advocacy Archives — Thrifty Mommas Tips

Your Mask is Completely Inappropriate and What Happened Later

Paula — Fri, 11 Dec 2020 14:02:00 +0000

A week or so ago I wrote this Your Mask is Completely Inappropriate post for CBC Parents. Here’s what happened afterwards. As some of you probably already know, I freelance and publish content in many other spaces. This year, a lot of that content has appeared on CBC Parents. Happy to hang my hat there sometimes. An Excerpt From My Recent Post on CBC Parents This past week we were walking through a grocery store near my home when my teenage daughter spied something scrawled on a face mask. In fact, I heard her speaking to a stranger before I even saw why. So Why Did She Speak Up? This post is all about the day we went to the grocery store and Payton spied a lady wearing a mask scrawled with Thanks China, which was not at all okay with either one of us. But, Payton spoke up…. Here’s why it offended her, what she said and how that went. Déja Vu The reactions to the post were a little surprising. Of course, there were a couple of “parenting experts” who advised me I was not raising kind children. I actually think it is kind to stick up for others and to reject racism, sexism and homophobia as well as transphobia. The reaction to the post reminded me a bit of when I used to write for daily newspapers. Back then, it wasn’t unusual for someone to call me out of the blue on a Saturday morning for no reason other than to complain about a column I had written. To be honest, it was intrusive but nothing like this. Anti-maskers are sliding into my DMs like it’s okay to be an anti-masker and a racist, they’ve emailed me to rant about my parenting and angrily detail why they are anti-China and why I should also “open my eyes.” Some messaged me on Facebook messenger and through this blog, as well to complain about my daughter speaking up. The crux of that argument was that she is a teen and should remember her place and be respectful. Earn it But to that my teens both blurted last week: “You need to earn respect.” There are definitely times when age matters. But I grew up in an era where kids were seen and not heard. Period. If my Mom was talking to the adults, we were to be quiet. At holiday events we sat at the kid’s table. My kids aren’t those kids. They don’t go through life sitting at the kid’s table. Raising Kids with Heart and More They both have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and anxiety. One has ADHD with the hyperactive component and the other has ADD with the inattentive part. They both blurt things sometimes, but this is not about that. This is about speaking up when you see injustice or something that offends you.. When Is Age Irrelevant? Age is also irrelevant sometimes. For instance, when you are actually speaking out about something offensive. Our kids both speak out and up and they have opinions and they are girls, so I encourage that wholeheartedly. So, I’m happy to see that they did speak out and up. I don’t mind all the messages because at least people are reading the content and engaging. Period. Ultimately, I can’t control you but I am raising my kids to speak up and out and question when things are not right. Read the Full Mask Post here – > Your Mask is Inappropriate. Would You Speak Up?

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Time to Stop Smoking in Movies Now

