were accepted practices in their day.
I could cite a few more...
When I was a kid, I was treated by dentists who never wore gloves. Would you allow a dentist to put her hands into your mouth now without gloves?
As a child, I was weaned by my mother because that was the recommended practice of the day but I don't blame my mother for it, nor do I complain that I am intellectually weaker than my peers who were lucky enough to be breastfed as a result.
Exactly what are the lessons learned from being hit? Often it leads to bullying and the acceptance that it is okay to hit others. What happened to the moral of the story? Your child might behave in front of you but how will you know what goes on behind your back? Discipline should be about raising morally-aware children with a social conscience, and not creating fear-inspired behaviours in a child that don't last once the child is out of sight.
There are Other Ways to Discipline
It also seems to me that a common misconception is that if I choose not to discipline my child by smacking him, I'm choosing not to discipline him at all (forgive me if I'm making a generalisation here as this is based on a comment made on a recent post I wrote about Choosing a Parenting Style). Perhaps such thoughts are only limited to those near-sighted enough to believe that the only way to discipline a child is through violence.
There are other ways to discipline a child. They are generally more time consuming and they also require more effort. Let's face it - it's definitely a lot easier to just yell at your child or smack him for misbehaving. It doesn't require much thought and I'm sure the action alone will help you let off some steam from the anger buttons your child has just pushed.
This is a long and lengthy topic, but if you're convinced that non-violent discipline is the way to go, then might I recommend these resources:
Hey mummy Shen, hope you, gavin and charlie are doing great!! Have yet to see little Gavin, but oh well, i am sure I will one day :) Hope life is adjusting well with the little one there. Take care and all the best!
Hi babe! It's a blessing knowin u thru Soon's network:) We had so much to share on becomin mummy and u hav been very informative. Keep in touch:) and enjoy your journey of mommyhood:)
), but I think I'll settle for investments in commercial, retail and high-end residential properties first.
