Help! Our baby's premature!

I am very fortunate: my babies were all born about their due date and normal, as were my grandchildren, but what would have happened had they been premature?

A premature baby, known as a premmie here in Australia, is by less than 37 weeks gestation, but with modern medicine and technology, many babies born much earlier than this survive and go on to live happy and productive lives.  They can spend many weeks in Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICUs) and Special Care Nurseries (SCNs) on a rollercoaster ride of progress and crisis before being discharged to their parents' care.  Some, unfortunately, do not survive, but are remembered by their families for their struggle to live.

All this means that being the parent of a premature baby can be very stressful and a time of turbulent emotions, often a mix of:

• relief that the baby was born alive;
• fear for the baby's life and fear about lasting damage as a result of the prematurity;
• guilt that something a parent had done might have brought on the prematurity;
• anger and frustration that the pregnancy didn't last the whole 9 months and result in a normal delivery with a healthy baby;
• feeling helpless inadequate as a parent surrounded by humidicribs, tubes, masks and people who seem to know a lot;
• feeling disconnected from the tiny baby lying in a plastic box;
• exhaustion and all the hormonal changes normally associated with giving birth.

Parents generally want to spend as much time as possible with the new baby, and this may be complicated by the need to care for older siblings, work responsibilities and the utter exhaustion that comes from spending long periods indoors in the NICU or SCN. 

Grandparents and friends can play an important part in helping with childcare and housekeeping tasks at home, caring for pets, preparing meals and offering time out for the parents by perhaps maintaining a hospital vigil while the parents can have a meal, go for a walk or do something escapist.

In hospitals with NICUs and SCNs, staff are generally used to working in these situations and are very aware of different responses parents have to the situation and are usually happy to give information and encouragement.  It is important that parents ask questions and talk about things they don't understand or that are worrying them.  And if necessary, to keep asking until they do understand.

Social workers, hospital chaplains and other professionals are also available to support parents during this difficult time, as are other parents going through the same process. There are also support groups, both online and in person to give information, support and empathy during this difficult period.  Life's Little Treasures Foundation has even developed apps to enable you to track your baby's progress and to understand the terms used in NICUs.

LINKS:
Life's Little Treasures
Rogan Family Care Agency services are available to help with child care needs for siblings of children in NICUs/SCNs and for on-going child care arrangements.

Protecting our children, Part 2: What you can do.

I wrote last week about child abuse, how to recognise it and what to do if you become aware of children that need help.  This week I want to look at ways you can help children to reduce their risk of abuse.  You may remember that the vast majority of abuse of children happens within the home despite the relentless media campaign about the predators 'out there'.   No one likes to think that their family is one where the mistreatment of children occurs, but while some forms of abuse, especially physical abuse, are more common in disadvantaged families, like other forms of family violence, child abuse occurs across all sectors of society.

So what can you do within your home to protect your children?

• ensure that adults in the family have healthy ways of relieving stress: exercise, relaxation, hobbies, nurturing relationships rather than excess alcohol and watching violent and/or pornographic movies;
• encourage children that there is nothing so bad that it can't be talked about, and the only secrets that need to be kept are fun ones(eg about birthday surprises), not those that worry children and parents need to keep lines of communication open;
• teach children that their bodies are their own private space and that they should say 'NO, Don't do that!' if anyone touches them in a way that they don't like;
• encourage children to be aware of their own network of adults they can trust to talk about things that are worrying them;
• encourage your children to be assertive and resilient young people in all the ways we have discussed in previous posts.

This is not to say that it is children's responsibility to protect themselves, it isn't.  It is always the responsibility of adults to protect children, but adults don't necessarily know what is going on if  children have been sworn to secrecy or are ashamed of what has happened to them.  SO if a child's behaviour or personality seems to change, it is always worth exploring what is going on for them in such ways as 'you seem much more angry/quieter than usual lately...Has something changed or is something worrying you?'

If the child or young person reveals that abuse has been going occurring, what are you going to do?

