I had a first kiss with an old gf at the end of Kevin Costner’s Robin Hood with this song playing in the background. It was young love. It was beautiful.
Would you like to listen to the song and capture the moment?
First Kiss
Winners Get to Drool
Middle of the month saw us announce a giveaway from Protect-A-Bed®. I’m happy to announce our winners:
Rachel Koopmans
Dianne Childs
Kelly Burstow
Julie Boxsell
Monique Nickalls
Soon, you’ll be able to slobber and drool on your pillows all night long and still be able to yell out ‘No More Mouldy Pillows for Me’! You’ll do this whilst trying not to get too absorbed by thoughts of dust mites and dust mite poo on your mattress.
Congratulations!
Links
- Collaboration between Protect-A-Bed® and SuperParents™
- @ProtectABed_Aus Giveaway – Act Now!
- Your Child’s Sleep Health
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The Original SuperParent
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The Child Remote Control
Wouldn’t it be cool to have a remote control for your child? You can finally leave your child and they’ll probably be safe, and will probably behave more or less within the bounds of what’s acceptable. This remote control will have some simple functionality – your child won’t get into a situation where they won’t get too hurt, or too much into trouble. They’ll probably be fed automatically come the right time, and of course toileting with occur without too much of a hitch.
Don’t laugh but the child remote does exist! It’s not an electronic remote control unit. It’s available in most Asian countries and is called a domestic maid. Many asians hire these domestic helpers from poorer developing nations to help in the home. The typical day for a maid is quite long – they wake up at about 6am to clean the house and prepare meals, and stay up until all the dishes are washed *manually*. Through the day their role could involve anything from cleaning the car to carrying the shopping bags. And of course, in line with this post, they will literally spoon feed your children and ensure they are accompanied while you finish your meal. There is no such thing as work choices for maids.
I happened to see a family with not one but what seemed to be two domestic maids at the Singapore airport earlier this year. Whipping out my trusty phone camera, I videoed two short clips of children running around whilst the child remote control maids go into standby mode. This standby mode basically allows the kids to play so long as they don’t trigger any of the previous parameters we discussed above.
This is not parenting, mate. You can’t let children be brought up by someone who has no clue of your culture, hardly speaks the language, nor has received very much of an education. Most likely coming from a village setting, these maids are struggling with the appliances at home, the amount of work they’ve got to do, and the expectations from their boss. They are also mostly very young girls with little or no parenting skills.
It is already commonplace to hear stories of child abuse when children are left alone with the maid, or children who grow up with Indonesian or Filipino accents. What is more telling are stories of maids doing whatever is needed to pacify the child – from holding the child in arms and rocking to sleep, to constant feeding, to giving in whenever the child so much as squeaks. What kind of tyrant is such a child potentially growing up to be?
Having such maid is illegal in Australia. There are of course ways in which you can get temporary and very inexpensive help into the country; and this was offered to us about 10 years ago. Back then, we were living in a small town house. Trying to visualise another occupant in the house, and their role to keep a small patch of floor clean was enough to indicate that we didn’t need our privacy invaded. I don’t want any maid or domestic help living in my family home. I want to parent my children. And I’m willing to make sacrifices in order that I’ve got a hand in it. Of course that’s a luxury that not all people have.
If you had a choice, would you hire someone to live with you so you could reduce the amount of work you have to put into cleaning and cooking?
While you’re thinking of your response, check out Help Improve My Marriage.
Colin
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Perth Family Blogs and Being True to Yourself
Isn’t that title a bit of a throwback to when I first started the SuperParents Family blog?
Keywords certainly are important to gaining the right search engine traffic, but to really excel as a parent blog in Perth, what is more important than SEO is the networking amongst other parent bloggers that will draw traffic your way and making sure that you are able to maintain output as the author of your blog. Of course I had no illusions that there was any other way – except of course my mind was only obsessed with seeding those keywords properly through my text and titles.
I expected a general reluctance to SEO and thinking that was contrary to my own. But a comment about ‘being true to oneself’ appearing early on in an email dialog kept popping up in my thought clouds. My previous clients didn’t really care about ‘being true to themselves.’ So what is the issue here?
As I worked more on SuperParents and bonded more with my new online family, I realised that it isn’t so much about quality of posts; ‘being true’ is all about using ensuring your voice comes through clearly. While it really isn’t mutually exclusive, it hasn’t got anything to do SEO! Confused?
Bloggers who have improved their SEO knowledge know that “small sustainable changes” are quite easy to do. You can have a search-friendly family blog without ‘compromising your content.’ But if you’re thinking only in keywords and only appealing to a search engine, you’re missing the entire point of having a blog. For instance, an SEO company would never understand why anyone would put shoes on a blogroll, upload a random video of their daughter rock climbing, or post a Pregnancy FAQs joke on a site that has commercial aspirations.
