The Mom Crowd

How much television is appropriate for a toddler or a preschooler to watch in one day? Over the last 2 years on The Mom Crowd we have had many discussions about new preschool television shows and inappropriate content in movies, but we haven’t discussed how much TV is okay. I bet that a lot of us let our kids watch more TV than we care to admit.

My husband and I have discussed how much television we will allow our 2 year old daughter, Annabelle, to watch. While discussing the issue we both agreed that we both watched a lot of television growing up and we turned out okay. We were both fit kids and didn’t grow into slothful adults. So for now we are not terribly strict on the amount of television our toddler watches.

The truth is that I need help sometimes. Dora the “Sitter” helps me out a lot for when I need to shower, make dinner, or clean up the house. Frankly, I don’t think I could have transitioned to having 2 children over this past summer without Dora. While I nursed, snoozed a little, or dealt with a fussy baby PBS, Noggin, Disney morning shows were available.

This Summer was one of the hottest Summers ever recorded in Texas history. When the temperatures hit over 100 degrees for 50+ days in a row, you can’t go outside. While we were house bound this past Summer I was more lenient with TV watching. As the weather cools down we will be able to go outside more often and the need for television’s help will decrease. Additionally, she goes back to Mother’s Day Out twice a week in the Fall, limiting her TV watching even more.

When Annabelle can safely entertain herself and I can reason with her about her activities, then maybe I will be more limiting. Unfortunately (for my productivity) my daughter does not play well by herself. She gets bored and needs me or another friend in the room with her. She has inherited her parent’s extremely extroverted genes. It is not practical for me to play with her all day long. Instead of limiting TV to an hour a day, I try to spend an hour or two without the TV on with my little one.

We don’t let our toddler watch anything. There are certain Nickelodeon and Disney shows that she isn’t allowed to watch and I still fast forward certain parts of movies. Although, I am anxious for Annabelle to fall in love with movies, because I love family movie nights with popcorn.

When my daughter turns into a couch potato while watching TV and can play by herself without a lot of supervision, then I will revisit my TV time rules. For now I am not being too hard on myself about how much TV my daughter watches. And I don’t think other moms should be so hard on themselves either.

Did you watch a lot of TV growing up? Are you strict on the amount of TV you allow your preschooler to watch? Are you thankful when you can get a break courtesy of Noggin?

Welcome to the inaugural Abiding Monday post!  As Amanda said last week, we at The Mom Crowd desire to start off our weeks with a focus on God’s Word and what he might want to tell us.  Abiding Monday posts will typically feature a scripture, some commentary, and a prayer.  Our hope is that you will be blessed by this new tradition on The Mom Crowd.

“Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything.  Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done.  If you do this, you will experience God’s peace, which is far more wonderful than the human mind can understand.  His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.” ~ Philippians 4:6-7

“Do not worry about anything.”  Oh, okay!  Great advice, hard to put into practice.  How many people do you know live truly carefree lives?  When has a day gone by that we don’t worry about something?  If it’s not my expanding waistline I’m fretting over, it’s the fact that another bill from the doctor’s office came in.  Sick kids, a tight budget, lost car keys, being late to work – you name it, we worry about it.  Worry can cause us to feel paralyzed with fear.  It can be annoying in its persistence.  Just when we’ve got one concern “under control”, another one comes along to make us uneasy.

Paul tells the Philippians that there is an antidote to worry:  prayer.  This should come as no surprise.  When we are faced with tough situations, we pray – or if you’re like me, we ask other people to pray for us.  I’m not always good about praying, myself.  Conversation with God requires concentration.  Thoughtfulness.  Time.

You know what I really do when I worry about something?  It’s a highly complex solution of mentioning the problem on Twitter, complaining in my Facebook status update, and starting long, rambling conversations with my husband.  This brings temporary relief, but it doesn’t yield long-term peace.  I should conduct an experiment this week and spend all that time on my knees instead.

Paul’s formula is simple:  prayer (telling God what you need + thanking God for what he has done) = peace. Notice that time in prayer doesn’t always mean the problem goes away.  Peace is not the absence of struggle.  Peace changes one’s perspective within the struggle.  That’s God at work.  I might have more bills than I can handle and a conflict with a friend that has no apparent resolution.  But I can have a peace that surpasses my understanding about both situations.  I simply need to talk to God about them more.  And peace does something for us, too:  it protects our minds from breeding even more worry (see v. 7).

This week, when faced with a worry, don’t let it pester you.  Write it down.  If you have many worries, make a list.   Mention it to God first – before you even bring it up to your spouse or a friend.  Be persistent.  Ask God to replace your unease with his promise of peace, and see how you feel afterward.  Max Lucado says, “The moment a concern surfaces, deal with it. Don’t dwell on it. Head off worries before they get the best of you.”  Philippians 4:6-7 tells you how.

