Carry or not to carry X Spoiling or sharing the love

Posted on March 3, 2009 by zlatavaskova — Leave a comment

Do not spoil BUT share the love

WARNING!!!!………….. babies are smarter than we think 🙂

Uffffff………….. 7 hours of constant cry, do you think that your baby is able to manage that? I can ensure you…. YES he/she can. After yesterday’s experience I decided to share with you what happened to let all parents think about the instincts and baby behavior at infant age.

We were having great day as parents with our son. He slept about 4,5 hours at night and he let mum rest nicely. He was then active whole day, smiling, watching, communicating in his cute lovable way. When I started to show him pictures of different animals and kept telling him their names he paid attention. He was sleeping after every breastfeeding (so every 3 hours he had a short beauty nap). But then came th evening and he started to be impatient and kind of nervous, his hands were shaking around his head and after last breastfeeding he started to cry. We thought, OK lets change the nappy and it will be OK. But it was not. We wrapped him tight and he stopped for a while, but then probably his gases were coming more and more and he was crying and crying even Carlos was caring him through the flat hall. We thought colic is here……… we can not do anything special. We a massage to Edie’s belly, we did exercises, we applied SAP SIMPLEX drops, we put hot towels on his belly. We knew that colic is a natural process for developing the micro flora in Edie’s intestines. We had to hold on and with patience and love release his pains.

This took about few hours and than we recognized that he stopped to cry when being carried and he started to cry only in the time when he was not observed, touched or carried………. in that moment probably started the other part of Edie’s behavioral test. Because always when Carlos wanted to rest a bit, after carrying him already 3 hours in a row Edie started to cry. Even when he wanted to lay down and just simply play with him he cried again. If we would have known what we know now we would stopped this endless carriage. We know that a baby in this time is asking for love and safety which used to get from hugs and caress but everything has its limits.We would probably also gave him a dummy to calm him down (I do not like to give baby dummies as the tool for calming him down and stop being active but as calming tool is sometime really useful – his chewing imitate the chewing of breast nipple which makes the baby calm down and feel comfortable).

Carlos was carrying Edie something about 7 hours………….. Great job daddy, this is cool exercise I think. But at the end it was about 1 am when Edie used to be breastfeed and go to bed for longer sleep, we were tired of watching his red face and listening constant shouting. So we changed the approach. Carlos realized this change of behavior. That Edie was crying only when he was not carried and when he was not moving by being hugged. And that he always stopped to cry when daddy took him into his arms and started to walk………..but try to keep doing that since 5pm till 1am and then we can talk. So what followed was a direct explanation of our son how the things should work. I did breastfeeding as usually at 1 am and then Carlos talked to Edie, that he is not nice guy and he is abusing us. We put him into the bed with us, we wrapped him tight and since he was lying on aside and watching me I pretended that I am sleeping. He was observing me with his huge dark eyes and always when I moved or even open my eyes a bit he started to have prompt of cry, but since I kept my eyes closed and I was not moving he fell a sleep and after long time we had a smiling and resting baby.

So yesterday lecture was really educative and I proved an old fact for myself that babies tries to push and test parent’s limits since early age. It is just up to us how we do understand our baby and how we are able to cope with their constant change of behavior.

TOP SECRET: LOVE YOUR BABY, CARRY HIM BUT DO NOT OVER CARE HIM………… it will be used against you in the future!!!!!

SOOOOOOO BE CAREFULL AND OBSERVE

Tagged with: attached parenting, baby, baby carrier, carrying, colic
Posted in Parenting

Tight wrapping of baby – plesure or limitation?

Posted on March 2, 2009 by zlatavaskova — 2 Comments

Tight wrapping means safety and imitation of belly comfort NOT limitation

My dears,

I always thought that tight wrapping is something what will limit my baby to move and certainly it will limit his further development, but I was so wrong. If I saw my son endlessly crying already in the hospital and you are constantly thinking that he should be a happy baby because he was fed and his nappy was changed……… then you will keep asking: “Small crying face, what more do you want, what are you missing my love?”