It’s good I left my SEO company.
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Good Chocolate is Chocolate #chocwars
#chocwars has just exploded on Twitter in the last two days (see What the Hashtag). Is white chocolate considered real chocolate even though cocoa solids are present in trace amounts only? Is ColesOnline here too? And is ColesOnline really officiating and drawing the line between the two teams? OMG.
My little contribution so far has been to say “Can’t be chocolate if it’s not *good* chocolate.” I really can’t be bothered with those el cheapo Easter Eggs, Freddo Frogs, Kinder Surprise, and such. Frankly, I’d rather starve .
In my house, Easter Eggs can sit out on the kitchen bench the whole year until next Easter – apparently taunting the children. It’s far from that really. We do like our chocolates, but prefer to reach for the good stuff. This is the philosophy that I want to share with the children – moderate what you eat, but eat well. We try to extend this way of thinking to everything: food, merchandising, drink, etc.
As for the debate regarding white chocolate – it’s not chocolate. It’s white chocolate. Clear as mud?
For the side of dark chocolate: It’s War
For the side of white chocolate: Team All Choc
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The Original SuperParent
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Racism on MasterChef?
I had to have this chat with my wife in front of my children, given we thought it important as an Australian Chinese family to have them aware of these issues. It all started last week when a young relative of mine cried foul on FaceBook when Alvin was evicted.
Essentially, the FaceBook rant chalked up the elimination to Masterchef being racist. What does that mean? Did he not see the state of the Adrianno Zombo’s cake Alvin put up? Even Alvin himself described his cake as being a “monstrosity.” Now, I think I know what racism is but when poor performance by a person of Asian descent is labelled as racism, then I’ve have to say I think the real issue isn’t about racism.
… when poor performance by a person of Asian descent is labelled as racism, then I’ve have to say I think the real issue isn’t about racism.
Do you really want to know what I think?
I think this kind of thinking sows the real seeds of racism.
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Taking Suzuki Violin Practise Outside
I understand that Riley Lee Shakuhachi Master once practised and eventually made a recording of his Shakuhachi in a storm drain after it rained – adding an ethereal quality to his already sublime music. Practising music outdoors might help musicality and might inure a musician to performance anxiety.
Shakuhachi Players Practising Music Outdoors
We didn’t exactly have such lofty goals today.
Having bypassed violin group class due to lateness (it’s a long story), all three of us felt we had to make it up at home. It was my idea to stop by the memorial gun at Birdwood Parade and have a violin practise session overlooking the Swan River. How could we not? It was the middle of winter, but the sun was nice and warm and the view was breathtaking.
Check out the video I took of William doing Suzuki Music practise overlooking the Swan River.
The children enjoyed it so much that they insisted on two practise sessions each, rather than the one short one I expected to conduct. All in all a really positive training experience, and I liked seeing the bounce in their step after they packed up.
Links
- Coaching Your Child Through Tears
- Coaching Your Child Through Suzuki Violin
- Suzuki Violin, Music Lessons, and Music Reading
- Will Suzuki Violin Practise Wreck My Relationship with my Son? A. No.
- Hear Music Play Music
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Your Child’s Sleep Health
Last week, in collaboration with Protect-A-Bed®, SuperParents posted a promotion and giveaway post combined with an article on sleep health @ProtectABed_Aus Giveaway – Act Now!. We don’t think the article got the highlight it deserved, so we’re posting the good bits of it again.
Why is healthy sleep important for your child?
We spend an average of one-third of our lives asleep in bed. While this may be a fact we have all heard before, it’s a figure that still loses none of its impact.
Sleep is essential for each and every one of us, especially our kids as it is particularly important for their developmental growth. It restores our immune system, is required for laying down memory, renews energy levels, restores mental function and is essential for physical growth.
Last month we partnered up with independent health and hygiene specialist, Mycologia, who run the only laboratory in Australia for mould and fungi, and asked them to test some household pillows to determine their health and hygiene.
Test results from household pillows
The lab took samples from four pillows – a 15-year-old pillow, a four-year-old pillow, a two-year-old pillow and lastly, a two-year-old pillow that had been encased with a Protect-A-Bed pillow protector from day one.
The report found all pillows had an extremely high amount of mould and bacteria inside them, with the exception of the Protect-A-Bed pillow, which had only natural levels of mould and less than half the level of bacteria in comparison.
Mycologia also tested mould levels on the outside of the pillows, with results indicating the Protect-A-Bed pillow had 78 per cent less mould than the other two-year-old pillow and four-year-old pillow, and a significant 92 per cent less than the 15-year-old pillow.
