I want to be famous

Forget about the days when children looked up to powerful women as role models. Today Miley Cyrus and Britney Spears are the people that children look up to and idolise. In the celebrity culture of the 21st century are celebrities considered to be the leaders in our community? Is the celebrity culture indicative of the values and morals which our society considers to be important? Is the society we live in today only concerned with money, fame and designer clothing?
Celebrities have become familiar icons we see day in and day out. We read and talk about the latest antics of Britney Spears or Paris Hilton but is this how children, define themselves?
Media- TV, tabloid magazines, newspapers and particularly the internet are today more readily accessible to children of all ages. For young girls, it’s opening Pandora ’s Box. Everything’s at their little varnish-coated fingertips. Could the media’s portrayal of people in the spotlight, who seemingly achieved overnight success, lead some youngsters to feel less than positive about themselves? Could it lead them to believe that education is not necessary for success and that fame and fortune can be easily be achieved?
I don’t think it’s all bad to have children looking up to role models who have achieved success through their artistic or athletic talents. This is certainly a less classist approach than teaching kids they need to have a PhD. to amount to anything. So maybe we adults just need to be a little more careful about who we worship and make it clear that it is through hard work and deternination that success is achieved.

Money, money, money

The life-long benefits of teaching children good money habits make it well worth the effort. Children who are not taught these lessons pay the consequences for a lifetime.
The problem is a lack of financial education. Why don’t we teach kids about money in school? Wealthy or not, smart or not-so-smart, we all use money. Yet, while there are a few schools beginning to offer some financial education, it seems that most educators believe money isn’t a subject worthy of the hallowed halls of our learning institutions.
There is virtually no formal financial education in our school systems. Most education comes in the form of a very broad overview of economics. Okay, understanding how the economy works is important, but it is also very dry and has little to do with personal finances. Ask any student in high school how a mortgage works or what the APR on a loan or credit card actually means and you would likely be faced with a blank stare. They might be able to recite every bone in the human body or ask where the post office is in French but couldn't explain what a credit score is or how compound interest works.
First, debt is not necessarily a bad thing. Debt is simply the leverage of using other people’s money. The London Stock Exchange does it, people who buy homes do it, it can be a great wealth building tool. The root of the problem is not with debt itself, it is that people don’t use debt as a tool for financial gain. Instead they use debt because they fail to understand the consequences of using it ineffectively.
But their problem isn't credit cards — it’s a lack of financial know-how. And at the root of that lack of knowledge is our school system and its archaic curriculum, which is out of touch with the way people really live.
The more children learn about money, the more they will be able to make wise financial decisions as they grow older. If the schools fail to educate our children it is up to us the parents. Lead by example and ensure your children are on the path to financial independence from day one.

Two pancakes short of a stack

Baking with your little girls is not only fun but it can also provide the perfect opportunity for some incidental learning to occur (not to mention spending quality time with your little chicks).
The kitchen is a great vehicle to learn reading skills; maths skills; science skills; and don't get me started on the organizational and sanitary skills it teaches. Look at the kitchen as the ultimate science laboratory where you can create and eat your own experiments. What is so wonderful about baking with your children is that without even thinking about it - they will have learned so much. And don't think that this is the end of it! Your kids will see the same concepts they learned about while baking with you in school during science and maths class. However, these topics of science could never have been presented to them in a more delicious manner than you did, and with so much love! Right now, you are probably wondering if I am "two pancakes short of a stack" for advocating you to join your children in the kitchen. All you probably see is the mess that they will make. Okay, they will probably create some sort of mess. But I am way ahead of you. There is more to baking than just getting the baked good into the oven. Teaching kids how to see tasks through and clean up after themselves is an invaluable lesson.

Baking with kids can be one of the best experiences you will ever share with your children. Creating lifelong memories of the luscious baked goods you have prepared as a "team" truly evokes the love that you share.

Once upon a time

In all most all fairytales, girls and woman play a significant role. This alone is a good reason to take them seriously. Fairytales teach us that nothing is impossible. They show us, figuratively, that difficulties always lead to emancipation if you do not run away from finding a way through, from taking on the challenge!

The person who has a good heart will gain access to the wisdom. Fairytales teach us that all problems can be solved as long as you accept the challenge, follow your own path and don't give up. A heroines journey.

What about Barbie?

