Babylicious by Figur8

Pregnancy Workshop: A Joyous Pregnancy by Pitter Patter – 30 June 2013

Shen-Li — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 16:22:45 +0000

First time parents and couples planning for their first child may be interested to attend the following pregnancy workshop hosted by Pitter Patter:

A Joyous Pregnancy!

Date: 30 June 2013 (SUN)
Time: 11.30am-5pm
Venue: Hotel Premiere, Bukit Tinggi, Klang

What’s Involved…

A) Experts topics:

Give Birth with Confidence by Consultant O & G
Prenatal Education ~ teaching before birth! by Maternal & Child Educator
Nutrition during pregnancy by Nutritionist
The Wonders of the Umbilical Cord

B) Motherhood Practical Sessions:

Pregnancy exercises Step by Step
Nursing Tips : bathing, swaddling, bottom care, diapering, umbilical cord care
Massage Techniques to Calm your child
Breast Feeding : Practical Tips & Techniques

C) Fun activities:

Sumptious Buffet Lunch
Delicious Tea Break
Stylish Potrait by professional photographer
Maternity Market Places for sampling, gifts, discount & knowledge

Registration:

Last day for registrations: 25 June 2013
Cost: RM10 per person
Please call/sms 013-2060570/013-3718697; or
Email to enquiry@pitterpatter.com.my

For more info visit Pitter Patter

How Do We Learn – Making it Count for Our Children

Shen-Li — Sat, 01 Jun 2013 01:18:40 +0000

Since we decided to send the boys to school, as opposed to homeschooling them, I have eased off considerably on our extra-curricular home activities. We still work together on stuff from time to time, but it is usually very flexible. Given the long hours Aristotle has at school (finishing at 3:30 if he has after school activities), I want to make sure he gets enough down time. Down time for Aristotle usually involves doing activities of his choice. These days, it’s usually painting, play doh, reading, Lego, TV or games on the iPad. Getting him out of the house and active is a bit of a chore, so I’ve made it mandatory for him to take on extra-curricular sports at school, like taekwondo and swimming, to help increase his physical activity.

Now that we aren’t so focussed on what to do with him at home, I’ve been thinking more about how to help him get the most out of his learning experiences – whether in school or out of school. Some time back, I wrote about figuring out our education priorities for our children because I don’t think it’s enough just to send them to school so that they’ll eventually graduate with a degree – however that may be achieved – because students who don’t care for what they are learning, who cram for exams just to pass, often leave with no memory of having learned anything. Just to be clear, we’re not talking about having a vague memory about learning a subject, we’re talking about zero memory. If a child cannot even remember learning about a topic then why do we bother to subject him to the process of “studying” it? If that were the case, then that child would probably be better off vegging in front of the TV.

Most of us would protest against that thought – allowing our children to while away the bulk of their time on meaningless TV programs. But getting by on having no memory of what they have studied doesn’t seem to bother as many people so long as the report cards are good. I am struggling with that because I don’t want my children coming home with a report card of straight A’s but not be able to tell me about what they’ve learned. That, to me, is a waste of time and our children’s time is too precious to be squandered so thoughtlessly.

Even if you don’t agree, you may want to ponder upon the following prediction from Brain World Magazine:

In a contemporary world where exchanges of massive amounts of information have become the norm, students are inundated by far more information than learners from just one generation earlier. Dr. James Appleberry, president of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, predicted that by the year 2020, human knowledge or information will double every 73 days.

Then there is another point I once heard someone say which, I must confess, offends me greatly… According to this individual, “some people can’t learn a particular subject because they are too stupid to”. The premise was that some people were born incapable of grasping certain concepts and there was nothing that could be done about it. I suppose this point of view arises from the idea that some people are musically talented, while others are physically talented, and, in this case, some are intellectually lacking. But I disagree. Shinichi Suzuki said it best:

In today’s society a good many people seem to have the idea that if one is born without talent, there is nothing he can do about it; they simply resign themselves to what they consider to be their “fate.” Consequently, they go through life without living it to the full or ever knowing life’s true joy. That is man’s greatest tragedy.

We are born with a natural ability to learn. A newborn child adjusts to his environment in order to live, and various abilities are acquired in the process. My thirty years’ experience has proved over and over again that this is true. Many children grow up in an environment that stunts and damages them, and it is assumed that they were born that way; they themselves believe it, too. But they are wrong.