In the early age, specially after being born, a baby is still confused by being born and is coping with that so much space which is rather now more and obstacle than an advantage. There was nearly any space in the belly before and the baby felt comfortable. I can prove that because my son was born through C-cut, since he really did not want to be born and go out of the belly. So the imitation of tightness of this internal space will remind your baby the safety and comfort which he was used to before.

We even did experience with Carlos that if we did not tight Edie properly he started to be scared by his own hands since he does not know how to manage his body yet. He was moving his hands, touching his face and scratching it. Sometimes he woke up because of his unexpected fast move of his body and specially his hands been near his head.

But believe me he is learning fast and sooner or later, I bet in one more week, he will improve that much that he will be able to be untight and my inceptive feeling of making him uncomfortable will disappeare.

Tagged with: attached parenting, calm down baby, infants, Parenting, tight wrapping
Posted in Parenting

Dunston Baby Language – What baby cry means?

Posted on February 21, 2009 by zlatavaskova — Leave a comment

“Baby Cry means Communication”

Once I was wondering how I will handle the cry of my baby since I did not have any younger brother or sister and I have not been in a touch with young babies. That’s why I started to search more for the answers. I went through many videos and pages and good advises of other parents but then I found an interesting newly developed system, which I will try to test soon for my own son 🙂

I wanted to understand his needs since early beginnings, but the question was HOW? Mother sense is a great thing created by nature, but not always can be sufficient enough………. and then I found Dunstan Baby Language system which helped me understand the basics of baby early communication. Now I am not afraid any more from hearing my baby cry I am on the other hand even excited what is he going to tell me 🙂

See these videos for better a understanding:

Who is standing behind whole idea of Baby Language?

priscila-dunstan Priscilla Dunstan, a mum from Australia with a special gift, says she’s unlocked the secret language of babies.

When Priscilla was a toddler, her parents discovered she had a photographic memory for sound. At age 4, she could hear a Mozart concert on the piano and play it back note for note.

Priscilla says her gift has helped her hear a special “second language” beyond English, allowing her to detect moods and even diagnose illnesses! “Other people might hear a note but I sort of get the whole symphony,” Priscilla says. “So when someone’s speaking, I get all this information that other people might not pick up.”

That mysterious second language took on an astounding new meaning when Priscilla became a mother to her baby, Tom. “Because of my gift for sound, I was able to pick out certain patterns in his cries and then remember what those patterns were later on when he cried again,” Priscilla says. “I realized that other babies were saying the same words.”

NEH = Hungry
OWH = Sleepy/tired (mouth has shape like O)
EH = Upper wind (burp) – not that urgent cry
EAIRH = Lower wind (gases in belly) – urgent cry
HEH = uncomfortable feeling (too hot/cold) – baby is saying it fast “he he he”

After testing her baby language theory on more than 1,000 infants around the world, Priscilla says there are five words that all babies 0–3 months old say—regardless of race and culture:
Those “words” are actually sound reflexes, Priscilla says. “Babies all around the world have the same reflexes, and they therefore make the same sounds,” she says. If parents don’t respond to those reflexes, Priscilla says the baby will eventually stop using them.

Priscilla recommends that parents listen for those words in a baby’s pre-cry before they start crying hysterically. She says there is no one sound that’s harder to hear than others because it varies by individual. She also says some babies use some words more than others.

Own experience:

I am already one week back home and started to recognize my son’s cry. I am not saying that is always easy to know what he wants but little by little I realized that sound for Hunger is used nearly exclusively for hunger compare to EAIRTH for low wind is used with different decibel levels (understand, if I do not react immediately than the cry extends into the level that I can not hear even my own voice) express I PEED or I NEED YOUR LOVE and HUG. I believed same as Priscilla that mother instinct works quite well and within short time when you stabilize yourself after the labour and you started to observe your kid more and more you can easily understand his needs. I recognized that HUNGER can be also announced by persistent sucking and chewing of anything what is available (hands, clothes) and if baby starts to cry then you can be nearly sure that he is either hungry or gasses are going to be present.

Tagged with: baby cry, dunston baby language, Education, infants, Parenting, what baby cry means
Posted in Parenting

Dalton system (learning is fun and joy not torture!!!)

