I'm a full-time mummy

I came across this article which I must definitely share with you guys as I'm very interested to know your thoughts on this. Do note that sharing this does not mean I agree or disagree with it. For your convenience, I have copied the excerpts from the article here:

Rule-breaking may be just as irresistible to teenagers today as it was in their parents’ day, but a new study of secret social media hashtags like #selfharmmm suggests that new technology is helping kids share dangerous behaviors more easily than ever before.

When it comes to what’s known as non-suicidal self-injury – cutting, burning and scratching done with damage rather than death in mind – teens can be quite crafty at deploying hashtags that mask their activities, evade content safeguards and advisory warnings, and make it much harder for parents to monitor their virtual lives.

“The online communities that develop around these hashtags can draw in adolescents and provide them a strong sense of belonging and support that is centered on these unhealthy behaviors,” said lead study author Dr. Megan Moreno, a specialist in adolescent medicine at the University of Washington and Seattle Children’s Research Institute. “This can make recovery from these behaviors more challenging,” Moreno added by email.

Moreno and colleagues used the search term #selfharmmm to identify public posts on the social media platform Instagram, a photo-sharing service popular with teens, that related to destructive habits like cutting and burning. Then, they used the search results to identify a list of ambiguous hashtags such as #blithe, #MySecretFamily and #SecretSociety123 that were tied to the same dangerous behaviors.

Other hashtags related to mental health conditions through use of common names, such as #Deb for depression, #Annie for anxiety, and #Olive for obsessive-compulsive disorder. The number of search results for self-harm hashtags was high and grew over time.

The broad term #cat, which refers to cutting, had more than 44 million search results in 2014 and more than 56 million in 2015, the study team reports in the Journal of Adolescent Health.

Over that same period, use of #selfharmmm also grew, generating 1.7 million search results in 2014 and more than 2.4 million in 2015. In its various permutations, #SecretSociety123 grew by approximately 500,000 search results.

One limitation of the study, the authors acknowledge, is its reliance on data generated by starting with a single term, #selfharmmm, which was selected for its popularity as a portal into online communities that focus on these behaviors but might omit some relevant content. The study results are also limited to self-harm, and don’t look at other destructive behaviors such as substance abuse or eating disorders.

Still, the results show that parents can’t rely on social media sites to provide safe places for their kids, and highlight the need for parents to be proactive in communicating with children about their online experiences, Moreno said.

One effective response to unhealthy content on social media may involve meeting teens where they live their virtual lives, suggests a second study focused on eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia. For this study, researchers analyzed videos posted on YouTube that promoted eating disorders using terms like “pro-ana” as well as posts opposed to the dangerous behavior with terms like “anti pro-ana.”

While pro-ana videos were more popular, garnering 4.8 million views compared to just 1.4 million views for clips opposed to this behavior, the opposition content drew more comments overall and more positive feedback, the study found.

This suggests that posting content advocating against dangerous behavior might help combat social media content promoting unhealthy choices, said lead study author Dr. Atte Oksanen of the University of Tampere in Finland. “YouTube has this powerful user community opposing pro-anorexia users,” Oksanen said by email. “Kids might not listen to their parents or adults in general, but they still might be influenced by their peers within social media and user communities might succeed where parents and health campaigns fail.”

What do you think?

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I like to make use of every opportunities and scenarios as a teaching and learning moments for myself and our kiddos. Whatever tools on hand that might serves the purpose to teach, I will not hesitate to use it. And so happened one fine day, I was looking at this piece of A4 paper with the 2015 calendar printed on it and my 6.5-year-old boy and I had a quick learning session using the calendar.

And this is why I am sharing with you guys today, how to use a calendar as a teaching tool for your kiddos. Of course, as a parent, you should know yourself whether your child is capable or mature enough to understand and learn this.

You don't need any fancy smancy calendars. In fact, I just opened up my Microsoft Word, choose the create new document and look for calendar template, choose the ones with nice and easy on the eye layout and printed one out.

