Can you believe tomorrow is the first of March? The time, it flies (as Hercule Poirot might say). Well, anyway, I've saved tons of links for you today, so you might want to settle in with a cup of tea and see what grabs your attention.
Learning
- Research Suggests Kids Over 2 Shouldn't Nap - But There's More to It by Catherine Pearson at HuffPost. They'll have to take naptime away from my cold, dead fingers. "Quiet Time" is one of my sanity savers. (See: Introvert Mom Surrounded By Children for more about this.)
- Treatment Reduces Kids' Peanut Allergy Risk. Turns out, the advice they've been giving parents about peanuts may have been the EXACTLY WRONG thing to do. Color me shocked. (Not really. Color me sarcastically amused.)
- Why Preschool Shouldn't Be Like Preschool by Alison Gopnik at Slate. I think John Holt would take this even further and explain why school shouldn't be like school, either, but I'm happy to see places like Slate (hardly a right-wing news source) actually tackling the issue.
- No One Ever Told Me Homeschooling Would Be Like This by Lea Ann Garfias for Crosswalk. As a fellow homeschool grad / homeschool mom, I can identify with a lot of this reality check.
- How Memorization Feeds Your Imagination by Joe Carter at TGC. Time spent memorizing scripture, hymns, and beloved poems is definitely not wasted time. (This is part one of a series by Carter.)
- Ten Reasons People Still Need Cursive by Jennifer Doverspike for The Federalist. I talked about a few of these reasons in my post: 9 Tips for Raising a History Buff.
- 4 Keys to Beautiful Writing from The Write Practice. Some of these points might be obvious, but they're good reminders for those of us who enjoy writing.
- Speaking of writers: Top 10 Ways to Tick Off a Writer by Ane Mulligan.
Living
- Deal Breakers: Advice to Unmarried Women (and Daughters) by Natalie Klejwa. This is a discussion we have to be having with our daughters and unmarried friends. Abusers (and manipulators) do not wear signs announcing that they are such.
- The Most Ignored Commandment by Nancy Sleeth for Relevant. Convicting (and practical).
- Struggling to Find the Silver Lining in Severed Friendship by Courtney Martin at On Being. My personality type is different from the author's but this post still echoed something inside myself that I've been unable to put into words.
- Perhaps related: 5 Surprising Reasons People Hurt Us by Lea Ann Garfias. This post is true and encouraging.
- 10 Great Things About Having Teenagers by Angela Richter at The Better Mom. I told some friends this week: "Everyone should have a teenager." I meant it and this post explains a few of the reasons why.
- Culture's Big Lie About Marriage by Debra Fileta for Relevant. Fantastic corrective here.
- Nine Better Things I Learned About Becoming a Stay-At-Home Mom by D.C. McAllister for The Federalist.
- Related to the above: What is Meaningful Work? by Courtney Reissig in TGC.
- How This Mother of Seven Children Does It by Rebekah Curtis in The Federalist. Practical and humorous.
- Related: What We Lose with Only Two Children Per Family by Andrew Yuengert also for The Federalist.
- Wagging Fingers or Bended Knees? {On Teaching Our Children About the Sins of Others} by Karen Ehman for The Better Mom.
Loving
- If I never see that ugly dress again (can we at least agree it's ugly?!), that will be fine by me. Meanwhile here are two explanations (I've yet to find an explanation for why this went viral and cluttered up my FB and Twitter feeds): The Science of Why No One Agrees on the Color of This Dress from Wired and Why People Can't Agree on the Color of That Dress from Yahoo Tech.
- A Settlers of Catan Movie Is Coming. Umm...OK. Catan is one of our family's favorite games but I'm not seeing how it's going to be a movie. (On the other hand, if it's successful, maybe someone will want to make my husband's first board game hitRevolution!
into a movie. That would be AWESOME. (P.S. I have a few screenplay ideas...)
- A DuckTales reboot is officially happening. My favorite childhood cartoon is being given new life? They better not mess it up. (Sing together: "Duck tales! Woo-oh!") Oh, and because no one has any new ideas: Netflix is Rebooting Inspector Gadget.
- Christianity and the Camelot Test by Louis Markos. This excellent post is primarily a review of David Skeel's book:True Paradox: How Christianity Makes Sense of Our Complex World
, a book my husband and I highly recommend.
- On Net Neutrality, Even John Oliver Would Call John Oliver An Idiot by Henry Scanlon for The Federalist. So, this "net neutrality" thing happened this week (while everyone was distracted by dress colors and llamas) and it is not a good thing.
- What's in a Child's Name? by Rich Cromwell. Being deep into this pregnancy with #7 (one of whom isn't here with us), means being deep into name discussions...when I can actually get my husband to talk about it.
- Leonard Nimoy, Icon. OK, I'll admit it: very few celebrity deaths affect me personally since they're not friends or family, but this one really did make me choke up. (Maybe the pregnancy hormones have something to do with it...)
If you'd like to see what I've posted here at Living Unabridged and what's been inspiring me this month, take a peek at this roundup: Life via Blog: February. That's all for this week, friends. Sorry for the length of this list but it was just too hard to cut anything out.
Live long and prosper. (Couldn't resist.)
That is quite a list of links! As one of seven (and with the same name as the author), I enjoyed the article on "How this Mother of 7 does it." I think my parents "did it" the same way (and I hope that I can do it even half as successfully should God bless us with a bunch.)
The peanut thing has been fun to try to explain even before this newest study came out. As a WIC dietitian, I can't say how many times I'd walk through nutrition pamphlets with clients, crossing out the "peanuts" under the list of foods to avoid and explaining "We used to recommend avoiding foods containing peanuts until kids were age 1 (or even later if they have a family history of allergies) because we didn't know how to prevent peanut allergy and hoped that might help. Meanwhile, researchers were busy trying to see if that recommendation helps. Now we know that it doesn't make any difference, so it's okay that you give your children foods with peanuts in them after they start solid foods." And then I'd go on to talk about reducing choking risk by spreading peanut butter thinly and avoiding whole peanuts until kids can chew them well.
Often, I complain about how the media conflates the "nutritionists are always changing their mind" problem by issuing recommendations that the science doesn't yet support (one study does not a recommendation justify). But this time it was the professionals who made the erroneous recommendation, and who deserve censure. I'd love it if every recommendation from a professional organization came with a letter grade and level of certainty such as those recommended by the United States Preventative Services Task Force (link to Wikipedia page describing that group).
Love your balanced approach. I do think it was probably one of those things that got conflated in parents' minds: peanuts = choking hazard being the same as peanuts = always bad for little ones. Thinly spread peanut butter is how we've introduced each of our 5 to peanut butter. Anecdotally, so far, so good. But I know 5 children does not a scientific study make. ;)
Thank you for sharing my article for young women on potentially abusive partners! :)