Brandie Weikle, the editor of the Star's parenting website, parentcentral.ca, has been writing, editing and commenting on parenting issues for 11 years. Here she discusses the news as it pertains to parents, and her adventures (and misadventures!) as a mom of two boys.
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Earl Beatty Public School sent a letter home to parents Monday to say that students would no longer be able to kick a soccer ball, toss a football or play any other sort of game that involves a ball.
The letter went on to explain that there have been "serious incidents" during which staff and students were hit. School trustee Sheila Cary-Meagher told the Star that one Earl Beatty parent took a ball to the head and suffered a concussion.
That's unfortunate.
But is an outright ball ban the right approach, especially when we're facing a crisis of inactivity among children? As my colleague Andrea Gordon mentioned in her latest story on children and exercise, childhood obesity has tripled in the last 30 years, and only 7 per cent of kids get the recommended hour of daily exercise.
Sure space is tight in urban school yards like the one at Earl Beatty. I have to be very cafeful to stay out of the line of fire when I pick up my youngest son from his small school yard, so I can appreciate the risk.
But that's the thing about risk. It has to be balanced against reward. And in this case the reward is just the kind of free play and exercise that today's screen-addicted kids need.
What do you think? Are there solutions the administration at Earl Beatty may not have yet explored? Is the answer better supervision in the school yard so there are some grownups to herd the junior kindergarteners out of the way of kids twice their size playing soccer? How about a sign at the yard gate to remind parents to beware of flying objects?
Spirits were a little low at my son's soccer game last week.
The other team was clobbering them and somehow we'd just scored a goal on ourselves (the ball simply hit one of them and bounced into the net).
But that wasn't the part that got me down. The father of one of the stronger players would not stop riding his son the whole time. (Bear in mind these kids are seven and eight.) This dad's message to his son was basically to play more than one position on the field. "Your team needs you," he kept saying. "Try some longer kicks." The instructions did not stop. The look on this child's face revealed his dad really was ruining his fun.
When Serious Dad made some general comment to the other parents on the sidelines about our kids needing to get it together, I had my opening for a chirpy response about it not being Major League Soccer.
What ensued was a stupid conversation with me defending having fun and him insisting you could still have fun while being disciplined. I'm pretty sure my son had a better time at the game than his.
This was just my first experience with those sideline shouters we hear so much about, and I know that many of you have similar - and much worse - stories to tell.
I choose to believe that most parents involved in amateur sport bring a good attitude to the soccer pitch or hockey arena, and I'm taking heart in a BMO Financial Group study conducted by Leger Marketing.
It found that competitiveness was one of the lowest ranked reasons that parents choose to register their children in sports, while 99 per cent of respondents said that fun was important. Not surprisingly, 97 per cent said that the health benefits were among their motivations. The chance to develop life skills was selected by 96 per cent and the opportunity to develop social skills by 94 per cent.
Some other interesting findings include:
* Four out of five parents surveyed felt that team sports were important.
* Soccer has the highest level of participation in Canada, with 33 per cent saying they would enroll their kids versus 16 per cent for hockey.
* Those living in rural areas were more likely than those in the suburbs to view being outside as an important factor when chosing sports for their children.
We're off to soccer again tonight and I'm planning to give Serious Dad a wide berth. Let's just all remember why we enroll our kids in sports. It's to show them a good time. It's to instill a love of being active. It's to help them make friends and learn to collaborate with others. It's to give them the resilience they can only gain from losing a game and finding that the world doesn't end. It's for the understanding that "you can't win them all" and the sweet feeling of success when they do.
When Halle Stasyna was 11, she got sick. But this time it wasn't just another cold picked up at school.
"My father took me to our family doctor and he did a blood test and a urine test, thinking it could be juvenile diabetes," explain Halle, now 12. "Then my mom called my pediatrician, who said to go to emerg."
Her blood sugar was 35. A normal blood glucose level is 5. The diagnosis of juvenile - or Type 1 - diabetes was confirmed.
"I had never heard about diabetes before. I didn't know anything about it and I didn't know if it was going to affect my lifestyle. I didn't know if it could kill me."
Type 2 diabetes is the focus of most media coverage of the disease - including on this blog, where I regularly rail on about childhood obesity and what we need to do about it.
But the frightening truth is that Type 1 diabetes is the most common and devastating form of the illness. It's a nonpreventable autoimmune disease affecting more than 300,000 Canadians. In other words, there's nothing you can to do to stop this by cutting down on Froot Loops or making sure your kid puts down the controller.