Dear Jesus, we have so many worries.  Life can be overwhelming.  We want to follow Paul’s advice and talk to you about our fears more often.  Thank you for giving us peace when we pray.  Help us put prayer into practice this week and always.  Amen.

Happy Labor Day, and go in peace, Mom Crowd!

We all know that children pick up everything they hear.  When we converse, my hubby and I are constantly spelling key words, finding creative synonyms, or using parental code.  It is a hoot to watch my daughter listening with all her might.  She reminds me of myself when I am listening to people speak a foreign language I’ve vaguely studied – I know every sixth word or so.   When she does follow us, she jumps in with questions and responses.  She’s quick, that girl.

Lucy often calls her brother “Buddy” now, because that is a nickname we have for our son.  This makes us smile.  And hearing our son say, “Get down! Get funky!” at the dinner table is good for a laugh.  (We taught him that.)  But I am most proud when my children use phrases we want them to say without being told.  Here are just a few biggies:

• “May I please have ______________?”  Long ago, my daughter mixed up some of these words and now every request begins with “Please may I __________?”  I think she thinks “Please may” is one word, because I’m hearing it in other questions now: “Please may can we go to the bookstore?”  Regardless of the word order, I’m just happy to hear the “please” and the tone of a question being asked.  When the kids get forgetful, they get demanding, and their mouths produce all kinds of imperatives that I find rude, like when my son drops his cup and says, “Get my cup, Mom!”
• “May I be excused?”  We’ve been working on this one for about a year.  Often when my child was finished eating, she’d just get up and leave the room.  I didn’t care for that to become a habit, so we started teaching this request.  It’s still a work-in-progress.  My son has about outgrown his booster seat, so this will begin all over again soon.
• “Thank you.”  This is a no-brainer, yet small children don’t have the natural inclination to be grateful for anything!  They know how to say thank you – they just hardly ever do.  I am always shocked and delighted to hear an unprompted thanks.  🙂
• “I forgive you.”  Our kids get plenty of practice saying, “I’m sorry” every time they are finished with time-out.  My husband and I feel it is equally important that they hear an “I forgive you” when they apologize.  It is becoming as natural as saying “You’re welcome” to a thank you.   When we coach our children through an argument, one of them always ends up saying, “I’m sorry.”  And the other is prompted to say, “I forgive you.”  Forgiveness is powerful.  Hearing and saying the words is a necessary part of conflict resolution.  I don’t want my children to grow up being unfamiliar with this phrase.  The other day, when my son apologized to his sister for pushing her, he stood there expectantly.  She didn’t say anything.  Eli said, “Mom, Lucy needs to say, ‘I forgive you.'”  Then she did.  I feel good about that. 

What phrases do you spend energy trying to teach your children?  What is something you say that your child has repeated?

I should be drinking whole milk while I’m pregnant?  And better than that is unpasteurized, raw milk?

I should stay away from a low-fat diet? Especially while I’m pregnant?

What is “carbage”?

It’s okay to feed my baby meat?

So, can I or can’t I eat fish while I’m pregnant?

Industrial fats like corn, sunflower, safflower, and soybean oil are making me fat and causing heart disease and diabetes?  You mean butter, coconut oil, and lard are better choices?

What foods are good to introduce to my baby?

You mean babies don’t NEED cereal when they first start eating? Are you crazy?

I recently read Nina Planck’s book Real Food: What to Eat and Why based on the recommendation of a friend. Thanks Heather!  She also recommended Planck’s next book, Real Food For Mother and Baby.  When she told me that the book explains why mothers need more than iron and folic acid when they are pregnant and even trying to conceive a baby my interest was piqued.

This book will turn many of your thoughts about food upside down.  Nina is aon a mission to help people understand why it is important to eat “real food”.  Real food is food that people have been eating for thousands of years.  The kind of food that is minimally processed–meaning milk that comes straight from the cow, beef that is fed grass not soybeans and corn, grains that have been soaked, plain yogurt with your own added flavor, poultry that is allowed to roam and eat grass and bugs.  You get the idea.  Planck makes the argument that “industrial foods” are ruining our health.  Soybean, corn, safflower, and sunflower oils are commonly added into our foods.  They are also highly processed and increasing our bad cholesterol.  The information in this book will make your head spin because it demystifies so much of our wrong thinking about food.

