Tag Archives: children

Modern Punishment for the Modern Teen

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A 16 year old was grounded for the weekend. He can’t go out and see his gang because of his attitudes. His parents thought he needed to mold his personality early than deal with it later.

 

But the dude has access to Facebook and he can know what’s up with his group. He can video call his girlfriend and see her live. He can still reach the outside world through the social networking sites.

 

Corporal punishment is another option many parents resort. It is also widely controversial and studied. Among them, the research of Murray Straus in the University of New Hampshire claimed that children who are spanked have slower mental ability development.

 

What are you gonna do? What is the best punishment for a child’s misbehavior?

 

What matters to children most in this modern day is connectivity to the internet. Banning social media sites, along with a period of prohibited outside presence, will fold their network with friends. This is a real punishment that hurts. Various software solutions like K9 web protection will aid internet parenting at home.

 

Another option is cutting their phone’s bill. With that, their expensive smartphones won’t have any purpose but an added carry-on. They won’t like that either.

 

Since nearly everybody has a profile in the internet, tell your teen that you’ll chat with his/her friends. This is the ultimate embarrassment for them. They’ll probably hate you but it’s a good threat nonetheless.

 

What other modern punishment do you think will work for the modern day child?

Vaccination Industry Secrets

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I had a chat with a mother who refused vaccination for her family. She has five children, the youngest in her arms while she talked to me. I’d say the young is about eight months old. She is raging about vaccination, reasoning that it isn’t natural and it’s dubious why we don’t hear anything in the news about the fatalities of antigen injection. Vitamins are her best bet to build up their immune system.

 

Vaccination is an intervention against diseases. It saved thousands of medical cases in the United States. Before the widespread of measles immunization, 20% of affected people are hospitalized with 450 deaths each year. Vaccination equips immunity from diseases like chickenpox and hepatitis.

 

Yet, not everybody believes in them. Parents who refused their child vaccination were called ignorant. But 4% of pediatricians won’t give their own children ages 11 years and below any immunization, according to a 2005 study. Are these pediatricians ignorant too or do they know more than public knows?

 

Vaccines have side effects. The nurse may inform the patient that inflammation, pain and fever are normal occurrences after the immunization. But no one has ever told us, or at least in my case, that vaccination has rare but major side effects. For example, DTap, a vaccine to prevent diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis (all are serious illnesses) has a 1:1,000,000 risk of developing encephalitis (a critical condition where the brain swells). Some may have long term side effects such as an inflammatory process that extends to a lifetime.

 

The ratio may be small but as Stephanie Messenger said, a mother who lost a baby after immunization, the “risk was 100%” when it happened to a child. The doctors call her son’s disease unexplained yet a mere coincidence that it occurred after the vaccination. Messenger had three more child, all are healthy and unvaccinated.

 

Administering vaccines all at once increases the risks. A recent study found a significant correlation between babies’ vaccination and hospitalization. Those who received the most immunization have higher and worse hospitalization occurrence. They also have higher death rates.

 

Giving multiple vaccines also increased the risk for older children since it is unusual to have a high dose of antigens all at once; and under normal settings, these foreign bodies are usually inhaled or swallowed, not pushed through the skin. But the US government is requiring vaccinations for immigrants and public schools in which multiple injections are given at the same time.

 

While a vaccine’s safety was studied incessantly, there is no scientific backup that injecting them all at once will not yield any unprecedented harmful effects.

 

Vaccines may have halted epidemics and saved many lives, but the mother I talked to was right. We don’t hear these stories and we don’t know the full information.

The idea of Unschooling and Bundle-led Play

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I’ve been reading a lot about “unschooling” lately. Unschooling is a form of homeschooling where you don’t follow a curriculum; you expose your children to different opportunities to where they will want to explore and learn more about a subject. It sounds fascinating. I’ve always wanted to homeschool my children, and this just seems like it would be so great. I’m still trying to convince The Man about homeschooling and I haven’t even mentioned unschooling, yet…

 
For most people, unschooling is an absurd idea. The child’s knowledge is limited, so why put her in charge of her own education? It seems like setting a barricade to the child’s life away from the rest of other kids who are obligated to attend classes regularly. She’s not only foreign to the core subjects like science and mathematics, but she’s a world away from interaction. It’s not conductive to life preparations, which is what schools are all about.

 
But unlike school, the child’s curiosity chooses the direction in unschooling. She decides what she wanted to learn based on her interests. She doesn’t have teachers, but she has parents, relatives, museums, internet, field workers and boundless resources to teach her. Every minute of the day in every corner of the house could be a learning session. There’s no classroom and homeworks; and as Leo Babauta, a parent who unschooled his children, puts it, “there is no division between learning and life”.

 
Inspired by this, I’ve been purposely letting the Bundle lead me in our play. Child-led play. This is the account of a beautiful afternoon we spent together.

 
After dinner, I started doing dishes and the Bundle said she wanted to go outside. So I opened the kitchen door that leads outside and we sat down on the steps. It wasn’t long before her wheels began turning. She picked up a rock and exclaimed “I ppffound it, Mama, dook!” She showed it to me and I tell her how pretty it is and describe the rock to her, and put it down on the step. She quickly “pinds” another one and hands it to me. Soon, we have a nice line of rocks going. She picks them all up and decides she wants to line them up, so she does, counting “One, four, five..”

 

Collecting rocks, pile of small rocks
A light bulb goes off and she runs inside, screaming “boll, boll”, and comes back with a green ball. (I think she got the pronunciation of ball from Nana’s accented English).

 
She throws it to me and I throw it back and she laughs hysterically when I have to go get it. Every. Single. Time. “Go get it,” she tells me. My heart swells up and bursts with love! She is talking so much lately, with sentences!

 
Later, she runs inside yet again to find another toy to play with. While I wait for her, I look into the distance at the sunset and I feel overwhelmed. I’m a sucker for sunsets. The rays of sunshine stabbing their way through the clouds. Beautiful.

 

God's presence, sun light through clouds
In that moment, I feel the presence of God. In the breathtaking sunset, in warm breeze blowing, in my daughter’s laughter. I worship God through it all.

 
She comes back and has another ball with her, this time a much bigger and softer ball. We enjoy some more time throwing it back and forth to each other. I take in her laughter, I’m in awe of how much joy a simple ball game brings her and I’m in love. As simple as that.

 

Yes, I think free learning suits us very well. What are your thoughts about unschooling?