katie allison granju

dogthink March 30, 2008

Before I had a full-time, outside-the-home job, one of my hobbies was helping with local dog rescue groups. Over about five or six years, I fostered dozens of puppies and dogs until the rescue organizations could find permanent homes for them. During that time, I got to know lots of different breeds of dogs. My two favorite large breeds are Great Pyrenees and German Shepherds.

Fast forward six years. I am now in a large house with - finally - a large fenced yard. For the first time in a long time, the possibility of adding a large dog to our family seems reasonable. Jon and I are looking at maybe getting a young adult German Shepherd. My cousin James’ family has an absolutely gorgeous 10 month old GSD puppy named Wolfric. He’s everything I would want in a large dog of my own. So today, James took me to meet Wolfric’s breeder , and some of her dogs.

Wow. These dogs are like the Mercedes or Ferraris of the canine world. You don’t have to know anything about dogs to realize that these animals are just a whole different level of doggity goodness. They are also a whole different level of doggity spendiness- costing from $800-$6,000.

Yes, I met a $6,000 German Shepherd today - imported from Germany. He was absolutely gorgeous.

But the one I would have taken home in a hearbeat was a mere $3,000. He was so beautiful and sweet and well-mannered that it’s really quite a lucky thing that I didn’t have a loaded credit card in my hand because I might have done something incredibly irresponsible. That’s how impressive this dog was.

I guess we will be looking at German Shepherd rescue dogs. But I’ll continue to dream of that $3,000 dog. I’ll bet he’d fetch a stick way better than Fiat and Mabel.

thought for the day

Some bloggers deploy their thesaurus (thesauri?) as sloppy weapons of silliness.

I’m all for using the simpler word first. Writing is generally prettier that way.

home from the hospital

My grandmother came home from the hospital today. I was happy to be able to be at her house when she got there, although she was very tired and was only able to visit a short while before needing to go to sleep for the night. She really enjoyed having C. hang out on the bed with her for a little while. C. seemed to enjoy it too.

It was decided by her three children (my mother and uncles) that she will do better at home with full time care than at a rehab center, so that’s what the plan is. I am not 100% sure how it will all work, as even the short time I spent trying to be helpful yesterday showed me that it is an extremely tricky and physically demanding thing to care for someone in a lot pf pain who is very frail and - at this point - totally bedridden. But I guess the people they have hired know better how to handle everything she needs.

I would SO MUCH like to be able to come over every day and just sit with her and read to her or chat. I miss her a lot, and I know she misses seeing me and all my children as well. She’s particularly close to H. He was her first great-grandchild, and they spent lots and lots of time together when he was a baby and young child. Until H hit adolescence, he enjoyed being at Grandma’s house more than just about anywhere. Even now, he’s very good about always making plenty of time for her -and before he died in 2006, my grandfather - whenever he’s in Bell Buckle.

my other blog March 28, 2008

Don’t forget that I do lots and lots and lots of blogging over at my other blog, Knoxville Talks.

Come on over and join the conversation.

-Katie

Don’t you think they look alike? March 27, 2008

baseball and coaching

E. has just started baseball in Fountain City. He played a short season of t-ball at age 4, but doesn’t even remember it, so really, this is his first year playing the game.

For the past several years, E. has played AYSO soccer most seasons, and he’s liked it very much. But he wanted to try something different, and he enjoyed watching his cousins play in this league the past few seasons, so he wanted to give it a try.

AYSO is fairly non-competitive at younger ages. The philosophy is that everyone plays, and the goal is to teach kids some basic skills and to build confidence and teamwork. Winning is sort of an afterthought. I mean, the kids certainly want to win, but the coaching isn’t as focused on building competitiveness as it is on cooperation.

E. is a very competitive person, and a very aggressive athlete. He likes to run faster, jump higher and yes, he wants to win. So he is REALLY enjoying baseball so far because in this league, the coaches expect those 10-year-old boys to learn skills, build athleticism, learn good sportsmanship - all of those things - but they also want the boys to WIN. The coaching is very focused on winning the games they will start playing in a week or two.

He also happened to luck into a set of coaches who are an excellent fit for him. These guys take this quite seriously, and they expect the boys to take it seriously as well. The coaches run the team with military-style order. The boys are expected to bark “yes sir!” and “no sir” back at them. The boys run laps and do push-ups if they get sloppy. This might not work with some kids, but E. is absolutely eating up all the testosterone out on that baseball field. He stays 100% focused and listens very well. He’s always the first one to do whatever it is these guys tell the boys to do. He loves the discipline of it. And he likes being pushed harder. These guys are kind, but they definitely tell the boys when they don’t feel they are trying hard enough or putting the skills they are teaching to use.

