An hour or so before midnight, I was posting entries in my photo blogs when, all of a sudden, it rained. I ran to retrieve the sinampay but I was too late. In the process, my head, shoulders, arms and upper back got wet. Since I was already out of the bedroom, I decided I might as well fix myself a cup of coffee.
As I sipped my coffee in the kitchen (with a matching cigarette, naturally), my still-wet hair brought to mind an acquaintance, a mother like me, who would insist that her then 7-year-old son wear a cap outdoors during the night, especially during the cold month of December. Baka raw sipunin (he might catch a cold). It might be more illustrative if I mention that when her son went swimming once with his T-shirt on, she made him get out of the water to change into another shirt because the one he was wearing was already wet. Yeah, change into a dry shirt then go back into the water again.
I admit that I can be a bitch when I hear comments like that. I find it so over acting and I have a tendency to scoff. Perhaps, I should be a little more understanding because that kind of mentality is, more often than not, borne out of ignorance. BUT, at the same time, I just feel that the understanding would be more proper when dealing with residents of the boondocks where science has not yet penetrated. You know, places where illnesses are still believed to be caused by disturbing the nuno sa punso.
But for a mother who grew up in the city and has had complete college education, I don’t think it’s too much to expect her to be a little more informed. The thing is, with this particular acquaintance, instead of informing herself, she prefers to take her mother’s words as gospel truth when it comes to anything child-related. And the mother’s medical knowledge has not progressed since the 1950s, I think. I mean, it’s touching how much she trusts her mother but she is an adult and should be responsible enough to inform herself for the sake of her own children.
Anyway, in the almost fifteen years that I’ve been a mother, I have learned a few things relative to my children’s health.
1) The common cold is caused by a virus, not cold climate. One can catch a cold anytime of the year — even during the height of summer. And, this I learned from my kids pediatrician, unlike bacterial infections, there are no medical cures for viral infections. That’s why it’s useless to take “cold medicine”. There are, however, remedies (try ginger tea) to help alleviate the symptoms (like runny nose).
NOT drinking cold beverages is not a way to cure the common cold.
It is NOT bad to take a bath when one has a cold.
2) When kids perspire and their shirts get wet, they won’t catch pneumonia. Otherwise, all athletes would be suffering from pneumonia permanently. The few years that we lived with my mother, she would pester me endlessly to change my daughters’ shirts every time they would get damp from perspiration. As in, change the shirts every 15 minutes or so. Gee, I might as well make them sit still in front of an electric fan and prevent them from playing.
3) Polio (poliomyelitis) is not caused by walking barefoot on the cold floor. Neither is it caused by the exposure of bare feet in cold air.
4) This is for females: Sleeping with the electric fan on, and the panties off, and even if the electric fan is directly between your legs and your legs are wide open, will not result in intestinal gas. Gas is caused by swallowed air and the normal breakdown of undigested food. Gas is a digestive issue and (isn’t that obvious?) the uterus is not connected to the stomach. One is more likely to get gas by sleeping after downing a bottle of Coke.
5) Circumcision does not make boys grow taller. Cutting of a piece of skin has no effect on hormones. It just so happens that most boys are circumcised just before they enter adolescence so that the circumcision seems to be followed by a sudden spurt of growth.
I can cite a dozen other superstitions but, anyway, you get the picture.
My mother-in-law used to drive me crazy with all her “information” on child-rearing. I know she means well, but it’s already the 21st century, most of the old wives’ tales have been proven wrong (and frankly, most of them sound really absurd). But of course, whenever I’d tell her that her beliefs are unfounded, she’d just tell me, “wala namang problema mga anak ko, ah.” Eventually, I’d learned how to say “ok” just so she wouldn’t feel bad, even though it doesn’t mean I’d actually heed her advice.
Hi mommy m
Did she insist that you bind your baby’s tummy with a “bigkis” too?
And the piece of thread on the forehead to stop hiccups?
I don’t have kids yet Miss Sassy, but I can just imagine the arguments my Mom and I are gonna have about the things you mentioned.
I don’t think I want my child to have a lipstick on her/his forehead if we go out before s/he gets baptized
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Every winter, my mom insists that I will catch a cold by going outside with wet hair. I shower every morning and I never have time to blowdry my hair, especially in the winter here. I have to warm up my car for 5 minutes or so before I can drive to work so I’m in a bit of a rush to leave when the car is ready.
