“Don’t let them tell you it can’t be done.”

Those are a few of the words written by Jack Layton, New Democratic Party leader and Canada’s Leader of the Opposition, in his letter to Canadians. Jack Layton is sadly no longer with us, but we are still here.

“My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world.”

Those are more words from Jack’s letter. But who is the “we” he is referring to? It is all of us, really. But more than ever, it is and needs to be mothers. Mothers are predominantly the caregivers of the world. They care for their children, their parents, their spouses, and themselves.  Mothers face challenges and see problems every day that need to be addressed. Mothers see the injustice, the gaps, the patriarchal systems.

But we are not just mothers. We are also economists, journalists, lawyers, business owners, first responders, politicians, scientists, teachers and more. Mothers have a skill set that allows us to intellectually weave together the public and the private, the personal and the societal, the tangible and the intangible. We see the world in a multidimensional fashion.

But we’re also tired. Mothers are often earning a living while caring for three generations of their family. Mothers are often martyrs, although they shouldn’t have to be. And many mothers face the simple, yet complex problem that there is no one to care for their children if they want to go out and change the world.

That isn’t to say that it cannot be done. Mothers have power and knowledge and ideas and they also face barriers and challenges to true participation in changing the world. For some mothers, the missing link is role models, inspiration, and ideas. They may see the problems, but don’t yet know how to build solutions or bridge gaps. For those mothers with fires burning inside of them but don’t know where to start or for those mothers who are still searching for a spark, I have a book for you.

When I was at the Motherhood Activism, Advocacy, Agency Conference in Toronto in May, I picked up a copy of the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement’s new book entitled The 21st Century Motherhood Movement: Mothers Speak Out on Why We Need to Change the World and How To Do It.

The book is full of stories of mothers, both individually and through groups, who have taken on the world, advocated for change, and made the world a better place for mothers, their children, and human beings in general.  The book covers themes so diverse in its 81 chapters divided into 7 sections across almost 1000 pages that it is impossible to try to list or summarize them. The book is not a light read, but individual chapters on their own can provide the inspiration or fuel needed to push forward or tackle a challenge.

If you like the sound of this book, I have good news for you. Courtesy of Blue Milk (who authored one chapter of the book) and Demeter Press (the publisher), I have one copy of the book to give away to one of my readers, anywhere in the world. But there is a catch. I want you to share your thoughts with me and my readers.

Tell me, in your own words:

Why does the world need to change?

How can we, as mothers, contribute to that change?

On September 3, I will use a random number generator to identify the winner of the book from the comments received. I will contact the winner by e-mail to inform them that they won and to get their mailing address. If I don’t hear back from the winner within a couple of days, I’ll draw again.

Last weekend when we were shopping at Chapters, the book “Go The F**k To Sleep” by Adam Mansbach caught my eye. I hadn’t heard about it until that moment and I was curious what it was all about. I picked it up and leafed through it, giggling a bit at some of the bedtime scenarios that were all too familiar. If you haven’t seen the book yet, you can watch this video of it being read by Samuel L. Jackson (the story starts at about 1:00 if you want to skip the intro).

All parents have been there, right? We’ve all had those times when we wished, for once, that our baby, toddler or older child would just go to sleep already. We’ve all had those evenings where we are desperate for some alone time, where we have something we need to do after the kids are in bed, or where we are just EXHAUSTED and want to go to sleep ourselves.

Everyone has thought it at one time or another, with or without the profanity. So I giggled, because I’ve been there, just like you have. However, it left me feeling a bit uneasy.

I work in a city and I like to walk on my lunch hour. Sometimes I walk along busy sidewalks. Sometimes I walk in the mall. Sometimes I cut through stores. When I am walking, my goal is to keep moving at a decent pace. Inevitably, I will end up stuck behind people who are not walking as fast as I am and who do not get out of my way. Some of those people are clueless, i.e. they are chatting with their friend and are completely oblivious to the fact that I want to pass them. Some people notice that I want to pass and just can’t be bothered getting out of the way. But there are also people who are in my way because they are in a wheelchair or using a walker, because they are elderly, because they are obese, because they have one of those huge strollers, or simply because their legs are shorter than mine.

