by Martine de Luna (Philippines) | Nov 9, 2016 | 2016, Life Lesson, Motherhood, Parenting, World Moms Blog, World Motherhood
This year in the Philippines, we have been amidst an election year for a new president. Honestly, I wasn’t too pleased with the options nor the results. In the last six months since the elections, things are looking quite bleak for our nation, with a clear divide between the people. I’ve never seen a more shameful public parade of opinions than in the last year since the campaign period began.
Compounded with the U.S. electoral campaign, my Facebook feed has become almost intolerable. Where there used to be updates about motherhood and the joys of parenting, I now find daily helpings of judgment and strife.
I can’t say more than this. You all know what I mean. We all know what’s being said and hurled around social media.
Everyday, I just get to thinking; What is this world coming to? Were we always this spiteful, this hurtful? Did social media make us more bold to spew out hate from behind our screens, or did it make us more cowardly than ever?
The biggest question of all; How does a mother in this day and age raise a child amidst such horrors? In my own country, things appear status quo on the surface, but we live in constant fear of extrajudicial killings, unsolved murders and deep corruption in the government.
How do you protect your child from what is evil, immoral and debase?
How do you explain to them that the world is still good, despite daily heralds that it is terribly, horribly twisted?
As a mother, all I can do is set an example for my children. Because what I do — whether or not my children see me in action — will reflect in how they turn out. I cannot play with their lives if I am not vigilant with my own character, my values and beliefs. Because like it or not, their perception of me will shape their future.
For my son, I hope that my husband and I can show him how to be a man for others. He is a kind soul, an old soul I feel sometimes. He watches out for his little sister, and has started ninja/martial arts lessons (after his obsession with TMNT), so that he “can protect her.” I want him to grow up to see the good in people, to be a giver at heart. Maybe he can use his talent for drawing in some good way for others; I don’t know. His future is full of possibilities.
For my baby girl, I hope that this world will still be full of wonder for her, as she is still such a baby. (She’s one and a half.) I have yet to find out what she will be like, but I hope to bring her up with a mindset of positivity and bravery, of gratitude and hope. She has such a full life ahead of her, that is why I am adamant to make her world a happy place.
Sigh. I remain hopeful. Maybe I just need to tune out of the news for a while and be with my kids more, so that I can constantly be reminded that we are all inherently good inside. Who’s with me?
Martine is a work-at-home Mom and passionate blogger. A former expat kid, she has a soft spot for international efforts, like WMB. While she's not blogging, she's busy making words awesome for her clients, who avail of her marketing writing, website writing, and blog consulting services. Martine now resides in busy, sunny Manila, the Philippines, with her husband, Ton, and toddler son, Vito Sebastian. You can find her blogging at DaintyMom.com.
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by Kristyn Zalota | Nov 8, 2016 | 2016, Clean Birth Kits, World Voice
When I started CleanBirth.org, I felt that it was my privilege to help make birth safer for women in Laos who lacked resources and a voice. I bounded out of bed in the morning ready to work as much as my kids’ school schedules permitted me.
I am still as committed today, perhaps more so. But I am not bounding out of bed anymore.
My boundless energy has diminished for a variety of reasons: an international move with 2 kids, frustration over local government rules, fundraising fatigue…
Despite moments of flagging energy, I keep on because of the commitment that I have made to women in Laos. I keep on to support the powerful work done by our amazing local partner, ACD-Laos. I keep on because so many others in Laos, nurses, midwives, community members, keep on in difficult circumstances. After four years, we are a team. They ask for what they need, knowing that I will listen and do my best to fulfill their requests.
I am part of something that I began when I was energetic and searching for a purpose. I continue this work, backed by a supportive Board of Directors, generous donors and my fellow members of the World Moms Network.
There was a time when I had to nag ACD-Laos staffers for data and they in turn had to repeatedly call clinics to get the information. After four years, and training about Monitoring and Evaluation, nurses at our 43 clinics understand the need to provide monthly data. Each month, they give ACD-Laos data that is then compiled into a spreadsheet detailing how many kits were given. Further, ACD-Laos has taken over the twice-annual execution of trainings in Clean Birth Kits protocol and infant care.