Suzuki points out a very obvious fact that every child is capable of learning to speak his or her native language (unless they have a developmental or learning disability). Despite the awareness of this knowledge, the significance of this fact seems lost to many of us. Children are all born with the ability to learn. It is the environment they are in that impedes their ability. Therefore, it is important to ensure that the environment our children are in is one that supports their learning. And if a child is not thriving in their environment, then clearly, something needs to change.

Hubby once told me about a child he knew about. This was not a story that came through a grapevine, it was straight from the boy’s father. According to the father, the boy is up every school day at 5:30 so he can get onto a school bus by 6am. He goes to school and after school, he gets on a bus to go to after school tuition classes. He stays there to shower and have dinner and comes home at 9pm. He gets a little bit of time to wind down and get ready for bed. Then it’s bed time and he wakes up to do it all over again. On the weekends, he has weekend tuition. Over the school holidays, he gets school holiday tuition. Despite all this “studying” and extra tuition classes, the boy is failing at school.

Tell me… do you think the boy is just plain stupid? Or perhaps his learning environment is just all wrong for him. They say that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. I would say that keeping this boy in his current “educational” environment is insanity.

So I’ve been thinking about how we can provide the appropriate educational environment that will enable our children to do what they do best – learn. Here are a few environments that have been inspiring:

Here are a few learning methods that we’ve come across that helps to increase learning retention (click the links to read more about them):

Interleaving - a method of increasing your speed and quality of learning.
Revision Techniques - the efficacy of various popular methods of study (you may be surprised by what you read).
Visualisation
Spaced-Learning and Repetition
Multi-sensory
Active Learning – Hands-on
Chunking
Emotional State – although ours is generally considered a rational brain, it is an emotional brain, where feelings receive first priority. A student who is upset is one who cannot learn and will not remember content information well during assessment.

Learning and Memory: How we remember and why we forget

Learning Methods: Interleaving – A Way to Learn Faster and Better

Shen-Li — Mon, 27 May 2013 16:29:48 +0000

There is an interesting article in TIME magazine – Practice, Made Perfect? – that examines the 10,000 hours of practice theory that Malcolm Gladwell wrote about in Outliers. Although the case study was golf, the findings may have implications in many other fields.

The article in a nutshell:

On 10,000 Hours of Practice

Clocking the 10,000 hours is not as important as what you do with those hours. It’s not enough to just go through the motions of practicing. It must be deliberate, dedicated practice that is focussed on improvement.
10,000 hours is simply a ball park figure. Don’t use it as a measure. The essential take-home message is that lots and lots of practice is required.

The Value of Interleaving

Firstly, what the heck is interleaving? It is essentially a method of practice that involves mixing things up. For instance, in baseball batting practice, instead of hitting 15 fastballs, then 15 curveballs, then 15 change-ups, practice hitting random pitches.

It was theorised that if teachers taught subjects in smaller, randomised chunks, students might gain a deeper understanding of the material. This seems to agree with an article I recall reading on study practices some time back where they recommended changing subjects during a study period rather than slogging through one subject at a time because your recall and learning potential is greater when you chop and change rather than focus only on one subject at a time.

Interleaving gives the brain a better workout because mixing tasks provides just enough stress to trigger the release of a hormone called corticotropin releasing factor (CRF) in the hippocampus, the brain area central to memory and learning. CRF strengthens synapses. During blocked practice, by contrast, you’re not reloading your circuitry by trying different tasks, you’re under less stress, and your brain is bored and less engaged.”

So if you want to help your child learn faster and better, perhaps you should start incorporating the interleaving technique into his practice…

If this article has caught your attention, take a look at the following articles and studies on interleaving:

Interleaving – Rethinked
Interleaving helps students distinguish among similar concepts
The effects of interleaving versus blocking on foreign language pronunciation learning
Robert Bjork: Remembering, Forgetting, and Desirable Difficulties – Robert Bjork is the scientist behind the concept of interleaving as a training method

On studying – these articles provide study techniques that improve learning and recall:

Mindset Lessons from Star Wars

Shen-Li — Mon, 27 May 2013 00:40:09 +0000

Star Wars is one of Aristotle’s favourite shows. I love it because the “way of the Jedi” offers so many terrific teaching opportunities on developing the growth mindset and character development. Take, for example, the following dialogue between Luke Skywalker (our hero) and Yoda (his master)…

Luke Skywalker: Master, moving stones around is one thing. This is totally different.
Yoda: No! No different. Only different in your mind. You must unlearn what you have learned.
Luke Skywalker: Alright, I’ll give it a try.
Yoda: No. Try not. Do or do not. There is no try.