• Don't panic, and don't dismiss what the child says.
• Thank and reassure the child that they have done the right thing in telling you, that you will take the steps necessary to protect them and that the abuse was not their fault.
• If the abuse is of a sexual nature, and the person the child names lives in the same house as the child, you need to ensure that there is no way the child has contact until you notify either the Department of Human Services or the police.
• Seek professional advice from the Department of Human Services, or contact one of the many family support and counselling agencies.

Links:

http://www.dhs.vic.gov.au/for-individuals/children,-families-and-young-people/child-protection

Victoria Police: Telephone  000 for cases of immediate life threatening risk to children

Department of Human Services: Office Hours: Ring appropriate regional office.

          After hours and weekend: 13 12 78

Family support agencies

Australian Childhood Foundation


 

Protecting our children Part 1

In SusanSays this week and next week I'm considering the subject of child abuse, difficult to think and read about, but as parents, nannies and those concerned with the well-being of children, it is important that we are informed.

The abuse of children is defined as an act by a parent or caregiver "which endangers a child or young person's physical or emotional health or development. Child abuse can be a single incident, but usually takes place over time.
In Victoria, under the Children Youth and Families Act 2005 a child or young person is a person under eighteen years of age." Such an act may take the form of physical, emotional or sexual abuse, or of neglect, or a combination of these.

There has been much recent publicity about the abuse of children by priests and brothers in the Catholic Church, but it is important and shocking to remember that most abuse of children takes place in family homes.  Both men and women are responsible for physical and emotional abuse and neglect, more often against boys, but nearly all cases of sexual abuse are by men, mainly against girls, and these men can be fathers, older brothers, uncles, step fathers even grandfathers.

Recognising abuse sounds easy, but it can be difficult in all except the most obvious cases of physical injury and neglect.  It is often a case of putting together signs of injury, behavioural clues, and explanations given by children and by their parents or caregivers.  Despite recent pleas from the AMA for smacking to be outlawed, it is still legal for parents to smack a child in Australia, but the question is, when does a smack become physical abuse?   With emotional abuse, it is a matter of how and when it happens, and how much is too much?  Is it neglect not to take a child to the doctor when it runs a temperature?

There are guidelines for recognising signs of abuse, which as people who care about children, we should know, because they form the basis for us to respond by reporting our concerns to those who can act to assess exactly what is happening and act to protect children from harm.  As members of the public, this is our responsibility, and all that is needed is that we have a genuine concern for the well-being of a child.  Teachers, doctors, nurses and police are "mandated" (required) to report their concerns.

The effects of abuse are serious, and the longer the abuse continues, the longer and more serious the effects are likely to be:

• physical injuries, occasionally resulting in death or lasting disabilities
• trauma
• emotional injuries resulting in difficulties forming attachments and relating to others, passivity or anger and aggression, behavioural changes
• self destructive behaviours 
• alcohol and drug abuse
• offending against the law

The abuse of children is serious and the Victorian Government's Department of Human Services has a team of workers who respond to concerns from the community (parents, teachers, doctors, neighbours, you and me), assessing the seriousness of concerns and where necessary, intervening to stop the abuse.  This intervention may involve putting the family in touch with services that can help the parents and children to manage better (Child FIRST), regular supervision from the Department or where necessary, the removal of abused children from the family home for varying lengths of time.  In cases of physical and sexual abuse, police may also lay criminal charges against the perpetrators as these are criminal offences.

Link:
http://www.dhs.vic.gov.au/for-individuals/children,-families-and-young-people/child-protection

Victoria Police: Telephone  000 for cases of immediate life threatening risk to children
DHS: Office Hours: Ring appropriate regional office.
          Afterhours and weekend: 13 12 78

It's not simply make believe!

I have noticed recently a trend to giving toddlers and young children explanations for various phenomena that they observe, presumably in the hope of building their knowledge of the world and how it works.  While part of me sees this as a useful idea, part of me also rebels at:

1. the need to have a factual explanation for everything
2. introducing concepts and words that are really beyond a child's need to know.

I guess that I'm old fashioned but I think that pushing a rational explanation for everything does take away some of the 'magic' of childhood.  And that is precisely why it is done...magic doesn't exist, so using it as an explanation is misleading a child and creating ideas that will have to be unlearnt in the future.  In this view, cultural icons like the tooth fairy, Father Christmas/Santa Claus, and any religious belief need to be discarded. I can't help thinking that this rather undervalues the ability of children to grow and mature in their understandings and imposes a rather grey and colourless world on children.