Our work to make birth safe is now directed by local ACD-Laos staff with the support of CleanBirth.org’sglobal donors.
When I am feeling less enthusiastic about drumming up donations, I think of this team we have built. I know that women in Laos are depending on me and on CleanBirth.org donors to supply them with safe birthing supplies they need. The nurses, thirsty for tools and knowledge to help mothers in birth, await our training.
We can’t disappoint them, so together we must press on. A little weary at times but wiser and more effective. We have built trust in these remote communities. We have developed a system that works.
So we push on, directed by our local partners, with the goal of creating an environment where every mother has a trained birth attendant and every baby has infection-preventing supplies. Where both mother and baby survive birth.
Kristyn Zalota, a World Moms Blog contributor from the USA, is a mom of two and also the founder of Cleanbirth.org, a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Working with a local Lao partner, Cleanbirth.org empowers nurses to provide women in their communities with Clean Birth Kits and safe birthing education. To date, Cleanbirth.org has provided 5,000 birth kits and funded training for 250 nurses.
Kristyn brings her years of experience as an entrepreneur and serial volunteer to CleanBirth.org. She holds a MA, has run small businesses in Russia and the US, and has volunteered in Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Uganda on projects related to women’s empowerment.
After having children, Kristyn became an advocate for mothers in the US, as a doula and Lamaze educator, and abroad, as the Founder of CleanBirth.org. She is honored to provide nurses in Laos with the supplies, funding and training they need to lower maternal and infant mortality rates in their villages.
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by Meredith (USA) | Nov 7, 2016 | 2016, Europe, Netherlands
When your family makes a move to another country across an ocean, one of the main priorities of a mom is making sure her children are having as smooth of a transition as possible to their new surroundings. When just walking down the street to get in the car can be an experience in hearing a new language, it can be a very intimidating experience for children to adjust to their new surroundings. School can be one of the hardest adjustments to make no matter where you move.
A year ago, I had a fourth grader and a second grader in a public elementary school in the U.S. Their typical day was to get to school before the 8:05 a.m. bell and then have seven hours of constant instruction all day long with the exception of a 30 minute lunch and a 15 minute recess. Then, they would come home, and we would hurriedly try to get the homework done (30 minutes of reading per night with a reading log to sign, 15 minutes of math practice per night with a math log to sign, and then whatever other homework was assigned for that evening by the respective teacher). Most days the homework was interrupted by running to after school activities, trying to eat together as a family, and getting to bed at a decent time.
To most parents, this sounds pretty typical…at least for the U.S. But, what I am not including here is the attitude my kids had towards school in the U.S. I did not mention that on top of the work and instruction and the meager 15 minutes of recess they would get a day that they were also taking a four hour long bench mark test for one subject about every week (yes, even my seven year old second-grader!). They could lose their little 15 minutes of recess and have to sit in silence because they talked too much in the cafeteria at lunch. They were being constantly assessed and assigned (major or daily) grades, and then tested again. They HATED doing their homework and they begged for just some kind of free time to just chill out.
I couldn’t blame them, their days were jammed packed, and if they didn’t perform and take the benchmark tests, then there was no telling what kind of score they would get on the STAAR standardized test given in Texas. The test which is supposed to prepare the students for academic excellence. During the battery of STAAR tests, the walls were covered with black bulletin board paper, and labels were taken off of water bottles in case the students may get any answers from the walls or water bottles….water bottles, really!!??
Yes, they take the labels off the water bottles so the kids can’t even see any numbers during the tests. They sit for hours on end and cannot even read a book when they are finished in case someone who hasn’t finished may see a word on a page and give them an answer on the test. They cannot talk during lunch during the testing time for fear they may exchange answers. All of this in the name of academic excellence and getting my children ready for the “real world”.
