Babies

In a recent article, the Guardian reveals that a South Korean couple left their daughter to starve to death while gaming online. Addicted to Internet games, the couple spent most of their time on a role-playing game called Prius Online, in which they raised a virtual daughter. After spending a reported 12 hours at a Seoul Internet café, they returned to find their newborn daughter dead. An autopsy confirmed the infant’s cause of death to be malnourishment.

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The other afternoon, as I looked over at my daughter’s pixie cut, I couldn’t help but chuckle to myself as I recalled the events that lead to her current hairstyle…

I don’t know how many times my own mother asked me what was wrong with my daughter’s hair. “Why wasn’t it growing? Why was it so thin? Why didn’t she have more of it?” She insisted time and time again that I should shave all her hair off so that it would grow faster. The idea that thin hair can be made thicker by shaving is a wives tale of epic proportions.

I hate to admit that I gave into parental pressure, but I did. I decided I would shave my daughter’s hair before the summer was over and before I got cold feet. I knew that if I didn’t do it, my mother would never let me hear the end of it.

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Every new parent rejoices (and loses sleep) over the sounds of their newborns crying, but a recent study shows there is something much more complex involved. WebMD reports scientists have discovered that the "the cries of infants as young as three days old already reflect the language their parents speak," and "the surrounding language seems to affect infants' sound production much earlier than researchers thought."

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"Kids are like cats one day and dogs the next" (“猫一天，狗一天”) is a popular saying Chinese families use to explain the ups and downs of child rearing. This is especially true for teething toddlers who go from cheerful little cherubs one day to little wailing banshees the next as their chompers grow in.

Parents everywhere can attest to the sleepless nights and mental anguish a teething can cause – it’s one of those trials of child rearing that you never really anticipate until it’s there, screaming, kicking and writhing in your face.

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Making your home in a foreign city like Beijing can be a daunting task. That’s why beijingkids magazine, the city's longest-running expat family publication, and the critically acclaimed Immersion Guides have teamed up to create the beijingkids Family Guide.

Tapping into the aggregate knowledge of hundreds of English-speaking families and expats, this one-of-a-kind guide is packed with information and advice parents can't afford to live without.

 

 

 

 

Consult these pages to:

• Help your children beat the relocation blues, thrive in school, embrace the China experience, and stay healthy;
• Find up-to-date listings of Beijing's most family-friendly hospitals, schools, stores, restaurants and more;
• Interview an ayi, order a banquet and chat at the playground using the Mandarin language chapter;
• Discover fun activities for kids of all ages, from sightseeing to sports, acting camps to cooking classes, and weekend retreats to China adventures.

Whether you're a newly arrived family searching for the right school, a first-time mom who can't find a birthing class, or a seasoned expat who'd run out of playtime options for the kids, you'll find the answers you seek in the beijingkids Family Guide.

Get the most out of family life in Beijing with this indispensable resource.

You can purchase a copy from any store that sells Immersion Guides. For locations, click here.

New York Times: Breast-Feeding Linked to Lower Cancer Risk
Some potentially good news for new moms with a family history of breast cancer: “There is new evidence that breast-feeding is associated with a lower incidence of breast cancer among a group of younger women who are at particularly high risk: those with breast cancer in the family. Although several studies have found that lactation is protective against breast cancer, the new report found little effect for premenopausal women over all. But for women with an immediate relative, like a mother or a sister, who had breast cancer, those who breast-fed had a 59 percent lower risk of premenopausal breast cancer. That is closer in line with the risk for women who had no disease in the family, the study found.”

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 It’s the last month of summer, and most likely you’ve just returned from a summer holiday, have hosted many guests in Beijing, or maybe you and your family are new in the capital – either way, it’s time enjoy those last few days before the kids head back to school. If your child is beginning school for the first time, find out what to expect and how to ease young ones into the classroom. Searching for the right school is one of the most challenging and important obstacles families face – we’ve got the guide to finding the perfect school for your kids. Considering home-schooling? Ian Cook interviews two home-schooling families in Beijing to find out about their experiences.

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More research on baby communication reveals that infants can "match the sounds of an angry snarl or friendly yap with photos of dogs showing the corresponding body language" – a finding that suggests babies “can decipher emotions even before they learn to talk.”

The study, described in an article in livescience.com, involved 132 infants from four age groups (6, 12, 18 and 24 months) and found that even the youngest of babies could associate the sounds of an angry bark with a picture of an aggressive dog, the only difference between the age groups was in how quickly the older kids lost interest.

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Everybody loves a cute baby, but there's more to that innocent vacuous gaze than you might think – behind those doe eyes is a whirlwind of cognitive activity that puts even the mightiest supercomputers to shame.

Consider how an infant learns language – this amazing feat is one of the most defining aspects of human existence, and the process (and speed) through which a baby learns the nuances of speech, grammar and syntax from mere observation and imitation is truly astonishing. But what's even more remarkable is the ease of which very small children can become bilingual.

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As a follow up to my last post about taking care of your baby's "business," I looked into a comment made by reader lioralourie about "Elimination Communication" – a potty training practice that's catching on in the West, which apparently has roots in traditionally diaper-less places like China.

Here are a few informative links on the subject:

Diaperfreebaby.org
An American based "network of free support groups promoting a natural approach to responding to babies' elimination needs. This practice is followed worldwide and is known as Elimination Communication, Natural Infant Hygiene, and Infant Potty Training. The process involves observing one's baby's signs and signals, providing cue sounds and elimination-place associations, and can be done with or without any diaper use."

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