And the coaching - the actual imparting of baseball skills - is absolutely top-notch.

Fountain City has a pretty strong baseball tradition, so it’s a great league for Knoxville boys who really want to progress in the sport.

Here E. is at his individual batting practice session yesterday.

TV for babies - BAD, BAD, BAD March 26, 2008

Ther’s a piece in Babble today about little kids watching TV. One piece of the article jumped out at me:

Time Guilt is tough for an outsider to control, but the producers of baby videos are doing everything in their power to eradicate Content Guilt by making shows that they assure us are not only age-appropriate but also educational.

“A recent University of Washington study shows that up to ninety percent of children under two are watching TV. We’re addressing that reality by providing a cleaner, safer alternative,” says Sharon Rechter of BabyFirstTV. “A lot of companies will put out a video with just some pictures and music and say it’s educational. But on our channel, every two-minute segment is supported and approved by an expert.”

An expert! Who can argue with an expert? Well, other experts. I asked Rechter if she was familiar with any of the studies that connected infant TV viewing with language delays, and was surprised that she said, “I’ve never heard of that.”

AAP member Dr. Victor Strasburger has. “Twenty-five percent of Americans smoke, so why not have a smoking channel?” Dr. Strasburger quips in response to the ninety-percent-of-kids-are-watching statistics Rechter often cites. “It doesn’t matter how many babies are watching TV; the fact is they shouldn’t be,” says the AAP’s Dr. Strasburger. “It doesn’t matter how many babies are watching TV; the fact is they shouldn’t be. It’s a drastic mistake. A cable channel that increases the amount of TV for babies is doing a major disservice to people around the country.”

When I asked Dr. Strasburger about BabyFirstTV’s assertion that AAP thinking on television is “outmoded,” he didn’t mince words. “She is absolutely, totally wrong. In 1999, when we first suggested that babies shouldn’t be watching TV, it was just based on what we thought was common sense. Now in 2008, there are half a dozen good studies to back that up, documenting language delays associated with watching television.

“For us, before you expose a baby to TV, we believe you have to demonstrate some benefit. But there are no studies — zero, zilch, nil — that show benefit. But we can prove harm.” I’m now clear on Dr. Strasburger’s position on babies and the blue screen of death. But is TV ever okay for kids?

“If you watch good TV like Sesame Street after age two, it can be quite useful,” Dr. Strasburger says. “But the infant brain is unique in that it is not fully developed — it is particularly malleable, plastic, under the age of two. Early infant brains develop in response to stimuli from the environment. If their environment is a screen, their development will be different than it will be if a human can interact with them. If in the future you can talk to your screen and it can talk back, maybe what I’m saying will not apply. But we’re not there. Babies need interaction with live, in-person human beings. There is more and more research that says exactly that.”

I have to say that I don’t actually know anyone who purposely allows their babies - infants - to watch television. I mean, I guess somebody is buying all those those Baby Einstein DVDs, but it isn’t anyone I know personally.

I’ve written before about how much I hate it when my kids watch too much TV. We have gone through long stretches in our family where we have had no TV at all, and then other stretches where we only have DVDs, and then some stretches where we actually have cable. Right now we have cable, but we generally don’t allow any TV at all on school nights. I’d say my three older kids currently watch an average of 1-4 hours of TV (that includes movies on DVD) each week. I do enjoy watching a little HGTV with J. thse days - she and I both like that show where they tell you what your house is really worth.

When they were younger, I really tried to limit their TV watching. I found that they were more hyper, less imaginative, and much crankier the more screentime they got. Of course, I certainly did use the TV as a baby sitter when necessary; I just didn’t delude myself into believing the TV-watching was for any useful purpose other than my own. I would plop them in front of a movie when I simply had to have a break, or when one of them had kept me up all night and I had zero energy left for another game of Candyland. But I never thought it was very good for them or their developing brains. No, instead, it was all about me, and my developing headache.

