It’s here! Raising Natural Kids has created a NEW website designed to make it easier for you to get answers to your questions, to learn and share more about natural/organic/holistic living and to connect with each other. Our favorite feature is CONNECT AND ‘PLAY’ LOCALLY, where you can join a group more local to your home in order to share information about natural resources and to possibly meet other like-minded people in your area! In the near future we will offer online web chats, seminars and conferences where you can learn about just about any holistic topic imaginable from experts in their field! Come join us! Community Link: www.RNKCommunity.com

A BIT ABOUT THE COMMUNITY WEBSITE

Welcome to RNKCommunity.com, the supportive community for parents, parents to be, grandparents and any one else interested in raising the children in their lives naturally to promote a healthy lifestyle.  We encourage you to sign-up to participate in the great discussions here, to receive event notifications, and to find and connect with colleagues. On our Facebook page alone, we have over 42,000 members from 75 countries.

EXCITING FEATURES: CONNECT & ‘PLAY’ LOCALLY is a great way for you to meet people and businesses in your area that are of a more natural frame of mind. You can share information about local happenings and set up live play or adult dates, making new local and natural minded friends. The CHAT feature allows you to have conversations with people from around the world that you may have never met otherwise, exposing you to new ideas and ways of thinking. The SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS make it easy for you to follow topics of interest, while gaining and sharing insights into topics that you are passionate about, or that you want to learn more about. FORUM is a place for you to start or join in on conversations of interest. Once we really get going we will be adding a new page for holistic professionals to share their knowledge.

You will find the resources of those in the RNK Community invaluable.  Because we want to make sure that all members are legitimate people and not spammers, we have to approve all memberships here. While your membership is pending you are still welcome to peruse the site or attend any events!

Solar Mason Jars

Capture the sun’s rays and use them later that evening for some recycled light!

Compost Education for Kids

Three aerated compartments enable kids to view the entire decomposition process clearly and make side-by-side comparisons between different materials. Included thermometers demonstrate temperature changes during decomposition process.

Green Toys Gardening Kit

Made from recycled curbside collected milk containers, these planters and spade are safe, containing no phthalates, PVC or BPA.

The Earth Book

A great little book to teach kids about the importance of protecting the environment. It is printed entirely with recycled materials and nontoxic soy inks!

I wrote this a year ago and am reposting it now because it is so important for people to be aware about the toxins in lawn fertilizers and pesticides – the following two phone conversations that I share here are eye opening. Along with this information, please note that a study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute finds that household and garden pesticide use can increase the risk of childhood leukemia as much as seven-fold AND studies show that children living in households where pesticides are used suffer elevated rates of leukemia, brain cancer and soft tissue sarcoma (Beyond Pesticides) – (Click Here for an Important Fact Sheet).

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Last week my parents received this postcard in the mail.

Being that my children play in my parent’s yard quite often, I called the given phone numbers. Truth be told, I would have called no matter what!

I first called the New York State Department of Health Center for Environmental Health and spoke with a friendly chemist named Tom. Here is the gist of the conversation:

Me: Does everyone receive this kind of notice when neighbors are having something applied to their lawn?

Tom: (In regards to NYS) – If you live in a county that has adopted the Neighbor Notification Law and the chemicals being used fall under that law then you will receive notification. (You can view the details of this law here: Department of Environmental Conversation)

Me: These chemicals being used by the companies required to give notification, are they sold in stores for people like me to buy and apply myself?

Tom: Many of them are, yes, like 2,4-D (a type of chemical).

Me: So if my neighbors are applying them themselves I wouldn’t know it?

Tom: No

Me: So in general, what do you recommend to do to take precaution when being applied commercially?

Tom: During application, close all windows, keep children inside, cover lawn furniture and anything else in your yard that you do not want the chemicals getting on. Why don’t you give me the number of the product being applied so that I can look it up?

At this point I gave the number and we found that it DID NOT match the description of what the postcard says is being sprayed, Ortho Weed-B-Gon Pro. Tom assured me that this happens from time to time and that the number given is what was probably being sprayed. He then told me the chemical names of the toxic ingredients, 2,4-D, Mecoprop and Dicamba.

Me: Does the application of these chemicals on my neighbor’s property pose a danger to my family?  

Tom: IF applied during the right conditions and IF applied right, according to the instructions, there should not be enough to cause a health effect in humans.

At this point I am thinking that that’s two too many IFs for me! I was also thinking about the typical homeowner applying these chemicals without understanding the importance of following the directions to the ‘T’. For instance, I am related to quite a few people who do not like to read directions. On top of that, there are people who think that more is better, so if the directions say only apply a certain amount, they apply double – thinking that their lawn will be better off, and not thinking about the consequences to the living things that travel on or around the lawn.

Tom (Sensing I was uneasy): IF (there’s that IF again!) done properly, it should be alright. We get a lot of calls about this stuff. Some people would never use these chemicals on their property no matter what. Others want their weeds gone and are comfortable with them being applied.

Me: I would NEVER use them on my property

Tom: Let me tell you about how the toxicity of these chemicals are determined: A bunch of rats are placed in a small space and are exposed to a whole lot of the chemical in a short amount of time. If a lot of rats die it is considered toxic. If only a small amount of rats die, it’s not that toxic.

I really think Tom was trying to make me feel better by telling me this – it only caused me to be more appalled.

Me: Okay, that didn’t make me feel any better.

Tom: I can’t tell you that it’s completely without risk.

At this point I thanked Tom for his time and we hung up. 