Paula — Wed, 12 Sep 2018 20:36:39 +0000

I have partnered with YMC and Region of Peel and have received compensation for this post. All opinions are my own. Smoking in movies has been irksome to me for years. It’s so very unnecessary and irresponsible. I am a drama Mom. Both of my girls act and have for years with a local youth theatre troupe. It’s an amazing emotional outlet and youth development program. So I know all about character and plot devices and that smoking has traditionally been used as a character tool, but here’s the thing. It doesn’t have to be. I’ve seen many of the plays my kids act in altered ever so slightly to be more socially responsible, such as through losing old references to outdated and inappropriate language. Smoking in movies is like that to me. It’s outdated and socially inappropriate and even more, irresponsible. The older I get, the more I realize how juvenile using smoking in movies as a tool to convey coolness or rebellion or any of the other emotions attached to it really is. This holds especially true for me since I became a mom and even more relevant as a mom of teenage girls. I have two daughters aged 14 and 17. Right now, they’re fully coming into the age of independence and peer pressure. That’s a dangerous combination. Over the years, I’ve had several conversations with my daughters about smoking. We’ve talked about how dangerous it is. How unhealthy and disgusting it is. We’ve talked about what it can do to you and we have discussed all the people we know who have passed away from cancer. Then we also discussed what it does to your health and to your appearance and how addictive it can be as well as how hard it is to quit if you ever start. Smoking in Movies Perpetuates the Act My motto is honesty with my kids. When my younger daughter asked a few years ago: “Mom did you ever smoke?” I answered honestly with: “Yes, I did for seven years.” But I also often follow that with a discussion about research and science and I remind them knowing all that we know now compels us to do better and make healthier choices. Since having that conversation about smoking, I’ve used myself as a prime example of how ridiculous it is. I started smoking in my early teens. During my teens, movies and media portrayed smoking as being glamorous and a way to stay thin. As a teen girl I bought that hook, line and sinker. When I began working after school at a fast food restaurant, where many other employees smoked, it reinforced that it was okay for me to do so socially. I didn’t stop until I was around 23 or 24. So I smoked for about seven years before deciding to quit. Starting a new career and getting married convinced me it was time. So did a doctor I had at the time. The thing is even though I thought it was cool and relaxing in high school, quitting was anything but cool or easy. Smoking in Movies Needs to Go As a concerned mom, who knows all too well about how difficult it is to break away from smoking once you start, I’m proud to be partnering with YMC and Region of Peel- Public Health to bring awareness to their Smoke Free Movies campaign. The campaign asks parents to support the change by signing an e-petition that would require any new movies in Ontario, which contain tobacco imagery to be rated 18A, allowing parents to decide if their children are exposed to the act of smoking. I love this because evidence strongly suggests this is an effective method of protecting children and youth from exposure to onscreen smoking and is also an incentive for movie producers to remove smoking from their films altogether. That’s important because 86% of movies with smoking in them were rated for kids and teens in Ontario. On top of that, the more kids and teens are exposed to smoking in the movies, the more likely they are to start. Take a look at these statistics: An estimated 185,000 children in Ontario will start smoking due to their exposure to its onscreen use. Of those, 59,000 will die from tobacco related diseases. 37% of Ontario youth smokers are recruited to become smokers due to onscreen smoking. Those are two horrifying statistics for me as a Mom of two beautiful, healthy daughters. There’s no reason for smoking to appear in the movies anymore and if it does it needs to be restricted to those who are 18 plus. Schools work towards making sure kids know that smoking is not a healthy choice. Most parents do too of course. Now it’s time media started getting the message and accepting that they have a greater role in our culture too. Help Make Smoking in Movies a Thing of the Past Smoking is so easy to start, and it’s incredibly difficult to quit. Smoking is one of the most common activities that kids and teens are pressured into taking part in, and it comes at them from many sides. The last thing we need is a movie theater being the prime pusher of these incredibly addictive and deadly products. So What Can You Do? Movies influence kids. We need to make them smoke free. Please, join me in the fight to end smoking in movies. Help support a rating change for all new movies in Ontario and protect our kids from ever starting. Visit the Smoke Free Movies petition page and sign the petition to help us end smoking in movies.

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Six Ways to Empower Your Child to Take Charge of Health Care

Paula — Thu, 17 May 2018 05:07:00 +0000

My regular readers know my kids have special needs. I write about the challenges involved in parenting them sometimes. We shuttle (mostly I to be honest) both girls back and forth to doctors and medical appointments and for assessments so much that I get tired and overwhelmed. So I imagine they must also. Which brings me to a tricky balance question. I was a child when I was sick with Crohn’s disease. I was in hospital a lot and shuttled back and forth to doctors a lot and I never felt empowered throughout the process until I became an adult with a career. Honest To God. I never felt I had any say in what my medical treatment was and I certainly never had a voice with which I could challenge my doctor as a child. I wish that someone way back when thought about ways to empower your child. Now, as a parent with kids travelling through the health care system, I believe that some of the process, and system has changed. But I know it is my job to help my kids feel safe within the health care system (which I absolutely still regard as the best in the world). So how do I do that? How do I give them the power? How do you empower your child to take charge of their health care and have a voice? It’s a question I ask myself often and strive to make sure I am building opportunities for them to have input into the process. Let’s be honest I am still the adult. Final say is mine until they are older. BUT, at some point the aim of the game here is for them to take over their own health care so they need to get comfortable with bits of that now. Six Ways to Empower Your Child to Take Charge of Health Care. 1. My Kids Have a Say. I’ve said it before and I will say it again. I am raising advocates and I am raising kids who empathize with others and speak up. Do they always? When it comes to others – yes. When it comes to themselves? Not always. This past week my oldest girl, with anxiety disorder was headed to her new doctor. We walked in and we were informed that a student doctor would be present at the session. “Is that alright?” Well, my normally forthcoming child shut down immediately, squeezed my hand so hard I could hear my knuckles cracking and stopped walking. Obviously it was not okay. Message received. I stopped her in the hall and told her she was in charge. Speak up and use your voice if this makes you uncomfortable. Finally she was able to state she was not comfortable with a stranger being in the session. I applauded that afterwards, publicly and privately. Wished I had the backbone to say the same thing when I was a kid. (At some point when you are a 14 year old girl and 4 people in a room are talking about your barium xrays and pressing on your stomach, you dissociate and leave the room entirely.) Never do I want my child to feel powerless with doctors, therapists, nurses etc. 2. They Get What They Need. ( and if they don’t then we get a different expert/health care resource or opinion. It stuns me that I have to say this about children’s health, children’s mental health care, or special education, or kid’s welfare. All kids should get what they need. My kids get what they need. No questions. No excuses. You need more sessions of physiotherapy because of the broken arm, then someone will be providing that. Need to bump up therapy sessions because of a child who was being a total bully in class, then we are going to bump them up/increase them. End of story. 3. I Believe my Kids. I believe my kids when they tell me something is wrong or isn’t working. They don’t always use those words. Payton had stomach aches for months from grade one on before everyone realized she was an anxious kid and school relationships especially with girls were very challenging to negotiate. There is always a reason for the ailment that is presenting itself. Listen and believe. 4. Ask Questions. (and Ask Your Child if they have any questions.) Even when they were little, I would ask lots of questions of the doctors helping my kids. I would also then ask them if they had anything to add. I model that it’s okay to ask and get answers to your questions when at the doctor. In fact, it’s expected. Then I ask them if they want to ask any questions. I grew up feeling that doctors were very unapproachable. We never went to the doctor with a list. Your doctor was a demi-god. That what I was taught. You let them do what they needed because they knew best. I was not an empowered patient. 5. Be present. This is a hard one actually Be there with them. I have been in more sessions with my kids, and doctor’s appointments and emergency rooms than a lot of people. I am there as their parent and their advocate too and I rarely leave the room. When my daughter is old enough to feel comfortable on her own, and when I know she is in a safe environment to be seen and respected and treated, then maybe I will be sitting in the waiting room letting her take the reins entirely. But not yet. The only time my daughter had surgery I slept in the room. If I am at hospital with my child, I don’t tweet and post and manage client accounts and take client phone calls. Oh and this one might be most important of all 6. Know When to Stop or Take a Break This summer we took a break from therapy for my daughter. She’s been doing talk therapy since expressing some anger and sadness that seemed explosive and almost like depression at times. So we connected with the right supports. BUT, during school it was overwhelming to do that every week or two. And in the summer I said enough is enough for now. She gets to be a kid and I get a small break from that stress too. Sometimes Everyone Needs a Break Super hard for me to know when to stop. But it was time. If I feel dead exhausted and resentful of all the time I need to spend at doctors with them, then I need the break as much as they do. My call. She has happily been a child this summer and enjoyed summer camps without losing time to doctor’s appointments. We are both happier this way right now. So clearly it was needed for both of us. It’s important I am there for both of my girls. It’s also important that I am understanding the process and the treatment, so I can help them stick to it. Over to you How do you help your child feel like they have a say in their health care treatment?