At the barn yesterday…

You know you’re a future equestrienne when you sometimes have your diaper changed on an old horse blanket lying out in the sun to dry

And here is E., checking out the newest Fiesta Farm resident. I think it’s a chinchilla, but it may be a degu.

glad he’s not my kids’ pediatrician March 25, 2008

There is an interesting, ongoing discussion going on over at Instapundit about parents who decline to vaccinate their kids. Glenn Reynolds has included some e-mails he’s gotten from readers - a few of them doctors - as part of the dialogue. This is what one of them - a Dr. William Schmidt - had to say:

I don’t know anyone in the medical profession personally who disbelieves in vaccinations (unlike claims made on certain websites). And, in response to Michelle Malkin, many pediatricians don’t have time to waste in their very busy day discussing the “risks” of vaccinating one’s children. From personal experience, many parents, especially in the Google age, have just enough knowledge to turn this into a 5-10′ conversation and will often continue to disagree with you afterwards. Ten minutes may not seem like much to the soccer mom who thinks that noted autism researcher Robert Kennedy is infallible, but it is to the pediatrician who would rather spend that time doing something more useful (like seeing another patient).

My first thought on reading this was, what an arrogant jerk. My second thought was, what a careless, thoughtless pediatrician. And my third thought was, Dude, you seem to have forgotten that when I bring my kid to see you…I AM PAYING YOU.

Dr. Schmidt’s tone is the one that gives doctors a bad name - the one commonly known as a God complex. It’s all about him and his time and his busy day and his desire to cram as many patients as possible into that busy day.

(Note to Dr. Schmidt: If you don’t have ten more minutes to talk to a parent with questions, then you are overbooking. )

And guess what Dr. Schmidt? Not all parents with questions about vaccinations are “twee Bobos” (as Megan McArdle christened us). This guy clearly has a fundamental disrespect for the parents he sees, automatically assuming that all their questions about this issue are stupid, unnecessary and time-wasting. This is where the bad doctoring comes in.

Good doctors want to talk to their patients’ parents in order to make sure the doctor has all the info needed before vaccinating a baby or child. They want to ask plenty of good questions before vaccinating so they don’t miss something that might alter the vaccination schedule for that particular child.In the case of my own children:

Child #1 is fully vaccinated
Child #2 had a very bad reaction to her first pertussis vaccine, and her pediatrician suggested we give her a modified version of her vaccination schedule based on that reaction
Child #3 is fully vaccinated, but we waited to start the vaccines until he was a bit further on in infancy due to some health issues he had at birth
Child #4 is fully vaccinated so far at age 7 months

Before my pediatrician gave any of my kids a single shot, he wanted to talk over each kid’s health history with me, as well as hear a bit about my own family’s health history. My father and I, for example, each had a very bad reaction to tetanus vaccinations. He wanted to know about that. He wanted to hear what questions I had. And he never rushed me, because he knows this is a very important topic.

Not all vaccine questions are from parents who don’t “believe in vaccinations.” There is a middle ground here, and this doctor seems to have staked out a claim so far to one side that he’s as “out there” as the parents who refuse to even consider vaccinating at all.

Injecting a vaccine into a 15 pound human is serious business. It may be good medicine for most babies, and for a healthy population, but it’s serious enough business that the pediatrician overseeing it needs to look at that 15 pound human as an individual, with an individual health history, and not just as a tiny human pincushion whose parents aren’t allowed to ask any questions.

And as the number of “required” (or soon-to-be required) vaccinations for children grows every year (HPV? Chicken Pox?), the argument that childhood vaccination is a cut and dried issue becomes weaker. Yes, population-wide polio vaccination is undoubtedly a good idea. But rotavirus? The slope gets slipperier (is that a word?) with every vaccine added to the mix.

And Dr. Schmidt, you are likely correct that you “don’t know anyone in the medical profession personally who disbelieves in vaccinations.” That’s a very bizarre way to characterize the many, many reputable physicians who are willing to ask critical questions about how vaccines and vaccination schedules might be modified or improved for the better health of individual patients and the population as a whole. Those doctors aren’t saying they “disbelieve in vaccinations.” They are saying that just because the pharmaceutical companies come out with yet another vaccine next year, it doesn’t mean we need to add it to the mix without taking a good, hard look at it. It may not be right for every child in every situation. It may even turn out to have serious problems AFTER you’ve already injected it into a bunch of your patients during your 10 minute “consults.”

Last, Dr. Schmidt, I hope you aren’t practicing medicine on the basis of what you think you know about the medical views of doctors you know “personally.” That’s not really how it’s supposed to be done.

Sheesh.

Parenting at Easter time March 24, 2008

As I’ve written here, I’ve been CRAZY busy lately. Lots going on at work, and the kids - particularly the boys - were just plain cranky and somewhat difficult over the winter months.