So, I could probably write a book called “Get the F**k Out of My Way.” Maybe it would be funny when relating it to the scenarios where some jerk just can’t be bothered getting out of my way. Perhaps it would even be funny when talking about the people who are just clueless that I’m trying to pass them. But would it be funny if I was directing my “Get the F**k Out of My Way” to someone who is disabled, obese, elderly or vertically challenged? Not really.

Through the eyes of parents alone, “Go the F**k to Sleep” may be funny, just as “Get the F**k Out of My Way” would be funny if you were considering only my view point and not the viewpoint or limitations of those I was directing it at. In most cases, I don’t think our children are staying awake at night specifically to annoy us. Perhaps there may be the odd occasion where an older child is purposely trying to disrupt the parents’ plans, but for the most part, I don’t think that a non-sleeping child realizes that they are ruining your evening or keeping you from sleeping. They are thinking that they want to cuddle with you, that they are not tired, that they are thirsty, that they are scared, that they are lonely, or that they just don’t want to sleep.

Some of those are needs, others are wants, but none of them are maliciously intended actions that deserve a response such as “Go The F**k To Sleep,” even if we are sometimes thinking that on the inside.

So yes, I giggled a bit, but I didn’t feel great about it and I wouldn’t say that I endorse the book’s message any more than I would endorse a comedian who made inappropriate jokes.

“Please stay to the right.”

“Please close your eyes.”

Those are, I think, more reasonable requests, even for our inside voices, than “[blank] the f**k [anything].” Both for our own sanity and frame of mind and out of respect for the person those words and thoughts are directed at, even when they are annoying us.

When Julian was little and I started spending time on attachment parenting forums, everyone was raving about Harvey Karp’s Happiest Baby on the Block. An anti-thesis to many of the baby trainers and baby schedulers, this book offered suggestions for creating a “fourth-trimester” like environment to help ease your baby’s transition into the world.  There are mantras out there that a happy baby makes a happy mom and others that a happy mom makes a happy baby. In reality, I don’t think that one makes the other. I believe that we (babies and moms) each have unique needs, but that those needs also intersect in amazing and sometimes frustrating ways.

So while I’ve spent a lot of time focusing on the needs and happiness of my children and while I get great joy from their happiness, I also recognize the need to focus on my own happiness. That is why I was thrilled to learn that my friend Meagan Francis was writing a book on the topic. I’ve been reading Meagan’s blog and following Meagan on twitter for a long time and I recently had the great pleasure of finally meeting her at the Blissdom Conference in Nashville.

Meagan’s book, called The Happiest Mom, has just been released. The official launch date is in early April, but it is already available in some stores and online.  Although she doesn’t call herself an attachment parent anymore, I know that her parenting style is quite compatible with many of us in the attachment parenting community. With 5 kids and 13 years of parenting under her belt she’s had plenty of time to practice her ideas and hone her skills.  The previews of her book over on her blog and her writing in general on her journey as a happy mom provide excellent insight on focusing on yourself and enjoying motherhood.

I hope you’ll take the opportunity to check out Meagan’s blog and her book. I know that I’ll be picking up a copy of it myself.

Disclosure: I was not compensated for or asked to write this post. I plan to purchase a copy of the book myself.

In my last post, I outlined my perspective on the nature versus nurture discussion. I talked about the intersection between genes, environment and individual choice in determining who a person is.  In that post, I promised to share the books that have influenced my thinking on this topic. In this post, I’m going to share the five books that have probably been the most influential to me as a parent beyond the baby years. I’ve certainly read a lot of other things too, but these are the ones I find myself coming back to as I shape and reshape my approach to parenting.

The Nurture Assumption (by Judith Rich Harris)

I picked up this book because the title and the subtitle, “Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do“, caught my eye.  I read a bit of the introduction and then bought it because it made me angry and I wanted to tear it apart.

