Kids and Disaster Planning

Could your pre-schooler be the key to how well you perform in a disaster situation? Possibly so. Amanda Ripley, author of "The Unthinkable: Who Survives and Disaster - and Why" (Crown) is a journalist with more than her share of disaster coverage. In her book, she was fascinated by the way survivors reacted when tragedy stuck and offers a few ideas on how you can help your reaction and that of your family. Surprisingly, your youngest child may help.

All good daycares and pre-schools practice how to evacuate during a fire. And while this may seem to be training for the adult providers, the experience provides a valuable lesson for the children as well. A properly executed evacuation can only come with practice, a repetitive behavior that gives the mind a mental map of not only where to go but how to get there.

According to Ms. Ripley, you brain works with pattern recongintion. This is way for your brain to access what has happened before and draw on that experience at the very time when you do not have the opportunity to think about what needs to be done. Simply using words will not suffice. The brain needs a map, a script to draw on in these kinds of situations. Fortunately, that is the easy part. The hard pard is making the map and denying your instincts, which may actually act against you.

The Importance of Gathering

While it is important to gather your child to you when a disaster strikes, the biggest problem facing the adults is the gathering reaction. Believing that retrieving valuable papers or pictures or even mundane things like jewelry or articles of clothing (surprisingly, grown-ups will grab the oddest things when disasters strike such as the story of the woman who needed to take the book she had been reading even as the 9/11 disaster was unfolding around her). In other words, moving quickly is learned through rehearsal and cannot be counted on as something you would do without thinking.

Follow the Leader

It is generally assumed that the leader will be the adult present at the time. Unfortunately, someone needs to grasp this role in order for the number of survivors to be highest. We tend to be agonizingly orderly, even polite when disaster strikes in a public place. But n the home, when moments count, we do some dumb things and this adds to the possibility that our plans will not get followed.

There are things you can do that will allow you to let the leadership role be assumed by even the youngest family member.
First, have fire drills. They may seem like an exercise that is better put off until tomorrow, but the more times you do it with your family, the better the chances are that they will all survive.

With the lights out, try and find your way to the nearest exit and escape. It is not as easy as it seems. Often we will confront obstacles that should be moved, doors that are not easily unlocked form the inside (where are the keys?), and what needs to go with you when you leave (fires might require a quick grab of important papers stored near an exit or, in the case of a natural disaster, an emergency back pack - a subject we will discuss in my next post).

Secondly: and ounce of prevention Put your child in charge of fire safety around the house. They will be reminders to things such as change the smoke detector battery on the first of the month if you give them the chore. It is a good way to teach them (and refresh what they have learned in pre-school about calendars) to follow a routine of good habits.

And lastly, give them the confidence to make the right decision You may be injured or feeling under the weather when a disaster strikes leaving the only clear-headed thinking to your toddler. The more confidence you give your child in which decision to make, the higher the likelihood the whole family will survive.

Do they know not to open a door if there is smoke seeping in around the cracks or the door knob is hot?
Do they know to exit the house without hesitation even passing up the opportunity to call 911?
Do they know how to crawl? (We practice that in our pre-school situation but are you prepared to re-enact this during a simulated drill once a month?)
Do they know how to stop, drop, and roll, which is another thing we talk about and practice once a month as part of our fire safety class here?
Is your escape route free of obstacles and have you designated a place outside for all of you to meet (a neighbor's house or on the corner)?

You may have less than three minutes to get to that place. Can your family do it? Have you practiced more than once?

It can save your life!

Kids and Nature

Are your children suffering from a lack of nature? Oddly enough, this becomes more prevalent when the child becomes older but can, and as I have come to understand, also afflict our pre-school aged children.

Author Richard Louv (Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder) offers a couple of suggestions on how to create a place for your child to experience all of his senses to their fullest. Although Mr. Louv does not necessarily trash technology, a fact of life that even he admits will give the child a degree of learning that can be had nowhere else, he does say that using only television and computers as a source of stimulus does a great injustice to a child’s curiosity.

There is no need for you to pack your bags and head to the closest national park – although the experience is well worth the time and effort you may expend getting your child (and you) to a place where interaction with nature is almost unavoidable (save for hiding in the trailer the entire time). You are in the “big picture” when you are out in nature camping, hiking or fishing. But in many cases, your backyard will do just fine. A walk around the neighborhood or through an open field can be just as rewarding.