As an educator, I understand the need for assessment of students. There has to be a marker to know the level of understanding of a child. I do believe there is a time and place for assessment, but not all the time, and not taking up so much of the very precious finite time of elementary students. I understand how the high stakes standardized testing began. The idea was a good one. There were schools that were performing very low in contrast to schools which were performing very high. The concept was simple: give the same test across the board to all public school students and that would get everyone on the same page. However, somewhere along the way, high stakes testing turned into scrutinizing teachers, pressuring students, and increasing the rigor of these tests every year. This led to more practice testing in the classroom which led to less recess time and more stressed out teachers, students and parents. It is as if the testing is a runaway train that I fear no one will be able to stop.
My third grade daughter had a panic attack here at her new school the third week because she didn’t know if her presentation at school with three classmates was going to be for a major or a daily grade. Her teacher had to call me, and I had to go to the school to pick her up. That is when I explained the type of system we came from where the children were literally graded on every. single. thing. Her teacher explained to me that the children are formally assessed here a few times a year, but the majority of the time is spent with hands-on activities, and cooperative learning and interaction with one another in the class. The children are mostly graded informally through demonstration of knowledge on a topic. The teachers actually take the time to get to know each child as an individual…not just how to get them from point A at the beginning of a school year to point B at the end of the school year. I felt myself let out a huge breath that I didn’t even know I was holding. It felt as if the pressure I had felt for my children lifted, and it also lifted from them as well. Imagine, elementary education given in an age-appropriate manner!!!
Last week, my son came home and told me he had to finish his spelling homework. Without me telling him to do so, he went to his back pack got out his book and sat down to complete it without complaining and without any nagging. My daughter came home with a project about an author study. She had her snack after school and immediately sat down at the computer and began to type in her author’s name to do a computer search for information. Who are these kids? They can’t be mine…my kids were getting burned out in fourth and second grade. They hated homework and school. This fifth and third grader here in The Netherlands are completely different children. I have two children who LOVE to go to school here and who are learning and who are not having so much pressure to perform…
The school my children are attending here is an international school which follows many of the Dutch school guidelines. One of the things both of my children love the most here is that the school offers them TWO recess times per day. A 15 minute recess in the morning and a 30 minute recess after lunch where they have unstructured play time, and no one is having them sit inside and finish work they didn’t complete (like our old school). They have time to be outside in the fresh air and run and play or just talk…it doesn’t matter…there are no right or wrong ways for the kids to have recess.
They also are dismissed from school each Wednesday at 12:30 p.m. This is another HUGE perk for my kids. I have seen with my own eyes their attitude about school changing and their engagement in their school work go up. I have seen that their teachers are actually learning about my children here. Social skills here at their school are just as important as the academic skills. They both have homework, but it is assigned if work was not finished in class or if there is a special project to do for a particular unit. There are no logs to constantly sign or meaningless worksheets coming home.
Some may say, how are they going to be prepared?? Are they learning enough? I would have thought that also coming from the system we were in last year. I would get daily updates in my email about test grades and classwork. Here, the grades are not entered into the computer, and I have found that I have taken a step back. In turn, my children, have felt that pressure ease as well. They are taking tests at school, but they are meaningful, and not four hours long every week. My daughter gets to go to the school garden to see science in action with her class and learn about fungi and insects.
There have been many articles written about the correlation between recess and academic achievement. Almost all of them say that more recess and break time for children equates to better learning and attention in the classroom. This particular article is written by an American teacher who taught in Finland and found that for every 45 minutes of instruction, the students (and teachers) would get a 15 minute recess. He was skeptical at first but saw the results with his own eyes. And really, isn’t this common sense? We as adults, need to step away for a few minutes and have a coffee or talk with friends. We know when we have been pushed too far and need a break. Why do schools constantly push students even when the students have reached the point in a lesson where they are not paying attention anymore?
As a former teacher before I stayed home with my children, I have seen the public school system in the U.S. change in the 10 years since I have left education. I have seen more stressed out children, teachers, and parents (myself included) since I was an educator. Seeing education in practice here at the school my children are attending, I see what elementary education was supposed to be. The way elementary education is taught here is what I was taught it was supposed to be in my university courses, and how I implemented it in my own classroom.