My mom would always nag nag NAG at me that I’ll get sooo sick for going outside when it’s 32 degrees or lower if my head was uncovered or hair was wet. What’s more frustrating is the woman is a registered nurse!!! You’d think she would have some sense when it comes to something like this but nope!
Good lord, some of those superstitions are so ridiculous!!! Number 4 had me laughing my ass off here!
Worse pa, Connie…..she insisted I put a bigkis WITH a coin so the baby would be an innie. I was freaked! I told her I would only be introducing infection, to which she replied, “huhugasan mo naman muna, ah.” No, thank you.
Mommy, I, too, experienced that with my MIL! Try these: Wag matulog nang basa ang buhok at lalabo mata – (of course, hindi ka makakatulog at mababasa unan”). PAg tumutuwad ang bata, pigilin at humihingi ng kapatid – (,as delikado pag ang nanay ang tumuwad, diba?) MAtulog tuwing tanghali para lumaki (kasi matutulog din ako at walang magbabantay sa inyo) Pihado bago na naman ang bunso) In order for your child to be bright, burn paper with mathematical problems and solutions, mix the ash to rice being cooked. (Pano kung mali ang solution e di lalong naging bobo anak ko). Syempre I have to draw the line somewhere. Away! hehe
LOL Karen, now that is such a common practice — to this day!
Nikita, o di ba, education is not an assurance that superstitions will be shrugged off. Far too many still believe that the common cold is equal to cold temperature.
mommy m, coin? placed where, right on the stump where the umbilical cord had been cut? now, that is new! grabe and i thought i’ve heard the most absurd superstitions on baby care.
tito rolly, hahahahahaha yan examples mo na yata pinaka-kwela hahahaha
i’ve heard about putting a volume of encyclopedia under the baby’s pillow (di kaya ma-deform leeg nung bata?) — a kumare actually did this with her 3 sons. pero yung “burn paper with mathematical problems and solutions, mix the ash to rice being cooked”… LOL bago rin sakin yun hahahahaha
My husband and I have chickenpox right now and my mother-in-law tells us not to take a bath. We told her that the doctor said that it’s actually good for us to take baths and she said that the doctor is wrong.
Toe, oh my goodness! You know, the oldies said the very same thing when Alex had chicken pox. I was attending a conference in Cebu when she caught it and Speedy believed it was bad to let her take a bath. She hasn’t had a bath in three days when I got home. I bought a bottle of Lactacyd and gave her a bath twice a day.
Hi Con. I couldn’t help but laugh out loud at all the things our mothers made us go through. My personal favorite is the not sleeping with wet hair coz it would cause blindness. Unbelievable! I think what was making me “blind” was trying to keep awake long enough for my hair to dry! Geez! On a different note, why can’t i get in your pinoycook website? I love your recipes, but lately I just can’t get in.
Here’s another: When a child has fever, give him/her hot sponge bath, suutan ng pajama at makapal na damit para daw pagpawisan at bumaba ang lagnat.
Well, being inexperienced in child care, I listened to this advice from our helper, and it nearly cost my first born’s life! When he was 3 years old, he had very high fever and I gave him a hot sponge bath then made him wear thick clothing. The fever shot up and he had convulsion after a few minutes, tumirik na ang mata! It took the doctors three hours to revive him. He was stripped of his clothes and ice cubes were all over him! It was a traumatic experience I could never forget.
belle, Pinoy Cook is up now. There have been intermittent problems the past week. Server overload.
rhodora, that’s my mother’s theory too. and i felt that the yucky feeling that goes with a fever is compounded by the sticky feeling when she made me “sweat”.
hi connie. i am laughing as i read this post. i have belly aches by the time i get to item 4. some people believe thats not for females lang. theres this really old guy who has a very sensitive stomach, and according to him “kasi pinapasukan ako ng hangin sa pwet.” hahaha!
Been there… pero wala din akong magawa kundi sumunod like putting the famous “bigkis”, ang “manzanilla” sa bumbunan and so on…
Just like the rest of the moms who grew up in the city, di ako masyadong naniniwala. But then, minsan, there are things that make me paranoid lalo kung nagkakasakit nga ang baby, at wala akong magawa kundi gawin din tulad ng “pagpapalaway” para di mabati, at “pagpapatawas” kung di gumaling ang sakit sa doktor.
LOL @ #4! I wouldn’t do that not b/c of gas, but wow, what a posture, wa poise naman! rotflmao!