In the second paragraph of the introduction, explaining why people say that she “has a hell of a nerve“, the author Judith Rich Harris writes:

This is the second edition of The Nurture Assumption, but its message remains the same. The “experts” are wrong: parental nurturing is not what determines how a child turns out. Children are not socialized by their parents. The nurture assumption is a myth and most of the research used to support it is worthless. Diplomacy has never been my strong suit.

She is right. By that I mean both that her research is sound and also that she is not at all diplomatic in her presentation of it. I found her tone to be annoying and confrontational and I got angry as I was reading it. But, I think it is an important reality check. She explains why nurture isn’t the same as environment. She talks about the role that groups of peers play in shaping behaviour and who we become. She talks about the ways that culture is transmitted within a society.  A lot of it made me angry both because I wanted to be able to have more influence as a parent than the research indicates that I can and also because the book signals that a lot of the things I hate about society may be more deeply ingrained in human nature than I would like to admit.

But, as angry as this book made me, it has allowed me to better understand that my influence over my children is not paramount and it has allowed me to channel my energy into the types of things that are most important rather than trying to do everything perfectly under the assumption that it is critical to their success in life. She talks about how children do bring things that they have learned at home into their peer group and if it agrees with what their peers have learned, then they will retain it. If it doesn’t, then they will reject what they learned at home in favour of fitting in. If what they learned at home is irrelevant to the peer group, then they may retain it in that case too.

In the chapter where she talks about what parents can do, she says:

People sometimes ask me, “So you mean it doesn’t matter how I treat my child?” They never ask, “So you mean it doesn’t matter how I treat my husband? or “So you mean it doesn’t matter how I treat my wife?” And yet the situation is similar. I don’t expect that the way I act toward my husband today is going to determine what kind of person he will be tomorrow. I do expect, however, that it will affect how happy he is to live with me and whether we will remain good friends.

You can’t argue with that logic.

Hold on to Your Kids (by Gordon Neufeld, Ph.D. and Gabor Maté, M.D.)

This book, which has the subtitle “Why Parents Need to Matter More than Peers” is both a complement and anti-thesis to The Nurture Assumption.

A lot of people seem to have taken a different message from this book than I did. I didn’t take away the message that peers are bad or that parental attachment can make peer influence irrelevant. What I did take away is that peer influence can be a destructive force if a child does not have a strong attachment to the parents to begin with and if parents do not make an effort to preserve family time.

Peers influence children in all sorts of good ways and some bad ones that are completely appropriate. However, when children look to their peers to take on the role of a parent, that is where it becomes problematic. Peers will never provide the unconditional love and support that parents can and should, yet children need that type of strong attachment. The book provides examples of families where children who do have a strong attachment to their parents will tell them things they would never tell their friends, because it is “safe”. They don’t have to worry about being humiliated or embarrassed for their feelings.  The relationship with parents acts as a compass as children move through life. In a society where children are spending less time with their families and more time in peer-focused activities, parents may need to use specific tactics to hold on to their kids.

Like Alfie Kohn’s book Unconditional Parenting (which I also recommend, but which takes a whole book to say what can probably be said in a Chapter), this book also talks about why force and manipulation (or punishment and rewards) backfire. The authors explain:

As our power to parent decreases, our preoccupation with leverage increases. Euphemisms abound: bribes are called variously rewards, incentives, and positive reinforcement; threats and punishments are rechristened warnings, natural consequences, and negative reinforcements; applying psychological force is often referred to as modifying behaviour or teaching a lesson. These euphemisms camouflage attempts to motivate the child by external pressure because his intrinsic motivation is deemed inadequate. Attachment is natural and arises from within; leverage is contrived and imposed from without. In any other realm, we would see use of leverage as manipulation. In parenting, such means of getting a child to follow our will have become embraced by many as normal and appropriate.

