Exploring Our Children’s Potentials

Kids.

They can laugh, do all sorts of silly ‘kungfu’ moves, knock his head, giggle, play and cry … all in less than a minute! And there I was, sitting at a coffee shop, smiling, watching (and keeping) these silly yet precious moments.

What a colourful life they have!

Click HERE to view the clip on my youtube!

Two weeks ago Vai had a tiny scratch on his nose tip, and since then he’s been having ‘strange sores’ appearing on his face.

First, his nose looked as if it’s been burnt, then as the scabs slowly came off, little red blister-like dots appeared here and there.

We suspected cold sores. We even assumed it’s actually some sort of an allergic reaction to this medicated ointment called ‘Zam-buk‘.

Since his skin condition didn’t get better, we went to see a dermatologist at National University Hospital to find out what it’s all about.

[We saw Dr. Seow from clinic D]

And we’re glad we saw a skin specialist because within 3 minutes of seeing him, he told us it is NOT an allergic reaction to Zam-buk!

He said Zam-buk contains Eucalyptus oil and it’s actually alright for kids’ skin.

Hmm.

Vai apparently has this skin condition called ‘Impetigo‘.

[And here’s more info about it for everyone’s reference, just in case you encounter anything similar in the future]

It’s a skin infection that happens when a certain type of bacteria enters the skin, eg. through a cut or scrape, and it’s common among children between the ages of 2 and 6 years.

It is contagious if the infected skin touches another person who has a cut too. Otherwise, our healthy skin is well designed to resist all sorts of infection, keeping billions of bacteria from entering our body.

[Photo sequence above : how it all started and developed over six days]

For Vai’s case, then apparently the bacteria got in through that tiny little scratch on his nose.

There are two types :
crusted and fluid-filled blisters, and apparently Vai got the crusted type.

Though in some cases they do get itchy, for Vai’s case he doesn’t feel the itch at all. There’s no fever and he’s as normal as he can be.

And here’s the good news:
however ‘scary’ the skin may look when one has impetigo, there’ll be no scarring (Phew!). And with antibiotics, it should all clear within three or four days.

[And really, after a quick check on the internet I saw how ‘bad’ the skin condition can get when one comes down with Impetigo, and I’m VERY glad Vai’s condition is still considerably mild when we saw the doctor!]

Frankly, with Vai touching ‘everything’ in public, playing and even lying on the floor in public places at times, I do wonder if I can actually ‘protect’ him from getting bacterial infections again in the future.

I don’t think I can though.

On one hand, I obviously don’t want him to get sick or infected by anything (no sane parents do).

On the other hand however, I never want to be a parent who carries antiseptic wipes everywhere, always wiping my kids hands and face every time they’ve played and touched something in public. That’ll be too paranoid for me, and my husband and I don’t want to have such an attitude when it comes to kids and play.

And so having gone through this episode with Vai, this is what we’ll most likely do :
Try to immediately (where possible) apply antiseptic cream when our kids get scratches or cuts while in public, to prevent bacteria / germs from entering the body through that cut.

BUT. Even if we practice such a habit, I know there’s no guarantee that our kids will be ‘protected’ from sickness though (eg. if he’s gotten the bacteria on his skin right BEFORE he gets a cut, or when the scrape is simply not noticeable)

In the end, it all comes to down to one thing I think :
If our children are healthy, if we’re healthy, if our other family members are healthy, it’s not because we can protect ourselves 100% from sickness (because nobody can ever do that).

It’s only because of God’s grace alone that we have good health.

[One more good reason why we should always live a grateful life, counting our ‘uncountable’ blessings we’ve received from above]

Now. I do look forward to seeing Vai’s skin getting the ‘all-clear’ condition real soon!

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Click the links below to read more on IMPETIGO :

– Impetigo by Babycenter

– Impetigo by Wikipedia

– Impetigo by Kidshealth

When it comes to arts and crafts or activities that require Vai to sit down for quite sometime, he’s been quite okay so far. He can sit down and do stuff for a good 10-15 minutes or a bit more, but he can’t stay put as long as Anya (who can quietly read, draw or make something up to an hour, if not more). Being his age, he’d then walk about, throw a ball, check on Anya’s work, bug her, walk off, return to his seat, continue a bit, and walk out and about again.

Anyway, as part of our effort to slowly introduce shapes to Vai, we did this the other day.

A very simple and quick activity aimed to emphasise the shape and its name to Vai.

What I did :
– Drew triangles on a piece of drawing paper
– Cut out triangular shapes
– Pasted some glue-stick on the inside of the triangle drawings
– Asked Vai to paste the triangle cut-outs WITHIN the triangle

And as he pasted the triangles, the word ‘triangle’ is repeated and emphasised, and occasionally I’d ask him to say the word ‘tri-angle’ together with me.

And as he was pasting the triangles, he threw (and blew) some of the coloured paper into the air too!

Oh well. It’s more fun for him that way, I guess.

No one can know what will happen in the future.

If one is successful today, how would we know if fifteen years down the road he’ll be out of job or a bankrupt?

Or if one is healthy and strong today, how would we know if seven years later she’ll fall terribly sick?

No one in the world can control the future, nor is 100% reliable.

But thank God for being 100% unchanging – yesterday, today, tomorrow.

He’s everlasting before history and after the cease of time.

