Happy Proud Mother's Day!

Isabelle is turning 10 this December, Ilysse is celebrating her 7th birthday this August, and Romeo just turned 2. While the world over is exhorting a mother's undying devotion and love to their children, I would like to celebrate this day by expressing my sincerest gratitude to my children who at their young ages have shown me what unconditional love is. Just today, I could not forget the change in Romeo's expression when he saw me rasing my voice and reprimanding his sisters. He blurted out in his tiny voice, "Mama", and slowly walked to me with his arms all stretched out and ready to give me a hug. I felt so ashamed at my sudden burst of anger but at the same time, I felt so much love from this little boy of mine. My children have learned to put up with all my quirks, my moods, and my shortcomings as a mother. They have filled my days with love and pure fun. And for these and so much more, I am mighty proud to be called their "Mommy".

Oblivious to Brand

There is one thing that I want my children to learn in this age of unrestrained consumerism and that is detachment from all things material and superficial. I know the difficulty that lies ahead in teaching this value. Children are bombarded with all kinds of stimuli that promote the belief that anything expensive and anything that comes with a brand is good, or even better.

I can honestly say that I have aqcuired some sort of immunity from anything branded, and anything expensive. My mom has showed me the way by her simple and thrifty ways, and I sincerely hope that I can pass it on to my children as well.

I trust that my girls can easily part with a Prada (the only costly brand in my closet that was given by a client) in the same way that I did with mine.

Aspartame in Sipahh Milk Flavoring Straws? Believe It!

Here comes another product in the market fraudulently claiming to be healthy and good for kids. The advertisements shown around Metro Manila pictures a caucasian kid sipping milk with Sipahh, a milk flavoring straw that comes in four flavors, chocolate, strawberry, banana, and cookies and cream.

Sipahh is supposed to encourage and promote drinking milk in kids but a closer look at its ingredients would show that it is not for kids because aside from a host of chemical-sounding components, it has the very controversial aspartame, the sweetener sold under the brand names of Equal and Nutra-Sweet, and usually found in diet sodas.

The safety of aspartame has been questioned for years but it was only recently that those doubts were confirmed by a study conducted by Dr. Morando Soffrite, a cancer researcher in Bologna, Italy. After a 7-year study on aspartame, his team found that the sweetener was associated with unusually high rates of lymphomas, leukemias, and other cancers in rats that have been given doses of it starting at what would be equivalent to four to five 20-ounce bottles of diet soda a day for a 150-pound person. The study, which involved 1,900 laboratory rats and cost $1 million, was conducted at the European Ramazzini Foundation of Oncology and Environmental Sciences, a nonprofit organization that studies cancer-causing substances; Dr. Soffritti is its scientific director.(Warner, Melanie. Feb. 12, 2006. The Lowdown on Sweet. The New York Times.Retrieved June 3, 2009 from NYTimes.com)

The study, obviously, is being strongly opposed by the producers of aspartame which if confirmed by the US Food and Drugs Authority would mean a loss of earnings of around US$570 million annually.

Last year, i admit guilt in buying a pack for my kids. It was a good thing when i got home, i checked the ingredients and i saw the word "aspartame" jumping right at me. That really irked me as it again showed the deceit employed by manufacturing companies. How can a product intended for kids contain aspartame? If we allow our kids to use Sipahh, it is as if we allow our children to drink diet sodas. The website of Sipahh claims it is healthy and has no preservatives. What do they think of aspartame? The fraud and deceit the manufacturer of Sipahh employs at the expense of our children is something i can no longer fathom. This company has traded their values for a worthless piece of straw that does nothing than make milk taste like medicine.

Teaching Children Honesty In These Dishonest Times

Just yesterday, Ilysse overheard me and my mom talk about the Php 6.9 million caught by the Russian government from a retired comptroller of the Philippine National Police, Eliseo De La Paz and our acerbic remarks on the incident. I think she became interested in our conversation when she heard the word 'caught', and relentlessly pursued the topic by asking questions like "Who was caught?", "Why was he caught?", and "What did he do wrong?". I had to explain the matter to her in as simple as I can thinking the topic is something a child at 4 would have difficulty to understand.

I told her that the man was caught with lots of money which he did not report, and so he was being dishonest by keeping the money and not telling where it came from and who gave it to him. Ilysse retorted by saying that what the man did was stealing. I had to explain to her that it is possible that the money could have been given to him so that could not be stealing. I had to contend with the next trickier question, "So, why then was he caught if he did not steal anything?" I had to explain to her again that the wrong he did was not telling the truth of why he had the money with him. Ilysse quickly replied, "I know what he did wrong, Mommy. He lied. Mommy, you always tell us that if we tell the truth about something bad we did, you will not get mad at us. He should just have told the truth so he would not be caught."

That has been a remark of a 4-year old child who is still learning to read, who is unaware of the reality that is slowly destroying our values as a people. But, what about the millions of Filipino children around the country who are older, more aware of what is happening around them, those know how to read, those who watch and hear the daily news, those who know the Hello Garci scandal, the ZTE-NBN deal, the Court of Appeals fiasco, and an endless string of other indignations. What do all these illustrations of dishonesty that this government has blatantly displayed and paraded for the last 4 years teach our children? That it is ok to lie as long as you are in power, as long as you are rich or simply, that there is nothing wrong in lying and at the other end of the spectrum, if you lie, you will get richer; if you lie, you will be more powerful.

What can we do to protect our children from this distorted sense of values? We cannot, obviously, shelter them perpetually from the evils of society and government. But, we can arm them with a good sense of what is true, noble and just not only by example by also by actually teaching them these values. However, teaching children the values of honesty, courage, self-discipline and moderation, justice and mercy, among others, is not an easy job as these are abstract concepts. Fortunately, we have parents, like Linda and Richard Eyre, who have shared their wisdom in parenting and child-rearing to the world. Their book, "Teaching Your Children Values", is one book that I will surely cherish for years to come. The book is divided into values such as those I mentioned above and there are activities for pre-schoolers, elementary school age, and adolescents pertaining to each of the values. I got this book in 2007 from Books for Less and it continues to teach me and my kids the values that our government has seemed to have completely forgotten.