Barbie has been around - and adored - for 40 years, and millions of Barbies have been sold, so the chances are good that some day your daughter will own a Barbie. Barbie looks exactly like a marketing strategist's idea of the average man's dream woman: a slender, long-legged, young woman with long blonde hair and a full bust. So what should we do about Barbie? Maybe we should turn our attention back on ourselves. Examining our own beauty ideal before we decide whether or not to buy our daughter a Barbie doll. The pressure on woman to look good is so great that most woman bow to this dictate - and of course we pass this pressure to conform on to our daughters. In the end, either buying or not buying Barbie is okay. Either way, explain to your daughter your own position on Barbie, and what feelings this doll triggers in you. Make it clear to her why latter-day Barbies have tilted feet, ready-made for high heels - and tell her all the things you cannot do in high heels. Make your own decision. I didn't buy Eva and Bianca Barbies, but their grandmother did but, rest assured if she hadn't, Barbie would have moved in with us via pocket money anyway. *(^_^)*

I am angry and it's okay.

Learning to accept and understand feelings is a big part of growing up. Anger is a feeling everyone knows, and it has an important function: it helps us take responsibility for ourselves and tackle tasks-in short, it gives us courage. People who suppress anger are living unhealthily. Sooner or later, suppressed anger will emerge as a stomach ache, a headache, or as fear. Every child feels fear sometimes and that is okay. But whereas men are expected not to show their fear, women - especially little girls - are allowed to.

Could excessive fear in girls be connected to overprotective caring they might receive from parents? If we allow our little girls to have quite normal experiences, which include accidents like falling over, will they learn to deal with such mishaps as a matter of course. Do we as parents often encourage our girls to give up, because we regard certain things as too dangerous, or unsuitable, for girls. We must remember that children may be even more likely to have accidents if we constantly protect them from experience. For example, a child must learn how to fall over in order to learn how to stop herself falling over.

The Mozart effect for babies

From the moment Paulo bought me the Mozart Effect for Babies Collection I was hooked. I immediately went online to research it and was captivated. The girls listen to it every evening before bedtime. Eva and Bianca both love it. Eva calls it her ballet music. The Mozart effect first came to light in a 1993 when Fran Rauscher, a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin, showed that college students who listened to Mozart's Sonata for 10 minutes performed better on a spatial reasoning test than students who listened to new age music or nothing at all. Scientists argued over whether the phenomenon had a relatively simple explanation, such as just improving a person's mood, or if the effect was tied to a unique quality of Mozart's compositions. One study reported that the particular rhythmic qualities of Mozart's music mimic some rhythmic cycles occurring in human brains. Rauscher team at Stanford University in California, think they have found the molecular basis of the Mozart effect. Their study used rats, which, like humans, perform better on learning and memory tests after listening to the sonata.The researchers found that these smarter rats had increases in neural growth, a learning and memory compound, and synapsin I, a synaptic growth protein, as compared to control rats who had listened to equivalent amounts of white noise. So does the Mozart Effect exist? Well, some say the Mozart Effect is life-changing music and is medicine for the body, the mind, and the soul and many disagree. You decide, I defiantly would suggest a closer look.

If nothing else the music certainly leaves you jubilant and exhilarated, and that is always a good, NO great thing!

Eva's First Apple

Are our children trading ABC’s for QWERTY’s? Computers in preschool? Keyboarding and mouse skills for toddlers? In our current era, a growing number expect their toddler to be as comfortable with the computer mouse as she is with Mickey Mouse *(^_^)* and our little Eva is well on her way.

Computers are here to stay and while the keyboard may eventually give way to some new technology, the computer will become even more vital to tomorrow’s workforce. Many parents hope to give their children an edge by encouraging computer literacy at an early age. Software designed for children under age five is one of the fastest growing segments of the educational software industry.

While the experts debate the merits and pitfalls of the various media marketed towards preschoolers, we the parents are snatching them up. According to researchers in the US, toddlers who use a computer develop better learning skills than other toddlers who do not use a computer. Researchers studied 122 children, aged 3-5 years. The kids who used a computer three to four times a week got better scores on a test aimed at gauging school readiness and cognitive development. This new study comes after previous ones which indicated superior motor, numerical and literary skills among toddlers who regularly use computers.