The One whom we can fully rely and trust.

Each child has his own unique ‘development time’When Anya was at Vai’s age (he’s turning two years old in less than two weeks), she could already recognise and name most of the alphabets. She knew her shapes, colours, and recognised many many people by their names too (ie. names of her friends, their mommies and daddies, etc)

While the big sister is more into things that require thinking, memorising and fine motor skills, we notice how the little brother is more into physically-related activities (ie. gross motor skills), like jumping – he can now hop forward twice or three times with both feet off the floor, climbing and tumbling about.

Do we verbally and condescendingly joke about our child’s late development in front of the child and our friends?Things that Anya couldn’t do or master when she was at Vai’s age.

Yes, having two kids with different interests, characters and capabilities does highlight the fact that each child is special and different, and how it is thus important for us parents to value and accept this reality.

That each child has his own unique ‘development time’.

That he is an individual, specially created by God.

That it’s completely okay if our child still can’t do certain things that his sibling or friends already can perform at his age.

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A natural tendency to see how other kids are doing and ‘mentally compare’ them with oursI must say though that as parents, we do have a natural tendency to see how other kids are doing and ‘mentally compare’ them with ours.

In the end however, I think what’s most important is what we actually do ‘after’ we mentally compare our child to another.

Do we condemn him for not performing like his siblings and friends?

Do we verbally and condescendingly joke about our child’s late development in front of the child and our friends?

Do we look down on our own child’s ability and development?

Do we look down on our own child’s ability and development?
Do we pressurise our child, expecting him to perform and be like his peers?

Or, do we acknowledge how our child is unique, and at the same time feel truly happy to see other children who’re developing well in many more areas?

It’s a reality check for all parents.

Us included.

For a considerably small country, it’s amazing to see how Singapore puts in so much effort in ‘preparing’ their people towards the big day. The billboards and decorations along the streets, the flags hung on the walls of government flats, apartments and commercial buildings, and of course the national day parade (NDP) itself!

And at school, Anya too took part in their very own NDP celebration today!

Everyone were encouraged to wear red and white, they sang the national anthem ‘Majulah Singapura‘ (as two kids held the flag on stage) and they went on stage to sing a song about ‘building the community’!

Though we’re not singaporeans (yet?), I still feel it’s such a nice way of celebrating a country’s national day.

In our family, I’d like to encourage the kids to use everyday stuff at home for our crafting and other activity sessions. It’s our way of ‘recycling’ too, I guess (ie. re-using the materials to produce something else, before finally throwing them out for good).

And the other day Anya and I made bracelets using a plastic bottle!

What you need :

– A plastic bottle (the 500ml type is good for kids’ small arms. We used a ‘Coke Zero’ bottle)

– Scissors, glue

– Crepe paper

– Coloured paper

What you do :

– Cut (slice) the middle of the plastic bottle so that you get a full ‘ring’

– Cut one strip of the coloured crepe paper (approx. 2cm wide)

– Paste some glue on the outer side of the ‘ring’, then let the child paste the strip of crepe paper onto it, going in and out of the ring, covering its plastic surface (ie. the inside and the outside)

– To make things easier for the child, shorten the length of crepe paper strip so that it’s not too troublesome for the child during the ‘wrapping’ phase

– Once all surface is covered, decorate it with anything you like (I used one of our ‘pattern maker’ thingies to cut out our coloured paper into shapes of christmas trees)

And that’s about it really!

And you have yourself a little home-made recycled bracelet!!

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PS : If you and your kid(s) get to try out any of the activity ideas from the site, and if you happen to take photos of the session, it’d be really nice if you can email one or two of those photos to me. If you don’t mind, that is. Am thinking of posting some of those photos on the site sometime! Thanks everyone.

The ‘burnt’ wound on Vai’s nose is looking better now. The skin on the nose is still rather pinkish but most of the scabs have come off by themselves. Which is good.

Now, the puzzling thing about all this is, as the skin on the nose gets better, he’s getting bits and pieces of ‘extra sores’ elsewhere. It’s as if they slowly crop up from nowhere!

He now has little reddish brown ‘sores’ under his left eye, near his right eyelid, under his nostrils, on his lip line. And the biggest of them all is on his chin (ie. the size of a green pea).

I can definitely tell they’re not ‘scratch wounds’. The look of the ‘sores’ is very similar to how it all started  (ie. the day AFTER I applied Zam-buk on his nose and fyi, I applied the ointment only twice on Vai and that was before we noticed any change on his skin)

I went and browsed the internet for more info, and I sort of suspected that perhaps they’re cold sores. And as we’re seeing little new ones appearing on his face every two days or so, we decided that it’s best to just see a doctor.

[Vai, as at 5 August]

After examining Vai’s sores, he ruled out the possibility of them being cold sores (as cold sores are not likely to have been triggered from the nose area). He couldn’t pinpoint any definite cause of Vai’s skin (weird) condition though, and so he’s referred us to a paediatrician who specialises in dermatology.

Sigh. It’s good that we get to find out what’s really going on with him, but I can’t help but feel a bit concerned though. The whole thing somehow becomes a little more complicated than what I originally thought.

Oh well. We’ll see what the specialist will say.

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If you’ve seen / encountered similar cases with your kids or your friends’ kids, please do share with us.

Thanks heaps!