Luke Skywalker: I can’t. It’s too big.
Yoda: Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you? Hm? And well you should not. For my ally is the Force. And a powerful ally it is. Life creates it. Makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us, and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Force around you. Here between you, me, the rock, the tree, everywhere. Yes, even between land and ship.
Luke Skywalker: You want the impossible.

(Yoda salvages the sunken x-wing using the Force)

Luke Skywalker: I don’t… I don’t believe it!
Yoda: That is why you failed.

Examples are a great way to communicate a message to your child. Better still, are the examples from stories he reveres. Aristotle loves Star Wars and he’s always emulating Yoda and Luke – his two most favoured characters – so what better example to study than this poignant dialogue between master and padawan (for the Star Wars laymen, that means disciple or student of the Force)?

With older kids, you can always ask them to analyse the conversation for themselves then tell you what they think it all means. Younger children may require a bit of prompting…

“Only different in your mind” – sometimes the thing that stops us is our mind because we make the assumption that it is too hard or too difficult before we’ve even tried it.
“You must unlearn what you have learned” – our beliefs can hinder our progress forward and sometimes we need to let go of what we believe to be so.
“Do or do not. There is no try” – I love this one because it communicates the idea that agreeing to try to do something is not enough when you’ve already given up in your heart. Sometimes we say we’ll try when we already expect failure to follow – that is not trying.
“Size matters not… Judge me by my size, do you?” – Anyone who is a fan of Star Wars will know that Master Yoda’s skills are mind-blowing. If he were a chili, he would be a chili padi – small, but packed with a lot of fire power.Luke
Luke says, “I don’t believe it!” To which, Yoda replies, “That is why you failed.” – indeed, the power of our beliefs can make or break our success.

Where he may reject the examples from a story he cannot identify with, he is more likely to accept the teachings from one he likes.

Now that Aristotle has completed the Brainology program, I felt that exploring stories of characters he idolises, that demonstrate good mindset lessons are a great way to move forward and reinforce the lessons he has learned from Brainology.

The Power of Play – it’s Good for Parents Too!

Shen-Li — Sun, 26 May 2013 16:20:35 +0000

In an earlier post, we talked about why play for good for children, but did you know that play is good for parents, too? Well, play is good for all adults period, but parents especially should get into the habit of playing regularly.

Why do adults need to play?

Similarly to children, play helps adults connect. It helps adults be more creative, more flexible, and learn better because it teaches us to improvise, innovate and adapt. There is a reason why Google’s offices are designed in such a way as to encourage employees to play and have fun. It’s because play:

increases creativity and innovation
increases productivity
prevents burnout
encourages teamwork
improves stress management
gives a new perspective on problems

Outside of work, play is the cure all for loneliness, depression, stress and anxiety because play makes us happy.

Playing for Parents

Play is great for parents because:

it helps parents relieve stress – I’m sure no parent will argue with me that raising a child is a stressful job, indeed.
it helps mend relationships – I’m sure we’ve all said and done things to our children in the heat of the moment that we wished we could take back.
it keeps everyone happy – I don’t know whether it’s the chicken or the egg, but happy parents and happy kids go hand in hand.

Ironically, no matter how tired I am and how aggro I feel, when I take the time and make the effort to play with the boys, I actually find myself in a better spirits after. I feel ready to take on more and ready to give more. In return, the boys are better behaved and are much less taxing on my nerves (which are also a lot less frazzled after a round or two of play).

Heck, play’s also good for your relationship with your spouse. There was one incident I clearly remember… hubby and I were fighting about something (can’t even remember what it was) and we weren’t really talking to each other. Then hubby asked me to help him fix the doona (you know how it falls in on itself and one part of the cover is empty?) because he couldn’t do it on his own. So we were standing together, shaking out the doona and suddenly I felt like a kid playing the parachute game. I caught myself smiling and tried hard to stifle it. I think hubby must have felt the same because he commented on feeling like a kid again. And that was the end of the fight.