I don't disregard the wonder of science, the magnitude of worlds without and within, the advances of knowledge that have helped revolutionise the world in health, communications and every field of endeavour.  I read a while ago that Albert Einstein, the great physicist, was a great believer in imagination, intuition and creativity as an aid to scientific thinking, which prompts me to think that children in time need to grow in knowledge and understanding of their world, but they also need to keep alive their imaginations.

Children have great imaginations. They can laugh and play growly bears or snapping crocodiles from an early age, also learning quickly to express a pretend fear of such creatures.  I watched a short video of a little chap, probably less than 2, bursting into giggles when he put his finger into the top of his water bottle.  I don't know what was funny about putting his finger into the water bottle, but he did...almost a pre-verbal imagination! They can dress up and be superheroes saving the world, monkeys swinging through the branches, doctors and nurses curing their dolls, old ladies having a cup of tea, experimenting with different roles and a wide variety of fields of activity.

I saw a blog post recently introducing science to a child of maybe 3.  He was having fun with water play and found if he put enough stones in his beaker of water that the water would eventually overflow.  The parent was pleased to be able to give him the name of displacement of water for this phenomenon.  I though it might have been more useful for him to observe his experiment with different conditions: different sized beaker, bigger stones or sand etc and then to simply share his observations and wonder, but perhaps I would just have missed a learning opportunity!

I have a friend who is doing research with medical notes from the Nineteenth Century.  She says they are full of detailed descriptions of people's tongues and physical appearance from which various diagnoses were drawn.  These may not have been accurate diagnoses by today's standards with all sorts of machines to help, but what impresses her is the closeness of the observations.  That is the starting point for science, from these observations and active imagination, improved machinery come modern medical advances.  As Professor Julius Sumner Miller used to say on TV back in the seventies, the question becomes "why is it so?" and the imagination is let loose to develop theories that stand up to testing in all sorts of conditions.

So let's keep childhood a time for creativity, wonder, experimenting, and observing and let our children gradually grow into a formal understanding of the world alongside having an active imagination.

I hope...

I was already enjoying the late winter sunshine and hoping that spring might be around the corner when I saw an article in this morning's Age about a mural King Sun by John Olsen, which has been installed in a building in Docklands.  The mural is bright and cheerful, to judge by the photos, with the quirky and typical addition of three frogs.  In this work, Olsen reminds us of the need for hope and optimism in the modern world.  As this was something I'd already been musing about it seemed to be an excellent blog topic!

If you have ever been depressed you will recognise the awfulness of despair and how hard it is to find the effort required to live in a world where hope seems to have died.  To seek help in this situation represents a hold on at least a slim glimmer of hope that things can change; the alternative, is often, to give up completely, to live in a constantly grey world or, tragically, to commit suicide.  I can't help wondering if it is hope that is really one of the great life forces.

Hope:

• compels starving parents to ensure their children get as much food as possible
• drives refugees to risk their lives to flee persecution and starvation
• lures people to move from country to city (or vice verse) from one country to another in search of a better life and greater opportunities for their children
• keeps people with cancer and chronic illnesses going often through drastic treatment regimes so that they might be cured , or at least live a little longer
• encourages us each night that dawn and daylight will follow night, and in the depths of  winter, that spring will soon in its turn.

Babies are, I think, little bundles of hope.  Not only do they represent their parents' hopes for the future, they seem also by nature to be optimistic/hopeful.  They haven't yet learnt not to trust everyone, nor to fear the world about them.

We owe it to our children to nurture this hopefulness, to teach them to be optimistic and to be resilient.  They should not be exposed to abuse, demeaning and degrading punishments  or to parenting and care that is overly permissive and sets no boundaries.  We often reward achievement, but perhaps we also need to focus on effort as well.  As I have previously said, we need to let children experience difficulties and failure not so that they are crushed but so they are encouraged and optimistic that they will succeed at something else or at another time, or even that it was fun trying.

