Daycare can cause SIDS...

The following article is unfortunately in Dutch: http://www.nu.nl/news/1365696/151/rss/%27Kinderdagverblijf_kan_wiegendood_veroorzaken%27.html
It does, however, show that a Dutch scientist has found a link between daycare and SIDS.
He has a few reasons for his thought. Breastfeeding is usually not continued in a daycare setting, which is important for the health of mother and baby.
Very young children are focussed on getting to know their father and their mother, and when they all of a sudden cannot smell, hear, feel or see them, they get stressed, which can attribute to SIDS and is a negative factor in their health and development.
Guus de Jonge obviously is of the opinion that young children, below 1 year of age, should not be in daycare. Even before he published anything I already agreed with that. Its nice to know that there are really good scientific reasons behind it as well.

Priorities

Lately I have been wondering again about something.
I noticed that people spends thousands of pounds for their wedding, but when it comes to having children, they do not want to spend a penny, but do complain about the care they have received.
It really made me wonder what is so important about a wedding compared to having a child.
I would prefer having a jeans wedding and in comparison to that be able to pick the best independent midwife I can find, that suits my thoughts and needs on birth.
But I guess people don't really think ahead or so. Which is another surprising thought to me. I prefer thinking ahead of what the future will bring and try to make sure that things go as smooth as possible for the whole family. Of course I cannot fully plan life either. Surprises do happen, but at least it makes it possible for me to anticipate on those without having to worry too much about other things.
I wish I could understand why people seem to spend so much money on a wedding and no money on having a baby. If anyone knows, please let me know in the comments. I am genuinely curious.

What about toys

When I look at the toys that are available in shops, its all plastic or plastic related. There is very little natural. Of course you can buy wooden toys, but those are very very expensive.
So how do tribal kids play, what kind of toys do they have.
I have watched some films and read some about it in books.
Tribal kids have toys as well, just not in the way we do in our society. In our society all toys have to fit within the health and safety rules of the various countries, this means: often no metal, definitely no chance on hurting themselves. But how are they going to learn to use stuff for the future.
In tribal communities where hunting is important, kids have small bows and arrows and other hunting tools, kid size, but nonetheless real. They can hurt themselves.
They are simply working along with their parents in gathering and cooking etc.
Our children are often in daycare, with plastic toys, very little real life going on there, so very little learning experiences that are real life again.
I have found a small cooker on which kids can cook with tealights, they can burn themselves and hurt themselves, but they do enjoy using it.
Furthermore one of my girls has her own sewing machine, as she loves sewing, and with that learning about fabric and yarn and how to combine the 2, often with success, sometimes it doesn't turn out too well.
I have learned from what I saw in the films about tribes to not be bothered anymore about my kids wanting a bow and arrow and a catapult, those are real tools in tribal communities, of course not anymore for us, we don't go out hunting, but the ancient need to use these kind of things in play, hunting play, is there. They also check out what in the woods they can eat/ gather. They have asked about buying a book on that, as we have no clue on what exactly you can and cannot eat, we have lost those skills.
Earlier this year they went to Alice Holt for a surivival day and learned a lot about den building, gathering food from the woods and what plants have medicinal properties. At present they know more about that kind of stuff than I do.

Thoughts on weaning

Weaning, I have always wondered why this is such a hot topic with people with young children.
It seems that most people do it on a very early age and it seems to mean that baby stops taking human milk and goes onto solids. But why is it such a hot topic, why does baby have to take full meals at 1 yo.
The WHO recommends 1 year and beyond. So what is the rush?
To me weaning doesn't mean that baby is force fed solids and is withheld human milk. To me a natural way of letting baby gradually go from a diet of only human milk to a diet of all kinds of other foods goes very very slowly. As from about 6 months, when baby shows signs of readiness (those are sitting up, being able to pick food up and put it in its mouth and being able to actually eat it, iso spit it out again) baby can grab food from out plates. Baby doesn't have to, when baby is ready this happens.
Slowly but carefully this means that baby will take more and more from the plate. There is no need to puree anything when you let baby do the work itself.
So after a while, this can be years, baby will eat full meals, some are faster than others. When mother keeps offering human milk as well, she is sure that baby will get all the nutrients it needs, besides the immune system isn't ready until 6, so what's the rush?
The child could do with an additional boost of immunity from human milk.

