Parenting Archives - Page 9 of 18

Part of My Son’s Past is Gone

If you follow me on Instagram, you already know that we had an exciting day last Friday. The day began as any average, quiet morning in our household, with our 6-year-old throwing a fit. I don’t recall what he was upset about — maybe he wanted donuts for breakfast? He had run into his bedroom and was on the floor crying.

As I walked into his room, he raised his red, teary face at me. I smiled and became excited. “Wow! Look at you! Hurry! Go to the bathroom and look in the mirror!” His demeanor changed immediately as he got up and trotted off to the bathroom. He was looking in the mirror, as I exclaimed, “Smile! Look at you! You’re so big!” And then he saw it!
My baby boy lost his first tooth! And he didn’t even know it! We rushed around looking for the lost tooth because — there’s money in that, you know? He quickly found it on the floor where he had been crying just moments before. We didn’t even realize the tooth was loose! Since his other
tooth was loose, Dad pulled it too. When my baby boy came to live with us at 8 months old, those bottom two teeth were the only teeth he had. For me it’s a particularly bittersweet moment for the loss of those two teeth are also a loss of my baby boy that isn’t a baby anymore. This baby boy changed our lives immediately. One phone call on March 4, 2008 changed the lives of so many.
Those two teeth were the link to his past life. There is nothing now left from his former life (except Blankie). Today, I think of his birthmom and her incredible loss of such an amazing son. Has she finally overcome her addiction? I pray for her and birthmothers everywhere.

Our boy placed his teeth under his pillow for the Tooth Fairy with a tooth holder like this one on Amazon:

It had belonged to his 21-year-old Bubba.

$5 for 2 teeth. It appears the Tooth Fairy didn’t have change.

Do you follow our adventures on Instagram? All the cool kids are!

7:31 am by Penelope

Have You Tried Gluten-Free With Your Kids?

Do you have a child that’s difficult to parent? Are your children cranky, aggressive, or hyperactive? Has your child been diagnosed with Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD)? {Read The Out-of-Sync Child for more on SPD}

Have you tried a gluten-free diet for your child with Sensory Processing Disorder?

I haven’t yet, but here’s what I’ve been reading about a gluten-free diet for SPD…

Beth Allen says this in her post, Jumping on the Gluten-Free Bandwagon for Our Son with Sensory Processing Disorder:

My second son Asher, 18 months at the time, was diagnosed with Sensory Processing Disorder. SPD is a neurological condition in which the person has difficulties organizing the sensations coming from the body and the environment. One of the first things I read about SPD recommended removing both Gluten (protein found in wheat) and Casein (protein found in dairy) from his diet. I decided I’d give it 3 weeks, and then go back to life as usual, because it surely wasn’t going to change anything.

Well I’m here to shout from the rooftops, because it’s turned out to be life-changing for us!….

I was about to dive in to Occupational Therapy after Asher was assessed, but I decided to try this GFCF (Gluten-Free/ Casein-Free) diet for 3 weeks “just to rule it out.” Ha!

The GFCF lifestyle has been a Godsend! And still to this day, 5 months in to this journey, I am blown away by what we’ve witnessed. Our estimation is that 75% of Asher’s symptoms were COMPLETELY GONE within 1-2 weeks of going GFCF.

Jenny has a son with autism and SPD and says this on the SPD Blogger Network about a gluten-free, dairy-free diet:

Back in October, you may remember that my son started the GFCF diet (gluten free and casein aka dairy free). Within weeks, his eye contact and engagement improved, his verbal ability approved, and he began to sleep through the night for the first time ever. That was life changing for this exhausted mommy, and I was ecstatic that Bud seemed happier himself.

To be honest, I haven’t tried a gluten-free diet with my son because, frankly, I thought it would be just too hard. But check out this group of ebooks!

Check out these five ebooks on grain- and gluten-free cooking! In these books are numerous tips for a gluten-free kitchen as well as almost 200 recipes for every meal of the day. This book bundle is useful whether you’re just getting started or you’ve been gluten-free for years.

Grain-Free Meal Plans: Summer {2 Weeks} by Cara Faus
Cara’s known for her grain-free meal plans, and this collection includes recipes for 3 meals a day, 7 days a week for two full weeks plus grocery lists, prep instructions, indexes, and more to take the headache out of meal planning for your family. {$~~16.00~~}

Awaken: 30+ Egg Free and Grain Free Breakfasts by Karen Sorenson
In Awaken: 30+ Egg Free and Grain Free Breakfasts, Karen offers 30 delicious breakfast recipes that are egg- and grain-free with step-by-step instructions and photos as well as tips for stocking a gluten-free pantry, egg and sweetener substitution charts, and nutritional information estimates.

