Cotton-Pickin’ Days

One of the biggest complaints the Brits seem to have about call centers is reaching the ones based in India. In our continuing quest to get Wanadoo to fix our broadband (now 1 month and 2 days since we lost it), I’ve learned never to call tech support in the late afternoon, evenings, or weekends because the chances of getting someone in India is much higher.

Because the staff in India are less well trained than the staff in the UK, they tend to follow the script and only the script, making me run through all the scenarios then just telling me some garbage to get me off the phone. If I call on weekday mornings around 9 a.m., I always get someone in the UK call center who doesn’t need to follow a script and seems to understand the problem very well. Not that they’ve managed to help me yet.

I’m glad I haven’t been too abusive, though. The Times (UK) reports:

A study of Indian call-centre workers based in Bombay found the majority suffer from “burn-out stress syndrome”–physical and mental illness–as a result of abuse they receive from people they cold-call in Britain, America and Australia. The Global South Research Group survey says that Australians as the worst abusers, followed by Americans. Britons tend to be the least offensive.

How do you feel when you’ve reached an outsourced call center?

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Villages in Turkey along the path of migratory birds have been affected by outbreaks of bird flu infecting children. Two siblings have already died and five more have been infected.

The outbreaks in Turkey are linked to the close interaction between humans and animals, which must be minimized, Guenael Rodier, a senior World Health Organization official for communicable diseases, said. “The front line between children and animals, particularly backyard poultry, is too large,” he said.

The problem was highlighted during efforts to destroy sick fowl, children would join in, chasing chickens, geese or ducks with their bare hands.

An 8-year-old girl hospitalized in Van apparently contracted the virus by hugging and kissing dead chickens.

I’m glad we never went to the zoo in Saigon.

Forbes.com, January 9, 2006

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A collection of posts on the Indian Ocean tsunami from my various blogs:

• Tsunami Mothers Desperate to Have Children
• Children of the Tsunami: Khao Lak
• The Twenty-One Balloons
• DNA Identification of Indian Ocean Tsunami Victims
• Healthcare Industry Doing Well in Phuket, Thailand
• Indian Ocean Tsunami Victims: Both Young and Old

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As a mother, I’m usually most affected by stories about children. Over the weekend, I’ve been consumed by news about the effect of the Indian Ocean tsunami on children; some dead, orphaned, or kidnapped.

So it was a wake-up call to read Respect Your Elders in the New York Times. The fishing village of Nam Khem in Thailand lost half of its 5,000 residents to four massive waves last December. Those left behind include the elderly who depended on their children for care.

According to Sudthida Somsakserm, a local restaurant owner who has been giving food to the elderly people in Nam Khem, the government has done little to help those who can’t help themselves. “There has been a push to get boats to the fisherman and to help the orphaned children, but many of the old people have been totally forgotten,” she told me. “A lot of them survived the tsunami because they went to the temple on higher ground that morning, but their families were killed because they had to go to work. In Thailand, the children always take care of their parents.”

Marv’s mom is visiting us this week. I’m grateful that we’re still here to take care of her and that we have nothing more strenuous to do than shop in markets without air conditioning.

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My mom used to compare the price of everything to the number of pizzas it could buy. A CD? One pizza. A pair of Guess? jeans? Four pizzas. A Sony Walkman? Ten pizzas. You get the idea.

Mother Jones magazine did a similar calculation for the war in Iraq:

• Amount needed for basic security upgrades for subway and commuter trains in large cities: $6 BILLION
  (Iraq spending equivalent: 20 days)
• Bush budget allocation for train security: $100 MILLION
  (Iraq equivalent: 8 hours)
• Amount needed to equip all U.S. airports with machines that screen baggage for explosives: $3 BILLION
  (Iraq equivalent: 10 days)
• Bush budget allocation for baggage-screening machines: $400 MILLION
  (Iraq equivalent: 32 hours)
• Amount needed to buy radiation portals for U.S. ports to detect dirty bombs in cargo: $290 MILLION
  (Iraq equivalent: 23 hours)
• Amount needed to help local firefighters preparefor terrorist attacks: $36.8 BILLION
  (Iraq equivalent: 122 days)
• Amount needed to get local emergency medical crews ready for terrorist atttacks: $1.4 BILLION
  (Iraq equivalent: 5 days)
• Bush budget allocation for emergency medical training grants prior to eliminating program altogether: $50 MILLION
  (Iraq equivalent: 4 hours)

You can buy a lot of pizza for this amount of money.

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Researchers report in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine that children as young as two years old mimic their parents’ smoking and drinking habits. (Forbes, September 6, 2005)

When told to “shop” at a doll grocery store,

• Children were nearly four times as likely to buy cigarettes if their parents smoked
• They were three times as likely to choose wine or beer if their parents drank alcohol at least once a month.
• Kids who were allowed to view PG-13 or R-rated movies were five times as likely to choose wine or beer while shopping than kids restricted to watching G-rated movies.

