Archive for April, 2011
V Is For Versatile Blogger Tag
Author: utbt14 Apr 2011
Anitha tagged me as The Versatile Blogger. Thank a bunch Anitha. The rules are, on accepting the tag, I must tell seven random things about myself. Since the kids are much more interesting, here are seven random things about Chula and Mieja. As for passing the tag, if you are reading this post, you are tagged.
Seven random dialogues in seven random scenarios with Mieja. You can come up with your own conclusion about her.
We watched Toystory-3 at home. Mieja is weird about movies. One sad note/night scene/loud sound scares her and she hides behind me and cries. I put her on my lap, coaxed her and finally pull her through the whole movie.
Me: See???? It wasn’t that scary. Isn’t it? What do you think of the movie?
Mieja: I hate it. All that the toys do are to get lost. They keep getting lost and lost and lost. This is not a happy movie.
I am explaining the concept of money, budget, buying out of need vs buying for the sake of buying etc.
Mieja: I know amma. Let us go to Target and buy some money. That way we will have lots of money and need not prioritize. We can buy anything that we want.
Mieja playing with her close friend. Friend is wearing Gap shoes. Mieja is clueless about name brands.
Friend: Mieja, look what I am wearing. Gap.
Mieja: <Frantically looking around her> Where?! Where is the gap?
I am taking Mieja to the doctor to finish her five year old vaccinations. This is the second visit in the last three weeks. She had two shots last week of March and is having the last two vaccines this appointment.
Mieja: <Lips quivering> But amma….. why do I even need shots? I don’t like shots.
Me: Shots are for your own good. It helps you to be healthy.
Mieja: That is not even true. I had two shots the last time. Right now I have a cold. If shots are supposed to keep me healthy and the germs away, they are not even working. So I will not come to the doctor. Ever, never, never, ever again. Never in my life.
Chula and Mieja playing ludo with my aunt.
Aunt: Don’t throw the dice like that. If it gets lost or broken, then we can’t play ludo.
Mieja: Its okay if the dice gets lost or broken. The dice any way gives us a random number between 1 and 6. So when it is my turn to roll the dice, I will tell a random number between 1 and 6 and move my coin. We can still play like that.
Mieja goes ‘walking’ with my aunt. In two seconds she places a request to be carried.
Aunt: Come on, we have come for a walk.
Mieja: Yes. But I don’t like walking and you like walking. So you carry me and walk, I will be carried and not walk.
Mieja and my aunt ‘walk’ to the local Target. Meija asks to be placed in the shopping cart.
Meija: Now…. I am looking for something. So follow my directions and push the cart.
<After multiple left, right, u-turn, stop, circle, left, right, slow, yields later…..>
Aunt: What is that you are looking for? My head is spinning.
Mieja: Okay, okay, okay. I want something, but I don’t know what it is. So let us look on the computer.
Aunt: How is that possible?
Mieja: Why not? That is what amma does. She looks online about things. So borrow a computer from Target and let us look online and find out what I want. May be we can ask Google and it will tell me what I want.
Aunt: ????
Seven things about Chula:
She C.A.N.N.O.T take it if she loses a board game. Friday nights are game nights. The idea is to spend time together as a family. So we make alterations and try to make the game cooperative. But on those rare occasions we play the real version and she loses, hell breaks loose.
She believes that the world is a happy place. She believes in fairies and magic.
“Amma, do you know that people and animals never die? Everything that dies comes back to the earth in one form or another.”
She is my litter police. The rare occasion, I throw something as inconspicuous as a strand of hair, she is on my case.
She is a people pleaser. She would try out things that she hates, just to please me.
She has a gift for music, rythm and languages.
She prefers a book over TV, friends, playing, tech toys etc.
CSAAM April 2011 – C Is For Child Sexual Abuse Awareness
Author: utbt12 Apr 2011
Child Sexual Abuse Awareness
I have been silently following CSAAM for sometime now. I went for lunch with a friend and no prizes for guessing what we talked about. I came back thinking that I must put up a post, but quickly scratched the plan within hours because I didn’t want to attract any trolls. So far I have always written about safe topics and have stayed in my comfort zone, do I really want to jeopardize it?
Today morning I read Kiran’s tweet.
This reminds me of the “they came for the Jews, I kept quiet”. All ye who kept quiet, tomorrow it could be you.
That was the decision point for me. I mean, I am a Early Child Education professional and if I hesitate to advocate for the kids and their families, then what is the use of my education?
Irrespective of one’s age, one inappropriate touch, even if it a hasty groping, is enough to open one’s eyes to the world. Suddenly the world is not a safe place any more. Even a ten year old will develop a bat sense that teaches her to steer clear of some people. This is all in retrospect, but it is very confusing when you go through it and you are only ten years old and are not equipped with a good support system. I remember thinking hard about this negative attention but for the life of me couldn’t figure out why. The only explanation I could come up with was my non-existent breasts and the potential of what they can develop in to. I also came up with ingenious solution of wearing baggy clothes and molding my spine in to a convex shape that would give Manthara a tough competition!