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Embracing Caregivers #CareforaCarer

Paula — Mon, 13 Nov 2017 13:37:23 +0000

Are you a caregiver for someone with unique needs or health care challenges? I see you. I know you miss many social events, or family gatherings. Perhaps you stopped work entirely to care for someone you love. Or you switched to part time, freelance or contract. Chances are good you have missed your own doctor’s and dentist’s appointments. Maybe, you woke up so bone weary one morning you drove down the street without your glasses. Maybe you forgot to take your own medicine. How do I know any of this? Been there, done that. For years my life has been health care triage. Juggling an overwhelming number of specialist’s appointments, prescriptions and therapies means the one with the most acute needs gets dealt with first. Triage. Years ago, my husband and I adopted two girls from the domestic foster care system. Our youngest has sensory processing disorder and FASD (fetal alcohol spectrum disorder). Our oldest girl has generalized anxiety disorder. Both have attention deficit disorder diagnoses and I have Crohn’s Disease. I cared for my Mom too when her health began to deteriorate. Coping with Alzheimer’s Disease was also part of our daily life. One of my hardest days as a caregiver, or carer, happened when I was trying to help my Mom do some shopping. Shopping was her favourite prior to her diagnosis. While tending to her needs, and keeping her safe in the community, my daughter’s school called saying she’d run away. When overwhelmed she’d leave or run away without regard for danger. So I raced my Mom back to her retirement home and ran directly to my daughter’s school to help look for her. Stressed out doesn’t begin to come close to explaining that feeling. Being a caregiver, or carer, is as rewarding as it is stressful. There are precious moments I wouldn’t trade for anything. And there are moments that are the polar opposite of that. It’s a challenging unpaid job and it often makes you feel completely spent, financially, emotionally and physically. Embracing Carers Recently I learned about the Embracing Carers Initiative by Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany operating as EMD Serono in the US and Canada and I’m thrilled to share. Embracing Carers is a global initiative led in collaboration with leading carer organizations around the world. The goal is to increase awareness and discussion about needs of carers. Carers is a term used to describe someone who provides unpaid assistance to someone in need. While many understand that carers play a crucial role in lives of patients, what’s less understood is the need for resources and support. Simply put, a carer’s own health often suffers as a result of the stress and demands of caring for someone else. Through working with carer organizations, and the multi-year Embracing Carers initiative, Merck KGaA Darmstadt, Germany hopes to change that improving lives for carers and patients. Did you know? Statistics show more women than men care for loved ones across the globe. That takes a toll on women’s health and wellbeing. Challenges associated with being a carer creates barriers to women’s ability to join and thrive in the workplace. The Embracing Carers initiative plays a key role in raising awareness of caregiving as a global public health priority. Embracing Carers is supported by leading international carer organizations including: the Caregiver Action Network, Carers Australia, Carers UK, Carers Worldwide, Eurocarers, the National Alliance for Caregiving, International Alliance of Carer Organizations and Shanghai Roots & Shoots, China. It has has support of many patient and physician groups around the world. How Can You Help? So what can you do to help? Share this blog post. Post messages of Hope intended for caregivers globally with #CareforaCarer. And if you see #CareforaCarer on Twitter take a moment to hit Retweet. If you belong to an organization or a business that supports carers or caregivers please share your positive programs or examples as well. This post has been sponsored by Merck, which means I have been compensated. My opinion is all my own and it is also truthful.

