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Tales From The Treehouse: Lego Star Wars Visual Dictionary

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“I liked the lego drawings. It fills my mind with questions.”
Lego Star Wars Visual Dictionary is just the kind of gorgeous keepsake book I knew my daughter would twitch on, if she got the chance to review it. This was sent to us in advance of Star Wars Reads Day which is October 3rd. Now I have to say that since we got this book, my daughter has asked for the lego sets related to Star Wars, plus this evening she asked for a Star Wars sheet set and bedroom makeover. I think this one gets 2 thumbs up because it is a compelling little treasury.

Lego Star Wars Dictionary is by Simon Beecroft and published by DK Canada, and it’s $24.99 even though I accidentally thought it $27 in the video. $24.99 is not bad at all. It’s 87 pages.

Thanks to DK Canada for this book. My opinion is all my own.

Too Hurt to Stay Review

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I started reading Too Hurt To Stay and then my mother passed away unexpectedly and my hobbies all fell by the wayside for a time. Grief and funerals took the place of reading for fun. The topic matter of Too Hurt To Stay intrigued me, but at the same time I was a bit apprehensive that picking up a heavy book right after such a trauma might plunge me into a deeper sadness. Eventually my heart felt ready to tackle Casey Watson’s world. In all honestly this book, a memoir, is not as devastatingly sad as I anticipated. It is quite simply an honest story from a foster carer’s perspective about one little boy who came into care and was her charge for a time. Too Hurt to Stay is about an 8-year-old boy declared born evil even before he hits Casey’s home, a place they also learn is his last chance at foster care.

Casey is a specialist foster care provider in the United Kingdom. Casey Watson is a pseudonym and has written many books in a similar vein on children in care. I look forward to reading more because her writing style is straightforward and easy to read and her topic is enlightening. Casey is married with children and has three grandchildren. She lives with her husband Mike. The couple care for the highest needs children with no place else to go.

Spencer comes to Casey’s home with a huge bag of tricks and the couple is warned in advance, but has some difficulty believing a boy of 8 could be a match for their skills. But as time wears on and the honeymoon ends Spencer reveals every last one of his behaviours, which all resist modification techniques. Casey never gives up on Spencer despite the fact that he is a pretty excellent confabulator who seems to lack a conscience and acts, at times, feral. Spencer’s visits to his biological family are taxing on everyone and they don’t go well at all. Casey suspects Spencer’s Mom is an alcoholic and she has too many children to care for. But strangely Spencer’s file states he asked to be put in care on his own. That seems at odds with what Casey sees and hears and so she does a bit of investigating and learns there’s a bot more to his situation that everyone thought.

The epilogue here is a lovely wrap-up. Too Hurt to Stay gets a $$$$ out of $$$$$. It’s a good read, with a solid story. I would recommend it for any of my fellow adoptive parents or foster care providers. It is always helpful to gain real situational stories about the behaviours of hurt children. This is a hard topic matter, but a worthwhile read. Too Hurt to Stay has many lessons to teach other foster care providers.

Too Hurt to Stay is by Casey Watson, Harper Element, 2012, paperback, $14.99, 294 pages.

Human Body Detectives: CDs and Workbooks Review

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How do you teach school-aged children about science, healthy eating and the body? Well, the Human Body Detectives series, by Canadian Heather Manley, now living in Hawaii, is one of the smartest tools available. Dr. Heather Manley is a naturopathic doctor and a parent who created the series called Human Body Detectives. (http://www.humanbodydetectives.com/) There are three stories so far in this series and each one tackles a topic of biology and features sisters Merrin and Pearl as they are transported through the human body in search of clues as to what might be happening to a friend or a relative. In Battle With The Bugs, Merrin and Pearl are vacationing with family in Mexico when their young cousin Max gets ill. Together, they journey inside Max’s immune system and learn how the body fights bugs. The story is educational and entertaining. My kids were using very complex science terms like leukocytes and macrophages after only hearing this audiobook once. The drawings on the app _downloadable app for the digestive system book called Lucky Escape _ and on the workbook pages are dynamite and truly high quality. I loved that this series came with an audio CD. I like these a lot for reinforcing learning in the car.

You can purchase the CD set with workbook and colour stickers for only $15.00 through Dr. Heather Manley’s web site. The app for Lucky Escape is a steal at $1.99. I give this series a $$$$$ out of $$$$$. Educational, smart and makes sense for families on the go. Also promotes healthy eating in children. Meant for ages four and upto 12.

(Join us later this week Thursday, Jan. 6th at 1 p.m. EST for a twitter party #drheather and you could win your own set of these books and CDs.) Stay tuned for more details.

