The saga of the cooties is not over.
On Thursday we got another call from the school. A nit was found. They are very strict at preschool, finding even a single nit means the child must be picked up and taken home right away. Now, one of the problems with science as a career for a working parent is that experiments are not the kind of work you can take home. They are time sensitive, and quite often they take several days. In this case I'd set up an assay the day before and needed to complete it. It would have been very difficult to take the day off. Fortunately Geekydaddy had no meetings, so he picked up the infested one and took her home.
Reluctant to do another chemical treatment, I decided to try the 'nit suffocation method' with Cetaphil, suggested by my doctor. Experiment complete, I got home early armed with bottles of the stuff. Its a facial cream cleanser, and you spread it through the hair and blow dry it on. It took about four hours to comb it through everyone's hair, but I have to say I can see how effective it is. The lotion loosens any nits and the creaminess makes it easy to comb them out. I found a total of 4 nits and what may have been one baby louse on my daughter, and one suspected nit on my son. The blow drying took forever. I let the kids watch TV with a lollipop to suck on, and turned the volume up really loud. I had a sudden flashback to when I shared a flat with a friend who set her hair in pretty curls every week, sitting for an hour or more under a salon style dryer with "Friends" turned up to ear blasting volume.
By the end of all the combing and blow drying I was wondering why I chose a husband who has shoulder length curly locks and was appreciating for the first time what hard physical work hairdressing must be.
We looked quite the sight when I was done. My daughter asked, "why is my hair big?", patting the dull bouffant it had become. I looked like Bonnie Tyler, if Bonnie Tyler had not showered for a couple of weeks. Bonnie goes to Burning Man, or Glastonbury, maybe.
We sent the kids to school the next day with the Cetaphil still in their hair. I was convinced that all that effort must have paid off.
I had just sat down at my desk when we got another call. A single dead nit found in Geekygirls hair. I should have washed and combed it again that morning, I suppose. For the first time I felt the preschool rules were overkill. There was no way there was a live bug on her hair. I kept my cool, because of course the preschool are just zealously trying to protect everyone else. Only Geekygirl and one other kid, the originator of the lice breakout, have been affected, which is good. Though it doesn't make me feel all that good to have one of the two lousy kids! The director said that if I could fax a letter from our doctor stating she was safe to be in school then she could stay for the day.
Ordinarily I would be quite happy to pick up the kids on a sunny Friday and just take the day off, but being in a new job, and having a lot more lab based work on my plate, I am worried about appearing unreliable. I reached out to the doctors office, who had recommended the Cetaphil in the first place and had and told me the kids would be OK to go back to school. The pediatrician took the time to call me back, and then faxed preschool the required letter. Such a relief to have a doctor sympathetic to a working mum.
We have hot washed all bedclothes, vacuumed the car seats and furniture, and will keep up with daily nit combing. I sincerely hope that we can get through next week without a call from the school.
Showing posts with label preschool. Show all posts
Showing posts with label preschool. Show all posts
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Friday, May 21, 2010
T is for....
To set the scene for the little conversation I want to share, I should let you know that Geekygirls preschool class has 10 boys and two girls at the moment, so you can imagine there is a lot of roughhousing and action figure related play. The teacher is also male. It is a fun group of kids, and Geekygirl loves it, she can play "batgirl saves the transformers" with the best of them.
This is something I overheard at preschool pick up yesterday:
Rowan's Dad was chatting to Teacher S "What is the theme for show and tell tomorrow?" he asked
Teacher S. "Either something related to the theme of the month, which is nature, or something beginning with the letter of the week, which is T. We're really trying to discourage the boys from bringing superheros and transformers for show and tell"
Rowan, who was listening, chimes in: "Teacher S, Transformers begin with the letter T!"
I think had been a long day for Teacher S. who was no doubt thinking "Damn, why did we teach these kids the alphabet?!"
He replied with a sigh.
"Oh, yes. Well, I guess you can bring a transformer. But try to find something related to nature next week".
.
This is something I overheard at preschool pick up yesterday:
Rowan's Dad was chatting to Teacher S "What is the theme for show and tell tomorrow?" he asked
Teacher S. "Either something related to the theme of the month, which is nature, or something beginning with the letter of the week, which is T. We're really trying to discourage the boys from bringing superheros and transformers for show and tell"
Rowan, who was listening, chimes in: "Teacher S, Transformers begin with the letter T!"
I think had been a long day for Teacher S. who was no doubt thinking "Damn, why did we teach these kids the alphabet?!"
He replied with a sigh.
"Oh, yes. Well, I guess you can bring a transformer. But try to find something related to nature next week".
.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Peace and love to all mankind
When I was young, one of the first excitements of the Christmas season was selecting cards to give to my friends from the "Webb Ivory" catalogue. I often selected a "Children of all nations" card, adorned with cartoons of round faced kids representing different countries, usually waving flags, and with "peace" emblazoned across them.