I am just as busy now - maybe busier since spring activities have begun (today alone - after work - we had an orthodontist appt, baseball practice and drop-off at Cub Scouts - E’s dad does Scouts with him, so he brings him home).

But I am finding that as the weather brightens and the days get longer, everyone’s mood seems to have lifted a bit. Spring Break seemed to help as well. The children all clearly needed a break from school.

But whatever anyone else’s moods, I am finding myself better able to enjoy individual moments in family time. Last night I thought the cuteness might slay me as I watched E. and his best friend hanging out on E’s bed for a sleepover, each reading to the other from books about WWII and strange factoids.

And in the past 24 hours, I’ve gotten to spend several hours just hanging out with and talking to 12-year-old J. without any real interruption. She’s hilarious and brave and sweet and funny, and has so much enthusiasm for everything, and I find myself looking at this gorgeous child and wondering how in the world I played any role in creating such an amazing female person.

Conscious awareness and gratitude are the most consistent religious practices with which I try to keep up. When I direct them at the children, I get huge rewards. Just quietly watching one of them read or play guitar or dig in the yard with a stick (yes, I have a 4th grade boy) is joyful when my mind is in the right place. Hanging out with H’s sweet hippie teenage friends, 4 of whom slept over last night, and seeing him smile because he’s at peace with who he is at that moment is a joyful. I love getting the glimpses of who he’s going to be once adolescence finishes working him over.

Jon and I both consider ourselves Christians, but we disagree about some things. I tend to see the science-defying miracles in the Bible as important fables, while he sees many of them as literal occurences - God made manifest. I always argue with him that I don’t believe in magic.

But really, I do believe in magic. I just don’t find it in stories about fishes and bread, or wine and water, or even in the idea of someone rising from the dead. I do find magic in realizing that another springtime has come. The light is back, and these children - one almost a grown man - are another few inches taller and a good bit more interesting every single year.

There is magic in seeing my 7 month old sit nestled in the arms of her 12 year old sister, both sitting outside in the sunshine next to the flowers that are coming up in our yard.

That’s Easter magic to me.

Educating liars

Po Bronson has an interesting piece in NY Mag at the moment on how kids learn to become liars:

For two decades, parents have rated “honesty” as the trait they most wanted in their children. Other traits, such as confidence or good judgment, don’t even come close. On paper, the kids are getting this message. In surveys, 98 percent said that trust and honesty were essential in a personal relationship. Depending on their ages, 96 to 98 percent said lying is morally wrong.

So when do the 98 percent who think lying is wrong become the 98 percent who lie?

It starts very young. Indeed, bright kids—those who do better on other academic indicators—are able to start lying at 2 or 3. “Lying is related to intelligence,” explains Dr. Victoria Talwar, an assistant professor at Montreal’s McGill University and a leading expert on children’s lying behavior.

Although we think of truthfulness as a young child’s paramount virtue, it turns out that lying is the more advanced skill. A child who is going to lie must recognize the truth, intellectually conceive of an alternate reality, and be able to convincingly sell that new reality to someone else. Therefore, lying demands both advanced cognitive development and social skills that honesty simply doesn’t require. “It’s a developmental milestone,” Talwar has concluded.

This puts parents in the position of being either damned or blessed, depending on how they choose to look at it. If your 4-year-old is a good liar, it’s a strong sign she’s got brains. And it’s the smart, savvy kid who’s most at risk of becoming a habitual liar.

baby’s new motto March 22, 2008

Sleep? What’s that? And why would anyone want to do it? Especially at night.

Currently, C. is waking every 15-90 minutes, all night long. This is the case whether I have her in her crib, in our bed, whether I nurse her lying down, give her a pacifier, rock her and pat her….

This too shall pass…

This too shall pass…

It’s hard to remember now that H., who sleeps like a teenage log and is often hard to wake without an airhorn, never slept through the night reliably until he was a toddler. And even when he slept all night, he continued to insist on waking for the day betwen 4 and 6 am until he was about 4 years old.

because you can never have too many cute baby photos… March 21, 2008

(Thanks to BK for the ADORABLE dress

fat & happy

Baby C. at 7 months.

Babble-icious! March 20, 2008

Big congrats to the fine folks at Babble.com on their work being recognized as a finalist for a National Magazine Award.

I am more impressed with Babble all the time. It’s become a must-read parenting site for me (along with Mothering.com).

I’ve had two pieces - an essay and a feature - published there in the past year and hope to write more for them in the future. If you’ve never checked the site out, I highly recommend it.