See the A Current Affair story
A Current Affair was so fascinated with the results that they did a whole story on it! Check out their story here. The video highlights the test results from three of the four pillows, however (understandably) doesn’t mention that the protected pillow is from Protect-A-Bed.
So what does this mean for your child?
Having a mouldy pillow isn’t desirable in anyone’s books, however other than the general ‘ick’ factor, it’s actually quite harmful for those who suffer from asthma, allergies and skin disorders. A lot of people don’t realise that not cleaning or protecting your pillows with protective pillow protectors can cause unnatural levels of mould to grow inside them, which can actually be making your child really sick.
One in four children in Australia has asthma and a child with asthma is often woken up during the night as a result of the condition. Allergies to environmental factors such as dust, dust mites, bacteria and mould can also lead to an increased risk of asthma as well as the potential to trigger symptoms for other allergic reactions like hay fever, sinusitis, eczema, psoriasis and dermatitis.
The most important thing to highlight is that Protect-A-Bed’s pillow protectors have a built-in breathable and waterproof protective barrier that blocks out any liquid or skin from getting through to the pillow. It also prevents any allergens and airborne bacteria from escaping from the pillow. While you can clean your pillow, the easiest way to keep you pillow clean is to cover it with a pillow protector with a protective barrier. There are several pillow protectors on the market, but not all of them have that waterproof, impermeable barrier that’s essential for keeping your pillow healthy.
Visit the Protect-A-Bed® website to see their complete product range – http://www.protectabed.com.au/
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The Original SuperParent
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Self-Correcting Parenting
@Bern_Morley’s Daddy Dearest is about a family pulled into the tailspin of a father’s alcoholism. Increasingly deluded and isolated from reality, the father eventually is kicked out of the family. On another level, Daddy Dearest shows personal growth from the family’s children – the rallying around him with youthful innocence eventually giving way to emotional numbness at his funeral.
Do you see what is perceived as normalcy for those in Daddy Dearest is the same situation we’ve all been in? However you start, that’s all you know. As we read from the story “depending on who you listen to, [the father] was either a top bloke … or just a lazy arse.” Where we take it from there is another story.
… what is perceived as normalcy for those in Daddy Dearest is the same situation we’ve all been in …
I know it’s rude, but it’s entirely laughable when talking to the older generation, everything we are told about parenting is so clichéd. ‘That’s not what we used to do in our time.’ ‘When you were young there were no books about parenting.’ ‘Why would you need to ask your friends about how they bring up their children?’ It’s as though we are required to cookie cut the wins and the losses of the previous generation. Is life a one track loop?
Is life a one track loop?
Fortunately, parents nowadays have a higher tendency to parent objectively. This doesn’t mean that parents don’t make mistakes, it just means there are opportunities to self-correct from childhood experiences. In fact, you can benefit from positive experience as much as you can benefit from the negative ones. All you’ve got to do – fer crying out loud – is not drop your own baggage on your own doorstep.
Take a deep breath. Focus on what you want for your family and for your children. Wear a smile in your heart. And be brave.
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@StellarStrategies For Your Business
I just wrote a massive article for Stephanie Bresson – the engine behind Stellar Strategies. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Stephanie’s business, Stellar Strategies tagline is ‘Business Improvement Strategies for Real People’. And for those of you who haven’t had the good fortune to be acquainted with Stephanie, she is a force to be reckoned with (see You’re Promoted!). In the last two months, she has taken the initiative to help me increase my networking by introducing me to some very relevant contacts. Of course, when she hinted that she’d like me to guest post on her blog, I jumped at the opportunity to help her.
My article talks about the need for business planning, presents a framework for planning which anyone can use, and the very much needed use of your own personal, parenting, or previous experiential savvy within the planning process. The article itself is way over the top for most anyone who doesn’t have own a business. For others who are thinking of starting an online or offline business, or who function at a high level in either full or part time capacity in a business, the article is GOLD. The framework I present is a management consulting tool which I have used countless of times in academic and commercial settings. Using it as prescribed in my article will prove to be a quantum lift of your planning ability, and which will bring a balance to your management approach.
Please let me take the opportunity to thank Stephanie, and to wish her well in her business endeavours. If you have not done so already, perhaps you should add her on twitter http://twitter.com/stellarstrategy and maybe visit her new website at http://stellarmums.webs.com/.
Look out for Stephanie’s announcement when she publishes it.
Links
- Parents Part Timing It Can Learn from This Example
- Part-time Jobs: Parents Are Great to Work With
- Parents Ace that Interview
- Part-timers and Parents Re-entering the Workforce
External Links
- Danimezza Polly Dolly
- Get in the Hot Spot Getting Things Done v Getting Results
- Childhood 101 Top Tips for Setting Up a Home Based Business
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The Original SuperParent
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