Sleep and Why it is So Important

February 28, 2014 By Diane Constantine

I am concerned about baby and children’s sleep as it relates to their behavior and intellectual development. Since we all want smarter, healthier children, sleep is far more important than what milk we feed them or which vitamin is touted to give them the edge.

I read some articles based on the UK Millennium Cohort Study. They are studying 11,000 children born in 2000 and will follow them through adulthood. There were some interesting facts to emerge from the study.

The children were evaluated at 9 months, 3, 5, and 7 years with parental questionnaires and in-home studies. The questions about the children’s sleep related to whether they had a regular bedtime and whether they slept before 9 pm. They did not report how many hours their children slept, however.

The results of standardized tests in math, reading and spatial abilities when they were 7 years old showed a definite difference between children with a regular bedtime and those with none. Children with consistent bedtimes throughout their early years showed better performance across all subject areas, while children with irregular bedtimes had lower test scores on all subjects.

We know from other studies that the brain is subject to change — especially when it’s laying down nerve tracks and making new connections in early childhood. The key to keeping the brain in this adaptable state is sleep. Reduced or disrupted sleep, especially if it occurs at key times in development, could have important impacts throughout life.

The link between lack of sleep and a child’s behavior often isn’t as obvious as with adults. We can mistake lots of energy for being well-rested. Instead of being sluggish and grumpy like an adult, kids often become hyper or have extremes in their behavior when they don’t get enough sleep.

Although there are an average number of hours babies and children should sleep, each child has their own optimum. You may have to experiment to find the best pattern for your child.

Some ways to see if your child should sleep earlier or longer can be seen by their behavior. If your child’s eyes start looking droopy or glazed over, you should probably be putting him to bed. Fighting to stay awake past that slow down will usually result in hyperactivity or misbehavior and a much harder time settling down to sleep. Then when your child wakes in the morning after enough sleep he or she will wake easily and be ready to get dressed and eat and get on with the day. If your child keeps trying to go back to sleep or resists getting dressed or eating, they may need more sleep.

Sleep deprivation adds up over time, so an hour less per night is like a night without sleep by the end of the week. Symptoms of insufficient sleep can lead to decreased attentiveness, decreased short-term memory, inconsistent performance, and delayed response time.

So here are the average number of hours of sleep for different ages:

Babies up to 6 months need 16-20 hours, roughly divided equally between night and day.
6-12 months need 3 hours in the day and 9-11 hours at night.
Preschoolers to 12 years need 10-12 hours at night.

I know for some of you, you see this as an impossible dream. But with science and experience to back it up, we should be doing all we can to make enough good sleep for our children one of our goals. Think about solutions that will give your children more uninterrupted sleep. If you make some changes that work, I’d like to hear from you: Diane

Fun Veggie Recipes

February 28, 2014 By Diane Constantine

Please see the original article and great pictures at: Parents.com

These were my favorites!

Cucumber Ribbon Salad
Trim the ends off a medium cucumber, then cut it in half crosswise and peel into strips. Whisk 2 tablespoons rice vinegar, 1 tablespoon canola oil, 1/2 teaspoon toasted sesame oil, 1/2 teaspoon honey, salt, and pepper. Toss the dressing with the cucumber and some toasted sesame seeds.
Tip: Ready in 15 minutes.
*All recipes make 4 to 6 servings.

Crinkly Carrot Fries
Slice 1 pound of carrots into 1/2-inch-wide sticks using a crinkle cutter. Toss with 1 tablespoon olive oil, 1/4 teaspoon dried thyme, and 1/4 teaspoon salt. Bake at 400 degrees F. for 15 to 20 minutes, or until soft, on a parchment paper-lined pan.
Tip: Great for toddlers 12 months and up.

