Do You Know What’s In That?

Hello there! Like this post? Subscribe to the feed and get more giggles every day.

Let’s talk about bath time, there’s nothing controversial about bath time. Oh, wait…

Last night I read a post at The Alternative Baby about the dangerous ingredients in many so-called “gentle’ baby soaps and shampoos.

What is often overlooked, is that there are countless sinister chemicals in the most common baby care products and children are extremely vulnerable to the vast array of chemicals prevalent in personal care products. A child’s skin is 30 percent thinner than an adult’s, but the surface area of skin (relative to body weight) is greater. This means that the potential dose of a chemical following dermal exposure is likely to be three times greater than in an adult. Another worrying fact is that the blood-brain barrier, necessary to protect the baby’s brain tissue from penetration by the aforementioned preparations (which are often neurotoxic), is not fully formed until the age of six months.

Yikes! Who knew that just a simple bubble bath could be so freaking dangerous? I actually wrote about something similar back in March when studies came out about possible carcinogens found in baby bath products. Johnson & Johnson was one of the biggest offenders, and one of the most widely used brands. The scariest thing about it is, as I wrote, some of the most worrisome chemicals aren’t even listed on the label. You might not even know if you’re using something dangerous.

I usually use just warm water, which works wonders at getting the dirt off. If the kids do need a little something extra I’ve got my bottle of Angel Baby Shampoo & Body Wash. It works great, smells like heaven, and I’m not worrying about what possible crap I’m rubbing into my kids’ skin. See:

• Clinically tested, Hypoallergenic
• No 1,4-Dioxane, formaldehyde, or phthalates
• No sodium lauryl sulfate, cocomidopropyl betaine or other synthetic surfactants
• No artificial preservatives (parabens, phenoxyethanol, etc)

It’s scary what we’ve got to look out for today. Possible cancer causing agents in our baby’s freaking soap? What the hell kind of world is this?

Tags: babies, chemicals, cleaning, shampoo, soap

Success And Failure

I’ve spent much of this week helping Evan learn to ride his bike without training wheels. It’s been a frustrating time for me. He can do it, I see him doing, I know he can do it. But just as he gets going he falls down. On purpose.

Again and again and again just as he would get going I would watch him make himself fall down. Half way through a turn suddenly jerk the bars the opposite direction. Suddenly slam on the breaks as he’s going down the road. Even just throwing himself and the bike down then trying to act like he lost his balance. Again and again I had to stop, breath deep, and talk him back up as he swore he didn’t know how do simple things like push the peddles. In my head I was screaming “Why? Why do you make yourself fall down when you’re so close to getting it?”

Then I got it. Sometimes it’s scarier to succeed than it is to fail.

Oh man, I’ve been there myself more than a few times. I remember in 4th grade the school I was going to started a program for students who were above average. Every student had to take part in a test to see if they could be in the program or not, and I hated it. I remember sitting there, purposely marking the wrong answers over and over again, trying my hardest to fail. Because succeeding was more frightening to me.

I can definitely see Evan reflecting myself. How many times in the middle of starting a new project have I slammed on the brakes and fell down? How often do I claim I don’t know how to peddle my own bike? When I notice I’ve got my balance I suddenly wobble and fall over.

Damn it, sometimes it feels safer to fail. Failure is predictable, it’s simple, it doesn’t require much work. But to succeed you have to try, work at it, and always wonder if you can do it bigger and better next time. If you ride without training wheels today tomorrow you might have to jump the ramps with the big kids. It’s easier to just keep falling down, to never get to that point.

Every time Evan fell down and wanted to quit I wouldn’t let him. I’d give him a hug then put him back up on that bike. Through scraped knees, a busted lip, and swearing that he would never be able to do it Evan slowly learned how to ride the bike. There was a lot of stopping, taking deep breaths, and saying over and over again that I knew he could do it. I’ve seen when he gets into the failure funk enough to know that if I let him give up he’ll never get back on. If I don’t push him back onto that bike right away he’ll spend the next year whining about wanting to ride the bike and refusing to even get it out of the garage.

