IPT is infant potty training, EC is elimination communication. They're basically the same thing, training an infant to communicate the need to use the washroom and then taking them to the toilet rather than have them using a diaper.

The language program is intensive. I think we (my husband and I, not Zed) may suffer some burnout trying to keep it up. We're in Canada, just outside a large city. There are lots of people who speak all those languages, and TV is available in French as well as English.

By co-sleeping I mean bed-sharing. I put Zed to bed in his room on a futon on the floor, and stay up until it's adult bedtime. By then Zed has woken up, so I nurse him in his bed, and fall asleep there for a few hours. Some nights I move into bed with my husband and other nights I don't. It all depends on how much attention Zed needs that night.

I posted a long list of links here most articles on those sites list references. Off the top of my head I can't link you to any of those studies, but they are popular enough that the Canadian, American, and British governments all frequently quote those studies in their literature to new parents.

http://www.attachmentparenting.org/
http://www.askdrsears.com/
http://www.kellymom.com/
http://www.drmomma.org/
http://www.thebabywearer.com/
http://www.mothering.com/
http://www.naturalchild.org/

Hi 2010Bebes!

Yes, my little guy is 6 months old. He's a terror. He's already cruising around the furniture, getting into everything, and otherwise stressing Mommy out.

We decided to let Zed decide what he wants to do. Right now he loves to play on the floor, and will not only sit still for flashcards, he will take them out himself. My husband still has his doubts, but he can see how much our son loves learning.

I'm not online much because he's quite demanding of my time, and I've been working from home (even though I told myself I wouldn't) When I get a free minute, I end up working, not checking forums online. It was actually a coincidence that I came online today and noticed you'd posted today.

Based on the Doman development chart, he's pretty much on par with kids doing the course. Compared with babies of my friends, he's quite advanced, some of these babies are over a year old now, and he's leaps and bounds beyond them on most milestones. So I really have no idea if he inherited genius genes.

Prenatal - We did not use any program. I listened to a lot of classical music. just because I like it. I specifically read to the baby in utero. His favourite stories are ones he heard before birth. He also enjoys Beethoven's 3rd symphony, which is my favourite, and I saw played live around 32 weeks.

Parent/Child relationship - I'm quite a big supporter of attachment parenting. We are co-sleepers, I wear him in a sling (when he isn't on the floor), I breastfeed, etc. There are lots of studies linking attachment with infant well-being.

Early Education - We have been doing the program from "How Smart is Your Baby" and will/may be starting LR and LM soon. (Pending spousal approval) But will continue with paper flashcards as well.

I do not have an opinion on Montessori.

Languages - We do ASL everyday. Spanish on Mondays, English Tuesdays, French on Wednesdays, German on Thursdays, Mandarin (Chinese) on Fridays, Russian on Saturdays, and Japanese on Sundays. We seek out interaction with native speakers and my husband and I speak those languages exclusively on those days. We aren't sure if we're going to keep it up like this though. Ultimately we would like Zed to learn 10 different languages, the above 7 and Arabic, Hindi, and Latin. We haven't decided the best way to teach them all. I am fluent in 4 of the 10 and my husband in 3 (only English overlaps) however we are both learning along with our son for the other 4. It seems to be working. He recognizes bathroom in all 7 spoken languages and will sign it (unfortunately not to tell us he needs to go, only after, or if someone leaves the room he wants to know if that's where they've gone)

I know many people who have had success with OPOL for other languages, the only concern is your child may think that all women speak one language, and all men the other. Which is easily corrected (and adorable in my opinion)

Because this doesn't leave me busy enough I also do IPT/EC, music classes, and work from home.

Your plan looks pretty good to me. Enjoy him when he arrives, they grow so fast.

I'm not new to the forums, I've been here for a few months. I used to be "Guest." Now that I have a real name, I thought I should actually introduce myself.

Hi! I'm Kay. I live near Calgary, AB Canada with my awesome husband and our new son Zed. I can't believe Zed is already more than 2 months old. It seems like he was born just yesterday.

We have been trying to do the whole How Smart is Your Baby program, but have been failing miserably. Despite my inconsistencies, Zed can roll over, hold his head up for 10+ minutes, sit unaided for 5 minutes and is already saying a few semi-words. But, he can't crawl anymore!