Roasted Veggie Medley
Mix 1/2 pound of tiny potatoes, quartered, and 1 cup small butternut squash pieces. Toss with 2 tablespoons each balsamic vinaigrette and olive oil; roast, uncovered, at 425 degrees F. for 15 minutes. Add red bell pepper pieces and roast 10 minutes more, or until tender. Garnish with 1 tablespoon fresh thyme.

Sunny Broccoli
Steam 3 cups broccoli florets for 5 minutes. Toss with 2 tablespoons orange juice, 1 tablespoon canola oil, 1 clove minced garlic, salt, and pepper. Spoon the broccoli mixture onto clementine slices arranged in the shape of a flower.
Tip: Ready in 15 minutes.

Mini Vegetable Cakes
Combine half an 8-1/2-ounce package corn-muffin mix with 1 egg white and 3 tablespoons water. Stir in 3/4 cup shredded zucchini and 1/2 cup chopped canned beets. Drop batter by the tablespoon into 2 tablespoons hot canola oil. Cook 2 minutes; turn and cook 1 to 2 minutes more, until browned.

Tips: Double the recipe and freeze leftovers. Great for toddlers 12 months and up.

Sweet Potato-Parsnip Mash
Peel and cut 12 ounces of sweet potato and 2 parsnips into 1-1/2-inch pieces. Boil in lightly salted water for 15 to 20 minutes, or until tender. Drain and return to pot with 1/3 cup apple cider, salt, and pepper. Mash until nearly smooth.

Fiesta Corn
Saute 3/4 cup each chopped red and green bell peppers in 1 tablespoon canola oil on medium heat for 3 minutes. Add 1 1/2 cups frozen corn and cook 2 minutes more. Stir in 1/2 teaspoon chili powder, 1/4 teaspoon salt, and 1 tablespoon fresh cilantro.
Tip: Ready in 15 minutes.

Butterfly Salad
Use a small cookie cutter or scissors to cut a butterfly shape from firm whole wheat bread. Brush both sides lightly with olive oil; toast for 2 minutes, or until crisp. Divide 4 cups torn lettuce, 1 cup halved seedless grapes, and butterfly croutons among plates. Offer dressing on the side.

Honey Glazed Carrots
Boil 1/2 pound of peeled baby carrots in lightly salted water for 5 minutes; drain. In same pan, melt 1 tablespoon butter on medium; stir in 1 tablespoon honey and 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger. Boil 1 minute while stirring. Fold in carrots and 1 tablespoon Italian parsley.
Tip: Ready in 15 minutes.

Cheesy Spaghetti Squash
Place half of a 2-1/2-pound de-seeded spaghetti squash, cut side down, in a baking dish with 2 tablespoons water; cover with waxpaper. Microwave on high for 10 to 12 minutes, or until tender. Let cool slightly, then scrape strands from squash. Toss with 1 cup pasta sauce and 3 tablespoons shredded Parmesan cheese

Citrusy Edamame
Cook 2 cups fresh or frozen shelled edamame according to the package directions; drain. Toss with 1 tablespoons olive oil, 1/2 teaspoon finely shredded orange peel, 1/4 teaspoon dried dillweed, and 1/4 teaspoon salt.
Tip: Ready in 15 minutes.

Raising Moral Pagans

February 8, 2014 By Diane Constantine

I recently read a post called, “How to Raise a Pagan Kid in a Christian Home” and his follow up, “Five Keys to Guiding Your Kid to a Faith that Lasts.”

I was challenged and that started me thinking. So, I’m going to share some quotes from his posts and add some comments of my own. In the months ahead, I’ll share more ideas for ways to help your children have their own strong faith.

Barrett Johnson, the author of the posts said,

“Too many times, (Christian) parents have it as their goal to make their kids good and moral. It is as if the entire purpose of their family’s spiritual life is to shape their children into law-abiding citizens who stay out of trouble. The only problem with this goal is that it runs in stark contrast to what the Bible teaches. The gospel is not about making bad people moral, but about making dead people alive. If we teach morality without the transforming power of the gospel and the necessity of a life fully surrendered to God’s will, then we are raising moral pagans.”