Baking with Coconut Flour by Starlene Stewart
Baking with Coconut Flour is not a recipe book but an instructional guide that will answer your questions about baking with coconut flour. Starlene shows you how to successfully reproduce other people’s recipes, how to work with coconut flour, how to adapt your favorite family recipes, how to troubleshoot your flops, where to find coconut flour and more. She even includes a handy worksheet to help you convert recipes!

Check out Beyond Grain and Dairy Cookbook
And the recipes in Gluten-Free Snack Cookbook look so yummy!

I have already ordered and can’t wait to read the Grain-Free Meal Plans book (with grocery list)!!! I’ll let you know how it goes.

Have you tried a gluten-free diet with your kids with Sensory Processing Disorder? Did it help their behaviors?

4:00 am by Penelope

Our Bedwetting Dilemna

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of GoodNites. All opinions are 100% mine.

Have you had a child in your home that wets the bed?

I was surprised when an 8-year-old foster child wet the bed the first night in our home. Bedwetting occurred nightly, and I wasn’t sure what to do about it.

However, nocturnal bedwetting is not uncommon —

1 in every 9 kids wet the bed at night

Bedwetting may be caused by one or more factors. The most common cause of bedwetting, however, is simply a small bladder that is not growing as fast as the rest of a child’s body.

Dr. Stephen Sheldon, director of the Sleep Medicine Center at Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago, Illinois:

“The most common causes of bedwetting continue to be issues involving bladder control, infection, fluid intake, stress and trauma.”

Because foster children have a number of stress factors, such as being removed from their families, moving to a new placement, and starting a new school, they may be more prone to bedwetting.

When I mentioned nighttime diapers for our foster child, she exclaimed, “No! Diapers are for babies!” (Note: I should have used the term nighttime underwear.) But when she saw the cute, girly, discreet design of GoodNites Underwear, she didn’t have any problem wearing them.

However, when I ran out of the GoodNites Underwear, I purchased another brand.

Our foster child did NOT like the other brand. “Gross! I’m NOT wearing that! It looks like a diaper!”

The discreet design of GoodNites Underwear made her feel more like she was wearing regular underwear.

Our nearly 4-year-old Lil Bit also has an issue with bedwetting; however, we found that the potty-training diapers just aren’t absorbent enough for nighttime bedwetting. Many nights, he wakes up in the middle of the night drenched in urine. We are now making the switch to GoodNites Underwear for him too.

For more information on bedwetting, check out the GoodNites Facebook page.

What has been your experience with bedwetting?

12:54 pm by Penelope

Our Disney Cruise Was Magical

After being foster parents for 3 little ones in addition to our 2 preschool boys, we were in desperate need of a vacation! We were elated to learn that Disney Cruise now has family cruises leaving out of Galveston! We wouldn’t have to travel to Florida with our young boys to experience Disney magic! In less than 24 hours, we booked a Disney cruise.

Our Disney Cruise was a magical experience for all of us!

We loved meeting all the Disney characters up close and personal.

One thing we quickly learned was that the cruise ship’s gift shop did not take cash; however, they did accept MasterCard for our on-board purchases.

Our Disney cruise included a port stop in Grand Cayman, which offers a variety of excursions including Seven Mile Beach, Cayman Turtle Farm, snorkeling adventures, etc. We booked our excursions ahead of time to ensure that we would have a reserved spot.

If you visit Grand Cayman — you MUST pet the stingrays at Stingray City! Just sayin’

Since not everyone in my family is as adventurous as me; afterward, I met dad and the kids at Rum Point, a relaxing, quiet beachfront with a variety of eating stands in little huts, and of course, a gift shop!

The currency used in Grand Cayman is the Cayman Islands dollar (CI$) which has a fixed exchange rate of US$1 equal CI$1.20. Souvenirs from Cayman include the famous Tortuga rum cakes, postcards from Hell, and anything turtle. We purchased our souvenirs (including turtle salt and pepper shakers for my in-laws) at the gift shop there at Rum Point using our MasterCard because it is accepted everywhere. Due to some complicated IRS rules, many merchants abroad do not accept all credit cards anymore. But MasterCard is accepted everywhere!

Our Disney cruise included 2 other port stops in Mexico: Costa Maya and Cozumel. Because the Mexican Pecos fluctuates in value between 10-15 Pecos for $1US, it’s easiest to purchase with MasterCard. MasterCard automatically converts Pecos to US dollars with the best currency exchange rate with no additional fees.

We purchased souvenirs and silver jewelry in Cozumel; however, we did NOT purchase any Cuban cigars!

If you’re looking for a credit card that you are sure will be accepted anywhere abroad while traveling, I would recommend MasterCard. For more Disney Cruise pictures, including dolphins, be sure to check out my Google+ Story!

As part of a sponsored post for Collective Bias®, I’m sharing my experience of how MasterCard was accepted everywhere on our recent Disney Cruise vacation to the Caribbean.