After moving here and seeing the attitude change so much in how my own children view school and how much they have learned, I am convinced of a less pressure-based environment, I feel that the meaningful instruction which takes place when the children are truly engaged in the lesson is so much more valuable than powering through a lesson in which the students are not paying any attention to because of no down time and constant pressure to perform.
Having time at school for unstructured play for my own children has made a world of difference in their academic lives. They are developing their social skills and problem-solving skills during their guaranteed recess time (which is not taken away from them as a punishment). Even when we are going to after school activities, we are not as stressed about long bench mark tests the next day. They may still have homework when we get home, but the feeling of all the stress and pressure seems to have lifted on all of us. And, they actually WANT to do the work because it is meaningful to them.
The conferences I had with their teachers last week reflect exactly what I am seeing at home. Both of my children are well adjusted and happy, and are performing at or above grade level in their classes. THIS is what I wanted for my children. I want them to enjoy learning. I want them to have friends, and develop into people that other people would actually like to be around.
Childhood is such a precious time when so much of one’s personality is developed. That time can never be given back. I fear that the lack of downtime and recess time at school is hurting elementary children. There will be plenty of time for hours of homework and test stress in high school and university level education.
I know that our time in the Netherlands will eventually come to an end because such is the life of an expat, but until we have to leave, we are ALL enjoying the lack of overload we were all feeling at our old school.
Does your child’s school give regular recesses? Have you noticed if it helps or hinders your child? Do your children have regular testing in their school? How does they handle it?
This is an original post to World Moms Network by Meredith. You can check out her adventures as life as an expat in The Netherlands on her blog www.gettingonthebicycle.blogspot.nl
Meredith finds it difficult to tell anyone where she is from exactly! She grew up in several states, but mainly Illinois. She has a Bachelor of Science degree in Elementary Education from the University of Illinois at Champaign/Urbana which is also where she met her husband. She taught kindergarten for seven years before she adopted her son from Guatemala and then gave birth to her daughter two years leter. She moved to Lagos, Nigeria with her husband and two children in July 2009 for her husband's work. She and her family moved back to the U.S.this summer(August 2012) and are adjusting to life back in the U.S. You can read more about her life in Lagos and her adjustment to being back on her blog: We Found Happiness.
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by Kirsten Doyle (Canada) | Nov 4, 2016 | Canada, Humanity, North America, The Americas, World Motherhood
While half of the world is seemingly losing its mind over Syrian refugees, Canadians are scratching their heads wondering what the big deal is. A year ago, we elected a Prime Minister who promised not to control the influx of refugees, but to bring even more into the country. We rejoiced when he actually kept this promise.
For many people, refugees are a bit of an abstract concept. They’ve never met them, so they assume that they are somehow “different”. For residents of the neighbourhood I live in, there is nothing abstract about refugees. There is nothing scary about them either. They are not would-be terrorists who are trying to impose Shariah Law while they freeload off the government. They are real human beings who are trying to rebuild their lives after fleeing from war zones.
The corner of Toronto that I call home has a large transient population. Refugees come here to live while they are trying to find their feet in Canada. They are housed at one of the motels in the neighbourhood, and their children attend school with my son. When they have found a place to live and a job, they move out of my neighbourhood and into their new lives.
I have come to know a number of refugee families through my involvement with my son’s school. I don’t know all of their stories, but they have a look in their eyes that speaks volumes. It is a look unique to people who are trying to wrap their minds around the fact that for the first time ever, they don’t have to live their lives in fear. They can move beyond “survival mode” and actually start to find enjoyment in life. They can board a city bus without wondering if it will blow up. They have access to parks where they can go for walks and have picnics. Instead of running away from danger, they can just run.
Some of the refugee kids at my son’s school have discovered the joy of running through Kilometre Club, which happens every school morning during the spring, summer and fall. Kilometre Club is very simple in how it works: kids show up before school and run laps around the school yard. For every lap they complete, they receive a Popsicle stick. Five minutes before the morning bell is due to ring, we send out a kid for the last lap holding a fake scarecrow on a stick. When the scarecrow completes the lap, Kilometre Club is over for the day. The Popsicle sticks are collected and tallied, and the class that has the most Popsicle sticks at the end of the season wins a pizza lunch.