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Bumped from a Flight? Know Your Rights As a Traveler

Paula — Tue, 02 May 2017 13:04:28 +0000

Bumped from a flight? It’s more common than you might think. Airlines routinely oversell their flights, booking more passengers than the plane can accommodate. You might be asking why they’d do such a ridiculous thing. It all boils down to economics. Airlines have to take into account that a certain percentage of passengers may have a delay from another flight, miss their flight, cancel their tickets, or any number of other things. Airlines overbook flights by selling last minute, highly priced tickets and then bumping people with lower priced tickets. They’ll give them a credit to take a different flight and still come out further ahead than they would if they’d forced the pricey ticket late payer to fly on a plane that wasn’t overbooked. So when you get bumped from a flight, your particular bump might be accidental, but it’s a symptom of a completely intentional money making business model. So what are your rights when you get bumped from a flight? Usually, there’s no problem, but as we saw recently in the United incident with a forcibly removed passenger, getting bumped does NOT have to be voluntary. And it’s not always handled well. Your Rights if You’re Bumped from a Flight The Voluntary Bump A voluntary bump can be a good thing. It can also be a win/win for everyone. When the airline realizes its overbooking process is going south, they’re required to begin checking with passengers – usually at the counter – to see if they’re willing to take a bump. Unless you really have somewhere to be, it can come out cheaper for you to take the bump. You can negotiate things like free upgrades, a voucher, or even a hotel room if the bump requires you to stay overnight. Be aware that this is all a negotiation process. They will, of course, try to low ball you at first, but you’d be surprised at what you can get just by asking. The Involuntary Bump Here’s where things get dicey. The airline cannot exceed passenger count. They only have so many seats, after all. The thing is, they WILL bump the lowest priced fares first, whether the flyer wants to get bumped or not. Remember that business model I talked about earlier? The Involuntary bump is a big part of it. They want the highest fares to stay on the plane. If you’re involuntarily bumped from a flight, the compensation will likely be higher than you’d receive on a voluntary bump, especially after the United incident. However, the fact that you were involuntarily denied flight means that you likely had somewhere important to be or were otherwise inconvenienced by the whole thing. In many cases, you’ll be entitled to a tidy sum for your trouble – up to $1,350. What you don’t know is that you can only get that if you ask. They’ll routinely try to compensate you with things like vouchers and refunds that are far less. Here’s what the Department of Transportation says you’re entitled to: If the airline provides transportation which gets you to your destination within an hour of your scheduled arrival, you get nothing. The airline is required to pay you an amount equal to 200% of your one-way fare to your destination for that day up to $675 if you will arrived one to two hours late. If you’ll arrive over two hours late and no substitute arrangements are made by the airline, you’re entitled to compensation of 400% of your fare up to a maximum of $1,350. If you have a ticket with no fare shown such as a frequent-flyer ticket, you’ll be compensated based on the LOWEST cash value of the flight. You can always keep your original ticket to use on another flight. If you choose this, you can request an involuntary refund. It’s basically a payment for your inconvenience. If you paid for extras like seat selection, checked baggage, etc. and you were denied those services as a consequence of being bumped from a flight, the airline is required to repay that money to you. Know Your Rights if You’re Bumped from a Flight Whether you’re voluntarily or involuntarily bumped from a flight, it pays to know your rights. And the first thing to remember in all of it is that airlines CAN bump you involuntarily. If you try to fight that, you might end up on the news. Rather than go through all of that, know your rights and make the most of being bumped from a flight. Their business model is more about them than you, so make your bump ALL about you.