Photo credit: Kid Activities

If you aren’t convinced about the value of play, you should watch the TED Talks video on “Play is More than Fun” by Stuart Brown. I loved the part about the polar bear and the husky – it was really compelling.

So the next time your children ask you to play with them, remember, it’s not just for them, it’s good for you, too.

Parenting: Raising the Scientific Child

Shen-Li — Sat, 25 May 2013 16:30:40 +0000

Do you have a child that smashes and breaks everything? Does you child do things even when you’ve warned him that it could be dangerous? Does he boldly go where others fear to tread? Are you at your wit’s end? Perhaps you’re ready to tear all your hair out in frustration – maybe you’re already balding as a result. I feel your pain. I have such a child and he’s likely to send me to a hospital with a nervous breakdown one day.

He is the Scientific Child.

(Photo credit: Best Education Possible)

The scientific child is a born scientist. He never takes anyone’s word for it without testing it out for himself (or herself – we have girl scientists, too). He has to bash, bang, and break everything in sight because he’s trying to understand its limits. He is always searching for answers – what happens if I shake this? What happens if I hit it? What happens if I throw it? You say it’s going to burn me if I touch it? Let me see… Ouch! Oh, I get it now.

She is likely to get into a lot of scrapes because of her endless curiosity. She’ll drive you mad because she needs to try everything out for herself. Just when you think she should have learned her lesson, she proves you wrong, over and over. And if you’re wondering why she would do something again and again, it’s because she’s looking for anomalies and exceptions to the rules. Just because it happened once doesn’t mean it’ll happen again unless the multitude of randomised trials performed indicate a correlation.

The scientific child drives you to the brink and dangles you off the cliff of insanity with a rope that is fraying. But as gut-wrenching as his behaviour can be sometimes, the very qualities of the scientific child that annoy the bejesus out of you will be the qualities that will help him get further in life. That is, as long as he can hang on to those qualities into adulthood. It is a trial by fire that most parents dread but you just need to hang in there and walk the tightrope between raising your child safely into adulthood (since the scientific child is a high risk child and likely to cause severe bodily harm to self and possibly others if not kept in check) without completely squashing all these wonderful, natural qualities altogether.

Hercules is my scientific child. I’m convinced he’s secretly bought me a one way ticket to Tanjung Rambutan without telling me about it. In case you’re wondering, Tanjung Rambutan is a place in Malaysia that is famous for its mental hospital. Despite his mischievous, rascally behaviour, his adorable demeanour and heart-melting displays of affection is enough to disarm anyone. Instead, I rationalise my son’s hair-splitting behaviour as a means of consoling myself for having to deal with such a child.

Since misery loves company, tell me all about your scientific child…

Every child is a scientist - Wired
Scientists show that children think like scientists - MIT

Parenting: Light at the End of the Tunnel for Picky Eaters

Shen-Li — Fri, 24 May 2013 01:10:59 +0000

To the parents of fussy eaters, I just wanted to say that there is light at the end of the tunnel.

When Aristotle started eating solids, we had a rough time feeding him. He didn’t like a lot of food and there was a lot of stress over his lack of enthusiasm for food. As I’ve said before, when you come from a Chinese family – a traditional at that – a child that exclaims, “I hate eating!” is like a child who has just cussed every expletive on the “no-no” list.

Even though I read that most picky eaters grow out of the picky eating phase by about 7-9 years, I confess that I feared this day would never come for us.

To highlight the extent of Aristotle’s pickiness, let me relate some of the feeding experiences we have had with him when he was little:

Aristotle liked a particular brand of instant noodles but only that brand. If you tried to substitute it with another brand (we ran out of the ones he liked one day), he wouldn’t eat. We’d cooked it up, used the same flavour – chicken – and served it on a nondescript plate, but he only had to take one mouthful to know it wasn’t his brand.
I tried to sneak bananas into a juice blend and he would not have any of it. The moment the cup reached his nose, he turned his head. Even though he was keen to try it only a moment before, his acute sense of smell told him it contained something he wouldn’t like.

