Parental Troubleshooting

I am sure you will agree that nobody is perfect and that kids, being people-in-the-making, cannot be expected to be perfect. So when your child struggles with some difficulty, it can be just part of being a child or it can be something else. It is often hard to tell.

Community nurses will tell you that the phrase “Mama knows best” is true and when a parent feels their child is suffering some kind of problem, they should be taken seriously and the child should be thoroughly checked until the problem is found and fixed. Ronit helps identify kids’ problems regularly and is amazed at how many times parents arrive in desperation, having been dismissed and ignored by “the professionals”.

So whether you are Mama or Papa, if you suspect your child might be having some sort of a problem, you know best. Do not let anyone put you down or discourage you. Your child is your responsibility and if you say he or she needs help, that is good enough. Keep on searching and doing the best for your child until you succeed.

What’s the problem with my child?

Excuse me if I use a computer metaphor, but in the IT world, there are 3 kinds of people: hardware engineers, software developers and implementers. Hardware engineers know how to combine electronic components and build computers. Software developers enable the hardware to do a lot of wonderful things. Implementers (business analysts) choose the best hardware, software, settings and methods to use in a particular context.

Parents, unfortunately, have to be all of them.

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Ritalin: The Easy Way Out of ADHD?

If you are a parent of a child who has been diagnosed or suspected as having ADHD and you are considering putting them on Ritalin, this post is for you! I have written about ADHD in this blog before, hoping to empower parents to take control over the health and wellbeing of their children and making sure their kids do not become a label. I hope today’s story and video will help you make more informed choices about ADHD and Ritalin.

I have been working in the special education field for 25 years. My amazing mentors and teachers warned me that one day, the inflation in the use of drugs to solve academic or behavioral problems like ADD, ADHD, emotional struggles and even tiredness will be so high that my job would be to stay on guard and offer parents alternatives and hope. I took this job description very seriously, but never in my darkest and most pessimistic dreams have I seen it becoming as big or as scary as this.

I am angry and I want to cry from frustration, because we have lost one more child to a form of organized crime. I am writing this post to recover, to remind myself of my job description, to try and save other children from a horrible fate and to offer hope, only this time I need that hope myself.

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Anorexia: Warning Signs

One of the things every parent will tell you when his/her daughter is diagnosed with Anorexia or any other eating disorder is that they could not see it coming. I am sure they mean it. Parents do not want to believe their child is having a problem, including me. It is mainly because most of us think that it says something about us. Maybe it says we have failed and we are not good parents. The problem with this fear is that it clutters our thinking and makes us blind to the warning signs of anorexia.

Be brave! Keep reading and look carefully at every photo, even though they are scary.

Having a child with Anorexia or any other eating disorder requires strong, brave parents who manage to help their child despite what others might say about them. The problem with Anorexia is that everyone can see it. Most kids do not do a very good job hiding it.

A couple of years ago, I worked with an anorexic woman who was 40 years old and weighed about 25kg (55lbs). Trust me, that was scary! It is not something you can hide very well. When I was in hospital with her, in the mental ward, there were other girls there and not all of them were teens. They looked like skeletons! But it is much harder to notice anorexia when it is developing and people often say, “She’s just a bit skinny, that’s all. She’ll get over it”.

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The "Light Thinking" Diet

You may have been on a diet at some stage in your life and your diet may not have been successful. If not, I am sure you know someone who has had this experience. Dieting requires a lot of effort and it is very frustrating when it does not produce big enough results or when the effects disappear as soon as you stop the diet.

I have always believed that fat was a result of heavy thoughts, because the mind is a powerful thing. Now, I have the research to back it up.

The show “You are what you eat” showed people they had full responsibility over what they ate. I think they can call it “You are what you think”, because a recent research discovered that our thoughts have a direct impact on what we eat – we gain weight when we have “fat thoughts”.

In recent times, “light” became a keyword for food shoppers. We are convinced that in order to be healthy we need to eat “light” food – no fat, no calories, no sugar, no salt, etc. Well, our body reacts badly to it. The more we try to be healthy, the harder it is to lose weight.

Why is that?

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My Gluten Free Adventure

It all started a year ago, when a regular checkup discovered I was missing some important vitamins in my body. As a very health-conscious person, I was a bit concerned. I eat very healthy food and have loads of energy, so there had been no indication anything was wrong.

My doctor was great. He did not just give me supplements but was very determined to find the source of the deficiency. I went through a series of checks that ended up discovering I do not have the enzyme required to digest lactose, the sugar in cow’s milk. It was sad to learn that (I love milk, yoghurt and cheese), but at the same time relieved, because it could have been worse.

During that period, I met a friend who had discovered she had Lupus (an autoimmune disease) and had almost died from organ failure. For the two previous years, she had taken chemotherapy medication, looked half-dead and we had all been very worried about her. When we met, she was still on the same medication, but she looked amazingly better than ever.