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Infertility Statistics in British Columbia – It’s Time for Accessible Health Care #IVF4BC

Paula — Mon, 17 Apr 2017 13:45:31 +0000

Infertility statistics in British Columbia might surprise you. They might shock you. They should be repeated and shared and talked about. 1 in 6 Families in BC struggle with infertility. That means you know someone in your circle that has infertility, or has been through infertility. Maybe they shared their story with you. Maybe they struggled quietly. This upcoming May British Columbia marks two important events. The provincial election occurs May 9th, and the lead up weeks are a time to inquire where the parties stand on IVF funding. When the politicians running for office in your riding come to your door, ask them where they stand on public funding for in vitro fertilization. Share this infographic. You can have your iPad near by with the infographic loaded. The visual helps. [tweetthis]Four provinces in Canada have an IVF funding program – BC does not #IVF4BC #bcpoli [/tweetthis] Let them know that these are the infertility statistics in BC right now. Remind them also that other provinces have a funding program that is working and saving money as well. In fact four provinces have some level of IVF funding program. BC does not. Then remember to tell your story. And the second event is Canadian Infertility Awareness Week from May 7 to 13. That’s also a time to tell your stories and advocate for change. More Infertility Statistics and Facts: Even though only 4 provinces provide public funding for IVF, more Canadians are covered than are not! Population wise more people in Canada have access to funding for IVF than not. That means BC is in the minority of Canadians. A round of IVF can cost $7,000 to $10,000. When people struggle to pay that cost, they will often transfer multiple embryos. While multiples are adorable, they also carry greater lifetime health care costs. Twins and triplets are often born prematurely and spend weeks in the Neonatal ICU (NICU). Maternal health can also be compromised. The optimum health outcome for women and infants is single embryo transfer with public funding for IVF. Healthy children are the future for every province. Children grow into smart consumers, taxpayers, caregivers, policy makers, politicians and business owners. They build the future. That’s why it’s so important to keep talking about funding IVF with single embryo transfer. IVF funding with SET builds healthy babies, healthy families and healthy futures. [tweetthis]59 % of BC infertility patients say cost was a barrier to treatment #IVF4BC #bcpoli [/tweetthis] What You Can Do To Help: Be sure you are registered to vote in the upcoming election. Talk to representatives when they come to the door. Tell your story and ask them where they stand on IVF funding. Sign the petition if you have not already. http://bit.ly/2kaoQx0 [tweetthis]Follow @IVF4BC for more about this subject and conversation. #infertility #IVF4BC #BCPOLI [/tweetthis] Follow – > http://www.twitter.com/ivf4bc/ Follow or join the Facebook conversation here _ https://www.facebook.com/ivf4bc/ I work with IVF4BC to share their advocacy work and as such I am compensated. My opinion is all my own and it is also truthful.

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Adoption, Awareness and Advocacy – Why Are We Still Here? #adoption

Paula — Sat, 07 Nov 2015 20:04:58 +0000

This past week someone googled ” I hate adoption awareness month” and they arrived here on this blog which had me shaking my head at google. So I wanted to set the record straight. Here’s the truth. I don’t hate National Adoption Awareness Month. Quite the opposite actually. But I have gone on record many times over saying awareness is not enough. And I stand by that. I am an adoptive parent. Our family was built via adoption and it is a wonderful means of forming a family. I celebrate that all year round. I celebrate adoption awareness activities and fundraisers that raise the profile of adoption as a means of forming a family. I have even clearly stated that I would not be a parent if not for adoption. Adoption is a hugely important piece of my life and my family. AND ALSO adoption awareness is not enough. I can love adoption and adoption awareness and still say that awareness is not everything, and that there has to be more to this conversation. I have given this topic a tonne of thought lately. It fills my brain this month more than others because I see awareness campaigns happening and I think why are we still here in 2015? It drives me a bit mad actually. I agree 100 % with the fact that all advocacy begins with awareness. It is the place where advocacy conversation starts. It has to start there, so that people understand any given issue or cause, charity, or disease. If you don’t have a critical mass of people that understand or buy into the fact that yes adoption is an important and viable means of supporting child welfare and building healthy families then you can’t build better programs that get children into permanent homes. I support that 100 %. BUT the conversation can’t stop there. Also here’s the thing – adoption has been around forever. Historically, it exists in the Bible. Awareness has been around for decades now. It’s not 1950 or 1960 when birth Moms were spirited away to give birth secretly in a home for unwed mothers. It’s no longer the norm that families stay secretive about the word adoption. But support…. We still fall short daily in 2015 on the support aspect of adoption and family building and permanency planning. And I am frustrated by that. I work with many groups, charities and non governmental organizations on line to build their awareness and support initiatives and we have grown and had brilliant results. We have changed the conversation on line and in real life. That matters and has happened with dedicated effort and many thousands of volunteer hours spent talking to people, in person, and on line. I am very proud of what we have accomplished for many brands and advocacy groups. But for whatever reason, adoption conversation is still stuck. It is not enough to say – adoption is a lovely thing. It is not enough to chime in that:” Oh yes, my neighbour adopted a little girl from China.” OR “My husband’s brother is adopted.” OR “My doctor’s sister was adopted.” We all know someone who is adopted or someone who has adopted. Now we need to begin building bigger conversations. We need to lobby hard for changes that matter and make an impact on adoptive families for life. Subsidy, support, special needs challenges that happen within the framework of adoption are all still lacking. Every year I show up at pre-budget time to tell my provincial government what adoptive families need, what works and what doesn’t. I try hard to elevate this conversation so that changes happen. I have been doing this since 2008. Occasionally one other adoption related group might show up at those pre-budget sessions, but usually I am it. I believe areas of the U.S. are doing some of this conversation better than we are currently in Canada. Their lobby groups are savvy and able to respond when there is a threat to adoption policy. They remain focused and they seem able to see all the many facets of the adoption triad and spectrum while not losing sight of the big picture. So why are we still here? Well, part of me suspects many of the adoptive families and stakeholders who could be elevating this conversation in Canada are so burnt out by battling systems that they have no energy left for anything else. That’s a sad reality. It’s one I see reflected around me in many of the adoptive families I know and help support on line and in person at an adoption support group locally in this city where I live. Advocacy has to be a long term life plan for a charity, or issue, or cause. Step 1 – is awareness. Step 2 – is support. Step 3 – is growth and succession planning. Step 4 – is sustainability. Awareness needs to lead to support and that in turn needs to lead to succession planning and sustainability. I am aware. I celebrate adoption. I also want more for all adoptive families in Ontario and throughout Canada. LONG TERM. We have to do more than just pay lip service to adoption during the month of November. Adoption doesn’t happen just one month of the year. [tweetthis]Adoption doesn’t happen just one month of the year. #adoption[/tweetthis] Are you an adoptee or an adoptive family? Is awareness enough?

