Mayim Bialik

[WanderingStar]

I also read that Mayim doesn't buy her children toys because she doesn't want them to become materialistic. She also sleeps with mattresses on the floor with her children.

Fair enough that she doesn't want to buy her kids the latest model, brand name toys constantly and possibly make them feel like they are entitled to such things, but my curiosity (aside from the EC and no-vax despite having a heavily scientific background) lies in this question: Do they have any toys at all, like as in gifts or hand-me-downs, or even homemade? Do they at least have plenty of other household objects they could play with, like cardboard boxes and blankets, and art supplies? I see the reasoning of avoiding a lot of electronic toys since simpler toys often help foster the imagination and allow it to grow as a child plays with the toy in his/her own way, but I don't know of any household that doesn't have any toys or things that could be toys at all if children live there, except for maybe the very poorest households. My brother and I used to have sword fights with yardsticks and I would put on variety shows inside a cardboard TV. I also had regular toys either bought or were gifts to me even though most weren't electronic (but it was because I didn't usually like electronic toys). Children do like imaginative play but a good bit of it is dependent on props. Babies often develop their motor skills through play, and that play usually involves some sort of toy.

It also bothers me that her main reasoning is that she doesn't want them to become materialistic. Of course no one wants their kids becoming materialistic. But who's to say that the kid deprived of almost all toys won't be like the person on a totally sweets-free diet and go hog wild once fate has them pass by a bakery one day?

Sorry for the rant, but since I was considering entering the field of child psychology once, parents that don't understand the value of playtime in a child's development get me almost as wound up as not giving your children at least the most important vaccinations, such as for polio. Hell, even the Maxwell kids had some toys and a little bit of time to play with them!

[Renting with Raggles]

Children do like imaginative play but a good bit of it is dependent on props. Babies often develop their motor skills through play, and that play usually involves some sort of toy.

It also bothers me that her main reasoning is that she doesn't want them to become materialistic. Of course no one wants their kids becoming materialistic. But who's to say that the kid deprived of almost all toys won't be like the person on a totally sweets-free diet and go hog wild once fate has them pass by a bakery one day?

Sorry for the rant, but since I was considering entering the field of child psychology once, parents that don't understand the value of playtime in a child's development get me almost as wound up as not giving your children at least the most important vaccinations, such as for polio. Hell, even the Maxwell kids had some toys and a little bit of time to play with them!

Yes, this also struck me as odd, especially since she has that background in neuroscience. Not that that prevented the anti-vax nonsense. But she may mean 'no toys', in the same way some parents mean 'no TV'...except the news, mama and daddy's programmes, DVDs, nature shows, 'history' channel shows, South Park ("Alastair just loves it! And it is funny, sometimes...")

I don't think the parents who insist on 'no plastic, no electronic' are so odd. A few wooden blocks and rag dolls, real (hand-me-down) pots and dishes, simple art supplies, lots of cardboard boxes and parents' old togs for dressing-up games are an adequate toy cupboard for early primary. Maybe, if the parents are generous, wooden ride-on cars. They can also be encouraged to make peg-dolls, dress puppets, construct papier-mache animals. I hope Madam No-Vax doesn't just leave them in a beige room with a couple of mattresses and a calculator.

[bubbabearzle]

In my opinion she's just fucking weird. I'm all for raising your children in ways that you deem acceptable as an individual or as parents, but not when that choice can pose serious harm or the risk of harm to the child. I'm really opposed to the anti-vax movement for obvious reasons. I knew about the Orthodox Jew thing and the breast feeding thing but not the elimination thing. The breast feeding thing seems unhealthy because in an article I read, she mentioned she only fed the child breast milk and the child was nearly 3. Shouldn't they have a decent amount of solids by that age? I thought you were supposed to start introducing cereals and such at 5 months or thereabouts. Pure milk, though filled with nutrients, can't be good for the child's digestive system. And what the hell do you do without diapers? Does the kid just go wherever?

I'd love to see how comfortable she would be having her unvaccinated children hanging out up here in Wa where we have a pertussis (whooping cough) epidemic :evil: . The daughter of one lf my husband's co-workers just had a baby the day after easter. To weeks later, the new grandfather (co-worker's husband) came down with pertussis. Obviously, he had been around the baby almost every day, as had the co-worker herself (who is now comin down with it, too).

I'm pretty sure that, since the mother is sane and sensible, she is on top of getting her baby vaccinated early and on preventative antibiotics. Anyway, that's bad enough, but we are also worried about our son, who has Crohn's disease and is immune suppressed. Just so that neither of us might bring it home to him, DH and I just had to go and get pertussis booster shots (we were both fully vaxed as kids, but it was recommended that we get boosters).