It freaks me out as a parent that an otherwise healthy child can get this disease without warning (it oftens manifests with ordinary flu-like symtpoms), no sign of a scale creeping up or a blood test coming back with slightly elevated glucose. Halle is a slim, active girl who plays volleyball and takes dance lessons in ballet and jazz. But one day her body just quit producing insulin.
What struck me during our phone conversation was the diabetes-specific vocubulary that's now a part of her speech - she uses words and phrases like "sugars," "insulin," "carb count" and "pen needles" that you don't expect to hear coming out of the mouth of a 12-year-old. But this illness rockets its victims forward in maturity.
"My entire life has changed," said Halle recalling the day of her diagnosis. "Having diabetes now, it's a new normal. Everything was turned upside down."
"I think that having diabetes has made me somewhat more responsible and just having to take care of it all, you kind of adapt to it. You're looking at the backs of foods, at the nutrition guide."
"I think that I'm more consious of what I eat then other kids are, of course. I can still eat what I want as long as I give the appropriate insulin for it."
But if she wants to have a piece of cake at a friend's birthday party, she has to plan for it. "I test my blood sugar before. I use a scale sometimes. It tells you the carbohydrates in the food. I just put that number in my pump."
Of course the hundreds of pin pricks to test her blood sugar and the inconvenience of having to count carbohydrates and wear an insulin pump are only a tiny part of the picture. Diabetes is a leading cause of disease-related death, most often due to related heart and kidney disease and stroke. It can lead to blindness and amputations, and it comes with a lifetime burden of uncertainty.
There is no cure, although researchers are working tirelessly to find one. And that's the goal behind tomorrow's Ride for Diabetes Research. In 17 cities across Canada, corporate teams, many from the banking industry, will compete in a stationary bike-a-thon. Together they hope to raise $6.5 million.
"I know that some people have said that we're about 10 years away from a cure, to a thing called the artificial pancreas," said Halle. "It's basically a pump with a brain. It knows what to do if your blood sugars are high or low. It gives the appropriate doses without having to tell it."
Halle will be at the Toronto event, held at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre from 9 a.m. until 1 p.m., with her whole family.
"I'm hoping that we reach our goal, I'm hoping we earn a lot of money and I'm hoping everyone has a lot of fun."
Last month Premier Dalton McGuinty found himself facing a firing squad of inflammatory and poorly-informed right wingers who screamed from rooftops that a proposed new sex education curriculum was an affront to morality and religious freedom.
These groups said that the new curriculum was "bordering on criminal" and tantamount to "indoctrination of a special-interest agenda."
In a turn of events terribly discouraging to thinking people, McGuinty ended up agreeing to delay the new curriculum to conduct broad consultations with the public.
I wrote my defense of sex education in this blog and there was a vigorous debate in the comments. Many were supportive, but some insisted that sex education does nothing to help delay sexual activity or prevent teen pregnancy. "Concerned Mom" said:
"I don't think that having this kind of sex education will prevent in any way teens from having babies as you mention or of having sex at all. They will do it or won't anyways mostly depending on the education they have had at home."
A commenter who went by "Upset Mom" said:
"Education does not prevent anything...if it were true then the rate of teen pregnancies would have dropped, and it has not."
Francine Kopun's story "Teen pregnancies plummet in Canada" outlines the details, including that Canada has the lowest teen pregnancy rate among the countries surveyed. The others were the United States, Sweden, England and Wales.
The researchers postulated that access to contraception and higher quality sexual education were the reason behind the drop in unwanted teenage pregnancy by more than one third.
Several commenters shared how lack of access to basic instruction on sexual health and human reproduction negatively impacted their lives:
"Sarah" said:
As someone who grew up in a household where no straightforward information about sexuality was permitted... I can verify that nothing leads to experimentation with sex like absolute ignorance! I didn't want 'how to' information, I wanted 'about' information."
Kenn Chaplin shared this:
"Guess where I stand as a kid who only figured out I was gay when school kids said enough derogatory, descriptive things that bore some resemblance to my innocent feelings, bullied by a head teacher who broke his trust with me and made my first seven years of schooling hell, I was then abused by a much older sexual predator.
If there had been more formal talk and less learning important words outside and in illogical order…who knows how much better even just a little sensitively-discussed information would have helped me and others."
Jillian Walker had this interesting perspective:
"I grew up in a household where sex was an open topic of discussion. My girlfriends grew up in households where sex was a taboo subject. Is it a coincidence that those same girlfriends were all having sex by aged 13, and I was almost 18? I don't think so. I believe that if my kids have all of the correct information (including what repercussions may follow, be it a disease, a broken heart, a soiled reputation, a teen pregnancy), they will make informed choices about what they will do, when they will do it, and who they will do it with. I'd rather them make informed choices than make blind choices that they have to pay for later.