As winter turns towards spring we know there will still be cold, wet, miserable days, but the bulbs and swelling buds remind us that change is on the way.  And thank you John Olsen for your beautiful King Sun.

Link
John Olsen, Australian artist b.1928
An interview with Olsen while working on King Sun

Gender issues: Action!

I was very surprised and greatly encouraged by the number of readers viewing SusanSays last week following my post about gender free toys for children.

There were also a number of responses on our Rogan Family Care Facebook page and after contact with Let Toys be Toys-For Girls and Boys, who say they have had a number of contacts from Australia, I've decided to take up the issue.

While I believe it is compatible with Rogan Family Care, I have decided to ask Sue Wragg, who does some work for us from time to time, to manage a campaign to promote gender neutral toys so that the on-going work of the agency is not disrupted.

Sue has started a Facebook page Gender neural toys for children and is looking for support in promoting this campaign in Australia.  If this is to be successful she will need people with ideas, energy and drive who are sympathetic to this cause.

Many parents, as well as kindergartens, childcare centres and nannies do a great job in encouraging children to have a variety of play experiences and to follow their interests, but unfortunately toy shops, particularly the mass market/major retailers and manufacturers still market their products in such gender divided ways that stereotyping continues.

I realise that our culture still has a long way to go in their attitudes, but change has to begin somewhere and this is a small seed that we very much hope will grow and bear fruit.

Important footnote
A new group, Play Unlimited-every toy for every body, has taken this up in Australia and with wide media publicity has launched a petition against Toys 'R Us online gender-biased advertising.
If you are interested in following up this issue I'd urge you to check out their website and sign the petition.
Sue is taking down the Facebook page she started to follow up this issue and with me, urges people to follow Play Unlimited.

Gender issues!

I feel like I'm jumping on the bandwagon after the recent issues in Australian politics, but today I really want to look at children's conditioning.  And perhaps that's where the issues that came out in Parliament really began!

I have been following with delight the campaign in the UK called 'Let toys be toys - for girls and boys' as it has taken up an issue that has concerned me for years.  When I used to go into large toy shops for my grandchildren I used to reel back in horror at the large pink sections of play things imitating domestic chores.  Half the stores seemed to be given over to dolls made to be as like human babies as possible, with all the trimmings: baskets, change tables, baths plus kitchens, shopping baskets and trolleys, irons and iron boards, brooms, mops etc.  The other half of the stores, mainly in reds and blues were cars and other forms of transport with garages, stations etc, construction sets and sporting equipment.  Any trikes or bikes seemed to be pink, with little white baskets or blue with tongues of fire on them.

It all seems like a real separation of girls should be interested in domestic activity and boys should be action and outward focused, attitudes I thought we'd left behind years ago.  When I was buying toys for my children, there was a little of this gender distinction, but a wider colour range was used, and things like construction toys, sporting equipment, and puzzles were not so heavily gender identified.

We live in an age when it is illegal to discriminate in the workplace on the basis of gender, and yet our toy shops are perpetuating this distinction.  And the problem is that it becomes very easy then for children to see the toys as indicating their appropriate gender role in later life.  How do little girls know that women can be mechanics, doctors, firefighters, train drivers, scientists, astronauts etc when all they see are pink themed toys encouraging them to be mothers and housekeepers?  How do little boys know that they can be ballet dancers, teachers, childcare workers, fathers and househusbands when all they see are action toys?  I thought this was a battle that had been waged years ago?  I'm not saying that girls shouldn't have dolls or play kitchens or that boys shouldn't have cars and train sets, but I am saying that toys should be available in a range of colours suitable for children of both genders.

I must commend the smaller, suburban toys shops, many of which promote toys on the basis of their interest to all children and on the skills that are needed to use them or that they develop.  It is also noticeable that these toys often last longer (in terms of quality of workmanship and in the interest they hold for children) and are enjoyed more than the mass market ones.

I would be interested to know if there is interest in Australia in forming an activist group like 'Let toys be toy's' to work to stop toy stores perpetuating these gender stereotypes. Do comment below if you are interested in following this up!

And when we have changed attitudes to toys, perhaps we could start work on the gender stereotyping of children's clothing, especially its 'pinkification'!