My point is, I am livid that selfish, and in this case selectively stupid, people like this refuse to get ther little incubators vaccinated. It's not only a threat to them, but can be a huge threat to those who are too young to have been vaxed, immune suppressed.

[WonderingInWA]

I'd love to see how comfortable she would be having her unvaccinated children hanging out up here in Wa where we have a pertussis (whooping cough) epidemic :evil: . The daughter of one lf my husband's co-workers just had a baby the day after easter. To weeks later, the new grandfather (co-worker's husband) came down with pertussis. Obviously, he had been around the baby almost every day, as had the co-worker herself (who is now comin down with it, too).

I'm pretty sure that, since the mother is sane and sensible, she is on top of getting her baby vaccinated early and on preventative antibiotics. Anyway, that's bad enough, but we are also worried about our son, who has Crohn's disease and is immune suppressed. Just so that neither of us might bring it home to him, DH and I just had to go and get pertussis booster shots (we were both fully vaxed as kids, but it was recommended that we get boosters).

My point is, I am livid that selfish, and in this case selectively stupid, people like this refuse to get ther little incubators vaccinated. It's not only a threat to them, but can be a huge threat to those who are too young to have been vaxed, immune suppressed.

Yes, the whooping cough outbreak here has been scary, and the strain of the flu that has gone around this year has also been scary. I do think non-vaxing parents believe their kids are safe from disease because almost everyone else vaxes. I have not done my own research on it, but I had a hard time with vaxing my kids (there are so. many. shots.), but I did do it. Even chicken pox (which was kind of new when my oldest was an infant) because my husband had never had them and we were more protecting HIM than protecting the kids.

I didn't realize Crohn's carried with it a suppressed immune system. Is that the root of that disease? A college roommate of mine has had Crohn's for many years (she's almost 50 now). How old is your son? How is he doing?

[mirele]

I don't know if the chicken pox vaccine protects against herpes zoster (aka shingles). Apparently the chicken pox vaccine hasn't been around long enough, since shingles tends to be a disease of older adults.

But I can tell you this--I spent pretty much the entire month of April in excruciating pain, first from what I thought was a flare up of my sciatica, and then what turned out to be a very small (1.5 inch by 2.5 inch) outbreak of shingles along my sciatic nerve in my right leg. The pain was such that I was rummaging through my closets for the lightest, smoothest most decent pairs of slacks I could wear to work, because the entire length of my right leg was so sensitive, unless the fabric was super smooth (no twills, we're talking smooth cotton sheeting here), I was in agony. I'd never had something like this happen before. I couldn't sleep on my beloved linen sheets, because they're still new and being broken in. And this was from a relatively TINY patch of shingles. My doctor told me I was lucky.

Now I'm looking at having to gut it up and pay ~$350ish for a shingles vaccination. But I'm likely going to do it, even though my communist health care (employer got rid of all choices for this year and we have only one health care provider, that's why it's communist) won't pay for it. Because the pain was excruciating and awful, for weeks. It still itches, a month after the outbreak started. And the vaccine is only 50 percent effective. Well, I'll take that chance.

I don't understand why parents would expose their kids to diseases like measles and whooping cough--that shit kills. I just don't. Now, after my experience with shingles, I REALLY don't understand. It's a PITA to be an adult and have this kind of problem.

[snarkbillie]

I didn't realize Crohn's carried with it a suppressed immune system. Is that the root of that disease? A college roommate of mine has had Crohn's for many years (she's almost 50 now). How old is your son? How is he doing?

The medicines to control Crohn's suppress your immune system. Crohn's is an auto-immune disorder where the immune system attacks the intestines. The only way to treat it at all right now is to take medicines that basically shut off your immune response. People who have Crohn's and are on medication for it are at very high risk for these diseases we vaccinate against.

[eohiken]

I don't know if the chicken pox vaccine protects against herpes zoster (aka shingles). Apparently the chicken pox vaccine hasn't been around long enough, since shingles tends to be a disease of older adults.

But I can tell you this--I spent pretty much the entire month of April in excruciating pain, first from what I thought was a flare up of my sciatica, and then what turned out to be a very small (1.5 inch by 2.5 inch) outbreak of shingles along my sciatic nerve in my right leg. The pain was such that I was rummaging through my closets for the lightest, smoothest most decent pairs of slacks I could wear to work, because the entire length of my right leg was so sensitive, unless the fabric was super smooth (no twills, we're talking smooth cotton sheeting here), I was in agony. I'd never had something like this happen before. I couldn't sleep on my beloved linen sheets, because they're still new and being broken in. And this was from a relatively TINY patch of shingles. My doctor told me I was lucky.