When I failed the test horribly I thought it was done. I had “proven” that I wasn’t anything special. After school my teacher called me aside to talk to me about my test score. She knew I could do better, she knew I was capable of succeeding, and she wasn’t going to let me stay down. She arranged for me to retake the test (the benefit of going to a very tiny school) and sat with me the whole time. I wanted to just fail, to stay where I was. The second time I took it I scored high enough to make it into the gifted program. The next few years I got to go on special field trips and take special classes with the other kids who passed.

Now as an adult I don’t have someone to stand over me, brush me off and make me get back up on the bike. I have to be my own motivator, make myself keep going even when I want to slam on the brakes. Even though succeeding is scary, I can’t let failure be an option.

Update: Yes I realize Evan isn’t wearing a helmet. A recent storm knocked down a large tree branch, which fell across the bikes and helmets. Luckily the bikes were fine, unfortunately the helmet was cracked down the middle. Wednesday is our shopping day, and that’s when we’ll hit the sports store and try to get a new one that fits. Chill out.

Tags: failure, success

Is Zero Tolerance Racist?

Almost everyone has heard of the zero tolerance policies many schools use. By these policies there is no warnings, no sympathy, and no extenuating circumstances. Any and all violations result in the harshest punishment available. Too often this results in ridiculous punishments. Like the straight A student being suspended for taking her birth control.

But could these policies also be racist? That’s what the ACLU out of Michigan thinks. In fact they even have a report out on this very thing, showing the “school-to-prison pipeline” where students who get the short end of the punishment stick in school are more likely headed to jail as adults. And that may not be because they’re just bad kids, it seems to be more because they are perceived as bad.

Jesse Taylor, who brought this report up, makes a pretty good case against the zero-tolerance policies.

There’s a reason we don’t prescribe the death penalty for every crime. If you’re going to be put to death for stealing a loaf of bread, then you’re not going to be put to super death for mugging someone, or raping them, or killing them. It works the same way in schools - when almost every transgression is met with suspension or expulsion, teaching a kid that asking “Why?” when a teacher says stop is the same thing as bringing a gun to school is a great way to encourage a kid to bring a gun to school. Why would you have trust in a system that targets you for overwhelming punishment for almost anything you do, and lets others skate for the same actions?

It’s a valid point. If the punishment is the same for making a simple mistake as it is for a serious crime, then why even bother any more. It’s also a great example of how school is far from “the real world”, as some anti-homeschooling advocates claim. In the real world I don’t get life in prison for speeding or running a red light. There are degrees of punishment to fit the crime.

But back to race. How could zero tolerance policies be racist. The ALCU report points out:

“In school district after school district, from one end of the state to another, we found that black kids are consistently suspended in numbers that are considerably disproportionate to their representation in the various student populations,” said Mark P. Fancher, ACLU of Michigan Racial Justice Project staff attorney and principal author of the report. “More alarming still are studies we examined that show that the behavior of black kids and white kids is essentially the same, and black kids are still kicked out of school proportionately more often. This is true regardless of socio-economic factors and geography.”

Studies show that when students are repeatedly suspended, they are substantially at greater risk of leaving school altogether. In at least one study of the Grand Rapids School District, 31 percent of students with three or more suspensions before spring semester of their sophomore year dropped out, while only 6 percent of students with no history of suspensions dropped out. Although there are few efforts made to track the whereabouts of students who leave school, 68 percent of Michigan’s prisoners are identified as high school dropouts.

I’m not claiming that all teachers are racists looking for an excuse to banish the black kids. But sometimes our perception changes based on what we have been taught. A short white boy standing up in class and being loud may be perceived differently than a larger black boy doing the same. The teachers may not even realize they are acting on stereotypes or cultural assumptions. And many parents might not have the resources to fight an unwarranted suspension.