I never used bigkis with all my kids, hehe. My mom thought I was really pasaway b/c I never did any of those old wives’ remedies. I took a bath the moment I was strong enough to get up after delivery. My sister’s SIL naman did not take a bath for 1 week post-partum, baka daw mabinat! Imagine, not taking a bath for a week in hot and humid Manila. eek.
lady cess, wow grabe, over yun pumapasok ang hangin sa pwet! just like reverse farting! hahahaha
mitchteryosa, i think the “giving in” is due to psychological pressure from the oldies.
Chateau, my lola had an even more absurd theory about the benefits of using “bigkis” — para daw maging shapely ang bata paglaki hahahahahaha
Late na ko.
Sa amin its my kids’ yaya who has a lot of the voodoo stuff. Yeah, I have to admit, we did the “bigkis” thing but honestly, it helped the “pusod” dry up fast. We’ve been trying to figure out the “string on the forehead” theory. Feeling namin, naduduling yun bata kaya nakakalimutan niyang may sinok siya. Hahaha.
Personally, I hate the “usog” theory. Sinci my MIL is Kapampangan and still has close ties with her pals and relatives in the province, we still go home every so often. Problema, when we go, everyone dotes on my kids and puts “laway” on them as “pwera usog”. You should see my arsenal of anti-pwera usog. Wipes, soap, alcohol…buong banyo dinala ko na. Ako ata nauusog everytime.
My mom would dampen a piece of cotton and put it on our foreheads when we hiccuped. She still does that with the grandkids. And she also nags them to change their shirts when playing, a real bummer when in the mood to play.
What I can’t understand is a tradition among some families (I’ve seen this in both urban and rural households, Filipino, Chinese-Filipino): after giving birth, the woman is not allowed to take a bath for a month! EWWWW
KongKong, to this day I still have to understand the concept of “usog”. I also wonder if it has its equivalent in other cultures.
Mila, there is an even worse theory about women and bath — that if a woman takes a bath while menstruating, she will go insane.
Siguro nga “psychological pressure” yun, di ka ba naman tantanan na gawin yun eh hehe! At ikaw naman bilang nanay sa taranta eh susunod ka na lang.
nakatawa talaga ang mga pamahiin na yan lalo na’t pagsinunod mo’t magmumukha kang tanga. pero hindi naman natin sila masisisi, sa panahon ngayon na with all these modern sciences, medecines and technologies compared to noon sa kapanahonan nila na puro experience lang ang inaasahan na ang end results ay mostly nagkataon lang.
Hindi kaya ang mga pamahiing ito ay may ibang kahulugan? tulad ng….
..huwag matutulog ng walang undies na nakabukaka at nakaharap sa electri fan…..di kaya pinagbabawalan lang ang bata at baka maka sanayan hanggang sa pag dalaga? papano kung makipag sleep over sa ibang bahay at may makakita….
…pag tumutuwad ang bata ay humihingi na ng kapatid…di kaya nag papa alala lang na huwag mo munang sundan bunso, alam naman nating ang mga bata ay ginagaya halos lahat ng nakikita nila, siguro ini isip nila na may nakikita ang bata na nakatuwad….nyehehehe
pero nakakatawa man ang mga ito, madalas pa rin sabihin sa atin, it only shows kung gaano tayo kamahal nila.
As the song goes..”OLD HABITS ARE VERY HARD TO BREAK”
Hi Don.
Sabi mo, “pero nakakatawa man ang mga ito, madalas pa rin sabihin sa atin, it only shows kung gaano tayo kamahal nila.”
I don’t doubt that.
BUT. To insist that their children (and children-in-law) follow their beliefs in raising the grandchildren, it also means two things:
1) They have no respect for their children’s right as parents; and
2) They refuse to face the reality of science even when the proof is available and staring at them in the face.
It isn’t a question of old habits dying hard. It is an issue of the inability, or downright refusal, to accept being WRONG. Bad example for the kids, bad example for the grandchildren as well.
HAHAHAHA… tuwing fiesta (maski sa metro manila), madami ang nagpapabinyag na din para isang handaan na lang, kaya uso un sabay sabay ba binyagan sa simbahan, tapos an gagawin ng mga magulang or ninong or ninang after ng ceremony ng pari magtatakbuhan sila palabas ng simbahan bitbit ang mga sanggol, kasi daw kun sino mauna sa labas un an magiging una sa lahat, sa pagasenso… eh paano kun madapa at mabitawan ang sanggol, katakot…