bearing blog

Slings.

I picked up Oscar from his last day at reptiles'n'amphibians camp.  Saw one mom pushing a stroller with what looked like a four-year-old girl in it.  Maybe five.  I know I am not the first to observe this, but... how does it come to this? 

There are times when I understand.  It takes a long time to get a 2.5-year-old out of a store full of interesting objects without yanking by the arm or picking him up to carry him.  If he's buckled up in a stroller, you can (theoretically) whisk in and whisk out at nearly the speed of a lone grownup.  (That is, if you're not knocking all the displays over in your haste, and you don't get stuck in any revolving doors.)  It takes time and patience to say "ok, come on, we're going," to gently disentangle little fingers from some enticing shelved thing, to walk a few paces ahead and wait for a little one to notice you've gotten away from him, to run and catch up.  And then there's the risk that, despite all your careful admonitions, you'll turn around after just one second and find an entire section of stuff scattered on the floor.

I know that.  This is why the little ones are always in the sling in stores, until they get big enough that it's more comfortable to let them ride in the cart, if there is one.  Most other places, once they can walk, they do.  I hold their hands, and they walk.

And so I suppose if you get used to the stroller, you just... at some point... might get to where you don't know how you can control your child, or get the shopping done in a "reasonable" amount of time, or how you can get them home, without one.   

I've never owned one, not even a ten-dollar umbrella stroller.  I'm convinced that for most of us they do more harm than good.  Five-year-olds can walk miles, if they're used to it; it's sad to see one who apparently can't walk a hundred yards from the car to the building.    And think how much less congested sidewalks, malls, street festivals, parks would be without those blasted buggies running over toes and bumping into backsides.   

Instead, while the little walkers are developing their endurance, I've worn an easy-to-use sling, popping them in and out as they need.  Over time they walk more and are carried less.  I learn too:  My incentive to encourage them to walk, and to teach them to "behave" in a store at ground level, grows as they get heavier.   Eventually I hardly bring the sling with me at all (there's usually one in the car though.)

I can envision several circumstances that justify regular stroller use.

• Jogging strollers.  If a parent's going to get real exercise, most small kids won't be able to keep up until they're riding a bike. 
• Physically handicapped children. Most children who are made to walk will develop endurance comparable to that of an adult.   But some won't be able to, because of musculoskeletal abnormalities, asthma, or some other condition.   After they've reached their limit, a stroller might sometimes be the answer.
• Physically handicapped moms.  Most of us who get used to walking with kids will learn how to get a child to come with us, most of the time.  Most of us who regularly carry our children, in arms or in slings, will be strong enough to pick them up and "make an escape" even if a child flops to the ground and completely refuses to walk.  But not all of us can count on being able to carry a child as far as we might have to.  (Pregnancy can count here, although I've managed to use a back carrier in late pregnancy without much difficulty.)
• Two babies very close together, so that the new one comes along while the older one is still learning endurance and needs a lot of time in the sling.  It's possible to sling two babies, or carry one on back and one on front, but I consider that an extraordinary measure for most parents.  A newborn needs to be in the sling almost constantly, but after a few months the children can take turns.  I'd still be pretty wary about letting the older child ride in the stroller too much.
• ADDED:  In the comments, Jamie points out that when you're trying to minimize the use of your car, the stroller can become more useful.  One point to Jamie!

Yeah --- that's really all I can come up with.  I honestly can't think of a situation other than these in which I'd rather have a stroller than a sling or other body carrier.  There's something about them that's so much sleeker than bumbling around pushing one of those things.

It helps to have a variety of slings and carriers.  The ones I have that get the most use are the Mexican rebozo, the Maya Wrap, the Didymos, the Kangaroo Korner Adjustable Fleece Pouch, and our Kelty Expedition (although it's only my husband who carries that one --- doesn't fit me very well).  I have a few other slings but these get the bulk of the business.   Notice that they all have different functions.  I am not much of a fashion plate, but if I were I would have a variety of colors and patterns as well.  I have more than one shirt; why not have more than one sling?