Veggie Tales creator, Phil Vischer, said in an interview,

“I looked back at the previous 10 years and realized I had spent 10 years trying to convince kids to behave Christianly without actually teaching them Christianity. And that was a pretty serious conviction. You can say, “Hey kids, be more forgiving because the Bible says so,” or “Hey kids, be more kind because the Bible says so!” But that isn’t Christianity, it’s morality. . .

“And that was such a huge shift for me from the American Christian ideal. We’re drinking a cocktail that’s a mix of the Protestant work ethic, the American dream, and the gospel. And we’ve intertwined them so completely that we can’t tell them apart anymore. Our gospel has become a gospel of following your dreams and being good so God will make all your dreams come true. It’s the Oprah god.”

Challenging, isn’t it? Praying for our children, teaching them to say grace at the table and at bedtime, and taking them to Sunday School won’t be enough to make them Christian. Just saying the sinner’s prayer isn’t enough without also helping them become disciples of Jesus.

Actually, there is no absolute, sure-fire way to guarantee your children will become disciples of Jesus. Think about Adam and Eve. They had the perfect environment and the perfect Father, yet they chose to disobey God’s one rule. Our children are growing up in a very broken world with much less than perfect parents. Add to that mix the inherited bent to sin and it is no wonder they are sinners in need of the salvation only Jesus provides.

Barrett ends his first post with this.

“What we need is kids who fully grasp the reality that they have nothing to offer, but who intimately know a God who has everything they need.”

His Five Keys are these:

Clarify Your Parenting Goals
Have a Biblical Theology of Life-change
Help Your Kids to Fall in Love with Jesus
Operate With an Accurate View of the Gospel
Teach Your Kids to Daily Submit Themselves to God

This article cannot be long enough to cover all of these. Please read his blog post, Five Keys to Guiding Your Kid to a Faith that Lasts and begin thinking about ways you can help your children know, love, and obey Jesus instead of becoming moral pagans. I will continue in the next few months with other thoughts on this topic.

What to Expect When Your Baby is Born with a Disability

January 16, 2014 By Diane Constantine

from: Mamapedia Voices January 16, 2014

by Meria Nichols of “With A Little Moxie”

Sometimes it seems when you are pregnant that the world is simply brimming with people that are eager to tell you exactly what to expect with your baby.

They load you with brightly colored blankets, impossibly tiny clothes and cheerful, precious hats that will keep your little one warm, fashionable and adorable. Advice is also given. In spades. What to do during birth, what to do after birth. What to expect with breastfeeding, with sleepless nights and baby’s screaming. How to help your body heal after the baby comes. How to help the baby grow, develop, thrive and realize his/her maximum brilliance.

But what happens when your baby isn’t what you expected she would be? What happens when your baby isn’t who everyone said your baby would be?

What happens when you have a baby that is born with a disability?

As a mother with a disability (I am deaf), and as the mother of a child with a disability (my daughter has Down Syndrome), I offer you these 5 kernels of truth as I have experienced them:

1. Your baby is your baby first.
Your baby is always your child first. His disability – whatever it may be – is no more a definition of who he is or will become than the color of his eyes or hue of his skin. He will always have more in common with you than with anyone else, regardless of his disability.

2. Your baby is your baby: you know her best.
When you are not familiar with disability, it’s easy to fall into the trap that experts know best. And sometimes they do – complicated medical procedures, for example. But not everything they say needs to be taken as if it’s the Holy Grail.

When my daughter Moxie was born, all of the experts told me she was losing weight and my milk was not coming in because of her extra chromosome. They told me babies with Down Syndrome have a hard time breastfeeding, her latch was weak and so forth (yet they never checked). I couldn’t understand it because she was chomping down on me – nothing felt weak with her latch! And she was a strong infant; there was absolutely nothing sickly or unhealthy about her. It turned out that some placenta had been left in me. One of the early warning signs of placenta being left in after birth is milk not coming in. But no one thought to check because of Moxie’s Down Syndrome.