But I have found that the simplest exposure to nature is often the most rewarding. Are you stopping to watch a spider spin a web? Do you explain what you know to your child about the nature you grew up with? They revel in your knowledge of subjects that are new to them. Do you take the time to give them a little insight into what they are looking at?

My husband still has a set of nature encyclopedias from almost fifty years ago that do two things for your children when I take them out to show them what they are seeing: they illustrate some of the wonders of nature in vibrant close up color and it also lets them see reference materials in a book. Although I am big believer in reading stories to kids, these little snippets of information fuel their imaginations and give rise to an openness for their natural surroundings.

Can you answer questions like “why bees are attracted to clover”? Books like “The Reason for a Flower by Ruth Heller might help. Or “why birds fly”? Try Up, Down, and Around Big Book by Katherine Ayres and Nadine Bernard Westcot. You can follow along an ant path in Bug Safari by Bob Barner

This is a stop-and-smell-the-roses experience that you get with your child, often only once. Don’t pass up the opportunity to help your child learn from the one person they will rely on for decades to know the answer. I’ll only be an influence for a couple of years but you will always be there with new insights, great antidotes about your experiences with nature and with any luck, knowledge of the world around them.

Just on final word on the subject: Keep it positive. Suggesting that bees sting and spiders bite is good as a warning to keep children out of harms way but do so after you have the opportunity to offer some of the reasons for their being. Then tell them why they will get stung or bit.

Kids and Bad Language - Seven More Words You can't say in Pre-school

I've raised four kids of my own and have, throughout the years, heard just about every shape of bad language. Only not when they were pre-school. This is largely a result of three factors, most of which are beyond our everyday control.

We work long hours, quite possibly longer than our parents did. Add in the time it takes to get to and from work, pre-school. grocery shopping, etc., etc. and a twenty four hour day quickly evaporates.

Secondly, with so little time to spend with our kids during the course of the normal workweek, we tend to turn to the media for help. And there are some excellent presentations available not only on television (another post at another time) and online (same with this topic) but what you choose may not be all of the media your child receives.

Lastly, we often know folks who expose their children to things we may not have dreamed of allowing our three- and four-year-old to and those kids talk. They explain the nuances of Indiana Jones or the Pirates of a Caribbean and re-enact numerous scenes. It may not make any difference whether your child has scene the actual movie, their interest is piqued and they will always seek more. It is one of those "taste of sugar" things. Once you have it...

I have seen an increase in certain language and words that seem key to these performances, most of which are intended for an age group (although they are equally marketed to this toddler set) that is much older, capable of understanding what those words mean and are able to grasp a parental conversation about the subject. Three is too young to understand the societal reaction of such talk and worse, the negative reflection that automatically shins right back on the parent.

Here are the words that I find most offensive, too telling (something strangers interpret to be a result of poor parental upbringing - and we know that is probably not true) and unacceptable in all group settings. It is just the time we live in.

No pre-school or daycare environment should permit their students or charges the following words: guns, swords (and any reference to weaponry), kill, hit (or any reference to physical violence), and completely to the flip side of the equation, kiss, marry, and sex.

Hey, it happens and most often when you least expect it. Bunch those words with the language that is generally out of acceptable social behavior (and this might mean trying not to laugh as four- and five-year-olds try out words like diarrhea or fart, the phonetic sounds of those which might make us chuckle. Doesn't make it right though.

According to some experts, the use of bad language is a cry for independence, a means to gain acceptance or as a way to gain attention. In most cases it is more of a way to show intellectual superiority (I know something that you don't).

Parents have got to be as firm as I am in the school situation if they expect their child to listen later when the topics become more serious. Watch the language you use, stay focused on the topic of what is acceptable and what isn't and reward good behavior every time.

Kids and Sun: It's Hot Out There!

Remember when you were a kid? No sunscreen, no t-shirts, no sunglasses, no worries. Remember your first sunburn? Chances are you were in pain and with little else in the way of information on the subject, you were liberally applied with a solid white coating of Noxema and more or less told to "walk it off".