Posted on February 11, 2009 by zlatavaskova — Leave a comment

Dear friends,

If you are considering which school should your kid attend try to think about this educational system/approach which was developed long time ago and which breaks all the awful rules of conservative learning approach and give your child the possibility of joy from learning and exploring new things.

I am writing this post because I was helping my previous primary school teacher, now applicant for chief executive officer of the primary school, with the administration of her final thesis about the Dalton system applied in her school. I got interested in the results she had observed during her 19 years of practical experience and how the Dalton system developed and is applied now in the primary school I attended many years ago 🙂 .

Dalton school plan is characterized by giving the freedom, independence, boosting cooperation, integration and creativity of kids in order to contribute to their development and enrichment of their intelligence and potential.

“Dalton is not any method or system. Dalton is an influence”

I got to know about the Dalton system through my primary school teacher in The Czech Republic and got more interested in it, because I was attending her classes since 1990-1995 and she as a new hired teacher started to experiment and applied this system in her teaching methods. I do remember how I was looking forward to do all given tasks because later I could enjoy leisure activities like playing, dancing, painting etc. Before this teacher came I had big problems with our old teacher, because I was not that kind of kid which would sit on its bottom whole hour and just listen. I used to finished my tasks, stood up and walked across the class and chat with my classmates…………….. of course this was according to conservative rules impermissible so a punishment for me followed 🙂

My parents were becoming desperate from all the times they were called due “my undesired behavior”, but as we realized later, there was no problem on my side but in the old teacher approach. Later with the implentation of Dalton Plan I always reached the highest score and I did not have any problem with studying anymore. I finished as Master of economic sciences with an A mark (the best score) from my examinations and with an special recognition on my final thesis 🙂

helen_dalton Dalton system (Dalton Laboratory Plan) is not a new system. It got its name from the city Dalton in USA, where was implemented by the teacher Helen Parkhurst (1886-1973). She was unsatisfied with the current system and specifically she disliked that students, even they differ by their skills and abilities and working pace, had to work together under same speed and they had to learn the same topics (content). That’s why she started to use an individual working plan for the students and after two years in 1922 she got published an education book based in the Dalton Education Plan.

This Dalton system fastly developed and spread to other countries such as Japan, China, India, USSR, Canada, Poland, Natherlands, etc.

The Dalton system differs from other alternative school system because it does not have uniform form. It is permanently developing, changing according to current social conditions and needs. Also every school is adopting their plans according to their instructions and every teacher can change also the plan according to the needs of his students and their specifics. Helen Parkhurst experimented with the plan whole her life and she was open minded to new approaches and usage of new tools which should improve the quality of education and effectiveness. Which means that the content of education according to Dalton plan is currently different from that one which was used 80 years ago.

What I like on the Dalton system are basic principles: independence, freedom in the decision about the order of activities to perform, cooperation between students

The Dalton system can be applied in many ways. At the primary school in the Brno is used specifically for the education of talented kids. For better understanding I will briefly explain difference between “SMART” and “TALENTED” kid because this typology together with characteristics can be easily applied not only for the kids education but also in the case of communication towards adults.

SMART	TALENTED
Knows how to answer	Asks additional question
Is interested	Is curious
Has good ideas	Has extraordinary ideas
Answers on a given question	Is interested in details, elaborates, completes
Is the leader of the group	Is independent, often works alone
Simply learner	Has already most of the knowledge
Is popular among other students	Is more comfortable in the company of older students
Does understand the meaning	Does make conclusions
Exactly copies given solution	Creates new solution
Feels good in the kindergarten and school	Feels good when he learns something new
Receives information	Uses the information
Is persistent in observation	Observes carefully
Is satisfied with studying and his results	Is very self-critical

From this table and also from the study which my teacher gave me is visible how important is to take care about the talented kids and we have to consider that no matter which method or approach of education will be chosen we have to always appreciate and accept their special skills and talent. Specialy talented kids can be beneficial for whole society in every sphere of our social life (medicine, modern technologies, arts or sport etc.). We just have to create the proper environment which will keep and boost their potential since early age.
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