When Zed was born his first act of life (after the scream, but before the cord was cut) was to climb my torso and head-butt me. But Zed has GERD. Once he started eating he refused to lay on a full stomach, or an empty stomach, or on his back. Even with his medications he will only sleep on his left side propped up on a 45 degree angle, or in a sling/wrap/baby carrier. When he's not screaming in pain, he's a wonderfully curious, happy baby.

The problem of course is getting him on his tummy for any significant length of time. When he was a couple weeks old he could crawl about 5 feet on a flat surface, now it's about 5 inches. He's so big now (almost 14 pounds) and I just hadn't been giving him enough time on his tummy for him to gain the strength to move that much weight around. We're working on it more now. We've regressed to the inclined track to get him to go farther, but it seems to be working.

I think this forum is great, and I miss being able to waste time here like before Zed was born. I'll try to keep everyone updated on our progress more often.

Have you heard of flylady? Her website was instrumental in my organization when I started working at home.

I think it has less to do with how or what we're teaching our kids and much more about how we treat them. Everyone here treats their children as the little miracles they are. There is no reason a baby can't learn a skill like reading, so there's no reason the same baby can't learn an easier skill like identifying which objects are toys.

Quality time is a big thing too. Just because someone is a stay-at-home parent doesn't mean that they interact positively with their children. Some parents only interact with their kids to tell them not to do something. We make a point of using every free minute we have to help our kids understand the world. There is a huge difference in the quality of the time we spend with our kids compared to other parents.

The last factor is that learning needs to be presented in a joyful, factual manner or it won't work. Logically then our kids see us happily interacting with them, responding to their cues, and respecting their interests. Kids learn from example, so they happily interact with us, respond to our cues, and respect us. It's a positive reinforcement spiral: The more we respect them, the more they respect us. But there is no reason that a parent needs to have educational motives to behave that way.

The next time there is a child misbehaving in public, look at the way the parents interact with the child. There is no respect there, and they get none back.

So while early education is doing wonders for our children, I think this is one thing that we have to take credit for as parents, not teachers.

When safety isn't an issue, I almost don't follow the guidelines at all.

Maybe my nephews and nieces are abnormally gifted, but I usually get them toys for the age group 50% older than they are (ie the 4 year old gets toys for 6 year olds, the 8 year old for 12 year olds, the 18month old for 24-30 month olds) I'm told I'm the best present giver in the family.

Is Kimbosan still active? This post was over a year ago. I wonder if she's become pregnant or had a baby since...

As for getting pregnant: the first time was the very first time I had unprotected sex. Unfortunately that pregnancy didn't work out. The second time was on the third cycle.

If anyone out there is still on the fence about Taking Charge of Your Fertility even after Kizudo's glowing review, I have to throw my support behind it as well. It's a fantastic book.

Haven't seen the "Hookt on foniks wurkt fur me!" t-shirts? They were very popular here for a while in the late 90s.

When I was little I had a mini-trampoline (I actually still have it!). I'm sure they say not to let kids use them now, but if you supervise it's not very risky. It's also good exercise for mommy. Walmart (I think) has one that uses elastic bands instead of springs, so little fingers can't get pinched. It's only about $40.

Also hula hoops are fun and don't take up much space. Or just plain dancing.

Some random internet ideas:

It’s Never Too Late to Skate
On a carpeted area, clear some space to make a “rink”. Get two pieces of paper (8 ½” x 11”), and put one under each foot. With shoes on, stride forward and backward as if you were skating. Have skating races, create a path to follow or skate to music.

Time to Act
Act out a sport and have the child guess what sport you are “playing” (for example, basketball, hockey, soccer, baseball, volleyball, swimming). To make this activity more active, have the child mirror the activity while you act it out. Try again with another sport. Take turns acting.

Play Simon Says, and include little exercises in the game. (Simon Says, Do Jumping Jacks)

Indoor Hopscotch
Create an indoor hopscotch by sticking masking tape down on the floor. You can do this activity whether you have a carpet or a hard floor. Show your child how to go through the hopscotch. You can just take turns hopping straight through it. Or you can play a regular game of hopscotch, by tossing a small stuffed animal or toy onto one of the squares. The player has to hop through the hopscotch, hopping over the space with the stuffed animal on it; and then turn around and hop back, stopping to pick up the stuffed animal on the way. There are many variations of hopscotch games. Play your favorite way, or make up your own rules!

Bowling
Set up a few non-breakable items, and roll a soft ball towards them, just like real bowling.