8:41 am by Penelope

How Can You Live Up to the Impossible Standard?

Are you on Pinterest?

Pinterest can be so much more than recipes, beauty tips, and crafts I will never do! My sister and I have decided that Pinterest gives mothers this impossible standard of having a perfectly decorated home…while eating delectable foods… while wearing fun fashionable outfits… and being SKINNY! Are you kidding me?

Foster2Forever Pinterest

My goal as a foster mom raising traumatized children is to get through each day without too many meltdowns!!! However, through Pinterest I have found numerous informative articles on being a foster/adoptive mom.

Are you following my Pinterest board on Foster Parenting?

I also have an Adoption board on Pinterest!

Are you on Pinterest? Leave your link below so we can follow each other!!!

3:32 pm by Penelope

Proud to Be a Stay At Home Mom

I’m a Stay At Home Mom!!!

Beginning at 4 months old, my sweet baby boy, Lil Bit, had grown up in daycare. I was incredibly blessed by motherhood, and more and more, I began dreading leaving my 3-year-old each morning. The daycare had grown as quickly as he did and was becoming more chaotic with the revolving door of daycare workers. This school year, each morning, my heart hurt as I dropped him off with him wailing, “I don’t wanna go to school. I wanna go witchoo.”

I was already feeling guilty for leaving my severely-neglected JD in daycare as an infant. His diagnosis of Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD) piled on even more “mommy guilt.” Would staying at home have helped my adopted child in his attachment as an infant? Taking FMLA (family leave) made a world of difference for my son after he got kicked out of his third daycare. (This year of all-day Kindergarten was incredibly successful with only minor rule infractions and not one meltdown at school!!!)

But could I really go back to being a stay-at-home mom as I had been when my husband and I first married? (See this YouTube video about homeschooling my stepson)

It turns out that YES I CAN!!! And I’m loving being a stay-at-home mom!! But I am busier than I thought possible after saying yes to a sibling foster placement of a school-age child and infant sibling.

Our finances are tighter, but with me staying at home, we are saving over $800 a month from daycare costs, eating out much less, lower gasoline costs, no office wardrobe, no maid service, etc.

And we, as a family, are less stressed – minus the stress that two additional children add.

Are you a stay-at-home mom? If you work outside the home, have you thought of how you could stay at home with your children?

2:30 pm by Penelope

Travel Tips We Learned on Our Family Cruise

We needed a vacation! And then something magical happened! Disney Cruise Lines announced cruises out of Galveston! We quickly booked a week-long Caribbean cruise with Mickey, Minnie, Donald and the rest of the Disney gang. I highly recommend Disney Cruise Lines! It was the best!!!

Here are a list of tips we learned when cruising with our children:

Buy Travel Insurance

You never know when your child may get sick, break an arm, etc.

Upgrade Your Room at Check-In

You can get steep discounts on available rooms. We could have upgraded from an interior room to a larger room with a port hole for $200; however, being the budget travelers that we are, we chose to spend that money elsewhere, since we spent so little time in our room.

Cash Is Not Accepted at Shops On-Board

We made the mistake of bringing cash to spend on the ship for souvenirs; however, the ship’s gift shop only took our room key or credit cards for purchases.

Bring a Carry-On Bag When You Board

Think of what activities you or your kids might want to do the afternoon of boarding. If your kids are waterbugs, like mine, bring swimsuits and pool paraphernalia in a carry-on so you don’t have to listen to your kids whine all afternoon because they want to get in the pool.

Decorate Your Stateroom Door

Since stateroom doors are made of metal, use magnets to decorate the door to your stateroom so your kids can find your room easily among the sea of doors that are identical.

Have a Plan for Sea Sickness

I cannot even read a map in the car without feeling woozy. Although, I did get “the patch” for the cruise, if you would like a more natural (and less expensive) alternative, consider taking Ginger Root capsules. I used it considerably when my former job had me flying in a helicopter with a former Vietnam chopper pilot.

Enroll Your Children in the Ship’s Kids Club

My kids begged to spend time in the Oceaneers Club for kids. In fact, one evening, our Kindergartner didn’t asked to be picked up until nearly midnight!!

Plan for Naptime

Our 3-year-old needs an afternoon nap! But the last thing we wanted to do was spend two hours in our interior cabin watching our child sleep. We had an ingenious idea and took the kids to an afternoon movie at the ship’s on-board theater. In the dark, cool theater, our exhausted preschooler fell asleep rather quickly, regardless of the theater’s surround sound system. We enjoyed watching DisneyNature’s Chimpanzee. (you must see this movie about adoption in the wild)

10:36 am by Penelope

Can You Prevent Child Sexual Abuse?

Last summer, I opened up and shared about being sexually molested as a preschooler. I honestly do not know how my parents could have prevented it, which makes the incident even scarier for me as a parent.