We're fortunate to live in a place where our preschool classroom looks much like those cards, though perhaps with rather less peace than the teachers would like. It was therefore with great interest that I read the chapter of Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman's fascinating book, Nurture Shock about race, diversity and children, which is published here in Newsweek.
The prevailing dogma has been that children don't really notice differences in race, and that furthermore a good way to ensure a child grows up "color blind" is simply to have them in a diverse environment. That had been my belief. Not true, and not sufficient, the authors say.
Anyone who knows kids, especially if they have been in a communal changing room while a three year old points to a fellow customer and starts singing "I like big butts", knows that they are startlingly observant. They notice the differences and similarities in appearance between themselves, their peers and the characters in their story books from the earliest age, and what is more, babies prefer people who look more like them. This makes sense from an evolutionary perspective, those most likely to protect you are probably the ones whom you resemble.
No doubt since the very dawn of time humans have been dividing themselves into groups based upon arbitrary differences in appearance or belief (skin colour, eye shape, whether or not the communion wafer actually becomes 'the body of Christ' or merely represents it, whether they support Arsenal or Chelsea..... ) and fighting each other over them. We do seem to be hard wired to fall into an "us" vs "them" mentality, as experiments (described in the article) giving kids different colored T shirts and watching the results on social interaction have shown. So if kids intrinsically seek out similarities and differences and divide the world accordingly, short of waiting for an alien invasion which will finally force all humanity to embrace each other as "Us" vs. the extraterrestrial "Them", what are we to do as parents to bring up children who truly believe all people are equal?
Well a diverse environment is a good start, but apparently it takes more than that. It turns out that my kids preschool already had the right idea. I was at first rather disconcerted by the proactive nature of the diversity education at our preschool. For one activity, when geekygirl was about two and a half, The teachers had provided construction paper circles in skin tones from pale pink through dark brown, eyes ranging from azure. through gold and green to black, and wool for hair in all kinds of curliness and colours. The children were encouraged to examine and describe themselves and each other, then made a picture representing their own appearance and that of two of their friends. The teachers had written examples of their lesson, and the children's comments and observations on the wall.
Geekygirl showed me proudly and explained her work "I have pinkish skin and reddish curly hair and green eyes, and Olivia has brown skin and black curly hair and brown eyes and Maya has light brown skin and short black hair and brown eyes. People have brown skin and brown eyes because a long time ago they come from hot countries where there is more sun, and people have pinky white skin if they come from cold places...." At the time, I wondered whether is was appropriate to be so blatant about describing differences and similarities to such young children, but according to the article, recognizing and describing our differences is the best way to teach tolerance and equality.
The lessons seem to have taken root with Geekygirl. I am hoping that the teaching she gets at preschool will help her grow into a person who has no vestige of racial prejudice. The philosophy, combined with the fact that her classmates and teachers are just about the most diverse group of people you could find anywhere in the world; Chinese, Filipino, Black, South American, Mexican, Japanese, Korean, Indian, as well as White Caucasian (which we are) and many kids with parents from different races with no one group having a majority, should set her up well to be a true citizen of the world.
Last week, colouring a picture of herself she told me "I'm going to give myself brown skin like Jaelle" and selected a dark caramel colored crayon. I have also heard her observe "Mummy, only one of the princesses has brown skin, that's Princess Jasmine and her skin is light brown (Though Princess Tiana is finally adding some diversity to the Princess posse this December). I was struck by how multicultural her world view is, when on a whim I asked her what her constant companion, her imaginary friend Leah, actually looked like. "Leah has golden really curly hair, brown eyes and brown skin" I was informed.
Like many white British people from the home counties, I grew up in a fairly monocultural environment, one where being of Italian descent, as many kids at my Catholic secondary school were, was considered "ethnic". I have a strong desire, shared by many of the parents I know here to have my children in a socially, economically and ethnically diverse preschool and school environment. Our preschool achieves this effortlessly; it is relatively inexpensive, has hours that cater to two parent working families, and it is located in an ordinary, affordable (well as affordable as anywhere in the Bay Area is) neighbourhood, South San Francisco.
Some of the "snootier" private preschools and schools in San Francisco proper actively seek out ethnically and socially diverse families for their student body, making it harder for people who are in one of the majority ethnic groups of the upper middle class to get in to them. We joke that ii is a "fake diversity", the students might be of many different races and speak several languages, and their parents might be gay or lesbian, but the only real diversity amongst the parents is whether they got their MBA at Berkeley or Stanford.
We're hoping to get Geekygirl into a decent San Francisco public school (for UK readers that means a state school, and the baffling complexities of the SF school system will be the subject of a future post), but if we have to compete for slots at one of these fancy private ones at least we have a trump card; the kids might be plain old whiteys (though with immigrant, not American, parents), but at least our daughter has a mixed race imaginary friend!
How do you and your kids and others in your community identify ethnically? Do you worry about helping your kids grow up to be color blind, or whether they will be discriminated against?