Hide and Seek

Make a Fabric Wall
String a clothesline across a room. Pin old sheets, towels or pillowcases along the clothesline to make a fabric wall. Let your kids have a ball running under, between, and through the sheets.

"We also play 'animals' where we just go around the house, pretending to be different animals. It does wear them out crawling around like lions and cats and whatnot. Plus fast crawling when the lions chase each other"

"I play music... the best one is Polka music. As much as it annoys the hell out of me - the kids love it and will gladly dance around. I pull out my bin of stuffed animals and let them roll around in them too. Amazing how long kids will play in a pile of stuffed animals with polka music playing in the background " (That's a hilarious suggestion!)

Hope some of this helps!

Amazon.com sells 1/32-sized violins. They cost $90 to $130.

I was looking because my MIL is already pushing me to teach the baby violin (he's not even born yet!)

1/32 should be the right size for a 3 year old. They have a lot more choices in the 1/16 size though.

Hi guest,

Love your insight and input. We could use you around here. Please register or are registered under guest?

There is (was?) a flaw in the guest forum, in that unregistered people cannot post. Thinking I would just ask my one question, and then likely not come back (or register under a real name, depending on the answers I received) I registered as "Guest"

I've obviously since started replying to other topics and now I think I'm stuck with the name.

I think this is the most important part of the phonics vs whole words debate, ultimately we all use both: We sight read familiar words and sound out unfamiliar ones. The better the reader the fewer words need to be sounded out and the faster their reading speed.*

I agree with Patreiche that the best way to teach reading should be a blended method. That's how we read in the end anyway. There is very little reason, in my opinion, to teach common or short words phonetically, and in fact many of them do not follow the phonetic rules. But at a certain point a child will be exposed to words which are phonetic but too rare to be sight words initially. The child will sound them out the first few times and then they will be assimilated as another sight word. If they are not exposed to the word frequently enough, they never develop it as a sight word. That is where the effect of practice is the most blatant, but also the effects of phonics. A child taught to read using sight words will be able to add words to their reading vocabulary easier than someone taught via phonics. The whole-word learner uses words as a unit, when they learn a new word it's a new word. A phonics learner learns a new word as a new series of familiar sounds/letters and to store it as a sight word they need to convert printed word --> letters/sounds --> mental word. The whole-word learner may see a word twice and remember it forever. For a phonics learner the more sounds it has the harder it will be to convert and store and the more exposure is required to remember it.


* To a certain point of course. Once the reader's vocabulary is sufficiently large, improving reading speed is a matter of making the reading unit larger and larger. Phonics teaches that the letter is the unit; the whole word method, the word; speed reading, the whole page. There are many gradients between using the word as the unit, and the page as the unit as well, and that's why most adults have varying reading speeds.

Being able to read quickly takes the drudgery out of reading boring texts (something that happens in schools and workplaces worldwide) so that the reader still has some interest in reading when they're finished. To have a lifelong love of reading, I think a certain reading speed is required. I don't know exactly what the minimum speed is, and it probably is different for every person, but I don't think that there is a maximum. Although, being able to read 12,000 words per minute seems slightly unnecessary, it would almost take more time to open the book to a new page than to read it. The article mentions 4000 words per minute as the average attained by a high school english class. This is encouraging for two reasons: first, speed reading can be taught to high school age students, and second that 4000 is AVERAGE.

I don't think someone who could read 4000 words per minute would be discouraged by a boring text. Even 1000 words per minute would reduce War and Peace from 1600 minutes (at a college level reading speed, which is more than 26 continuous hours of reading) to 560 minutes (or 9 hours 20 minutes). At 4000 words per minute it's less than 2 and a half hours, and at the remarkable speed of 12,000 it's a breeze at 47 minutes.

In case there are any Tolstoy lovers out there: I'm not saying that War and Peace is a "boring text", it's just an incredibly long one that I was required to read in high school. I don't think I read anything for pleasure for months after having to read it. How much happier I would have been if it had only taken a couple hours!

While I find it fascinating that a science fiction writer managed to start a religion based on what most people would consider entirely crazy ideas, I have to admit it's not all rubbish. If you take out the parts that seem like they're straight out of a sci fi book, or the parts where he's trying to convince you to join the religion, most Scientology writings do have a solid base. In terms of character building, I think the LDS resources are better though. I don't subscribe to either religion personally, but I think it's important to give children a solid moral base.