The authors go on further to explain the importance of the relationship between parents and their children:

No matter what problem or issue we face in parenting, our relationship with our children should be the highest priority. Children do not experience our intentions, no matter how heartfelt. They experience what we manifest in tone and behavior…Many a child for whom the parents feel unconditional love receives the message that this love is very conditional indeed….

Unconditional acceptance is the most difficult to convey exactly when it is most needed: when our children have disappointed us, violated our values, or made themselves odious to us.

When helping parents figure out how to hold on to their kids, the authors do not suggest that parents should never let their children out of their sight. However, they do stress the importance of, for example:

• Ensuring the people who do care for your children in your absence form a strong attachment with them too (e.g. child care providers, babysitters, teachers, etc.)
• Being sure to “collect” your children when you pick them up after being away, as a way to reconnect with them as you come together.
• Establishing and protecting family routines and traditions as a time that is set aside for the family to be together.
• Not rushing to set up play dates on evenings and weekends, when children have already spent much of their week in the presence of their peers instead of with their family.
• Encouraging children to interact in the context of strong adult attachments — e.g. having a play date with another family with similar values that involves both the parents and the children, instead of just dropping the kids off.

Another book I like a lot in terms of how to create the type of attachment they are talking about is Playful Parenting by Lawrence J. Cohen, which teaches parents to use play as a tool to create attachment, to discipline, and to give their children confidence.

Ultimately, I like Hold on To Your Kids a a lot. I think it does a good job of laying out the type of relationship that I want to have with my children. However, in light of my reading of The Nurture Assumption, I do think that it may go a bit far in its hypothesis about how much influence parents can have. Parents need to have more influence than they do today in North America and a secure attachment to the parents is important, but I don’t think that there is any society anywhere in the world where parents truly mean more than peers in determining who children become.

The World Needs Your Kid (by Craig Kielburger, Marc Kielburger, Shelly Page)

In The Nurture Assumption, Judith Rich Harris says that one way parents do influence children is that they often follow in their footsteps. Doctors produce doctors, musicians produce musicians, and so on. If activists produce activists, then maybe I don’t have to do much. Whether it is nature (genes) or nurture (environment, encouragement, modeling) that makes kids follow in their parents footsteps a lot of the time, I still like the idea of creating an environment that will support my children in their own endeavors to make the world a better place. No matter what they are passionate about, I want them to believe that they can make a difference.

This is where the Kielburgers book comes in. Most people know Craig and Marc Kielburger as the founders of Free the Children, the world’s largest network of children helping children through education. Their work has inspired a lot of people over the years and they have now written a book where they share their stories and the stories of other activists about how they were raised and what things their parents did to encourage their passion.

The book includes seventeen different lessons, divided into three main sections: Compassion, Courage and Community. In each one, they tell stories (some their own, some of celebrities, and some of other regular kids who made a difference) and give tips to parents on how to encourage their children to care and to make a difference.  Some of the stories are told by the authors and some of them are told in the first person by well-known activists. The book ends with 100 tips to Raise Global Citizens, summarizing the ideas shared in the book.

Will the ideas in this book make my children into people who care? Will their genes do that? Or will they turn out to be “each man/woman for himself/herself” types despite my efforts? I’m not sure. But regardless of the outcome, the ideas in this book will help me to create the type of environment I want to raise my kids in.

Reading opens the mind, fuels ideas

These books are useful to me, whether I take the ideas in these books and use them to guide my life or just use them to open my mind to the possibilities. They have taught me about the possibilities and the limitations of what I can do as a parent. Most importantly, they’ve reminded me to be human and seek a connection with my children and with other human beings.

Last year Meagan Francis from The Happiest Mom received a press release about a horrible book and called it out on twitter. I had just started writing on a blog called I Blame The Mother and it seemed like a great venue to write about this book. So I wrote a post called Like beating yourself up? This book may be for you. Today, a press release for the same book landed in my inbox. The title is still the same, but they have toned down the parent blame a little bit in the press release. I’m still not rushing out to buy it though.

Here is what I wrote on I Blame the Mother last year:

Do you like having people tell you how horrible your kids are?