The Scary Statistics of Sexual Abuse:

Experts estimate that 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys are sexually abused before their 18th birthdays.
30-40% of children are abused by family members.
As many as 60% are abused by people the family trusts- abusers frequently try to form a trusting relationship with parents.
Nearly 40% are abused by older or larger children.

(from Darkness to Light)

Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse

Minimize Opportunity for Sexual Abuse

Understand that abusers often become friendly with potential victims and their families, enjoying family activities, earning trust, and gaining time alone with children.
Avoid one-adult/one-child situations & instead, choose group situations, whenever possible.
Think carefully about the safety of situations in which older youth have access to younger children. Make sure that multiple adults are present who can supervise.
Set an example by personally avoiding one-adult/one-child situations with children other than your own.

Talk About It

Teach your children about their bodies, about what abuse is, and, when age-appropriate, about sex. Teach them words that help them discuss sex comfortably with you.
Model caring for your own body, and teach children how to care for theirs.
Teach children that it is “against the rules” for adults to act in a sexual way with them and use examples. Teach them what parts of their bodies others should not touch.

These acclaimed books (Amazon affiliate link) could be used to educate your children about privacy of their bodies:

Amazon.com Widgets

Stay Alert

Physical signs of sexual abuse are not common, although redness, rashes or swelling in the genital area, urinary tract infections, or other such symptoms should be carefully investigated. Also, physical problems associated with anxiety, such as chronic stomach pain or headaches, may occur.
Emotional or behavioral signals are the most common sign of sexual abuse. These can run from “too perfect” behavior, to withdrawal and depression, to unexplained anger and rebellion.
Sexual behavior and language that are not age-appropriate can be a red flag.
Be aware that in some children there are no signs whatsoever.

How an Abuser Works

The abuser shames the child, points out that the child let it happen, or tells the child that his or her parents will be angry.
The abuser is often manipulative and may try to confuse the child about what is right and wrong.
The abuser sometimes threatens the child or a family member.

How You Should Act

Believe the child and make sure the child knows it.
Thank the child for telling you and praise the child’s courage.
Encourage the child to talk but don’t ask leading questions about details. If you must ask questions to keep the child talking, ask open-ended ones like “what happened next?”
Seek the help of a professional who is trained to interview the child about sexual abuse. Professional guidance could be critical to the child’s healing and to any criminal prosecution.

Act on Suspicions

By acting on suspicions of child sexual abuse, you will save not only one child, but perhaps countless others. Many of those who sexually abuse children have multiple victims. You may be faced with a situation where you suspect abuse but don’t have any proof. Suspicions are scary, but trust your instincts. Have the courage to report the suspected abuse.

How do you educate your children against sexual abuse?

6:47 am by Penelope

3 Tips on How Parents Can Deal with Manipulation

One evening while my husband and I were dating, he was voicing how upset he was with his ex-wife about how she handled their son, Bubba. Bubba had run to his dad’s house, and began lamenting about his mother: “She said I couldn’t go with you to visit my cousins!”

Angry that his ex-wife, Medusa, was encroaching on his plans with Bubba, my husband went to her home and they began arguing. Bubba hadn’t complete his chore of taking out the trash, and she had given him a consequence. As my husband and Medusa were arguing, Bubba went to them and said, “I took out the trash.”

When my husband relayed this story to me, he was struck back as I began laughing out loud. “Sweetheart, don’t you see? Your son is manipulating you. He knows exactly how to get you and Medusa arguing to take the pressure off of him.”

Triangulation – when a child plays one parent against another in a manipulative way.

photo credit: .craig via photopin cc

My husband and I rarely argue; however, we found ourselves arguing more and more after our 12-year-old foster girl, Big Helper, joined our home. It was only after she left that we discovered how crafty she was in subtly pitting us against one another. We didn’t even realize it.

All children, not just foster children, will try and manipulate a situation to gain control and get their needs/wants met. However, for foster children, manipulation can be a technique they learned in order to survive.

HOW CAN PARENTS DEAL WITH MANIPULATION?

Encourage your child to use honest words. Let them know that they don’t need use tricks to ask for what they want.
Check with your spouse. If a child says that the other parent said so — always, always, always check with your spouse before agreeing.
Become more connected with your child to help them learn that you are there to meet their needs.

If you follow on Facebook, just last week, my 5-year-old didn’t want to go to school. After numerous attempts to get him in the car, I exclaimed: “Get in the car NOW or I’m leaving without you!” My Kindergärtner walked to the car, opened the door, pulled out his blanket, closed the door, and said, “Bye, Mom.”

I was furious! But I had to drive away… When I returned a few minutes later (to take him directly to the principal’s office), he had gone inside and told my husband: “Mommy left — She said I could stay home today.”

He’s only FIVE!!! But already learning the art of manipulation.

What has been your experience with manipulation? What suggestions do you have?

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