Kilometre Club has become a well-loved institution at the school because it is so inclusive. There is no sign-up and no expectation to go at a particular pace. Kids who want to run can run. Kids who want to walk can walk. For the refugee kids, it is a discovery that you can run without having to run away from something. You can run without being triggered by the “fight or flight” response. For these kids, it is a new world in which you can run just to feel free and alive.
I’m the one who hands out the Popsicle sticks and decides who will be the scarecrow for the day. In this role, I have gotten to know most of the kids at the school. I get to see the Canadian kids weaving the refugee kids into the fabric of their lives, welcoming and including them as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. I get to see the refugee kids slowly, slowly dropping their cloaks of fear as their lives mesh with the lives of those around them.
It is a beautiful thing, and one of the reasons I love being a Canadian.
Does your community welcome refugees? How do you encourage your kids to embrace diversity and acceptance?
This is an original post to World Moms Network by Kirsten Doyle of Canada. Photo credit: Ani Bashar. This picture has a creative commons attribution license.
Kirsten Doyle was born in South Africa. After completing university, she drifted for a while and finally washed up in Canada in 2000. She is Mom to two boys who have reached the stage of eating everything in sight (but still remaining skinny).
Kirsten was a computer programmer for a while before migrating into I.T. project management. Eventually she tossed in the corporate life entirely in order to be a self-employed writer and editor. She is now living her best life writing about mental health and addictions, and posting videos to two YouTube channels.
When Kirsten is not wrestling with her kids or writing up a storm, she can be seen on Toronto's streets putting many miles onto her running shoes. Every year, she runs a half-marathon to benefit children with autism, inspired by her older son who lives life on the autism spectrum.
Final piece of information: Kirsten is lucky enough to be married to the funniest guy in the world.
Connect with her on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Be sure to check out her YouTube channels at My Gen X Life and Word Salad With Coffee!
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by Susie Newday (Israel) | Nov 3, 2016 | 2016, Africa and Middle East, Inspirational, Israel, Life, Life Lesson, Middle East, Susie Newday
I think the word mother is synonymous with busy. Time is a precious resource and when we have a bit of it to ourselves we’re often too exhausted to even enjoy it, let enough do things for ourselves.
I’m not the only mother out there constantly playing the waiting game, pushing off things I want to do because I have other obligations or not enough energy.
It’s funny how even when we know how fragile life can be, we still think we have plenty of time to do the things we’ve been meaning to do.
I think we should learn from our kids, they don’t wait. They just jump into new things. They can be exhausted but still insist on playing a new game or coloring a picture. They enjoy crawling and don’t waste time dreaming about when they will finally walk.
They’re right, because life is too short for the waiting game.
Waiting for the right time or the right moment.
Waiting for the inspiration to hit.
Waiting to be sure.
Waiting to take a chance and go out on a limb.
Waiting to take a class or learn something new.
Waiting for someone else to tell me I’m worthwhile.
Waiting until ______.
I want to stop waiting.
Because no one else is responsible for my happiness.
No one else can give me the answer to what’s right for me.
No one else can grant me satisfaction with my life.
No one else can open doors for me if I am holding them shut.
No one else can fill my life with love if I don’t love myself.
Do the things that bring you joy and make you happy. Stop waiting for tomorrow. Just do it. Now.
This is an original post to World Moms Blog by Susie Mayerfeld, our contributor in Israel.
Photo credits to the author.
Susie Newday is a happily-married American-born Israeli mother of five. She is an oncology nurse, blogger and avid amateur photographer.
Most importantly, Susie is a happily married mother of five amazing kids from age 8-24 and soon to be a mother in law. (Which also makes her a chef, maid, tutor, chauffeur, launderer...) Susie's blog, New Day, New Lesson, is her attempt to help others and herself view the lessons life hands all of us in a positive light. She will also be the first to admit that blogging is great free therapy as well. Susie's hope for the world? Increasing kindness, tolerance and love.
You can also follow her Facebook page New Day, New Lesson where she posts her unique photos with quotes as well as gift ideas.
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