Do you enjoy being told that you are a bad parent?

If that is your idea of a good time, this book by Larry Winget may be for you. It reads like the bible of motherblame. From the press release:

ABOUT “YOUR KIDS ARE YOUR OWN FAULT” (Gotham Books; January 2010; Hardcover; $26.00).

This is not a fix-your-kid book. It’s a fix-the-way-you parent book. You owe it to your kids to parent with a plan. As Larry explains, “Why am I writing this book? Look around. Our kids are a mess! They are overmedicated, over-indulged, over-fed, over-weight, over-entertained, under-educated, under-achieving, under-disciplined, disrespectful, illiterate brats with a sense of entitlement that is crippling our society. And it has to change!”

Along with in-depth research and experience from raising his own kids, Winget makes sure you “don’t expect to change your kids’ behavior, unless you are willing to change your own.” He uses the same tough love approach that has made him a bestseller to make sure you are teaching your kids the right values to become productive adults and live a successful life.

WINGET tells you things you don’t necessarily want to hear or admit to, such as:

–You tell your kids they’re special. They’re not!

–You make your kids the most important thing in life. They’re not!

–You turn to medicine to fix everything. Don’t be lazy!

–You set a bad example. Your kids follow it.

Winget forces parents to take a good look at their own behaviors and make a change. He offers five basic principles but suggests it isn’t a matter of just doing them; it is how well you do them that counts.

This Winget guy sounds like a wing nut to me. On his website (not deserving of a link…look him up if you want) he calls himself the “pitbull of personal development” (FWIW I don’t like pitbulls). His other book is called “No Time For Tact”, which he very obviously demonstrated by bringing out this parentblame book. It sounds like it breaks all of the rules of appropriate parenting advice by trying to shame people into whipping their kids into shape. He is also on twitter and predictably is not following anyone and doesn’t reply to anyone…all one way communication. Just the guy I want to teach me to be a good person and a good parent.

I’d love to take my copy of The Nurture Assumption by Judith Rich Harris, which concludes “as for what’s wrong with you: don’t blame it on your parents” and whack him with it.

So today, I received a press release from the publisher of the book that reads:

LARRY WINGET, The Pitbull of Personal Development® and New York Times bestseller is back with YOUR KIDS ARE YOUR OWN FAULT: A Guide for Raising Responsible, Productive Adults (Gotham Books; January 2011; Paperback; $16.00).

I know what you are thinking. Why is Larry Winget writing a book about kids? As Larry explains, “Why am I writing this book? Look around. Our kids are a mess! They are overmedicated, over-indulged, over-fed, over-weight, over-entertained, under-educated, under-achieving, under-disciplined, disrespectful, illiterate brats with a sense of entitlement that is crippling our society. And it has to change!”

Along with in-depth research and experience from raising his own kids, Winget makes sure you “don’t expect to change your kids’ behavior, unless you are willing to change your own.” He uses the same tough love approach that has made him a bestselling author to make sure you are teaching your kids the right values to become productive adults and live a successful life.

Winget forces parents to take a good look at their own behavior and make a change. He offers five basic principles but maintains that it isn’t a matter of just doing them; it is how well you do them that counts.

Ø       Communication is the backbone of civilization and kids will learn to communicate with the world based on how they learn to communicate within their own family.

Ø       Involvement is crucial. Know your child’s friends and teachers. Know what your kids are doing and who they are doing it with.

Ø       Education is the responsibility of the parent.  It’s not up to the school system to make sure your kid learns what they need to in order to be successful, healthy and prosperous. It’s up to you!

Ø       Discipline is a code of conduct by which you live. You will be challenged every step of the way – that’s what kids do.

Ø       Punishment and confrontation is something most parents dread but it is a necessary part of parenting.

Winget touches upon all of life’s lessons from being responsible with money, to discipline, to dealing with your child as a dating teenager. YOUR KIDS ARE YOUR OWN FAULT is the ideal guide for any parent navigating the intricate road of parenthood. I’d be happy send you a review copy today!