When I asked her how she had recovered so well, she said she had discovered she was gluten intolerant and had decided to stop eating gluten. I asked her if she had Celiac (my doctor had sent me to check that too and, thank God, I do not have it) and she said, “No, I don’t, but I figured I could try not eating gluten for a while and if I felt better, I’d know it was a good choice”.

That was 6 months ago.

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Don’t Forget

I was sitting in the reception hall of the rehabilitation ward, waiting for Genia (not her real name), an old lady who needed interpretation. As she arrived, I heard her speaking very good English to the receptionist and wondered why she needed an interpreter. Genia was about 62 years old. She looked beautiful and fit, […]

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Escape of the Rats

The world today is a rich, technologically advanced, ever-changing, interesting, exciting, confusing, demanding, fast-paced, interconnected, stressful, cold, impersonal and sometimes abusive place. We live a different life from any other period. What does this mean?

To many of us, it means we feel trapped. We often hear or read the term “rat race” as a description for the way we live – like rats in somebody’s lab, running around, trying to find a way out or get to the reward at the end of a confusing and frightening maze. Trouble is we do not even know whose lab we are in and we feel helpless and out of control.

In his excellent book, The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell describes some fascinating events and research about how our environment affects our behavior and the behavior of those around us. Sometimes, it can drive a man to kill, but when managed well, it can lower the crime rate and improve the lives of many people. He calls this “The power of context”.

The book highlights some things that we can all use to regain control of our lives, improve the quality of our time on Earth and make the world a better place for our children and even for other people around us.

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How to Stop Parental Bullying (8)

Parents are the most important agents of socialization in our society. Unlike teachers, who are the second biggest influencers on children, the same parents are around their kids while their teachers change. It is only sensible to think that if we want to support kids’ health and wellbeing, we need to support the most important people in their life – their parents.

I came up with the idea of supporting kids by supporting their parents about 20 years ago when I had an early childhood center. I could increase my young kids’ success and confidence whenever I got to the parents and made the partners in the process of education. There was 100% correlation between the success of the child (1½ years old to 4 years old) and the level of their parents’ involvement. My young students could read, do math and solve 60-pieces puzzles. They had the fine and gross motor skills expected of kids 3 years older than they were. At first, their parents did not believe their own eyes, but I just sent all their games and work sheets home so they could see their kids were able to do everything I said they could.

After 25 years in education, I can dare to say that investing in the parents is the most effective investment in children. And as with any investment, the sooner you start, the greater the returns.

I believe that government organizations should be investing in parents, but until that time, I will use this blog to help parents help themselves.

Here are the next 5 tips to help parents stop the cycle of bullying, help themselves and help their children be confident and avoid being bullied, being a bully or being a silent bystander.

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Nothing wrong with feeling bad

Everybody feels bad sometimes – sad, lonely, upset, worried, even angry. OK, except Tibetan monks, maybe, but only after 20 years of meditation and a strict diet of warm water. The rest of us sometimes feel bad.

The problem with feeling bad is not so much that we find something hard to deal with, but that we have been brought up not to feel bad, so we feel really bad about feeling bad. That, of course, makes everything worse, because now, we are feeling bad about ourselves and blocking ourselves from processing and letting go of the original bad feeling.

When I was growing up, I was often told that only girls cried. “Take it like a man”, people said to me and to all of my friends who were boys. The girls were not supposed to take it like men, but they were instructed not to bother others with their feelings and to “show their happy face” like “a good girl” should. So happiness was clearly good and resentment, anxiety, regret and sorrow were bad.

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Ronit’s Parenting Bible: Food

Many parents have issues with kids and food. I have to say that running a family and making sure they stay healthy is not easy, especially when your kids are babies and your heart aches with them whenever they are sick.

I added the connection between food and health to my bible after a huge pain of trying very hard to get rid of Eden’s pneumonia when she was just an 18-month-old baby. By the time she was 2 years old, Eden had been sick with pneumonia 3 times already and had been constantly on antibiotics and inhalers. Before those scary 6 months, I had never thought about what I ate and had just gone to the supermarket and bought the same things my parents and Gal’s parents had.

One of my friends, who was trying to help me, told me Eden should eat certain things and avoid eating others to improve her health. I thought she was not normal (which was true, but in a good sense) and that food had nothing to do with germs and health problems. It was only later, when we discovered Eden was sensitive to dairy food, that I realized just how tight the relationship between food and health was.

Food, and only food, was the difference between having a very sick girl (with pneumonia that 6 months of antibiotics could not fix) and having a healthy girl that went to see the doctor only once in the following 20 years. Food, and only food, was the difference between being anemic and having a healthy iron level. During my second, third, fourth and fifth pregnancies, while every other woman had to take iron tablets, my iron level was strong and stable, even the doctor was shocked. Food, and only food, was the difference between Gal having sinus surgery to unblock his nose and not needing that surgery until today.

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