There was really no way to hide anything from him because his senses were so discriminating. He could smell the rat from a mile away. This was not a boy where you could pull the wool over his eyes.

Now that Aristotle is 6, I have noticed a different pattern of food consumption. He has been more willing to try “new” things. He is also expanding his repertoire of “favourite” foods, eating foods like nasi lemak and curry chicken, prawns, meats with different preparations, and even some veggies, like broccoli. To increase his green count (veggie consumption), I started mixing fruit and veggie smoothies in the Vitamix and he has been drinking them by the cupful. Make no mistake, the fruit and veggie smoothie would never have worked a couple of years ago, even though there is not a hint of green in the taste.

I won’t go so far as to say he eats everything now but he does eat a heck of a lot more variety than he would have as a younger child. So if you have a fussy eater, too, it may just be a waiting game. In the mean time, if you’re up for it, you can try some of the tricks we did to boost our picky eater’s food consumption:

Health and Nutrition: Boosting the immunity of a picky eater
The Sneaky Chef and Deceptively Delicious didn’t really work for us but it’s worth a shot if you’re desperate
For parents of younger children starting solids and moving to finger foods, Annabel Karmel is one to try – her recipes didn’t work for us but other mothers have sworn by her
If the Sneaky Chef doesn’t work for you, you can try hiding veggies in your chocolate milkshake
Novelty sandwiches and other pretty food

We have also found two tactics that work fairly consistently:

eating in the company of other children
exercise or vigorous play before meal time is a great way to boost an appetite

Creative Play with Lego

Shen-Li — Tue, 21 May 2013 03:21:36 +0000

Aristotle loves Lego. He started with Thomas Duplo which he would work on with Daddy. After that, Daddy decided to give him a bigger challenge and bought him a small Lego City kit. Aside from the manual dexterity problems (Lego is much harder to put together compared to Duplo), Daddy found that he could follow the instructions on his own so he continued to expand Aristotle’s Lego City collection. Then he got into dinosaurs so his uncle got him the Lego Dino Defense HQ (which he used as part of his background and props for his Jurassic Park movie) for one of his birthdays. Some months back, he got into Star Wars so he started collecting a few of the Lego Star Wars sets.

It has been difficult giving Aristotle time to work on his Lego projects because Hercules would inevitably want to take part – which is great, except for the fact that his idea of taking part is to grab his brother’s completed models and dash them onto the floor. Understandably Aristotle gets upset about that so I would try to distract Hercules in the play room. Unfortunately, sibling rivalry would come into play as Aristotle wonders what fun Hercules and Mummy are having in the play room without him and he wouldn’t want to work on his Lego any more. Then I tried to encourage Hercules to work on the old Thomas Duplo sets while Aristotle worked on his Lego but Hercules would feel he was missing out on the good stuff because he had the big, clumsy Duplo blocks while his big brother got the cool, cute Lego pieces.

Finally, I decided to get Hercules his own set of Lego bricks that he could build and tear down as many times as he liked without upsetting his brother. Hercules was so pleased, he invited Mickey to play Lego with him…

After a while, I noticed something else happening…

The mad scientist (Aristotle) started creating an army of robots to take over the world – from the underwater cities of Otoh Gunga…

…to the volcanic planet of Mustafar…

…to the ice planet of Hoth.

Looks like in spite of all the new creations in Lego branding, the good ol’ fashioned, open-ended play opportunities with plain Lego bricks are still the best…

While we’re on the topic of Lego, did you ever hear the full story about Lego? If you haven’t, it’s a beautiful one and truly inspiring.

Watch it here.

It’s a great story to share with the kids to teach them about the value of persistence, determination, and thinking outside the box.

If you want to do more with Lego, check out the following Lego Educational Resources:

How to Train Your Brain to Think Faster

Shen-Li — Mon, 20 May 2013 02:15:16 +0000

After our recent experience with the coin, I have been thinking about a new skill that would be great to have – the ability to think quickly on your feet. Actually, to be honest, the real inspiration for this has existed for far longer but it was the recent event that finally prompted me to sit down and write about it.