Now I'm looking at having to gut it up and pay ~$350ish for a shingles vaccination. But I'm likely going to do it, even though my communist health care (employer got rid of all choices for this year and we have only one health care provider, that's why it's communist) won't pay for it. Because the pain was excruciating and awful, for weeks. It still itches, a month after the outbreak started. And the vaccine is only 50 percent effective. Well, I'll take that chance.

I don't understand why parents would expose their kids to diseases like measles and whooping cough--that shit kills. I just don't. Now, after my experience with shingles, I REALLY don't understand. It's a PITA to be an adult and have this kind of problem.

My understanding is that it doesn't. What's more, being exposed to chicken pox as an immune adult actually works as a booster to prevent shingles. Because of the vaccine, children aren't getting chicken pox, meaning no helpful exposure for everyone who already had it, meaning more shingles.

We don't buy toys for our kids, but they have more toys than they know what to do with, all gifts of some sort or another. The issue is not *having* toys, but the expectation that toys will be purchased at will.

[Conuly]

My understanding is that it doesn't. What's more, being exposed to chicken pox as an immune adult actually works as a booster to prevent shingles. Because of the vaccine, children aren't getting chicken pox, meaning no helpful exposure for everyone who already had it, meaning more shingles.

Exposure to a disease generally works as a booster anyway, right? But this whole shingles thing is generational. If enough kids are vaccinated against chicken pox so it's ultimately eradicated within the US, in a short enough time very few adults in the US would get shingles - right?

[SisiL78]

Honestly I think vaccines should be required by law. I worked with a woman who was a dumb as a bag of erasers (she eventually got fired as a receptionist b/c that job was too challenging for her). She had two kids and didn't vaccinate them and instead took them for regular chiropractic "adjustments" whcih meant in addition to putting them at risk of disease was also creating a situation where they could be in pain or disabled in later life due to bone malformation. A good friend who is a PhD in anthropology told us that when studying forensics he learned that investigators can tell if a person has seen a chiropractor b/c their bones will have spurs and malformations, some of which would probably have sent them to more chiropractic visits or to doctors who would fix it (hence, the importance in identifying a body in a murder investigation).

Anyhoo, she was totally snookered by her chiropractors. They even convinced her to go off of her anti-depressants, which is when she lost that last grip on being able to get through her job and got fired. She kept on repeating that these things aren't "natural" and therefore bad. I did point out to her that opium and cocaine are natural, but she's not giving those to her kids! Or that the measles and polio are natural... maybe natural isn't always great. Honestly, she seemed to have no clue what I was talking about.

Laws are there, to some extent, to protect stupid people from themselves and to protect their children from the stupid people. It seems to me that that there could be laws requiring vaccinations that at the very least preserve herd immunity. Also, regarding other threads on FJ laws that require rigorous testing of homeschooled children.

[MamaJunebug]

The Science FRiday site has at least some of the interview on it:

http://www.sciencefriday.com/program/archives/201205042

Enjoy!

[Wolfie]

The Science FRiday site has at least some of the interview on it:

http://www.sciencefriday.com/program/archives/201205042

Enjoy!

The link I included in the first post has the transcripts and audio of this entire segment in it.

[B5SnowDog]

I don't know if the chicken pox vaccine protects against herpes zoster (aka shingles). Apparently the chicken pox vaccine hasn't been around long enough, since shingles tends to be a disease of older adults.

Being vaccinated for chicken pox can prevent you from developing shingles later in life. When you become infected with the chicken pox virus, it lies dormant in your nerves. Shingles occurs when the virus becomes active again. If you never become infected with chicken pox, you never get shingles.

[B5SnowDog]

Exposure to a disease generally works as a booster anyway, right? But this whole shingles thing is generational. If enough kids are vaccinated against chicken pox so it's ultimately eradicated within the US, in a short enough time very few adults in the US would get shingles - right?

Right, because people who have never been infected with chicken pox will never develop shingles later in life. By preventing the initial infection with chicken pox, you keep the virus from reactivating later in life to cause shingles.

[FireIsCatching89]

Right, because people who have never been infected with chicken pox will never develop shingles later in life. By preventing the initial infection with chicken pox, you keep the virus from reactivating later in life to cause shingles.

This may be a stupid question, but since mono and herpes and chicken pox are all caused by different strains of the Epstein-Barr virus, can having mono or herpes have an effect on chances of getting shingles, if you've not gotten chicken pox before? I ask because I didn't have chicken pox as a child (vaxed at age 10 when the shot became available) but had mono when I was 17.