Science museums.

Amy Welborn disses children's science museums:

... I hate Children's Science Museums.

...I've been taking children to science museums for 20 years. I don't think I've ever seen more than 1 or 2 kids on any of those occasions do anything but race around madly, randomly punching buttons to see what the effect is, then racing around to the next thing. No one reads the explanations unless they're forced to, and I've never felt that a lick of learning was going on.

In many ways I agree.  Certainly that's how my 5-year-old experiences the science museum --- as an endless variety of buttons to push.  But they are pretty cool to the nerdy teenage type that I was, if they're well designed.  And as an adult with an engineering background, I still enjoy them.  (Now, of course, there's the added layer of evaluation --- could I do a better job designing this wind tunnel demo?   Are all the explanations accurate?)   

I think perhaps the best age to start going to the science museum is about twelve.

We have a good one in St. Paul, MN.  Recently my family visited, and I had to keep reminding my husband that this is how you go to the museum with little kids --- you let them play with the stuff. 

In a couple of years when my son can read a little better, I'm planning to try a little homeschooling experiment:  get an unlimited-visit pass and come for an hour or so, once a week, for the entire school year.  If I say, "ok kids, we've got thirty minutes to work on THIS DEMONSTRATION RIGHT HERE," will he learn something?

I figure the first three or four visits, of course, will have to be "run around and get the whole museum out of your system" work.

Best Google search of the day.

Someone got here today by searching for

find osha rules on taking placenta home

Hm!   Well, that person was disappointed.

Geography games. (And others.)

Some of these board games reviewed by Matt at Defective Yeti sound like a lot of fun.

Update:  Matt's Games for Kids And Adults.  Matt's Games For Toddlers (scroll down).

Wow.

"The Shape of a Mother:"  a blog of pictures of women, before, during, and after pregnancy.  I have to say I love the banner photo, grotesque as it is.

Probably not safe for work, so you've been warned.

The photos of women pregnant with twins are pretty stunning.  I'm surprised one can stand up when the belly sticks out that far!

Coming out of his shell, so to speak.

Oscar, age 5-nearly-6, is at Reptiles and Amphibians Day Camp this week.  I have to leave to go pick him up in about half an hour. 

It looks like a cool camp.  When I arrived early yesterday, the children were standing in a circle with their hands behind their backs, while another child in the middle turned around slowly, solemnly waving at the others a metal antenna as big as himself.  Turned out that it was Turtle Day, and they were playing "Turtle Telemetry."  One of the kids in the circle, the "turtle," was clutching the transmitter.  I guess the nature center must track the movements of some of the local turtles, inspiring this game.

What a milestone!  It was not that long ago that he was pretty reluctant to be left anywhere for any reason.  We used to call it the "I hate the teacher" syndrome.  Ski lessons, swim lessons, nature center classes, it didn't matter.  I don't want to go.  I hate the teacher.  A year ago I signed him up for Catholic Vacation Bible School at our parish, from 9 to 12 for five mornings, and the first day I stayed in his classroom to keep him from getting distraught.  (There were perhaps three other children in his classroom whose parents had to stay.)  After the first day he was fine.  And here I am leaving him in the suburbs for five hours in a row!  With a brown bag lunch, even!  And he's perfectly happy about it.  Amazing.

As opportunities have come up that have required him to separate from us for a half-hour or longer, we've tried to gently nudge him ever so slightly outside his comfort level.  I do have respect for parents who choose to wait until a child is completely confident before starting lessons or activities or hourly child-care situations.  But we've tried to be sensitive to Oscar's anxiousness, and are willing to pull back/cancel/stay in the room/take more time when he needs it, and so we've felt pretty comfortable challenging him to step out a little bit.  It's not difficult to back off if necessary.