Since we don’t smoke or drink, I think if Stephen were asked to go shopping, he’d probably buy some cake and gummy candies first. And if it were a store that had non-food items, he’d probably pick up some DVD’s too and maybe a laptop for himself.

What do you think your kids would buy at the pretend store?

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Today foot fashion is big. Toddler shoes come in the same styles as adult styles.  In the 1980’s it was difficult to find an infants shoe in anything besides the traditional strapy white leather shoe.

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Nothing seems worth blogging about except Hurricane Katrina. And I cannot do the disaster any justice.

All I know is that I have never:

• Gone without bathing for more than a couple of days.
• Been want for food or water.
• Spent the night in a sports stadium crowded with tens of thousands of other people amidst fading lights and overflowing toilets.
• Had to fight to get on a school bus that’s supposed to take me to safety.
• Been near a decomposing body.
• Seen dead bodies floating past my front door.
• Needed medical care that I couldn’t get.
• Dodged bullets in fear for my life.
• Lost my child with no idea of where he is - dead, injured, or alive but alone.

I have never felt so sick with fear and anger while reading the news.

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Stephen has had many accidents during this time of learning how to use the toilet. Now that he’s able to go on his own 90% of the time, the 10% of the time when he forgets and pees on the floor can be frustrating because I know it’s not because he’s unable.

As much as I try to be matter-of-fact when I have to wipe up a huge puddle of pee on the floor or wash his ball tent along with 100 balls in the bathtub, I can’t help but pull my hair and raise my voice while I lecture and clean-up at the same time. But I would never, never, never hit him for it.

Not all parents and caregivers feel the same way. The News Sentinel reports that toilet training is “among the top stress factors leading to child abuse.” They list numerous children who died after being beaten for potty training accidents. (The cases are too distressing to list here.)

Parents often base when they toilet-train their child on opinion, generational bias, cultural custom and peer pressure, said Rachel Tobin-Smith, executive director of SCAN Inc. in Fort Wayne, which provides education and support services to parents and caregivers in order to prevent child abuse and neglect.

Parents brag about their 18-month-old being trained. Grandma criticizes the family whose 2 1/2 -year-old is still wearing diapers. The issue can mistakenly be pegged as the “hallmark” of good parenting, Tobin-Smith said.

One of my pet peeves is when people start bragging about how clever their children are for being able to “use the potty.” I got news for you. If children are not voluntarily going to the potty/toilet by themselves, pulling down their pants on their own, and doing their business, they’re not truly potty trained.

As for parents who start putting infants as young as 6 months on the potty, Dr. Roberta Hibbard said, “You can set up reflexes. It?s like house-training a dog. You can feed a child, set him on the potty and he?ll poop, but it?s not control. It?s reflex.”

It’s great when people use elimination communication (EC) from the start so they don’t have to deal with diapers. In my opinion, EC is as much about training parents as it is about training children. If the method is harmonious, then I think it’s wonderful.

Just as a reminder, here are some guidelines for figuring out if kiddies are ready to learn how to use the toilet on their own. As mdmhvonpa said to me before, using the toilet is not a physiologically necessary thing to do. Let them pace themselves.

Ready to go?

Rather than basing a child?s age on when to begin potty-training, use these indicators. Can the child:

• Follow simple instructions.
• Understand words about the toileting process.
• Regulate the muscles responsible for elimination.
• Express verbally a need to go.
• Keep a diaper dry for two hours.
• Get to the potty on his or her own.
• Pull down diapers or underpants.

Pointer from Blogging Baby.

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The space shuttle Discovery will be landing in less than half an hour. We’re watching it live on NASA TV. I hope everything’s going to be ok!

ETA 7:12 p.m.: They’ve landed safely. Whew! What a relief.

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Before Stephen was born, my biggest concern about breastfeeding was that I would not be able to produce enough breast milk to satisfy him. A month or so after he was born, I found out that you could actually produce too much breast milk and have an oversupply problem. I must have wasted so much breast milk letting it soak numerous cloth diapers, handkerchiefs, and towels. If someone had offered to buy it or take it from me without liability, I would have done it.

Mothers with oversupply now have a place to sell their breast milk - Prolacta Bioscience.

Prolacta is aiming to buy donated breast milk from independent milk banks and hospitals across the US, pasteurise it and sell it back to hospitals to treat low-birth weight babies.

It is also looking to supply it for babies with heart defects, who need surgery and are at risk of infection, and children who are being given chemotherapy for cancer.

And the firm wants to analyse the different components of breast milk - there are more than 100,000 although scientists only know what a few thousand do - to see if breast milk therapies can treat disease common to newborn babies.

Some are concerned that women would feel pressure to sell their breast milk for money instead of giving it to their own babies. But I think that any mother who can do the math would know that selling their breast milk would not bring in enough money to pay for the cost of formula and associated paraphernalia. And, if women are educated about the many benefits of breast milk, especially if it’s direct from the breast, I doubt they’d be willing to shortchange their own children. In the end, however, it’s still the woman’s choice to do what she wants with her body and the milk her body makes.

BBC News, August 4, 2005
Pointer from Medpundit.

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