"Bravo to you for writing this blog. Cheers to all of those people who support the proposed curriculum changes, and to those who don't...do your research, get informed, and don't come crying to me when you find out your 14-year-old is going to be a parent because you refused to keep a supply of condoms available for them just in case."
This morning three of us from The Star participated in Media Rock Band, the kick-off to a great new family festival in Toronto called Funday Sunday on November 29, 2010.
The event supports causes dear to my heart: Sunnybrook Hospital's Women & Babies program, which specializes in providing care to women experiencing high-risk pregnancies and their babies, some of them premature, and Canadian Hadassah-WIZO, an agency that protects at-risk youth and women in Israel.
The highlight of Funday Sunday will be Toronto's Top Rock Stars, a Canadian Idol-style competition where teams of gaming experts and would-be musicians compete playing XBOX Rock Band. Bands will register in three categories:
Under 12
Over 13
Family
They'll have the summer to practise and to raise funds for Sunnybrook and Hadassah.
This morning's event for a kick off to raise awareness about Funday Sunday.
Yourhome.ca editor Jennifer Wilson-Speedy, rocker Brett Lodge from our graphics department and I formed a team - with one ringer supplied by the organizers (thank you, Phil!), and performed the Blondie hit One Way or Another. Jen is a Rock Star ace but Brett and I were playing the game for our first and second times, respectively. We didn't come ANYWHERE near winning, but it wasn't completely humiliating and we had fun!
Here you can see Jennifer above on guitar and just barely make me out with the microphone.
Here's our group shot, left to right, Jennifer, Brett, me and Phil.
Participating in Toronto's Top Rock Star is not the only way to enjoy Funday Sunday and support these charities. You can also buy tickets to the day-long event, which includes games and activities for kids, a marketplace and an area offering information and tips about family health. Or you can sponsor a team here.
While I don't yet have the kind of detail on the curriculum that I'd like, I do want to point out where I think some individuals and organization are making inflammatory and incorrect assumptions about the spirit, tone and intention of this sort of education.
We've learned that kids will be discussing homosexuality in Grade 3.
It's 2010. Don't a lot of our kids already have someone in their class who has two moms or two dads? That certainly applies for my son, Cameron. He's in Grade 1. He's known a lovely two-mom family since he was in daycare, and happily accepted an explanation that some people pick as their special person a member of the opposite sex and some people pick someone of their own gender.
For the sake not just of combating homophobia but of normalizing the experiences of school children who have same-sex parents, it's very worthwhile to discuss sexual orientation at an early age. Equally important: Getting the message to kids who may already be sensing some sort of "difference" in themselves compared to others, that they are OK no matter who they have a crush on.
What troubles me is the assumption that talking about sexual orientation is tantamount to recruitment to the gay cause. That's just backward.
Certainly one's religious and cultural values give shape to views on this and other aspects of sexual education. Critics say it is up to families to address sexuality with their children in a way that's in line with the their values.
But here's the thing. They don't.
Or if they do, they're not terribly successful at arming kids with the information they need to prevent pregnancy and the transmission of sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Or to delay sexual activities for which that they don't yet have the maturity to cope.
And that brings me to one of the other contentious points in Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty's proposed new sex ed program: discussion of oral sex as early as Grade 7.
By Grade 9 one third of Canadian teenagers are having oral sex. That's a fact and remains so whether or not we're too squeamish or scandalized to discuss it. If we want kids to delay this activity instead of engage in it, um, willy nilly, maybe we'd be better off explaining that you can get yucky sores in your mouth - and much worse - if you're not taking proper precautions. Or if you're trading sexual favours with schoolmates like they were Pizza Pockets.
It's important to look at the context in which kids will be hearing about oral sex. According to a story we had last night, Grade 7 kids will be learning about "delaying sexual activity, sexually transmitted infections, pregnancy and STI prevention."
Did you see the first thing? "Delaying sexual activity." The intent here is not to provide some sort of instructional how-to for kids who would otherwise know nothing about sex. It's about getting kids who are already engaged in risky behaviour - or will be soon enough - to be smarter about it.
This subject has prompted some discussion around the office. One colleague mentioned that when she was going to school in Nova Scotia, sex ed didn't start until junior high. "Two of my classmates had babies that year."