We tried to start swim lessons when he was four.  Initially we thought private lessons, with Dad in the water close by, would be best.  The first lesson, he clung to Dad and refused to listen to the teacher, telling us afterward that he didn't like her.  The second lesson wasn't any better.  So --- we stopped those and decided to wait.   A couple of months later he had his first ski lessons, on a family trip to Utah, and (shockingly to us) he seemed much happier in the group lesson than in a private lesson.  So when we got back we signed him up for group swimming lessons.  And that went better.  He liked having the other kids around him.  Maybe it took some of the pressure off.

He came up with a "goodbye ritual" that helped him separate.  Two kisses, two hugs, four waves and the "little hand".  Woe to the mommy or daddy that got the numbers wrong or put them out of order!  It was the difference between a child who dried his tears and ran off to join the other kids, and the child who clung to daddy's knees and wept for many minutes.    We soon learned that if we took the time to be present and visible through the first session of some class or lesson, walked him through it once so to speak, he'd be able to go it alone for subsequent sessions.  And also, from watching him through the window at his swimming lessons, learned that for some reason he will say he didn't like it and doesn't want to go back, when we can see him laughing and having fun the whole time.  (Never did figure that one out.  Eventually he began to admit to enjoying himself.)

Every child's different; who knows what patience Milo and unborn #3 will need from us?  But it's nice to see Oscar grown so confident, asking us to read the brochure to him so he can pick out a camp for next year, maybe something even longer, even farther from home.  Time's fun when you're having flies, as perhaps he's learning now, since it's Frog Day.

Hey! This'll be useful!

The Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church is now online in English.

Together with the comprehensive, searchable CCC available from several sources (here's one), this'll be a great resource for anyone who wants to know more about the Church and her teachings.  It's slim enough to treat as a reader rather than a reference book. 

The Compendium is truly something to get excited about, as the material in it is presented very simply and directly, with the tried-and-true Q&A format.  It all fits on one page of HTML!   But it retains the structure of the Catechism, which is handy for those who want to turn to the appropriate section in the larger work to find out more.

Here's a sample entry, from the section that's based on the sentences and phrases of the Creed.

“Jesus Christ descended into hell;
on the third day He rose again from the dead.”

125. What is the “hell” into which Jesus descended?

632-637

This “hell” was different from the hell of the damned. It was the state of all those, righteous and evil, who died before Christ. With his soul united to his divine Person Jesus went down to the just in hell who were awaiting their Redeemer so they could enter at last into the vision of God. When he had conquered by his death both death and the devil “who has the power of death” (Hebrews 2:14), he freed the just who looked forward to the Redeemer and opened for them the gates of heaven.

The "632-637" refers to paragraph numbers in the larger Catechism.  So if you go to the table of contents with paragraph numbers, it's easy to find the relevant section where you can learn more.

Paragraph 1. Christ Descended into Hell

632 The frequent New Testament affirmations that Jesus was "raised from the dead" presuppose that the crucified one sojourned in the realm of the dead prior to his resurrection. This was the first meaning given in the apostolic preaching to Christ's descent into hell: that Jesus, like all men, experienced death and in his soul joined the others in the realm of the dead. But he descended there as Savior, proclaiming the Good News to the spirits imprisoned there.

633 Scripture calls the abode of the dead, to which the dead Christ went down, "hell" - Sheol in Hebrew or Hades in Greek - because those who are there are deprived of the vision of God. Such is the case for all the dead, whether evil or righteous, while they await the Redeemer: which does not mean that their lot is identical, as Jesus shows through the parable of the poor man Lazarus who was received into "Abraham's bosom": "It is precisely these holy souls, who awaited their Savior in Abraham's bosom, whom Christ the Lord delivered when he descended into hell." Jesus did not descend into hell to deliver the damned, nor to destroy the hell of damnation, but to free the just who had gone before him.

634 "The gospel was preached even to the dead." The descent into hell brings the Gospel message of salvation to complete fulfilment. This is the last phase of Jesus' messianic mission, a phase which is condensed in time but vast in its real significance: the spread of Christ's redemptive work to all men of all times and all places, for all who are saved have been made sharers in the redemption.