So, it seems Meagan got the hard core YOU SUCK AS A PARENT press release for the hardcover book and I got the slightly softened you suck as a parent press release for the paperback book.

In any case, I replied to the e-mail that I received and said:

Hi [redacted],

I actually wrote about this book on another blog that I contribute to last year:

http://iblamethemother.wordpress.com/2009/09/16/like-beating-yourself-up-this-book-may-be-for-you/

Your e-mail has prompted me to repost it on my blog.

Thanks,

Annie
www.phdinparenting.com

The reply I got…

Fantastic! Thanks, Annie!

Fantastic indeed…

Image credit: f_mafra on flickr

About a week ago, the New Internationalist Gifts and Publications catalog for 2010/2011 arrived with the latest issue of New Internationalist. I’ve received some of their cookbooks as gifts before and have often coveted the other things in the catalog. I have been looking for some good books to buy for our kids that will catch their attention, but also teach them something about the world and give back to the world. There are a number of good ones in the New Internationalist Shop’s Children & Young Adults section, but I thought I would share the three that we purchased with you.

Note: The links to the books embedded in this post go automatically to the Canadian version of the website, because my browser always detects Canada as being my previously selected location. If you are not in Canada, go to http://www.newint.org/shop and start your shopping from there if you wish to purchase these books or other products from their shop.

Braids

Braids is a book written by Robert Munsch, published by a young girl called Taya Kendall, and illustrated by a group of children from Taya’s school. Robert Munsch gave Taya the previously unpublished story when they met because she reminded him of the girl in the story. She asked him for permission to publish it in her school newspaper. He gave her permission and the idea grew from there. She ended up having the book illustrated by her friends from Sir Isaac Brock Public School, published the book, and now donates the proceeds from the sale of the book to a Guelph, Ontario based charity. The charity is the Children of Bukati, which helps AIDS orphans and other destitute children in the village of Butula in Kenya to attend primary school.

The story itself is about about a little girl called Ashley who does not like having her hair braided. It is told in Munsch’s usual entertaining fashion and the illustrations by the kids are great. Your kids will enjoy the story and benefit from learning about the children in Butula who are now given a chance to learn to read and write because of this great book and a little girl with a great idea.

If the World Were a Village

This hardcover book written by David J. Smith and illustrated by Shelagh Armstrong helps children to understand the make-up of our planet. A lot of children grow up in a fairly homogenous neighbourhood or an area with a few predominent cultural groups. Few children will have a good appreciation of the true diversity that is found on our planet.

This book helps them to understand how diverse the world is by showing them what the world would look like if it was a village of 100 people. Looking at issues like nationalities, languages spoken, ages, religions, food, air and water, school and literacy, money and possessions, electricity and more, the book gives stats on how those 100 people would be broken down — e.g. 21 speak a Chinese dialect, 9 speak English, 9 speak Hindi, 7 speak Spanish, and so on.

Where Does The Poo Go… when you flush?

Do you have a kid who likes to talk about poo? Or one who is reluctant to talk about it? This is the perfect book for a poo enthusiast or for a kid who is embarrassed about it and who needs to open up and learn to appreciate it. This book written by Australian Caren Trafford and illustrated by Jade Oakley, gives a detailed account of Goobie, a piece of poo. It includes:

• the history of poo (going way back to the dinosaurs)
• how old poo helps us learn about history
• the uses of poo over time
• where people poo
• diseases you can catch when you come into contact with poo
• the development of modern sewage systems
• what happens to it after we flush
• and more…

It even includes a snakes and ladders style game on the last page, called “Pipes and Leaks”. A word of warning though…if poo makes you queasy, the illustrations in this book may not agree with your stomach. I know that when I was pregnant, I would not have been able to read this book. But your kids will love it!

And more…

There are lots of other great books and other gifts in the New Internationalist shop. We also bought a game and I expect that we will buy some more books and games as time goes on.

Do you have any of their products? What do you think of them?