One parent who had to fight for her child had this to say in the report (emphasis mine)

“As an attorney, I am highly trained to deal with the loss of rights and conflict resolution, but even I was at a loss when my daughter’s school nearly expelled her for bringing an eyebrow shaper to class,” said Desiree Ferguson of Detroit. “As a criminal defense expert, I knew that the charge against my daughter was unsustainable as a matter of law. But she could still have suffered serious and enduring consequences from the accusation if I had not been armed with the necessary resources to intervene immediately and fight zealously for her. I can only imagine what parents with fewer resources encounter. By coming forward and by being a part of this report, I am not only advocating for my daughter, but for all the parents who cannot or don’t know that they can fight too.”

What about the parents who aren’t attorneys? What about the kids who see their friends and classmates getting in trouble for things they see others not getting in trouble for? What about the kids who open their lunch box, see a butter knife with their food, and worry that a teacher having a bad day will drag him to the principle’s office for “possessing a dangerous weapon”?

When will zero tolerance be replaced with common sense?

Tags: punishment, race, school, zero tolerance

Summer Vacation and School Days

What is it about summer that makes some people think more about school?

I think that for those of us who feel that school was something we needed to be liberated from, the magic of summer is almost tainted with dread. Sure summer vacation might not have meant building flying cars and super roller coasters in our backyards, but it did mean a kind of freedom we had to slurp up as quickly as possible before it was gone. Because all too soon we would be back at our desks, only able to daydream about the things we wanted to do.

Trish from TinyGrass forwards an article along on Twitter called Public schools stifle kids’ free will. It’s an obvious conclusion. Could you imagine a classroom of 25 kids, all acting according to their own free will? Teachers would skyrocket as the group with the highest amounts of alcohol use within a month. But, how many think about what that stifling means for each individual child?

The problem with children in public schools is not the children — it’s the public schools. It’s an artificial and coercive environment in which young children are put when they don’t know any better that they shouldn’t be there. The water is cool.

Then the water slowly heats with absurd rules such as sitting in one’s chair and not making noise when that is what children do and how children explore the world. Then the child is told to pay attention to certain information when the child has no interest in that information at that time. Then the child is yelled at or mentally manipulated by guilt-based recrimination from teachers and parents. The water slowly heats.

When the water gets close to boiling in elementary school or middle school, many of the potentially brightest and free-spirited children have almost completely tuned out in a natural rebellion against this artificial and needless education construct.

Any parent who has tried getting their kids to do something they weren’t interested in doing can attest to the tuning out. You tell them to clean their room then watch as the vacant stare washes over their face. Do we really want that same vacant stare happening when they should be learning? Vivian at MamNeedJava Tiffany of Nature Moms Blog has a great guest post up from Kirsten Olson, the author of Wounded by School: Recapturing the Joy in Learning and Standing Up to Old School Culture. The post is simple: in school children’s time may be occupied but not their brains. For too many they’ve tuned out, shut off their minds and walked away. The post lists 13 reasons why kids are tuned out at school, but I want to just point out two of the reasons.

4. You have to sit still too much in school. It’s hard to sit still all day. Few adults do it. We ask kids to.

5. You don’t get to choose what you are going to learn most of the day. Choice motivates! Lots of school assignments, even if they do offer choice, offer false, superficial ones.

It’s summer now, the season of swimming and biking and having fun. Kids who have been in a daze during the last nine months are waking back up, tuning back in to the world around us. Pay attention to how much your kids are learning in freedom, at their own pace, within their own desires. So far mine have chased frogs, and wanted to know everything about them. Collected rocks, and asked a thousand questions about what are fossils and how they are made. On and on and on, the learning never stops around here. Sure it’s disguised as play, but it’s learning none the less.

It’s when boredom gets disguised as learning that things because troublesome. That’s when tuning out happens, and learning stops.

Tags: education, learning, school