After the incident with Hercules, I went back to search what the proper method for handling an emergency in the event of a swallowed object. Even armed with the knowledge of what to do, I can’t help but wonder if I would have been able to handle the situation if the coin had lodged in a position that made it hard for Hercules to breathe. I did an first aid course many years ago as part of my training and I remember the broad strokes for DRABC – danger, response, airway, breathing and circulation. I remember the rules of how to do EAR (expired air resuscitation) and ECC (external cardiac compressions), but if I had to do it all in an emergency situation, would I be able to? I don’t know.

It’s easy to think clearly when you’re not under pressure. It is easy to run through all the things you were taught and to apply it when it doesn’t count. The question is whether we can apply our knowledge and think clearly if the life of a loved one depended upon it. Sometimes we freeze from the shock of it all. Sometimes we react with the wrong responses because we panic. Sometimes we forget to think and proceed logically because we’re clouded by emotions.

I find that whenever I am looking back in retrospect, it is easy to see how I should have responded but what I think after the fact is usually quite different to how I actually responded at the time. It would be great if I could respond to emergency situations with the ability to think clearly and quickly. I’m sure such a skill would come in handy to my boys as well.

Have you ever seen the movie “Flight” starring Denzel Washingston? Just in case you haven’t, let me give you the overview: in the movie, Denzel Washington plays an airline pilot, Captain Whip Whitaker, who successfully navigates a malfunctioning passenger plane to a “safe” landing, saving 96 out of the 100 passengers aboard. There were a lot of other issues being explored in this movie but the point I want to bring up was Whip’s ability to think creatively and respond quickly during an emergency that would otherwise have resulted in the death of everyone aboard the aircraft. At one point of the movie, they highlight that fact:

“The FAA and the NTSB took 10 pilots, placed them in simulators, recreated the events that led to this plane falling out of the sky. Do you know how many of them were able to safely land the planes? Not one. Every pilot crashed the aircraft, killed everybody on board. You were the only one who could do it!”

So we’re not just talking about the ability to think quickly, but the ability to think well under pressure. Some people are naturally better at this than others but if we wanted to, could it be a skill that we can develop? If we could develop it, how is it done?

It is obvious that practice and experience counts for something. The experts in any field would be better at thinking quickly and responding well in situations related to their expertise. For instance, you would expect ER doctors to be able to respond more quickly and with greater proficiency to medical emergencies compared to an individual who has simply been through a first aid course. But what if you didn’t have the practice an experience? Is there a general way to train your thinking so that you can think faster and better no matter what the situation required?

According to Posit Science, there is. In fact, Posit Science has several exercises that are specifically designed to speed up the brain to think faster and more efficiently in any situation. Here they are:

And you can try them for free if you sign up for a free account with Brain HQ by Posit Science.

What other exercises and games can you play to help speed up your reaction time?

While I was searching for ways to train thinking speed for children, I stumbled upon The BrainFit Studio. Unfortunately, it’s only available in Singapore so I cannot comment beyond their website. Maybe the parents who have been to see the center and have sent their children there can comment.

If you would like to get your child interested in this subject as a means for motivating him to train his brain to think faster, check out the project suggestions at Science Buddies:

In summary, even though some people are born with the genetic disposition to think faster and some are not, it’s good to know that we are not limited to what we were born with. The brain is like a muscle – exercise it.

Accidents, Emergencies and a Swallowed Coin

Shen-Li — Fri, 17 May 2013 18:37:22 +0000

Two evenings ago, Hercules swallowed a coin. In spite of all our best intentions to make sure there are no hazards for our children around the house, the older they grow, the more resourceful they become, and the harder it is to keep the house “safe”. Of course, having a child like Hercules also increases the risk of these incidences happening. As is it, this was not his first visit to the hospital but the third – the first was when he cut his brow and the second was when he had dengue. You would never expect something like this with Aristotle because he never put foreign objects into his mouth and he never did anything “dangerous”.

What happened?

Hercules was tired and hungry so I served him dinner early. He ate a large bowl of Niku Udon. When he finished, he said he was still hungry, so I gave him a bowl of strawberries for dessert. He was done by 6pm. Aristotle hadn’t eaten so I sat Hercules in front of the TV for an episode or Tom and Jerry, thinking to put him straight to bed after I served Aristotle his dinner.