The point is: listen to your gut. Do your own homework. Talk to other parents and figure things out for yourself. Beyond being safe with your child and her health, you really are the person who knows her best. Listen to your intuition on what your baby needs!

3. Go out and connect.
Grieving for the child you thought you were going to have is very typical. Being scared and feeling a plethora of negative emotion is completely normal when you have a child with a disability. We live in a world that is not always kind to people with disabilities and we know it.

Reaching out and connecting with other parents is one of the best things you can do. Learning about new communities – both online and in person – will help you in more ways than you can count. It will give you support, ideas, a space to talk. It will be a space that will hear you in ways you need to be heard – especially in the beginning.

4. Begone, Dr. Google!
There is a fine line between understanding your baby’s disability and scaring the daylights out of yourself. Beyond having a grasp on your baby’s disability, it’s advisable to stay away from Googling too much about it until you have gone through your grieving process (if you have one). Get to know your baby first so the information can be taken with perspective.

Too much information, too soon, usually hurts more than it helps.

5. It’s going to be okay.
It’s not what you expected, but it will be okay. In fact, it’s probably going to be way more than okay; it’s going to be wonderful! You are going to fall in love with your baby, and you will marvel that you were ever upset about the disability.

No, really, you will. I promise. So just relax for a while, revel in the newness of your precious little one, delight in her existence.

It’s really going to be just fine.

Meriah Nichols is a third culture kid, former missionary child, deaf Mama to three. She is currently traveling with her family from San Francisco to Argentina, along the Pan American Highway.

Decisions and Choices

January 10, 2014 By Diane Constantine

Happy New Year! I hope you had a good Christmas and New Year’s season.

I’ve been thinking a lot about making decisions. I’m not talking about resolutions. Those mostly get broken before we get out of bed on January 2.

I’m looking at choices instead of resolutions. A resolution is what you intend to do. A choice is what you actually do.

Life is made up of hundreds of choices every day. Many of these choices are simply instinctive. Those are the ones we make without even realizing we made a choice. We get in a pattern but may never recognize it is a rut. Ruts resist change. So getting out of a rut takes deciding to change and then opting for different choices.

We start with a decision. A decision is a process of analysis that cuts off some options.

Here’s how it works. We make a decision after considering the results we want and consequences we want to avoid. The decision makes certain options no longer available to us.

Let’s take an example from parenting. We decide we want children other people will like. That’s a good decision. It’s nice when we like our kids, but it’s even better when others like our kids. The consequences of leaving this to chance mean our kids may or may not be liked by others. Making a decision means cutting off some options. For instance, letting them stay up so late they are screaming and running around when our neighbors would like to sleep, or giving them whatever they want, whenever they want it so they become tyrants.

Now we get down to the nitty gritty. We make a decision in a sane moment of contemplation, yet we make the choices moment-by-moment. Neglecting to consider the little choices means we allow ourselves to slip away from the good decision we had made.

So my personal challenge is to look at my behavior and consider my choices. I have made some wonderful decisions in the past. I have decided to grow as a Christian. I have decided to be a loving wife. I have decided that people are more important than tasks. But often my little choices do not support my major decisions. I may choose not to read my Bible one morning, thinking I’ll do it later in the day. Or I choose to get irritated and snippy with my husband. Or I choose to not make a phone call to someone who would appreciate even a few minutes of my time. Instead, I dive into a new project with abandon.

It’s much easier to just do what comes naturally, but many times those natural responses do not reflect my decisions, but rather my selfish desires.

I am making a conscious effort to look at my behavior as choices. As soon as I realize I made a bad choice, I’m consciously choosing to do something that agrees with my decision. It is a tiny step to seeing my big decisions bear fruit.

Will you join me in looking at your choices? Let’s see if we can’t be closer to our goals at the end of 2014 by making this small change in our thinking.