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“I Want Them To Know They Are Loved” – On Holiday Gifts That Matter #MeaningfulGifts

Paula — Wed, 04 Nov 2015 17:03:00 +0000

Boys play with a wooden gun used in re-enactment dramas, which can be part of rehabilitation therapy sessions. Many are familiar with how to handle the weapon. – Photographs from World Vision’s Children of War Rehabilitation Center in Gulu: daily life under World Vision’s care and reunions with their families; portraits to accompany Nigel Marsh interviews. This is a Guest Post by my Daughter Payton Schuck, she’s in grade nine this year and has been involved with helping us choose which World Vision Canada gift catalogue holiday gifts that we give as a family. This family tradition started last year. In grade seven Payton did a project about child soldiers. Today for Take Your Child To Work Day she is working with me, learning about social media consulting, using social media for social good and she decided to write a guest post about which of the gifts speak to her heart in the World Vision Canada gift catalogue….these are her words. By Payton Schuck War. A word we all hear, but most of us have never experienced. We see children playing soldiers, but what about the ones who live that nightmare? Big guns in little hands killing. Because they have to. Because sometimes kids are stolen from families. Because they thought this would help their family. Because they want to make their parents proud. Because they want to be a hero. Now they are the victim. But there is hope. You can be the hero. You can help restore a broken child soldier for $75. That’s a very small price for a big change. Today, I am using my own savings to restore a child soldier with World Vision Canada’s help. because I want them to know that they are loved and that there are people out there who won’t hurt them and want to help them. This is the holiday gift I choose this year with my family. If you want to help give back this year, you can also choose something from the World Vision gift catalogue. This is my recommendation. Imagine if you were in their position. Imagine the things they have seen. This is a chance to make a difference. Children as young as eight are stolen and forced to become soldiers. That shouldn’t happen, ever. There are a lot of options that are easy to save money for. There’s something more to giving when you give a gift like this. Rather than just giving another video game or present you can give something that matters to someone else. These holiday gifts change lives and make a huge impact on children and communities around the world. This year I am choosing to use some of my babysitting money to help child soldiers. Follow World Vision Canada on Twitter. Huge thanks to my daughter for writing this. I think she did a great job and she made me cry because I thought we were choosing a gift of a piglet or roosters together and she came up with this instead.