My friend Allie writes the blog No Time for Flash Cards, and in general I would agree. Although we don’t often turn to crafts (like Allie does), we prefer learning by reading books, spending time outdoors, and going to museums rather than by memorization and repetition.  So when Julian’s French teacher said that he needed to work on building his vocabulary and suggested flash cards, I cringed. But we gave it a try and it did help him learn some new words. He enjoyed it, and used the cards both with us at home and with older children at school, but I never got excited about the idea.

I’ve written before about raising bilingual kids. Our children are learning English and German at home and English, French and Spanish at school. Both my partner and I speak English, French and German. We want our kids to learn other languages and to have fun doing it. Since we arrived in Berlin, both of them have been struggling with their German a bit. That has led to them not talking to others or trying to talk to others and lacking the vocabulary to do so. I also know that once school starts up again in the fall, the French flash cards issue will come up again and I wasn’t thrilled with the flash cards we had been able to purchase in Canada.

So I was intrigued when I came across a box of flash cards at the bookstore in Berlin called Einfach Alles: Die Welt in Bildern by Rotraut Susanne Berner. It includes 150 flash cards and each card contains:

• an illustration on the front

• the word in 6 languages (German, English, French, Spanish, Turkish and Chinese) as well as a word-related phrase or saying in German on the back

The set of cards comes in a sturdy and attractive box. It also includes a set of instructions with ideas for games you can play with the cards (opposites, charades, word games and more). There are also several blank cards where you can draw your own picture and then write the words on the back.

As if that isn’t impressive enough, I was even more impressed when we cracked the box open and I saw the quality of the cards and of the illustrations.  As an example, this is the card for WOMAN and yes, there is a corresponding one for MAN too (can you tell this isn’t an American kids product?).

As I said above, the illustrations really are excellent. They range from simple line drawings in one colour to elaborate landscapes. Some of them are quite literal, some are more abstract, and some of them make the kids laugh out loud. It includes nouns (e.g. elephant, snow man, bathtub) as well as feelings and emotions (e.g. fear, love, sadness) and actions (e.g. kidding around). Some of them create opportunities to talk about the things that are on the cards, especially when they are new words or new concepts for the kids.

My kids favourites are things like:

• the BOTTOM (a small child sticking it’s bum out)
• the RAGE (a red faced fist clenched figure)
• the NAUSEA (which is an illustration of a man sitting in bed vomiting into a bowl)
• the HOLE (which is a blank card with a small hole in the middle of it)
• …and of course the naked people (Mommy and Daddy in the shower, they call them)

I’ve thrown in a few images of some of the other cards here to give you an idea of the types of illustrations found in the set. My mother will be really impressed to know that one of them passes as Grannie (let it be known loud and clear that the elderly woman pictured on the card looks nothing like my mother), but I’m happy with them saying “Grannie” for the sake of a giggle and in the hopes that they don’t yell and point “Hey, look at that old lady” at the top of their lungs in public again (especially since they now have the vocabulary to do so in German). The picture of the pregnant woman, showing the position of the baby, is just wonderful.

I get numerous requests daily to do flash cards, even before getting out of their pajamas in the morning, and who can resist a face like this?

This is not a typical book for me to review, so I won’t follow my typical book review format. LIFE with Mother, by the editors of LIFE books, is a beautiful compilation of photographs of mothers and their children, accompanied by quotes about mothering.

The almost 100 page collection includes:

• regular people and famous people
• old photographs and contemporary photographs
• American photographs and photographs from countries and cultures around the world
• photographs from all stages of motherhood from pregnancy all the way to an elderly woman walking with her even more elderly mother
• joy and pain
• everyday scenes and extraordinary circumstances

The book was recently updated from a previous version and this new 2009 version even includes a photo of Michelle Obama with Sasha as the final photograph.

There are beautiful pictures of families in bed together snuggling and reading. Wonderful images of mothers and their children at play. Many heartwarming moments captured on film. One of my favourites  photographs is the one of a Kurdish mother in Israel breastfeeding her baby by Paul Schutzer. The expression on her face and the way she holds her breast make for a stunning photograph. One of my favourite quotes is: “Chance made you my daughter; love made you my friend.”