635 Christ went down into the depths of death so that "the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live." Jesus, "the Author of life", by dying destroyed "him who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and [delivered] all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong bondage." Henceforth the risen Christ holds "the keys of Death and Hades", so that "at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth." ...

IN BRIEF 

636 By the expression "He descended into hell", the Apostles' Creed confesses that Jesus did really die and through his death for us conquered death and the devil "who has the power of death" (Heb 2:14).

637 In his human soul united to his divine person, the dead Christ went down to the realm of the dead. He opened heaven's gates for the just who had gone before him.

There's no search utility on the Compendium online, but it's preceded by a detailed table of contents.   And of course, one could work back from the Catechism, using a search utility to find items of interest and then turning to the corresponding passages in the Compendium for the short-and-sweet explanation.

It's so easy to find out what Catholic doctrine has to say these days.    I wish every religious group (at least those that have a well-defined doctrinal system) would put their stuff up online for everyone to see, study, and compare.  I don't just mean holy books, which are rarely self-evident, but rather developed doctrine.

It's there for a few.  For example, here're some links to the Book of Common Prayer (Anglicans), which of course includes a catechism.  The Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod (LCMS) has a very well-organized set of pages that explain their beliefs and practices through documents both new and old.  I don't know of any others.

h/t Amy Welborn.

Jake Shimabukuro.

Wow.  Is that really only one ukulele?

H/t First Things (7/14/06).

Prematurity.

"One in eight babies now is born prematurely."  By that they mean, before the end of the 37th week of gestation.   

Personally, I'm curious how many of those are born early because of maltimed unnecessary inductions or scheduled c-sections.  The article alludes to that possibility when it suggests one way to combat premature birth:

[The Institute of Medicine recommended that m]ore pregnant women receive a first-trimester ultrasound exam, the only way to be certain of the fetus' exact age. That's particularly important if the woman later has labor induced or a Caesarean section before her due date, either elective or because of a possible health problem.

Fair enough, except for that "the only way to be certain" bit.  Somebody's never heard of fertility awareness.  Granted, it's unrealistic from a public-health standpoint to recommend that "more women who may become pregnant track their basal body temperatures," but that's no excuse for the inaccuracy here.  And incidentally, do we really want to go the route where ultrasounds in the first trimester are considered a routine and necessary part of prenatal care?  OTOH, it may be a reasonable choice for women who are at risk of preterm labor.

And then there's the artificial conception connection:

Specialists should strengthen guidelines that reduce the number of multiple births as a result of infertility treatment. During in-vitro fertilization, doctors often implant several embryos at once into a woman's womb. That number has been dropping thanks to guidelines from the American Society of Reproductive Medicine, issued in 1999 and tightened in 2004 — and triplet-and-higher multiple births have dropped, too.

I'm glad for those guidelines, especially if it means that fewer embryos will be created and tossed in the haz-waste bin.  Doesn't make it right, but reduces the harm by a small bit.  I wish people would stop calling this "infertility treatment" though.

But it won't be easy to follow the example of some European countries that implant just one embryo at a time, said Dr. William Gibbons, president of the Society of Assisted Reproductive Technology. Those countries also pay for women to undergo multiple IVF attempts, while very few American women have insurance coverage for a procedure that can cost more than $15,000 per try, he noted.

"If we want to buy into this, society needs to buy into it," said Gibbons — who added that parts of Europe also found they saved money on treating preemies even after paying for repeated single-embryo IVF attempts.

Bleah.   They'd probably save more money if they didn't pay for any IVF attempts.  I'm sure the folks at the SART would love to have the taxpayers and insurance customers foot the bill for IVF.  Fifteen thousand bucks for an elective procedure that doesn't relieve any condition? 

Grail.

Matthew at the Shrine has a fascinating article on legends of the Holy Grail.