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Why I am Speaking Martian Again: FASD Looks Like This and I am Still Proud to be a Health and Special Needs Blogger

Paula — Thu, 26 Feb 2015 20:08:04 +0000

It’s been an interesting week here, in which several signs have made me realize again what I am supposed to be writing about. It’s funny how sometimes you, as a blogger, get tunnel vision watching stats and striving for growth and page views and SEO. These are the tools of the trade and we all get really great at understanding them. We watch our posts for engagement and comments and we tick them off and file them away with headings like: improved or needs improvement, or blogging goals for the year. We worry on a day when the stats dive and we question sometimes what happened there. We wallow. We question what am I doing wrong? Then a post about some dessert you made goes through the roof and is shared on Facebook 100s of times and comments are so positive and you say to yourself: okay then clearly I have to write more about desserts and you find yourself, aproned, dusted with icing sugar and flour, five pounds heavier than your usual weight, writing about products and staging parties with desserts trying to duplicate that success. But it’s like trying to capture a genie in a bottle. These things like viral, are rarely duplicated and when we can’t repeat the formula for success we start to question our blogs, our worth, our writing. (I watched a roundup post about gluten free food go crazy this month on my blog and I sat stupefied wondering what or how or why it happened.) And after your fifth or sixth post about desserts you think, what the heck? What am I doing? I have a degree in astrophysics (not really) or English Literature (yes really) and I am writing about pie, or vacuum cleaners. WHAAAAAT??? Why? Why am I doing this? And how the heck did I gain five pounds and which weight loss company can I pitch so I can post about losing said five pounds. But this week two things happened. I invited a speaker on FASD (fetal alcohol spectrum disorder) to come to the adoptive parents group that I help facilitate in London, Ontario and I couldn’t even keep up with all the RSVPs. People were coming from Goderich, St. Thomas, Hamilton in a snowstorm to see a speaker who would talk about caregiving and FASD (fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. For the record FASD is a brain injury caused by prenatal alcohol exposure.) And it was a great event, and the speaker was highly entertaining and inspiring and supportive. Workers attended and some caregiver’s parents showed up ( so a child’s adoptive grandparents learning how to be a better parent and help support their son or daughter while also learning what works better for their grandchild. I can’t tell you how much I love that dynamic because I might start to cry. ) and everyone seemed to get some help or support or new nugget of info from Jeff Noble’s talk. Check him out, follow him if you need support. (FASDFOREVER.com). And in a room full of old friends, and new contacts, and some total strangers, I remembered again why I started writing right after we adopted our second daughter. I found myself nodding like a bobble head at every comment. That’s so true, I thought. That is me. That is my daughter. That is us together making sense of life on Mars. I remembered some of the reasons and some of my strengths in parenting, connecting and supporting. It felt good and it fit like an old pair of jeans, before the blogger butt set in. When I started blogging, it was a way to make sense of this life – the one people sometimes call life in Holland. I call it life on Mars. Then again I guess since we are about to try to colonize Mars I may need to pick a new planet as special needs metaphor. ;? Special needs parenting and writing is a small field, such a tiny niche really. I remember why I resisted that box for awhile. It is sometimes depressing to be speaking Martian all day. You burn out. Period. But it is the space where people connect with me, my family and my writing. It’s the unique thread that tired all of us together inside a room listening to Jeff Noble talk. We all get this surreal life. And it is privileged and beautiful and back breaking and so very hard. [tweetthis]It is sometimes depressing to speak Martian all day. But I am a health and special needs blogger and it beats speaking SEO.[/tweetthis] The other thing that happened this week was that a reporter, a dear old friend from my daily newspaper reporting days, DMed me. Because that’s what we do these days, or we PM on Facebook. My people know they can always hunt me down there, even when I can’t recall how to answer the phone (Right, Margarita?) She wanted to talk about a national study that’s been released from Centre for Addictions and Mental Health about the economic costs of FASD. She recalled my name and a portion of my story. So, we started to tell that story again. As we grow the story evolves, even if it always starts the same. Regardless of any of that…I started speaking Martian again. The story went live late last night. You can find it here: http://www.lfpress.com/2015/02/25/a-costly-tragic-legacy or here: [tweetthis]There are a lot of caregivers living on metaphorical Mars. They all need and crave support. [/tweetthis] And that was my second lightbulb moment. There are a lot of caregivers living on metaphorical Mars. Dozens have messaged me and emailed and asked if I know of support groups in Stratford or St Mary’s or on line. I have seen dozens of friends and fellow caregivers around North America sharing my Facebook post with the link to the article about FASD. And I have heard from some who said I just printed this out and sent it to our school board in Wisconsin, and I took it in to my son’s teacher. Some have asked do I know how to get the school to do an assessment once and for all? Can I help with X or Y? And my heart is full from the amount of wonderful kind comments. And I remembered too that it is the hardest thing in the world to parent our kids with special needs, even when sometimes it can also be the most rewarding thing as well. I find myself speaking Martian again. Oh I still speak a bit of SEO, but I am fluent in Martian. Turns out I never lost it. I just stopped speaking it for awhile.