I bought one copy for me and one copy for a friend. I love to sit and leaf through it myself or with my kids, especially on days when I feel my mothering needs some inspiration.

Buy LIFE with Mother on Amazon.com or on Amazon.ca.

About a year ago, a reader asked me if I would be willing to share a list of my favourite parenting books. I said “sure” and that is when I started working on page called My Parenting Library. Last night I finally found the time to finish an initial version of it.

My Parenting Library

You can click on the link above this paragraph or find it anytime through the navigation above my header (just click on “Library”). The library includes the following types of books:

• General Parenting Books
• Discipline and Relationship Building Books
• Sleep Books
• Pregnancy and Birth Books
• Breastfeeding, Nutrition and Health Books
• Essays and Writings on Parenting that Inspire
• Other Useful Parenting Books

If you do decide to buy any of those books or if you are making any other purchases from Amazon, I would appreciate you supporting me by clicking through from the links on my blog to Amazon.com (for residents of the US) or Amazon.ca (for residents of Canada).

Photo credit: babblingdweeb on flickr

With fear and interest I picked up a copy of this book on a lovely visit to Chapters in Toronto with my friends Sam from babyREADY and Lindsay from Kickypants.

Overview

The byline for the book Slow Death by Rubber Duck is “how the toxic chemistry of everyday life affects our health“. The book systematically introduces, discusses and analyzes the impact of  a variety of chemicals that are far too common in our lives, including:

• phthalates
• Teflon (PFCs or perfluourinated compounds)
• polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs)  or flame retardants
• mercury
• triclosan (“antibacterial”)
• pesticides
• bisphenol A (BPA)

Each chapter includes a combination of stories about the everyday use of these products, scientific data and studies on actual environmental and human impacts, and first-hand tests that were carried out by the researchers to see if/how they could increase and decrease their own levels of these chemicals doing everyday things using everyday products.

What I Liked About this Book

The book provides a really great mix of sources on the impact of each of the chemicals that is discussed. It includes examples of the way that we are confronted with theses chemicals every day. It provides stories about the methods that industry uses to try to convince people of the safety of these chemicals or to hide the dangers of them. It references studies and cases where these chemicals have presented a real danger to human health. It gives first hand evidence from the authors experimenting on themselves of how the regular use of everyday products that contain these chemicals can lead to alarming levels of these products in our systems. This unique mixture of different sources and different approaches makes for a very compelling argument.

What I Didn’t Like About This Book

It scared me to death!

But beyond that, I wished that there had been more data from people other than the two authors. I wish that they had recruited more volunteers and done the experiments on more people to get a larger sample. I would have liked to have seen more information from the other people whose blood they tested (they tested the blood of people including many Canadian politicians).

I also wish the section on solutions had been more detailed. However, they do provide numerous additional resources that people can go to in order to get that information.

Recommendation

Buy this, borrow this, or take it out of the library. This is a must read eye opener. As Sophie Gregoire-Trudeau is quoted saying on the back of the book: “What could be more alarming than the toxic chemicals absorbed by our bodies every day? Our willful ignorance on the matter. Slow Death by Rubber Duck is a call to action for both governments and all Canadian citizens, but especially for us mothers, who are necessary for real social change“.

Buy the book from Amazon.com or from Amazon.ca.

I hope to write more about this book, what I learned, what I’m changing and how it is scaring me in the weeks to come.

Note: I know a lot of people in the United States want to get a hold of a copy of this book and have been having trouble doing so. You can try to get one from a third-party seller by clicking this link to the book’s Amazon.com page. I paid CDN $32.00  plus taxes in store, so if you find the book for between US$30 and US$40  that is probably a fair price. Another place you can try is on the buy the book page on the Slow Death By Rubber Duck website. It provides a few other options for getting the book, which appear to only be available to Canadians, but perhaps they will add American options over time.