Hard to judge how rational the fear is

A recent article in Salon.com about peanut allergy got my goat.  Here's my reaction.

Fear is only irrational if it is out of proportion to the risk. The problem with peanut allergies is that, for many of us, it is difficult to assess the risk of us or our children becoming severely ill or dying from exposure to peanuts. Certainly, for some people, the risk became quite obvious the first time they or their child was rushed to the emergency room, but for many others the allergy is identified in relation to treating less sensational threats, like eczema or asthma. For those people identified through skin prick tests or blood tests as likely to have an allergy, or those who had a reaction to eating peanuts that was not confirmed by a physician, assessing the risk is decidedly more fuzzy.

If the average time from exposure to anaphylactic reaction is 10 minutes, then anyone caring for a potentially allergic person must know how to administer their epipen. Most people have never triggered an epipen and have no specialist training in recognizing an allergic reaction, so for them the best way to control the situation is to prevent exposure to the allergen. This is true not just for parents, but for childcare centers, kindergartens, and schools. For children who are too young to read the ingredients label, or who lack the life experience to know that something called "satay chicken" contains peanuts, it is pivotal that the environment they are in contain as few allergen containing foods as possible. This is why carers of children are increasingly choosing to restrict common allergens from places that are largely populated by children who are too young to protect themselves.

The author implies that many of the children described as allergic to peanuts or other foods are not. Though many people misuse or do not distinguish between the terms "allergy" and "sensitivity", it is not fair to denigrate the experiences of those who suffer serious discomfort from eating certain foods, whether they have been confirmed by a skin prick test or not. Neither skin prick tests nor blood tests are 100% predictive of allergic reaction or lack thereof. The Australasian Society of Clinical Immunology and Allergy states

"When properly conducted, the skin prick test is a highly sensitive and specific test for the presence of allergen-specific IgE antibody. However, the presence of IgE antibody (as defined by a positive skin prick test) does not prove that the patient is clinically reactive to the allergen."

They go on to state that wheal size is not predictive of the severity of symptoms. Controlled food challenges, where the subject eats the food in question in a controlled environment, are considered the gold standard for determining food sensitivity.

My son, who suffered from severe eczema as an infant, has had multiple positive skin prick tests to peanuts (and never negative) but never had a reaction that could be definitively attributed to peanuts. Still, the allergist recommended avoiding all nuts until he was older. After accidentally exposing him to almonds with no negative effect, I foolishly decided to challenge him with cashews, to which he had a severe, but not anaphylactic, reaction consistent with allergy and later confirmed by a skin prick test. We now carry an epipen. As much as I would like to believe we will never need it, it would be irresponsible of me to ignore the recommendations of his allergist, who I must assume knows more on the subject than I.

Though many people with peanut allergies do not have life threatening reactions to eating them, the conclusion I've drawn from countless hours spent trying to determine how serious my son's allergy may be is that the medical studies cannot conclusively say that the severity of one person's reactions will always be consistent. Hence, he may have hives one time he eats peanuts and anaphylaxsis on another occasion. Then again, he may not, but how am I to know. And that's my point. Without more accurate tests to predict the severity of a reaction then one must conclude that a life threatening reaction is possible for anyone who demonstrates some kind of reaction.

I'm all for ridding the world of misinformation, and I appreciate the author exposing the questionable statistics of the FAAN and the motivations of Ms Munoz-Furlong, but I think the author has failed to provide clarity about peanut allergy. Despite any of his efforts to the contrary, he has produced an article that belittles those who express concern for the welfare of the children in their care. If a skin prick test predicted that a child in your care was probably allergic to peanuts, and whose doctor recommended avoiding peanuts and carrying an epipen, you would never forgive yourself if that child died because you did not take the advice seriously.

Mix and match your duplo

Cordless power drill

I've always known that lego (and now duplo, its larger cousin) was a fantastic toy.  With a few blocks and a little imagination you can create a stunning array of things, from pretend power drills to guitars with strings to pluck (granted, not with particularly good tones).  With the addition of a few specialized pieces picked up from the Legoville collections or Bob the Builder sets, you've got everything you need to create an extensive array of construction equipment.

Semi trailer with excavator like the ones we saw when they pulled down the house on the corner - using truck base from cement truck kit, wheel base from Lofty kit, caterpillar tracks from Muck kit, back hoe and cabin from Scoop kit, warning sign base from one of the Bob the Builder sets to provide the articulation between the truck and the trailer, generic pieces, and rubber bands to create the loading ramp.