This book addresses all those questions I wrote above. The first chapter is basically a summary of her first book Real Food.  I highly recommend reading her first book to get more of the science and information behind her food recommendations. It is eye opening.  Chapters 2 and 3 deal with pregnancy and nutrition during pregnancy.  Chapter 4 covers breastfeeding. This chapter may make your eyes get as big as saucers in some parts but it is interesting all the same.  She covers why breastmilk is best for baby, what she would do if she had trouble nursing her baby, how formula is made, some of the basics of getting baby to breastfeed and even some anthropological implications for why we have to nurse so often.  Chapter 5 covers first foods for your baby.  This chapter has seriously made me rethink how I want to introduce foods to any additional children we may have.

This book, along with her first book, has caused me to reconsider the kind of foods I want our family to eat.  One thing that I really appreciate about her approach is that she recognizes that eating a traditional, REAL FOOD diet can be pricey.  Time magazine just had an article covering the benefits of grass fed beef for farms, farmers, and consumers.  The article showed how it is cheaper to buy  unhealthy, industrial food than healthy, traditional foods. Many of us are on strict budgets and have difficulty paying for free range chicken and grass fed beed for every meal.  She encourages people to pick and choose wisely and get the best that you CAN afford.  Can’t find raw milk?  Then buy organic whole milk.  Can’t afford organic?  Then at least drink whole milk.  She does recommend that we stay away from all foods that come with industrial indredients and not to fall prey to marketing schemes that tell us that processed foods are good for us.

When we get to England I am planning on implementing several things in the books I have been reading in the last few months about food.  One thing I want to do is avoid ALL forms of industrial food: corn oil, high fructose corn syrup, soybean oil, white flours, processed grains, powdered skim milk…you get the idea.  It seems almost impossible but I’d like to try it for at least a week and see how we do.  I figure since we are moving to a different country it might be easier to stop buying some of our industrial food culprits.

Other books I’ve been reading on the topic of Real Food:

The Omnivore’s Dilemna

Nourishing Traditions

Real Food: What to Eat and Why

Have you read this book?  What do you think?  Does the idea of drinking whole (raw) milk freak you out? Eating whole, unprocessed, real, traditional foods has been getting a lot more press recently.  What have you heard?

There comes a time in every family’s life that you change churches for one reason or another.  Maybe it’s because you just moved or maybe it’s because you just felt God calling your family to serve somewhere else.  Either way, visiting churches can be extra tricky when you have young children. 

Late last year, my husband and I made the decision to change churches because we had been feeling for a while that God was leading us to another church family.  We loved the people at our old church and it was a very difficult thing for us to think about doing.  In fact, we waited for about 6 months before finally deciding to take the plunge and start looking for where we were supposed to be.  Our biggest hang up… our kids!  We truly felt that for our family to join a church, the entire family needed to feel a sense of belonging and comfort, so the decision was not ours alone, but rather that of us and our two young children.

Our biggest concern was how our son, Andrew, would handle the change.  He was only 3 1/2 years old and was incredibly emotional and shy at the time.  He did not take to change well and we knew he would miss his old Sunday school teacher whom he loved so much.  Add on to that his diabetes and being concerned that he was in good hands, and we were a nervous wreck!  We knew our daughter, Catherine, only 1 year old at the time, would do pretty well where ever we put her, but we still were concerned about her happiness as well.   

Luckily for us, we truly already knew where we were supposed to be and it was our first stop, but there was a lot of work behind the scenes before we made our first visit.  Here are a few ideas on how to make the transition time smoother for you and your children. 

 – Call the church’s childcare ministry and get information on the programming  in which your children will be involved.  Find out schedules and routines and make sure to ask if they serve snack or if you should bring your own.  If your child has health issues, make sure they are equipped to handle any special needs or accommodations.

 – To get an idea if you will like the pastor, check out their website and see if they have a video archive or live webcast you can view.  In doing so,  you can get a good idea if it’s somewhere you would really like to be or not.

 – You and your spouse can take turns visiting while one stays at home with the kids.  If you aren’t quite ready to jump into taking the entire family to a church you aren’t sure you will visit again, take turns with your spouse visiting so you both can get a feel for it and then decide from there if you want to continue going and take your children the next time.

 – Always consider the emotional development of your children.  Some kids will fit in well anywhere and it won’t really be an issue for you, whereas other children may take longer to adjust and feel comfortable.  Take into consideration their feelings for the environment and listen if they say they are overly uncomfortable.

 – Ask if you can visit your child at some point during your time at the church.  For us, it is necessary that we check in on our son between our Sunday school and Worship service for health purposes, but honestly, we’d do it anyway!

 – And as always, pray about it!  It’s a big decision on every level and the best thing you can do is pray about it before making any big steps.  You can’t go wrong if you are going where God wants you! 

Have you had to make a church change since having children?  What things did you do to prepare them for the change?  How would you do things differently?

Photo courtesy of NathanReed