[ilovetchotchkes]

This may be a stupid question, but since mono and herpes and chicken pox are all caused by different strains of the Epstein-Barr virus, can having mono or herpes have an effect on chances of getting shingles, if you've not gotten chicken pox before? I ask because I didn't have chicken pox as a child (vaxed at age 10 when the shot became available) but had mono when I was 17.

I don't think so.... I think because its different strains of the flu. Like if you got vaccinated for H1N1 only it would not protect you from the Spanish flu....

[eohiken]

Exposure to a disease generally works as a booster anyway, right? But this whole shingles thing is generational. If enough kids are vaccinated against chicken pox so it's ultimately eradicated within the US, in a short enough time very few adults in the US would get shingles - right?

Lifelong immunity from the chicken pox vaccine is in question. No one knows if maybe we're going to have a outbreak of cp amongst previously immunized 40 year olds.

[MamaJunebug]

The link I included in the first post has the transcripts and audio of this entire segment in it.

Even better. Also, who started reading this thread on page 3, hmmm? Can you say, me? :lol:

[FakePigtails]

Lifelong immunity from the chicken pox vaccine is in question. No one knows if maybe we're going to have a outbreak of cp amongst previously immunized 40 year olds.

True, but immunity can be monitored over time with blood titer testing and guidelines can be changed as needed before epidemics occur like that.

[B5SnowDog]

IANAD, but I don't think it would have an effect because they're not really strains of one virus. They are all in the same group of viruses, though - the human herpesviruses.

I'm sorry you had mono, that's no fun. :-(

[B5SnowDog]

True, but immunity can be monitored over time with blood titer testing and guidelines can be changed as needed before epidemics occur like that.

Exactly. We'll probably start seeing recommendations to have varicella boosters every 10 years or so, like tetanus boosters.

[ilovetchotchkes]

Lifelong immunity from the chicken pox vaccine is in question. No one knows if maybe we're going to have a outbreak of cp amongst previously immunized 40 year olds.

That would be BRUTAL, my mom got it at 40 and she was out of work for no lie 3 weeks. Apparently it hits adults insanely hard.

[WonderingInWA]

That would be BRUTAL, my mom got it at 40 and she was out of work for no lie 3 weeks. Apparently it hits adults insanely hard.

It does hit adults harder, and would probably be life-threatening in the elderly. I was born in 1965 and was exposed many times to the chicken pox but ultimately didn't get them until I was 15. I had a very severe case (had them in my eyes, ears, mouth, genital area, bottoms of my feet, palms of my hands, inside my nose) and was out of school for 3 weeks. I wouldn't wish that on anyone! I did vax my kids for varicella but I, too, wonder how long that will last. My oldest is 12 and since the time he received his first innoculation, they've added a second one. So I think we will see boosters regularly until they figure out how long the "immunity" lasts.

[ilovetchotchkes]

It does hit adults harder, and would probably be life-threatening in the elderly. I was born in 1965 and was exposed many times to the chicken pox but ultimately didn't get them until I was 15. I had a very severe case (had them in my eyes, ears, mouth, genital area, bottoms of my feet, palms of my hands, inside my nose) and was out of school for 3 weeks. I wouldn't wish that on anyone! I did vax my kids for varicella but I, too, wonder how long that will last. My oldest is 12 and since the time he received his first innoculation, they've added a second one. So I think we will see boosters regularly until they figure out how long the "immunity" lasts.

Yeah, my kid has eczema, so, when he's 12, i'm gonna have titers run. JUST IN CASE. Family history of asthma+ eczema= baad news if he were to get the pox.

[mirele]

Lifelong immunity from the chicken pox vaccine is in question. No one knows if maybe we're going to have a outbreak of cp amongst previously immunized 40 year olds.

I had chicken pox and I've had shingles. Yeah, chicken pox was annoying and yes, all over my body, but it didn't totally cramp a major nerve in my body for weeks on end. I'm thinking shingles is worse. But I suspect chicken pox for an adult would be not so good either.

[Austin]

My understanding is that it doesn't. What's more, being exposed to chicken pox as an immune adult actually works as a booster to prevent shingles. Because of the vaccine, children aren't getting chicken pox, meaning no helpful exposure for everyone who already had it, meaning more shingles.

We don't buy toys for our kids, but they have more toys than they know what to do with, all gifts of some sort or another. The issue is not *having* toys, but the expectation that toys will be purchased at will.

They are giving chicken pox vaccine boosters for those vaccinated as young children. My young adult sons all had boosters the summer before last, as all had been vaccinated against chicken pox as young children. I don't believe the medical community believes that the chicken pox vaccine confers lifelong immunity, just as with many other illness for which we vaccinate and need boosters for incrementally throughout our lives.