Once digesting this information, I called the second number, the one for the National Pesticide Telecommunications Network, just to see if they had anything different to say.  I spoke with a man named Colton, who didn’t offer up the information as freely as did Tom. He did let me know that the chemicals being sprayed on the lawn of my parent’s neighbors is of the HIGHEST TOXICITY LEVEL. I asked about how the level is determined and he again told me how it is tested on animals and that the number it is given in regards to toxicity is based on the amount of animals that die. The one question I thought to ask of Colton that I did not ask of Tom was this:

Me: You say that the chemical is dangerous until it is dry. I have children who put things in their mouths. Lets say their ball gets a piece of treated grass on it once it’s dry and it goes into of of their mouths – it’s not dangerous?

Colton: It IS dangerous and you want to try and keep that from happening. When we say it’s not dangerous when dry, it simply means that when you walk on the grass, the chemicals shouldn’t stick to your shoes, only the grass.

So, of course, the piece of grass with chemicals on it could stick to a shoe and enter my house. Great….

Colton then told me he can e mail me the fact sheet on two of the chemicals being used in the formulation being sprayed. He said that because there are thousands of active ingredients that fact sheets haven’t been made for all, so he didn’t have one for the third chemical, but could send me information. I am not including the information on the fact sheets in this post because I already covered a lot of the dangers caused by these chemicals and others like them in this post: The Bad and The Ugly: A Look at Lawn Care Products

I share this information with all of you to raise awareness. These chemicals pose dangers to the health our our families and our pets, even when not used on our own properties. Please think twice before using them and help others to learn about them as well!

On a side note: I am glad that at least there is some kind of law in place when it comes to some applications of pesticides. However, if you notice, this postcard was sent out by a Scotts Lawn Care Service. Scott’s has been in trouble in the past for not revealing important information regarding chemicals in its products. I would think that they would be careful about taking the proper steps so as not to get into any more trouble. That being said, I just don’t know that other landscaping services are following this law and letting people know when they are applying chemicals on a nearby lawn. Let’s face it, there are companies that are run off the books – are they really playing by the rules?

My re-sharing of this post comes at a time when the Weston A. Price Foundation is trying to undermine the value and importance of nursing a child. Though I like the Weston A. Price Foundation’s homemade formula recipe for when a mother truly cannot nurse her child, I am AGAINST their recent claims that unless a woman’s diet follows their suggested diet, that she should NOT nurse her child – this is insane! They suggest that unless a mother’s diet is all organic and nutrient dense as outlined by them, that the mother should instead use their formula recipe (maybe they are getting ready to sell their own formula?) Of course a nursing mother should eat as organic and healthy as possible, but to suggest that if her diet does not follow their beliefs of what it should be, that she should not nurse at all – well, that is ludicrous.

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I have nursed just about everywhere in the thus far total of 42 months that I have nursed my three children, one who was born just 8 weeks ago. I nurse in restaurants, in cars, in friends’ homes, at amusements parks, on park benches, on the beach, on ferries, in stores and in numerous other places that I cannot recall right now. I am the person who just whips out a breast and starts feeding, albeit I do try to be a bit inconspicuous at times. I never thought I’d be as uninhibited as this, but when I had my first born I found that so many people wanted to help me nurse, that my breasts were more exposed than ever before and I didn’t care. I didn’t mind because it was all about feeding my son the best food he could have so that he would thrive, and since then I don’t really care about who thinks what about my nursing in public.

But, I know people who do mind. People who, at times, are what I call closet nursers. They feel self conscious and assume that people are looking at them and thinking “why here, do that in private,” or “that’s gross.” Perhaps with more support from society, they wouldn’t feel that nursing is something to hide. I actually have a friend who didn’t nurse because she admitted to me that she finds nursing repulsive, and I have heard a person say that nursing is something that should only be done in private.

Yet, the main reason why women have breasts is so that they can provide milk for their children. And I wonder, when did what was once the ONLY way to feed a human child (I am going back to the beginning of the existence of humans here) become a faux pas? It could have a little to do with when men were taught that women’s breasts were sexual objects solely for their pleasure, though I realize it really has a lot more to do with the emergence of formula being introduced. It boggles my mind that formula was once deemed to be better than human milk (can you believe it was actually marketed as being so!?). I am not trying to belittle the idea of formula, as I know that without it there would be babies that couldn’t survive as there are women who legitimately cannot produce enough milk to feed their children for varying reasons. BUT, I do question the companies who make some women believe that formula is almost as good for a child as breast milk and that it’s okay to not try so hard to make nursing work because you can easily pour a product into a bottle and hand the baby off to someone else to feed. Let’s really look at this: chemically processed (I don’t care how you slice it, a canned formula is just that), versus naturally occurring milk containing all the nutrients a baby needs for his/her first year and beyond. Formula doesn’t protect babies from disease and illness as breast milk does. Drinking from a bottle doesn’t increase a child’s lung capacity like nursing for at least four months does. And, as I believe, formula feeding a child through a bottle doesn’t create the same bond between mother and child as does nursing. I am not saying that a mother who doesn’t nurse doesn’t have a great bond with her child, but, let’s face it, a formula fed child is typically not snuggled closely to their mother for the amount of hours a nursing baby is, though there are always exceptions to the rule.

My point? A woman nursing her child is only doing what she knows to be as the best form of food for her child and that should be, at the very least accepted, if not honored. A woman should feel comfortable and confident to nurse her child anywhere and anytime she pleases, just as a mother giving her baby a bottle does.