The iConnected Parent

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So what happens to helicopter parents and their children when the kids go to college? Well, that’s precisely the question Barbara K. Hofer and Abigail Sullivan Moore set out to answer in the new book The iConnected Parent: Staying Connected to Your College Kids( and Beyond)While Letting Them Grow Up. It’s an interesting question and a growing phenomenon – parents who are so extremely connected to their children in a communications age where texting, emailing, Smartphones and data plans mean the apron-strings never really need to be cut. Helicopter parenting, loosely defined as the syndrome of over-involved parents who schedule every moment for their children, always hovering to make life easier, is a popular topic and a relatively new term. We’ve all read of the parents who program their children to the extent that they are rarely left to their own devices. Preschools chosen from in the womb and playdates stacked back to back from birth. But until now, we haven’t really been given an accurate picture of what those families look like as they mature. This book does that and the picture truly is surprising. Hofer and Sullivan have done some remarkable work here surveying students and tracking the number of times per week they are still in contact with parents after the kids leave for college. They found that the number of times families communicated per week was an astonishing 13.4. That figure did not lessen as the young students grew more comfortable in their new surroundings; instead it remained quite consistent. While one might expect that the kids indicated resentment or a wish for less communication with parents, it was not so. Most reported a high degree of acceptance and comfort with their arrangement. They had grown up on cell phones and email and found it natural to call parents frequently and share information on test scores, classes they signed up for, discussions of social adventures and advice on choosing a major. “Whenever (my daughter) was bored, I was her entertainment.” The authors questioned whether income level, race, ethnicity, or distance from home might have an impact on the amount of contact. But none of these factors made a difference. The only slight variation noted was one of gender: daughters phoned home more than sons. Daughters called 14.5 times a week as compared to 11.3 times for sons, and more often both genders were likely to speak with their mother than the father. The communications, Hofer and Sullivan found, were not one-sided at all. Parents too found it commonplace to check in with their kids. While this research is slightly shocking in that it appears most parties are comfortable with the electronic tether, anecdotally there are some astonishing exceptions. There is the mother who tried to log on to her daughter’s university web account only to be told the password wasn’t working. After a mere 75 failed attempts to guess the password, she crashed the university registration web site. Then there are the parents who get pulled into their young student’s social lives hook, line and sinker, instantly emailing the roommate or some college official to confront and resolve the problem.
One might think then that the IConnected Parent is a sort of cautionary tale warning parents to steer clear from constant contact with their child, in a 24/7 world. Not so really. It is simply a snapshot in time showing a strangely evolving reality. Barbara Hofer is a psychology professor at Middlebury College and Abigail Sullivan Moore is a frequent contributor to the New York Times. She writes about children and educational issues. As a result of their partnership this book is a well rounded picture, both of research and reporting, a more three dimensional product than it would have been if either one had chosen to write it independently. The authors take time to add prescriptive advice. Some of it as simple as don’t always jump to answer the phone during the high school years when your child forgets their hockey sweater or exam paper at home.

The iConnected Parent, by Barbara K Hofer and Abigail Sullivan Moore, Simon and Schuster, published
August 10, 2010, Free Press, 288 pages gets a $$$$ out of $$$$$ rating.


To see the extended review of this book visit my review at the New York Journal of Books

My Mailbag

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This is my new Thursday mailbag. Check out all the amazing reads I have received this week alone. New Nora Roberts. Wow! And this wonderful story from a mother with a child who has Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, Jennifer Poss Taylor. Sadly my Kobo goes back this weekend. I was just using a loader for review purposes and I have loved the thing. It is in fact one of the easiest, most fun, tech devices I have been given. Look for my review on thriftymommastips. The price is right on this adorable little purse sized ebook reader, so perhaps someone will take the hint and buy me one for my next birthday. That would be better than swell. Anyways, I just wanted to show you my mailbag. Look for these reviews coming soon.

Character Is The Key Book Review

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Very few could argue with the title of this book, Character Is The Key, by Sara Dimerman. It is to many parents an obvious goal of good parenting, teaching a child moral fibre and building great people, leaders and compassionate adults. But how to get there? It is so easy to get caught up in the daily ins and outs of parenting that character-building could easily be a topic that is neglected or placed on a backburner. For this group, Character Is The Key, subtitled How To Unlock The Best In Our Children And Ourselves, could be a worthwhile guide causing one to reevaluate old parenting styles and strategies for ones that focus on building the emotional intelligence of our children. For those who feel they are already on the path towards mindfully creating and moulding characters with integrity Dimerman’s book could be used as a supplementary tool. Dimerman, a parent, therapist, columnist, author and frequent contributor to Today’s Parent, was highly involved in the Character Matters program that was applied in schools throughout the York District in wake of the Columbine tragedy, and other high profile media reports of bullying and violence. The author draws on and refers to this program in many spots. Out of that program evolved 10 key characteristics that schools, parents and communities all agreed were key to producing young adults with substance and strength. The 10 virtues were: respect, responsibility, honesty, empathy, fairness, initiative, courage, perseverance, optimism and integrity. Dimerman advises families to tailor these to fit their own beliefs and priorities. Not surprisingly, Dimerman views modelling as a key tenet of consciously building children with strong character. Most of us already do this and much of Dimerman’s book is common sense parenting, but the next step to modelling in terms of character building comes with the reflection involved in evaluating why we as parents make the choices and actions we do. In reflecting gently and in age appropriate ways that are not heavy handed one can reinforce character or empathy or respect. When my own children were very small and even still now at five and eight, I would often say to them if a friend was sick, “Jack is sick today. He cannot come for a play date.” Then giving them permission to feel disappointed for a few minutes I would often take it one step further with: “I feel sad that he is sick. What can we do to help him feel better?” This type of reflection would often result in my own children drawing cards or baking cookies or calling their sick friend. Now, without any prompting at all both of my girls will often quickly do this type of reflection on their own and are usually the first ones problem-solving how to help people in heartfelt ways. While this has always been second nature to us in our home, I still enjoyed reading the book as it supports my own views that we are on the right path towards developing great children. Character Is The Key is by Sara Dimerman, published this year by John Wiley and Sons Canada, $23.95 Canadian and $19.95 US.

thriftymommastips rating $$$ out of $$$$$.