Just as I was coming out of the kitchen, I heard Hercules coughing. It sounded like he was choking on something. I rushed to him and brought him to the sink and tried to help him get whatever it was out. I asked him what he put in his mouth (since he was long done with any food) and he finally answered, “A coin.”

I write this all very calmly now that Hercules is safe and well, but I assured you, I was anything but calm that night. I should also add that we do not leave coins lying around and there were definitely no coins around the living area. I only discovered later (upon questioning Hercules after we got back from the hospital and all was well again) that he climbed a stool to access a drawer where Daddy kept his spare change. Just when we thought it should be getting easier, we are reminded that the older kids are more resourceful – it’s much harder to keep them from danger because they go in search for it.

I tried to get Hercules to throw up the coin but all that came out where the noodles from dinner and the strawberries. After a while, Hercules calmed down and it seemed like everything was back to normal. I thought perhaps the coin had made it down to his stomach. I called the hospital and my brother (non-practicing medical doctor – long story that one) for advice. We ended up heading to the hospital to A&E (accidents and emergency) for a chest x-ray even though we thought it made it to the stomach. It turns out it was just as well we checked because this was where the coin really was:

Since it was fairly high up, the ENT was called to come in and get it out. According to the ENT, it was mostly likely a 20 sen coin (roughly the size of an Aussie 10 cent) because he has never had to pull out anything smaller as they usually make it to the stomach. He didn’t think it was a 50 either because those are usually too large for a child of Hercules’ age to swallow. In fact, just from the way he talked about it, swallowed coins seemed to be a common occurrence. It was really no different to a swallowed fish bone, except that it was usually easier to remove without complications.

He did a laryngoscopy which he says usually takes about 2 minutes. Because Hercules is a child and children struggle, he had to go under a GA. So the big commotion was really getting him prepped and putting him under. By the time the procedure was over, it was pretty late, so Hercules has to stay overnight for monitoring and recovery.

The doctor said that there was a slight cut on his throat which meant that he might have trouble eating or drinking. If we were concerned, we should not have been. Once Hercules knew that the coin was out, he wasted no time tucking into his breakfast. Lunch was a big bowl of noodles and dinner was a healthy serve of Bah Ku Teh. His return home was so uneventful it was as if the whole incident had never happened. The only thing that tells us it really did happen was the X-ray, the hospital bill, and this souvenir:

I realised that I was actually quite unprepared for an accident like this. No matter how “safe” you keep your house, it is always best to know what to do in the event of an emergency. So I looked up some pointers for a refresher on choking…

What do you do if something goes down your child’s throat?

1. Assess the danger

can your child breathe?
is your child in distress?
is your child coughing, wheezing, crying?
is your child silent and turning red or blue?
do you know what your child swallowed? Some items can cause damage – batteries, pins, etc.

2. Help your child dislodge the object

your child needs to be in a position with his head lower than his body
thump your child’s back
in an older child, encourage the coughing as it can help to dislodget the object; don’t put your fingers down the back of his throat, you might push the object further in
See: Infant First Aid for Choking for babies

3. Take your child to the A&E department of the hospital

Some sites say it’s okay to adopt a watch and wait if your child is not in distress and see if it comes out in his poop. I say bugger that, just go to the hospital and get the chest x-ray to see where it is. And if you don’t know what the object is, you need to find out if it’s dangerous to leave it there. If it’s in the stomach and the object is relatively harmless, then you’ll just need to wait until it comes out in the poop within the next couple of days. Of course, if it doesn’t, then you’ll need to go back to the doctor’s to have it removed because it is obviously having trouble being eliminated.

The real danger of swallowing an object is if it is not in the stomach. You need to know whether it’s stuck somewhere along the way down or if it entered the lungs. In either case, it needs to be removed because it can cause an infection and serves as a blockage.

The reason why I say just go to the hospital even if your child doesn’t appear to be in distress is because some children might be like Hercules – they don’t appear to be in distress even though the coin is stuck. Based on Hercules’ reaction, we all thought it was already in the stomach. The X-ray was merely a formality to confirm that fact. Lucky we checked…

Baby Center – Swallowed object or object stuck in wind pipe
Livestrong – What happens if my child swallows a coin
AAFP – What to do if your child swallows something
Parents – I can’t believe my kid swallowed that!