My son loves tools, trucks, and tractors, so we have, in addition to a few basic sets of duplo blocks, a cement truck and Scoop (tractor), Lofty (crane), Sumsy (forklift), Muck (supposedly a grater), and Rolly (roller).  We haven't actually started watching Bob the Builder in our house, which is probably a blessing, but which also means we aren't compelled to create the characters.  The pictures show some of the things we've put together instead.

Guitar with rubber band strings

My only big gripes with duplo are the lack of hinges (you'll notice my makeshift hinge for the loading ramp on the semi-trailer) and pieces that click together in different planes, so you can build things at 45 and 90 degree angles.

Construction crane like the ones over the parking structure that is being built at the junction - using windows for the scaffold section, cabin from Bob the Builder sets, crane arm from Lofty set.  The ladder is made from fence pieces turned on end.

Our son is interested in creating lego versions of things he sees when he's out, and I like the fact that he can imagine the real object even though the lego version is rough, at best.  He has even created his own grinder, based on seeing one being used on the way to child care.

Oh my god, I'm a stay at home mom!

This shouldn't be too surprising, since I haven't worked in over a year, but before now I was in denial.

Until my son was born I was earning more than my husband.  I decided I'd like to stay home for the first year of my son's life so I quit my job, naively believing that I'd be able to find part time employment after a year out of work.  Last month, I dusted off my resume, added my most recent experience, and sent it to a few people.  The response I got was less than encouraging: "The chances of finding part time work in the IT industry are virtually nil."

Now, I'm not wedded to the industry.  In fact, I'd be quite happy doing something else, but I'm not prepared to take an entry level position just to start working again.  It's just not practical; working is too expensive to get paid beans.

The going rate for childcare in our area is about $75/day (wombats) and competition for places is fierce.  If you already have your foot in the door, it could be a few months before you can pick up an extra day of care each week for your child.  If your child doesn't already attend childcare, you can expect it to be a year.

Childcare covers the hours between 7am and 6pm, with hefty penalties if you are late to pick up your child, which means you have to be strict with your work hours.  There's no option for half days, or any reliable way to pick up casual days (for those times when you really need to attend a meeting on  day when you don't normally work).  This is when the other types of care kick in: nannies and daddies.  Which you choose depends on how much dad earns and how much you travel.  If this is a rarity, dad might stay home for the day, but if dad earns a lot or you travel a lot, then a nanny is a cheaper option.  The going rate for a nanny in our area is about $17/hour.

Not that I want to have my child in childcare for that much time.  Sure, it's nice to have a break from changing nappies and conversations with someone who sounds like the teacher in the Charlie Brown cartoons, but I'd still like to be one of the primary carers in my child's life.

Another hidden cost is the loss of government benefits when resuming work.  If I were to work three days a week, for $20/hour, I would forfeit about $3,500 in government benefits, making my effective tax rate about 30%, compared with the tax rate of 16% for people without a child.    Combining taxes and lost benefits with the aforementioned cost of childcare makes my marginal take home income only slightly better than if I were in the highest tax bracket.  Of course, the Australian government makes it easy for all Australian parents to weigh up the cost of returning to the workforce by making the cost depend on your partner's income and your prospective income, tax rate, medicare levy, tax offset, family tax benefit A, family tax benefit B, and childcare benefit, not to mention the family tax benefit supplement, which they don't even remotely try to explain how it is calculated or who is eligible for it.

There are other costs to working: transportation, work clothing, out of hours baby sitters.  I read a quote from one woman who was spending nearly $200/month on the magazines she read on the train!

Of course, there are costs to staying home as well, most notably the lost experience and contact with the industry that will ultimately result in lower wages when I return to the workforce, which could haunt me for the rest of my working life.

For now, I've decided to stay home a little longer.  Each day I feel my market value slipping away, but I try not to think about that because if I am already unmarketable after one year out of work I in danger of becoming a permanent housewife if I stay home too long.

Why I'm teaching sign language to my child

I guess I'm not an entirely conventional mother.  One of the ways this evidenced itself was when I tried explaining to my child's day care minder that we were teaching him sign language.  She reacted with surprise; she had never heard of hearing parents teaching sign to a hearing child.