I have been subjected to an occasional groping in public transportation, exposure to inappropriate language and despicable behaviors of a few individuals while in college. As difficult as it was to deal with it at that time, I must count my blessings. When it comes to my children, how do I deal with it? Gamble on luck? I wish I can put them in a bubble. But that ain’t happening. I cannot look in to those wide, innocent eyes and say that there are big bad wolves out there and they can potentially be affected by them. I just finished teaching them about widening their circle of trust and letting on people other than me in to this circle. Do I want to give them mixed messages? Though the girls already know certain aspects of appropriate and inappropriate touch, I had been afraid to go any further with this.
Thanks to CSAAM, I have been thinking about this topic for the past month. I am trying to remove the emotional ‘parent’ aspect from this equation and approach it as I would any lesson plan and I must say that helps. With this in mind, I have split what I want to do in to two categories – objectives and goals. Objectives are very concrete set of achievables which come with a definite time frame. Goals are something that we walk towards and at times we find this expanding and elusive.
Goals:
#1 Create awareness.
#2 Giving the child the right to say no.
#3 Teaching the children that they have full control over their bodies.
#4 Keeping the line of communication open.
#5 Let them know that they are special no matter what.
Objectives:
If you have a set of goals in your mind, small opportunities present themselves and these can be turned in to objectives. Otherwise, introduce the topic through a book with good content that targets your goals.
-For quite sometime now, Mieja has been pestering me how baby comes out of a mommy’s body, for which my typical answer has been, ‘When it is time the doctor will help the baby come out of mommy’s tummy’. Three weeks back, Mieja refused to take the template answer and forced me it to a corner asking me, ‘Amma, I have heard this million times. Tell me the body part the baby comes out of.’ So I told her the name of the appropriate body part. This to me is one of the goals that keeps in line with goal #3 – Teaching the children that they have full control over their bodies, which includes every body part has a name and a related function.
Over the three weeks at multiple instances I have followed up on this conversation, stressing that it is the name of a body part and is not something to be giggled over/used as a joke; the need for hygiene; every part of the body has a certain functionality including private parts and the children need to define boundaries for every body part. For example – It is okay to hold hands, not okay to touch some one’s eyes, okay to ask for permission and give a hug, not okay to touch private parts. By holding hands and hugging you tell a person about love and trust. By touching some one’s eyes, you can potentially harm their eyes. When it comes to private parts it is inactive currently and all they need to worry about is hygiene.
-Indian culture is one that expects compliance, especially from children. So when your child says no, stop and listen to it. If possible help the child to give a reason why they are saying no. When one blindly discounts every no a child says, the child is going to grow up thinking that they do not have the power to say no. This addresses goal #2.
This is a constant struggle for me. Expecting compliance from my children has been written in to my DNA owing to the way I was raised. So I have to really practice to count to ten to keep my reflexes under control.
-Post 6 years of age, all children experiment with lying. The intention is totally harmless. A simple, ‘Yes, I washed my hands already’ is not meant to make a fool out of you, but to move on with the next exciting thing. Stamp out the urge to make a lesson out of the situation. A simple and quite, ‘I can find out if you washed your hands or not. Please tell me the truth. If you are in a hurry to go out and play bubbles, I will ask your sister to wait for you.’ will do wonders in the long run. goal #4.
What would I recommend a friend to read?
Of course the whole website, but in particular
- Awareness about cyber sexual abuse
Guess The Book
Author: utbt5 Apr 2011
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April 6th, edited to add clues.
Clue 1: Yes, the island is Alcatraz, which all of you figured out.
Clue 2: Think young adult, 9 – 12 years.
I have one last clue which is as good as giving the answer, so I will hold on to it till Friday 9.00AM PST.
April 7th, edited to add last clue, as promised.
Many of you have guessed the correct answer already.
Clue 3: Think Newbery Honor. I am trusting you guys not to google.
April 11th: Please find the results at the end of the post.
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Here is the quiz for April 2011, yes, I am working towards a book quiz, first Monday of every month.
- Guess the complete TITLE and AUTHOR of this book.
- Quiz closes Friday, April 8th. 4.00PM PST.
- Results will be announced Monday, April 11th.
- Instead of picking the first person to respond with the right answer, I am doing a random number generation of the right answers to pick the winner.
- The prize is a book. I want to choose a book appropriate for you/your child. So will announce the title of the book after I announce the winner.
-Comment moderation is on.
- Clipart credit coolclips.com and clipartpal.com
Your picture clue is
Added on April 11th, Results:
-Seven people got it right before the announced closing time. Hema, Sreela, sorry, you guys were right, but your answers did not make it in time. Sandhya, you did not have the author, but I made an exception, because this is a tough one.
-I inserted the names of the people with right answers in an excel file, ordered by the time they sent their reply.
-To choose one person randomly, I used a RANDBETWEEN function.
-The winner is entry number 6, N.Chokkan. Please to get in touch with me through gmail(utbtkids@gmail.com) and we will discuss the prize.
-Thanks for playing folks.
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