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Five Steps to Becoming a More Healthy and Empowered Patient

Paula — Wed, 24 Dec 2014 16:20:07 +0000

How many times have you gone to the doctor and felt less than happy with the visit? Do you leave feeling like an empowered patient or not?If you spend any time at all visiting this blog, then you know I often write about health matters. I write almost as often about advocacy and causes that matter to me. The lives of the members of my family intersect often with the traditional health care system. I was a child when I was diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease and I spent many weeks, months and school vacations in the hospital or racing back and forth to doctor’s appointments. I never felt like I had any sway at all in my own health care until I hit around the age of 25. It’s sad to me that it took that long to find my voice within the system. It’s sadder still that I felt I never had a doctor who listened or treated me in a way that made me feel like an empowered patient. As a child and a teen, I didn’t know to grab that power myself. So what does all that have to do with the topic of this book: Diagnose Yourself: How to find a permanent cure for what ails you.There are a few reasons this book interested me right off the bat. Jenner is a naturopathic practitioner with a history of speaking engagements in which he would tackle the root cause of a person’s ailment or issue, often successfully finding a “cure” contained within a patient’s environment. He experienced great success in person with this method. So he decided to write a book about this common sense approach to diagnosing your own illness. His approach is designed to empower patients to manage their health care better, particularly their interactions with their doctor. His book is available on Kindle and in paperback. I reviewed it here on Thrifty Momma’s Brainfood. Recently I interviewed Jenner who advised this book would be a good tool for anyone unhappy with their current relationship with their doctor. After all everyone has one of those stories. You know the one, where the doctor didn’t take enough time to listen, or the one where he or she got it wrong. Diagnose Yourself says what if you take the power back and prepare for each appointment and work through a template in the book to help you get the right answers that solve your issue. It is not about avoiding the doctor or firing the doctor. It is a book about occasionally managing your own symptoms and using some common sense to figure out symptomology. It is well worth the money, and as anyone here knows, I am very much about advocacy. Funny how so many of us can do it for others and yet not for ourselves. This Christmas or New Year give yourself the gift of Diagnose Yourself: How to find a permanent cure for what ails you. Because it will change the way you work with your doctor and it might even provide you with the tools to get right to the cause of your illness instead of passively assuming a prescription is the only option. You can analyze your problem, the symptoms and potentially find the cause within your environment. “People who read my book will be able to take more responsibility with their own doctor.” The book is structured in three basic parts. There are case studies and health care history sections and then there is also an interactive element for patients that includes an easy to follow template to help guide you in assessing and detecting what and when and how symptoms are impacting you. It sounds simple, because it is but it can also be time consuming which is partly why this kind of assessment often isn’t done in traditional medicine. Five Steps to Becoming a More Healthy and Empowered Patient By Reid Jenner I was talking with a friend the other day over coffee and she was relating to me an uncomfortable experience she’d had with yet another malady that was initially misdiagnosed by her physician and which needlessly extended her illness. This led to a discussion about how we can take more responsibility for our own health by doing a little legwork to assist our health care providers in more effectively diagnosing and treating our health problems. Here are five quick and simple steps you can take to help yourself and your doctor reach faster, more effective, and less invasive personal health management outcomes: Keep track of your symptoms. Studies show that the cause of most illnesses can be traced to harmful factors that we are being exposed to in our environment, not internal or genetic factors. But we are often so busy and distracted by everything that is going on in our lives that we fail to recognize the connections between what we are doing or being exposed to that may be contributing to our illness. Just keeping a simple log on the back of a napkin for when your symptoms manifest and what you’re doing at the time can help. Recognize what you are doing differently. Most illnesses can be traced to something unique about your special habits, the unique locations you habituate, or the unique timing of your illness. Take the information you gather in step 1 and analyze what is different about you compared to others most similar to yourself who are not experiencing the same problem. Using this technique, one of my clients traced the cause of his chronic and painful sinus infections to the unique exposure to a wood stove placed in the basement adjacent to his study. Look for distinctions in your environment. Oftentimes the source of the problem has something to do with the unique location(s) in which you travel and operate. Another client found the cause of her recurring and severe red eye condition was being caused by the rapid change in air pressure within the cabin of her commercial airplane when she traveled and descended into a high elevation airport in inland China where she visited her parents periodically. Recognize the unique events associated with the timing of your symptoms. Sometimes the sources of the problem relates to what is going on at the unique times when your problem presents. A fascinating and perplexing problem with flight attendants experiencing a severe face rash was ultimately solved when the random timing of problem was traced to certain flights over water only on selected routes where they were displaying new life vests that had a chemical irritant embedded within the fabric. Share your findings with your health care professional. At the outset of your doctor examination, tell your doctor what you’ve uncovered and what you think may be causing the problem. Put the onus on the doctor to evaluate and rule out your well-framed hypotheses. Use the same critical thinking process and cold hard facts you uncovered in your analysis to evaluate and rule out equally implausible explanations offered up by your physician for your illness. Information is power—and you are the primary custodian of the critical information relating to your health problem!

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