We're fortunate to live in a place where our preschool classroom looks much like those cards, though perhaps with rather less peace than the teachers would like. It was therefore with great interest that I read the chapter of Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman's fascinating book, Nurture Shock about race, diversity and children, which is published here in Newsweek.
The prevailing dogma has been that children don't really notice differences in race, and that furthermore a good way to ensure a child grows up "color blind" is simply to have them in a diverse environment. That had been my belief. Not true, and not sufficient, the authors say.
Anyone who knows kids, especially if they have been in a communal changing room while a three year old points to a fellow customer and starts singing "I like big butts", knows that they are startlingly observant. They notice the differences and similarities in appearance between themselves, their peers and the characters in their story books from the earliest age, and what is more, babies prefer people who look more like them. This makes sense from an evolutionary perspective, those most likely to protect you are probably the ones whom you resemble.
No doubt since the very dawn of time humans have been dividing themselves into groups based upon arbitrary differences in appearance or belief (skin colour, eye shape, whether or not the communion wafer actually becomes 'the body of Christ' or merely represents it, whether they support Arsenal or Chelsea..... ) and fighting each other over them. We do seem to be hard wired to fall into an "us" vs "them" mentality, as experiments (described in the article) giving kids different colored T shirts and watching the results on social interaction have shown. So if kids intrinsically seek out similarities and differences and divide the world accordingly, short of waiting for an alien invasion which will finally force all humanity to embrace each other as "Us" vs. the extraterrestrial "Them", what are we to do as parents to bring up children who truly believe all people are equal?
Well a diverse environment is a good start, but apparently it takes more than that. It turns out that my kids preschool already had the right idea. I was at first rather disconcerted by the proactive nature of the diversity education at our preschool. For one activity, when geekygirl was about two and a half, The teachers had provided construction paper circles in skin tones from pale pink through dark brown, eyes ranging from azure. through gold and green to black, and wool for hair in all kinds of curliness and colours. The children were encouraged to examine and describe themselves and each other, then made a picture representing their own appearance and that of two of their friends. The teachers had written examples of their lesson, and the children's comments and observations on the wall.
Geekygirl showed me proudly and explained her work "I have pinkish skin and reddish curly hair and green eyes, and Olivia has brown skin and black curly hair and brown eyes and Maya has light brown skin and short black hair and brown eyes. People have brown skin and brown eyes because a long time ago they come from hot countries where there is more sun, and people have pinky white skin if they come from cold places...." At the time, I wondered whether is was appropriate to be so blatant about describing differences and similarities to such young children, but according to the article, recognizing and describing our differences is the best way to teach tolerance and equality.
The lessons seem to have taken root with Geekygirl. I am hoping that the teaching she gets at preschool will help her grow into a person who has no vestige of racial prejudice. The philosophy, combined with the fact that her classmates and teachers are just about the most diverse group of people you could find anywhere in the world; Chinese, Filipino, Black, South American, Mexican, Japanese, Korean, Indian, as well as White Caucasian (which we are) and many kids with parents from different races with no one group having a majority, should set her up well to be a true citizen of the world.
Last week, colouring a picture of herself she told me "I'm going to give myself brown skin like Jaelle" and selected a dark caramel colored crayon. I have also heard her observe "Mummy, only one of the princesses has brown skin, that's Princess Jasmine and her skin is light brown (Though Princess Tiana is finally adding some diversity to the Princess posse this December). I was struck by how multicultural her world view is, when on a whim I asked her what her constant companion, her imaginary friend Leah, actually looked like. "Leah has golden really curly hair, brown eyes and brown skin" I was informed.
Like many white British people from the home counties, I grew up in a fairly monocultural environment, one where being of Italian descent, as many kids at my Catholic secondary school were, was considered "ethnic". I have a strong desire, shared by many of the parents I know here to have my children in a socially, economically and ethnically diverse preschool and school environment. Our preschool achieves this effortlessly; it is relatively inexpensive, has hours that cater to two parent working families, and it is located in an ordinary, affordable (well as affordable as anywhere in the Bay Area is) neighbourhood, South San Francisco.
Some of the "snootier" private preschools and schools in San Francisco proper actively seek out ethnically and socially diverse families for their student body, making it harder for people who are in one of the majority ethnic groups of the upper middle class to get in to them. We joke that ii is a "fake diversity", the students might be of many different races and speak several languages, and their parents might be gay or lesbian, but the only real diversity amongst the parents is whether they got their MBA at Berkeley or Stanford.
We're hoping to get Geekygirl into a decent San Francisco public school (for UK readers that means a state school, and the baffling complexities of the SF school system will be the subject of a future post), but if we have to compete for slots at one of these fancy private ones at least we have a trump card; the kids might be plain old whiteys (though with immigrant, not American, parents), but at least our daughter has a mixed race imaginary friend!
How do you and your kids and others in your community identify ethnically? Do you worry about helping your kids grow up to be color blind, or whether they will be discriminated against?
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