Lesson #1 - Name of the Days & Month

Looking at the calendar, just pick one month and teach your child the name of days in a week. If they are old enough to write things, teach them to write the days down.

I also teach our 6.5-year-old boy that calendars we see usually have short name for the days such as M for Monday, T for Tuesday and so on. In addition to that, I also explained to him that some countries in the world treat Sunday as the first day of the week while there are countries that considers Monday as the first day of the week.

You can then proceed to get them to count how many months are there in a year and get them to write down the name of months in a year.

Lesson #2 - Concept of Rows and Columns

Based on the calendar, I proceeded to use a sample month (January 2016 for this example) and write out the days accordingly. I explained to our boy what is row and what is concept and how we make use of the rows and columns to figure out say, how many Mondays in a month, or how many days in a certain week of the month.

Lesson #3 - Concept of Dates, Days, Months in a year

Based on the calendar, I then slowly explained and asked our 6.5-year-old boy to circle dates such as birthdates, special occasions date, writing down the day of certain dates and more.

You can then teach your child to figure out what is the first day of the month, the last date of the month, what day is 15th of the month and so on by referring to the calendar template. Once I can see our boy gaining more confidence, I asked him to circle the months with more than 5 Sundays and so on.

Again, I'm just sharing one of the fun ways to teach your child using a calendar although I need to stress that it differs from child to child. Some of you might also think that a 6.5-year-old boy should not be learning this at this stage. There are children younger than mine who learns way more advance things than him (I just read in a parenting group that a mother shared her 3.5-year-old girl is reading book way faster than she can supply new ones for her, not that I'm pressured to get our boy to be like noooooo...). Again, no right or wrong. This is how we do it our way in our family. I hope my sharing is helpful to you guys!

** Note: I have disabled the commenting feature on my blog engine thanks to all the spammers who happily spam my blog every day. If you wish to ask me any questions, you can find me at my Facebook page (I'm there almost everyday) or just drop me an email if you wish to maintain some anonymity.

I have previously seen this being promoted in one of the FB pages of an individual that I followed regularly (due to his charitable activities) and forgotten all about it until I saw it while shopping for Christmas presents few weeks back. I grabbed 2 (one to give to our 3 kiddos while the other to give to a close friend of ours)

Ever since I was a young child, I think not just me, but most of us around that age have heard or watched the Sang Kancil (mousedeer in English) cartoon series. Back then it was quite a big deal for locally made cartoons and what more in our national language. Wayang kulit or shadow puppet in English is one of our traditional play which I really wanted our kiddos to be exposed to as well. So you can imagine how excited I was to be able to get this!

It comes with a stack of hardcover boards for the puppet shadow scenes (tied to a side by a big rubber band), a torchlight and 2 Eveready batteries. I experienced a bit difficulties trying to put in the batteries, needed to rummage through my storeroom for a screwdriver in order to unscrew the tiny but very strongly secured screw at the upper portion of the torchlight. Also took a bit of tinkering to figure out which directions to put in the batteries and then screwing back the tiny screw in place.

There is also 2 separate hardcover boards where you can use one of them as a background and the other where you need to take out the Sang Kancil and giant characters and DIY your own shadow puppet story. But anyway, I decided to just follow the stories provided in this box. In each cardboard, there is a small image guiding you to point your torchlight there for better shadow effect.

It follows the story of Sang Kancil that wanted to go to this castle on a mountain and the experiences it endured along the way and how it got out from tricky situations. I like the creative storyline but am a bit disappointed with the ending as I feel it could be expanded more. But not bad for a shadow puppet story in this modern world! You can even play the sound effect as you tell the story from the book to your kiddos.

I am looking forward to more stories from hereon. I hope with this gift, our kiddos will continue to cherish and preserve the shadow puppetry and local childhood stories like what I've been growing up with. Malaysian parents, this is a must to get for your kiddos!

** Note: I have disabled the commenting feature on my blog engine thanks to all the spammers who happily spam my blog every day. If you wish to ask me any questions, you can find me at my Facebook page (I'm there almost everyday) or just drop me an email if you wish to maintain some anonymity.