Sucking on Bisphenol A

Below is my letter to the National Toxicology Program concerning its draft brief on Bisphenol A.
Just another petro-chemical leaking into our body, but this time it is in my baby's bottle. I have known about this for a few days, from an email I get from MomsRising.org urging action, but I couldn't open it right away because I knew how sickened and enraged I would become. Please sign this petition to CEOs of the leading manufacturers of baby bottles to stop the use of the toxic chemical bisphenol A (BPA) in our baby bottles and other children’s products.

*****

To NTP experts,

I appreciate that the board is investigating this issue. I am once again dismayed that the FDA, EPA and the NIH are not able to protect the consumer from dangerous products. Lead in the toys, poison in pet food, and estrogen-mimicking chemicals in a baby’s bottle. I have to say as a mother and a voter; I have had enough and demand that my tax money be used to care for public health and well-being rather than war and all its weapons. It is painfully clear that our technology and science has outpaced our capacity to regulate and even understand the potential harm of lab created substances.

Please, take the greatest care possible in deciding on your levels of concern for BPA. We all know the song and dance surrounding issues of causality, but it is a losing perspective that puts the chance of profit above the chance of cancer. It is time for the US to become leaders in safe, green products. Our economy is ready to be revived by a real commitment to technologies and science that increase our chance of health as a planet and a people. BPA certainly isn’t the worst thing in the world, but it feels like the last straw to me as a stare at the baby bottle I have used to feed my son for the last year. I am outraged.

Thank you for your consideration of my concerns

.

Holy Crap... This could change my life

The Kazdin Method: How to Parent a Defiant Child.
This works. Oh my good mother of god and baby Jesus. We are only through Ch. 2 and on day 5, and it has changed my son's behavior remarkably. It has stopped the yelling. Oliver still yells sometimes (naturally) and he behaves (mostly, naturally). We do not yell hardly at all with the goal being never. Yelling does not work, but heaven help me, it gets to a point where I don't know what to do. This technique offers an alternative based on solid research instead of tired opinions of some righteous doctor, celebrity, or plucky do it all mom.

Never would I imagine myself to be a yelling, red faced mother. I knew that once angry, I tend towards the white hot, head exploding kind of anger. But I can be quite patient and calm, I thought I had learned. I did not know how thin my little Oli would wear my last thread of dignified control over my anger. Nothing had prepared me for the solar flare, the block of steel, the raging ego of wanting everything and heeding nothing that is my Oliver. Bless his perfect, golden spun hair covered little head. He is quite possibly brilliant, but most definitely defiant.

I sense a bit of push back from folks who think I am exaggerating Oli's behavior and really "he is just two". But trust me, this is no "phase" for my son. It is his personality from the moment he had one to be strong willed, intense, and demanding. He is very high energy, extremely smart and articulate, and wildly particular about how things are done. I love these things about him, but had not a skill in my pocket to parent this child.

This is what I learned doesn't work to get Oli to do something not on his agenda or to his liking:

• making it a game
• repetition
  
• reasoning
• explaining
• punishing
  
• yelling
• warning
• time-outs
  
• time-ins
• naughty chairs...worked for a while and then didn't anymore.
  
• taking away toys
• more yelling
• spanking....really not proud of that one.

Praising like a drunk cheerleader (loud, touchy, and often) with points for everything he does "good" and mostly ignoring the "bad" does work.

Sweet, sweet boy is to me returned and I to him. He hugs me more, tighter, and longer. He says to me "hey mama, you are soooo sweet! Come here and give me a hug."

Fabulous

In this, my 30th year, I have made a commitment to be more fabulous.

If I do not, I worry I will be sucked down a spiral of boring, blah, and comfort that can only end in Mom Jeans and scuffed tennies. That is scarier than my very old fear of being too bold, too weird, to "look at me"! My feeling now is "I please me!" because I currently dance to the piper of children and a mortgage every other given moment.

My bossed dubbed my hair "parrot purple and pink". I love it. Love my boss even more for not firing me. I work with students, so I try to sell it as giving me "street cred".
Sometimes I realize a person is staring at me and I wonder why. Then I remember, right-- I have purple hair. But most folks seem to really like it. Not that I care too much... not that I would admit it if I did.

Also on my quest to being more fab: I am getting rid of all my clothes that do not fall into these two categories: It is fabulous and It fits. Why shouldn't I feel great in my clothes everyday?

Hopefully, a side benefit is to prepare me to embarrass my boys properly. Not as a MILF (a full discussion of how stupid that term is requires a separate post) but as the slightly nutty mom who sings and laughs too loud, is not sufficiently invisible in public, and makes some other parents a little nervous -- but always has cool music, good food, and excellent conversation to offer up in exchange.