Here is a nice link on the natural age of weaning, it makes quite clear that humans aren't ready to be weaned at 6 mos or earlier, but much much later.

http://www.kathydettwyler.org/detwean.html

Whole food Coop

As I am always thinking about saving money, but want to keep eating healthy, we joined a Whole Food Coop locally. This has been a blessing. Saturday we could pick up our first order.
I was very very pleased as through this coop we could order products that I hadn't found in local shops yet, but that I desperately wanted to use.
One of them was coconut oil for frying. Coconut oil can handle much higher temperatures than most oils. It is actually not fluid in room temperature, because its tropical.
We also use olive oil and for a few years we have only used that for frying as that is the next best thing. From now on olive oil will be used in salads and less warm dishes only. Coconut oil is going to be there for frying.
It was somewhat funny, as the smell from the pot of oil was pretty strong, but when used there is no problem in taste, we love it.
The other thing was concentrated fruit juices. Local shops didn't have those and we were used to using those before we moved to the UK. This as there are no artificial sweetners nor added sugar in there. The taste is much more natural and you can dilute it very well, to make it nice and healthy.
So, we ordered that as well, next order will have a different taste in there.
What was further one of the highlights for me were the nut butters.
Before our move we used to use those, but again, didn't find them in local shops.
So, now we have almond butter, hazel butter and cashew butter added to the standard peanut butter. Its a joy to have the different tastes and again, its healthy!

Junk food

I have found that in our world junk food and soft drinks are part of life, everybody uses them to some extend. This has resulted in me having had some thought on it. I found that it is important to educate my girls on the ins and outs, rather than bluntly forbidding it. In tribal cultures they use things like alcohol and (soft) drugs as well. Therefore it has become crucial to me to not withold them any, and in that way make it much more interesting for them to get junk food and soft drinks, but rather explain to them what it is doing to their bodies and let them have a go at it here and there.
I have come to the conclusion that the same goes for alcohol, smoking and soft drugs, they are relatively easy to obtain, so education goes further than forbidding as far as I am concerned.

Tribe - Bruce Parry - DVD

Recently we bought the BBC DVD Tribe - Bruce Parry (http://www.bbcshop.com/invt/bbcdvd2418). This DVD is very very interesting. It shows a lot about how various tribes live. Some more "civilized" than others. I have found it very interesting to see how children are participating in everything. There is no difference between adult life and child life. Children are simply part of life.

Recently I watched a BBC tv program which was about obese teenagers who went to life with a tribe in Borneo in the long houses.
At some point during this tv program one of the females of the teenagers stated that she didn't like it that the men went hunting and the women stayed behind doing stuff around the long house, cooking, gathering etc.
She also wanted to hunt and felt this was violating her equal rights.
The tribe spokesmen simply said that things were that way.
I fully understood. And I will tell you why:
When women would go hunting, how will they do this with a baby or a child at the breast? Men have a more muscular body, they were made to go hunting and run for long periods of time.
Women have, from old times, taken care of other parts of life and as they have the boobs they also have more to do with the children. Simple as that.
I am not able to understand why women have to life a men's life to feel good about themselves. Women are better skilled for gathering and caring, men for hunting and protecting. For me no sweat in that.
I actually noticed that with driving I tend to take the known ways, sometimes that can be a bit of a detour. My partner, however, tends to take a more direct way, whether new or not.
This fits with the gatherer and hunter mentality.
Hunters have to go where ever to get the meat. Gatherers tend to pass the same area's to see if there is any more food to find. Gatherers do not fully empty it in general, as there needs to be growth which will provide more.
It was a very interesting talk that we had about this.

Some thoughts

As this is my first post on this blog I think I may have to explain a bit about The Continuum Concept.
For our family it basically comes down to parenting the natural way. We think about what must have been natural in the Stone Age, the things required for survival back then are still valid. Men are still the hunters and protectors, women are still the gatherers and carers. So when a boy is more active and physical, this is for a reason.
We also always try to look at the emotions behind the behaviour.

The Continuum Concept was written by Jean Liedloff, who spend a tremendous amount of time with the Yequana tribe in South America. Those people still lived like in the Stone Age when she was there. They were satisfied in their ways. They are also a non-violent tribe. Therefore visiting this tribe was a brain teaser to her, which led her to write her book.

I love what she wrote and her writing has been a huge brain teaser for me.