To be fair, I had never heard of teaching sign to a hearing child until I noticed a friend of mine had an uncanny ability to figure out what her daughter wanted even though she wasn't speaking.  Her daughter only knew about ten signs, but was using them to communicate valuable information.  As soon as I found out about this, I acquired copies of Baby Signs by Linda Acredolo and Susan Goodwyn and Sign With Your Baby by Joseph Garcia.  Then it seemed like I was seeing references to baby sign all over the place: books at the bookstore, DVDs at the baby goods store, classes at the local community house, articles in the weekly baby newsletter.  Most of the women in my mother's group had heard of it, though I think I am the only one who is actually using it.  With all this exposure, I was surprised that someone in the childcare industry had not heard of it.

There area number of supposed advantages to teaching your child sign:

• It takes years for children to develop the oral skills to say all the sounds in their native language.  Manual dexterity develops much earlier and research suggests that infants develop the ability to use language before they develop the muscle coordination required to speak clearly.
• Learning to communicate at an earlier age reduces frustration for both the child and the parents.
• Using sign allows children to learn fundamentals of language earlier.  Garcia found that children who learn sign language are speaking about objects at the age when children who aren't using sign are only starting to identify objects.  Acredolo and Goodwyn concluded that babies using signs understood more words and learned to speak more easily than babies who weren't using signs.

My child can only say three words orally, but he's currently using at least five signs.  Like all children, these words have a much broader meaning than a fluent speaker would attribute to the same words.  For instance, the sign for potty may mean "I need to use the potty", "I have just peed", or "There's the potty".  But what a relief!  Instead of crying, if he has a sign for what he needs he silently moves his hands.  I no longer need to guess if he is thirsty or hungry.  When he signs "potty" I know he either needs to use the potty or needs a nappy change.  Sign hasn't turned him into the angel child; he still yells when he wants something or when he is unhappy, but only when he doesn't have a more effective way to communicate or doesn't get what he wants.

He seems to be so excited about being able to identify something and share that with us.  For instance, he recently started using the sign for "hat".  He now signs whenever he sees a hat or a helmet, not only when he wants to put one on or look at it more closely, but also as if to say "hey, I see a hat and I know what it is, and I can tell you that I know what it is."  This creates opportunities for conversation that would not have happened if he weren't initiating it.  These conversations expand his understanding of the world and of English.

As it would be when learning any language, my son's pronunciation is at times difficult to understand.  For instance, the sign for "more" can be confused with clapping (I'm still not sure which one he is using), and it took me at least a day to figure out his sign for drink.  But now that his pronunciation is familiar, it is becoming very easy to understand him.

When I first started this process, I used signs from ASL.  Then I started looking for variations because some signs are just too difficult for a young child with limited manual skills.  I'm not opposed to making up signs, as Acredolo and Goodwyn suggest, and as I learn to understand my son's "pronunciation" I realize that the official sign doesn't matter all that much as long as we understand what he's saying.  Since very few people he interacts with are likely to know sign, it doesn't really matter what signs we use.

It has taken very little effort to teach our son the signs he knows.  Because I own two books on baby sign, we have an accessible reference to learn new signs ourselves.  Then it is just a matter of using them at the right moment.  As my son learns more signs and expands his interest in the world, I learn more signs to share with him.

Raising children gets easier, I hope

When my son was about four months old the father of a young girl told me, "It only gets harder."  There aren't many crueler things a person can say to someone who hasn't had four consecutive hours sleep in almost six months.

I consoled myself, saying that if it never got easier no one would ever have a second child by choice.

Now my child is a year old.  Despite the occasional temper tantrum (which is a relatively new development), it is easier than it was when I heard that cruel remark eight months ago.  Maybe it's just a temporary reprieve, but then maybe a little rest was all I needed to be able to approach all the new challenges with a sense of humor.

Or maybe he just got off easy when his daughter was younger.

Tunnel wonder

I made a tunnel out of a box for my son to play with.  He loves it.  I need do nothing more than look at him from the other side for him to drop whatever he is doing to crawl through the box.  In fact, anything that is remotely tunnel-like will get his attention: the previously forgotten play gym, someone's legs, the dining table (or more likely, the dining chairs).

I must admit a certain affinity for tunnels myself.  As a child I always enjoyed driving through the tunnel from Detroit to Windsor; it never bothered me that we were going under a large body of water to do so.  On the bus to summer camp we always held our hands up to the roof going under a particularly long and dark tunnel-like bridge.  And I still enjoy crawling under the dining table with my son.