Princess Jesus

Although this is Eva’s third Christmas, it is the first that she fully appreciates in all of its indulgent, commercial glory and her greater awareness of a holiday-saturated culture in general - she knows exactly what's going on, or does she?
It is all visions of sugar plums, fat men bearing gifts, candy cane, gingerbread and princess Jesus.
She has embraced the holidays with all the desperate enthusiasm of an alcoholic at a whiskey sale, and although it is adorable, it's also a little bit disconcerting.Should we carefully shield her from the hype of the holidays as a festival of presents and candy? Limit her exposure to any medium that broadcasts holiday-fetishizing advertisements. We have made efforts to explain to her what Christmas really is supposed to be about - star in the east, baby in swaddling clothes, three wise men bearing gifts. We talk about the importance of giving and of being grateful and of celebrating family and friends and everything that we are so fortunate to already have. But still, after all of this, she remains intoxicated by Christmas. "Will princess Jesus bring us gifts?" she asks. The Christmas that decks the halls with boughs of holly and Tinker Bell Advent Calendars and that celebrates, above all else, the getting of stuff. I don't want to deprive my children of those childish pleasures, nor do I want to teach them that wanting (desiring, coveting) is in itself bad. It is, after all, okay to want things. But I do want them to learn that wanting things for oneself must be tempered by - and is most pleasurable in concert with - wanting things for others, and that Christmas is only incidentally about receiving material gifts. I want them to take to heart - when they're old enough to understand - the spirit of the Christmas story with its tidings of great joy and message of hope and peace and good will. I want them to understand the lesson learned by Charlie Brown, that shiny pink Christmas trees with mounds of presents are kind of cool, but are really beside the point, and that the best feeling that one can have during the holidays is that heart-full, love-smothered feeling that one gets when embracing the spirit of good will and hope and love.

We had a revolution

We had a revolution, things have got better for girls and now girls can do anything they want to, though it's not turning out to be that simple. The empire struck back, and the appalling forces of commercial greed rushed into to replace old values, and created for girls a whole new slavery - you have to be slim. You have to have big breasts. You have to work your whole life long, even if you simply long for some peace and quiet with your new baby, or to be creative,or have time to just BE. We have to have it all. We've made progress but we still have a long way to go.

This world is a pretty toxic place for children, the messages the media send, the food on the supermarket shelves-toxic. So we have to show great care in what we put into their bodies and their minds.
One thing we should remember, our baby girls are not putty in our hands. They belong to themselves and bring their own personality and unique life's work into the world. As parents, we are lucky to be allowed to accompany them for a while.

On your journey

I can hands down say I have never felt intensity as in the moment my daughters were born. But also, sitting halfway between feeling so lucky, so blessed, and so terrified about getting it wrong, and not being up to the job. For help, I as do many parents tap into one of the things that our culture does well - books, ideas, discussion, to help broaden our picture and learn from the lives of others. We don't have elders,we don't have a village to help us. But at least we have a questioning society that puts out so much information and that brings us the thoughts from across the globe, that other people's lives have gone into making, all for us to digest, use or discard.

Most of us, men and women, had odd and difficult times growing up, distant fathers did not teach how to father, marital chaos and widespread divorces made us distrustful and unsure of how to form strong relationships. and make them work. We had little in the way of spiritual depth, the old religions collapsed but only money and pleasure rushed in to replace them. We didn't really know the deep peace of the earth around us only the chatter of television and the clutter of bedrooms full of junk.

What is it that I want for my daughters ? In answering that I search deeper within myself, so that things I had kept buried inside come to surface, beliefs, passions, forgotten memories to become a more wide awake, fully alive human being, rather than someone who provides meals, drives the school taxi, packs a lunch for the school bag for another rat race day. What our kids will remember, and what will strengthen them, is the moments of closeness, honesty and peaceful times that we spend in amid the scramble of life. The parts that we fence off and make special, where we refuse to dance the the tune of the commercial world.

Exposed

Once upon a time, becoming a mother was something you did alone, in your home, with your baby. Your sources of expertise were few: women in your family, women on your block, and your doctor. Your husband knew nothing, and when you had a question, there was Dr. Spock. Maybe you were happy, or angry, or drunk, or overwhelmed, or pleasantly bored, or deeply satisfied. But those emotions lived at home.
Then came the Internet. (Okay, then came feminism. But after that, the Internet.) And for all mothers, came a sense emancipation. Sharing parenting stories, dumping our most toxic thoughs and enjoying great moments - our lives lit up and exposed.

I'm Sonia Da Silva and this is my story, raising girls - exposed!