The moves follows startling findings during hearing and eyesight tests at schools in poorer communities. Nearly a third of these kids needed follow-up care by an optometrist, and 13.7 per cent needed further hearing tests. This spoke to the barriers preventing low-income families from getting the health care they need, including difficulty juggling work schedules and appointments (when you're in a minimum-wage job, chances are good you won't have the flexibility to duck out to take your little one to a clinic) and simply not having a family doctor.
The clinics would be run by Sick Kids and St. Michael's hospitals, and would likely be open one day per week after school. It's not just hearing and eyesight that these clinics would be handling, but rather that those barometers cast a harsh light on the severity of this particular health care gap.
But as commenter Yuki suggested in her insightful explanation of why low-income families aren't preparing and eating healthful meals, the real solution could be to "make basic cooking classes and hands-on nutrition a mandatory part of the curriculum so our provinces' children are better equipped to make healthy choices in the future and actually have the practical skills to execute them."
Some other headlines you don't want to miss today:
I think it's an important and logical step in the sluggish efforts to combat astonishingly prevalent obesity among children and adults. Surely in our educational institutions we should be setting a good example, right?
But I got some feedback on Twitter this weekend that got me thinking a little differently about where the problem really lies.
I haven't had a chance to verify this, but one person said that it's schools in affluent areas that sell the most junk from vending machines and unhealthy cafeterias, and yet it's not those kids who are obese. It's the kids who eat junky foods because their parents can't afford anything better who get fat, and it's not because they're buying pop at school, she said.
Of course it's not news to any of us that there's a link between poverty and obesity. That's why community gardening programs and others that help put healthy foods in the hands of people with lesser means have been so successful.
It was on my mind Sunday when I hauled home a huge bag of winter vegetables - carrots, parsnips, potatoes, turnip, beets, bok choy, onions, ginger, garlic. The cost - $16.10.
I was talking about the affordability and nutritional density of these mostly root veggies with the boys' father, and he challenged me to better understand the way my own education and good fortune arm me with the knowledge required to turn these cheap veggies into parsnip-potato pancakes, turnip-carrot-parsnip-apple soup, mashed yukon gold potatoes with horseradish, and pan-seared bok choy with ginger. (And that's just this weekend - my crisper is still full.)
I'm not working a second job. I know I'm fortunate to have the time to make these foods for my family. But the extent to which it may be a mystery to others how to plan and prepare healthy meals is something I hadn't considered fully. In future, I hope to better explore the initiatives and policies that really would help Canadian kids maintain healthy body mass, and would love to hear your thoughts.
What kind of healthy-eating programs would make a meaningful difference?
Oh, what a flu season it has been so far, the usual fall colds and other school-season viruses accompanied by pandemic flu H1N1.
Today's tip comes from thermometer makers Thermor Ltd., but seems like a reasonable idea.
Since body temperature varies from person to person, get a base body temperature of everyone in your family when they're feeling well. This way you'll have a more accurate read on what defines a fever for each person, and you'll be more likely to catch on when a virus is in its most contagious stage.
(As a side note, apparently thermometer sales have been up along with sales of hand sanitizer.)
It was the first day of "Learn to Play Hockey" at the Swansea Hockey Association in Toronto's Rennie Park this Saturday.
After bundling their 5- and 6-year-olds into a nearly impossible - and impossibly cute - amount of hockey equipment, some parents found themselves in a bind when they weren't allowed on the ice with their nervous offspring.
That's because the association doesn't allow any parents on the playing surface without helmets. Many had showed up with a pair of skates, hoping to be out there helping to pick new skaters up off the ice and otherwise assist with the cat herding. But the helmet-less were unable to go out there with their children - some who were having big first-day meltdowns.
It got me thinking about the whole "do as I say, not as I do thing," and the way we don't seem to value our own skulls the way we our those of our children.
We grew up without bike helmets and ski helmets, so it's our natural inclination to think of these things as excessive. But safety nuts that we are when it comes to our kids, we barely let them watch a hockey game without protective headgear.
The ski hill is another place of noggin-protecting inequity. I went on plenty of ski trips as a kid and never wore a helmet, but the Natasha Richardson tragedy last year really gave me pause. As a parent, I'm a little more keenly aware of the importance of staying alive, and I was saddened by her passing all the more because she'd be so missed by her kids.
When Cameron took some basic ski lessons two winters ago, of course helmets were essential. I don't own one, but I think that's going to change before I next head to the slopes. After all, my brain should be sharp enough to protect the skull it's in, right? (Besides, I hear that wearing a ski helmet keeps you so much warmer, particularly on wind-whipped chairlifts.)
So where's the parenting tip in all of this? I guess it's simply this: Protect yourself and improve your helmet-enforcing credibility by putting one on yourself!
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