This affinity is clearly present from a young age, so what is it about tunnels that makes them so inviting?

Children's Books

My son is about a year old.  Every night, as part of the bed time ritual prescribed by all of the child rearing "experts", we read him two or three books.  At this rate, one can go through a lot of books.

Now the first thing that I have to say about children's books is that they are absurdly expensive: "A dollar a word" as one friend and parent said to us.  Now, it's not really that bad.  They're probably closer to $0.20/word, and some of them may even go less than $0.04/word.  Still, can you imagine paying that rate for your typical novel?  I've mostly gotten over this.  If I find a really good children's book, I will simply ignore the price tag as I take it to the register and pay for it with my credit card so I don't ever have to acknowledge the actual cost.

My real issue with children's books is that on the whole, they are so bad.  They insult the intelligence of the readers (both the children and their parents) by sloppily throwing together pictures and a few uninspiring notes with little semblance of a story.  At the risk of committing a bit of copyright infringement I'll give you an example, the complete text of one of the board books we own:

Baby bunnies enjoy an early morning wash.
Heads down, tails up! Bunnies drink their breakfast milk.
One, two, three... Hide and seek is fun to play.
One young rabbit learns how to hop.
Cuddle up, it's time for bed.  Goodnight!

Now, with the exception of an old college mate of mine who would have liked the cute pictures of bunnies, I can't see how anyone could enjoy reading this book once, let alone the hundreds of times a parent can expect to read each book they own.  That's why when my son decided he liked to use this book as a teething ring I didn't discourage him until the pages started to fuse together and I started to worry about what kinds of glue he might be ingesting.

Fortunately, there are a few stars that shine through the dark, books with nice stories, clever rhymes, intelligent words, and good illustrations.  They include words like "cavort" and "rapscallion".  A few I've discovered so far include "Slinky Malinky", "Harry Maclary and Zachary Quack", "Edward the Emu", "Edwina the Emu", "Olga the Brolga", "The Very Hungry Caterpillar", "Barnyard Dance", and "But Not the Hippopotamus" (who can resist a story about a hippopotamus?  It's just a fun word to say - try it).

Have you read these books?  Do you have other suggestions or remember favorites from your own early childhood?

By the way, if you're ever giving a children's book as a present to a young child, make sure it is a board book, otherwise it will either be torn and crinkled or stored away to save it from that fate.  I'm not sure at what age this no longer applies, but certainly beyond 1 year.

Cloth vs. disposable?

It's a very common question, but it almost seems rhetorical these days: will you put your baby in cloth or disposable nappies (aka diapers)?  We live in a disposable culture, so it's hardly surprising that the vast majority of people (well, Americans and Australians anyway) choose to use disposable nappies without a second thought.  The question also implies that one must use one or the other, ignoring the possibility that it might make sense to use cloth during the day and disposables at night.

The strange thing is that when you choose to use cloth nappies for your baby, even when you don't do it full time, you seem to be joining a bit of a fraternity (well, more likely a sorority).  Since there are about 45,000 different cloth nappy products to choose from, none of which are carried in your local supermarket for examination, if you aren't careful you can end up spending hours reading about them on-line, where you will also end up reading a list of reasons why cloth nappies are better than disposable.  And the list will inevitably argue that the time spent cleaning cloth nappies is marginal and actually not as much as having to go to the store to purchase disposables all the time.

Sure, if you're disorganized, you may find yourself making an occasional trip to the store to get an emergency supply, but most people would buy the nappies at the supermarket when they do their weekly shop.  How can the 60 seconds it takes me to walk down the nappy aisle while I'm at the supermarket once a month possibly compare to the time spent on three extra loads of washing, drying, and folding I do each week to keep my 1 year old in cloth nappies during his waking hours.

Wandering the streets for peace and quiet

I took my son to his first session of child care this morning so I could get some work done outside of his naptime.  However, since the session was when he normally napped, I had to wander the streets for an hour pushing him in his stroller to get him to sleep before the childcare session started so he wouldn't be too grumpy to survive the whole 2.5 hours.  The irony was not lost on me.

Fortunately, I have just gotten a report that he has settled in very well and is doing better than many children his age do on their first day.  After 11 months of not being able to leave the room without him complaining, I have just managed to leave him in the next suburb without him getting upset and I'm wondering why I didn't do this ages ago.