But now they tell us that those kinds of burns, the ones that don't blister, that cause pain and redness that can last for hours, even days, are the ones that cause the most damage later in life. These first-degree burns were common place in the days of my youth and they all seem to lead towards a playground filled with nut-brown children by the end of summer.

I have even heard that the sun is different. although my scientifically minded husband tells me that the sun is the same, it is the sun's ability to get to us through some sort of diminished atmosphere is the real problem. That leaves your child facing a summer sun that might just be akin to life under a magnifying glass. You burn faster and quicker than ever before - so do your kids.

According to keepkidshealthy.com, there are ways to treat that sunburn, if for some reason your failed to apply enough sunscreen or worse, failed to re-apply it (more on that further along). They suggest: "The main treatment of a sunburns involves control of pain and includes use of an acetaminophen or ibuprofen containing product for a few days. You can also use moisturizers and a 1 percent hydrocortisone cream three times a day, cool baths or wet compresses, and drinking lots of fluids. If peeling occurs you can continue to apply a moisturizer until the skin heals."

Turns out, that in the quest to keep your kids safe from the sun, clothing is not enough. Most summer time attire has a SPF rating well below 10. That means that you need to do several things in addition to just covering them up.

Keep them inside. As much as we want our children to exercise, and we all know the allure of video games and television, the hours between 10am and 4pm are the worst in terms of exposure.

Even if it is cloudy, apply sunscreen and slather it on. Even children without sensitive skin (those born with genes that might be less Scandinavian and more Mediterranean) need to apply protection. That sunscreen should contain zinc oxide or titanium dioxide.

And as if that isn't enough, most insect repellents counteract the sunscreen you apply. You should probably be shopping for a combination rather than two separate products to protect your kids.

Choose a sunscreen with the highest SPF rating possible. Skin cancer is serious business and won't actually surface in your kids until they are adults.

Put it on liberally and 30-40 minutes before they are going out. If you are taking your child to pre-school or daycare, supply the sunscreen with their name on it.

And lastly, sunglasses. Sheryl Berman, M.D., a medical officer in the FDA's Division of Ophthalmic and Ear, Nose, and Throat Devices, says that wearing sunglasses reduces the risk of eye damage due to sun exposure, but doesn't completely eliminate it.

"Even when we talk about 100 percent UV protection, light still enters from the sides of sunglasses and can be reflected into the eye," she says. Some people choose sunglasses that wrap all the way around the temples. A hat with a three-inch brim can help block sunlight that comes in from overhead. Be sure to choose sunglasses with polycarbonate lenses which are generally recommended for children because they are the most shatter-resistant.

Keep in mind that the only medical claim manufacturers are allowed to make on sunglasses is that they may reduce eye strain or eye fatigue due to glare.

Food for Learning: Your Kids and Carbs

The simple fact is: your kids need the energy that carbs provide and should consume about 50-60% of their calorie intact in carbs over the course of a day.

A harder fact to understand: not all carbohydrates are created equally. A good rule of thumb however in distinguishing between good carbs and bad carbs is accessibility, portability and cost. Generally the foods that are the easiest to consume on-the-go, cost the least and can be found in the "center-of-the-grocery-store" are the highest in carbs found from sugars.

But we are getting ahead of ourselves. Carbs comes as simple sugars and starches. Simple sugars, such as the kind found in fruits are often referred to as simple carbohydrates, easy to consume and absorb into the body. The complex carbohydrate, starch comes from the families of whole grains, breads, cereal, rice and starchy vegetables.

These complex carbs all have certain characteristics. They all are broken down more slowly in the body. Because there is more to break down in such foods as whole grains, the carbohydrates enter the body slower, and that means is easier for your body to regulate them.

Because complex carbs are often high in fiber, the child will have fewer tendencies to over eat. And last but surely not least, complex carbs are packed with other vitamins and minerals. In addition to fiber, whole grains contain more essential fatty acids, vitamin E, magnesium, and zinc than their processed equivalents. All of these reasons are equally good for adults as well and if you noticed from the first in this series on food and learning, it is how you shape your child’s eating habits by example that begins the good eating habit process.

Just as Kidshealth recommends, the best way to achieve fitness through food is to:

Eat a variety of foods, especially fruits and vegetables.

Drink water and milk most often.

Listen to the “fullness signals” your body is sending.

Be active.