My secret fears teased out in vivid detail and organized by chapter

This book is not about fear. At least it shouldn't be. It's just that there are a few issues in the world of all things green and greener that I am handling (like cleaning), a few I feel I can't afford to handle (like organic free range, pure food) and a few more that I have really not handled at all (like what's in the baby soap?)

Nevertheless, overall this book is an encouraging resource for parents and really for anyone who spends time around kids and/or the environment. In fact, it inspired me to make the following specific changes:
Today we bought indoor house plants as part of an overall plan to improve indoor air quality.
Today I ordered 100% cotton organic pajamas for LP & underwear as well - more on that later!
I am currently researching all our body products (soaps, shampoos, sunscreens) on a pretty great resource I found in the book. It's called Skin Deep. Healthy Child Healthy World - the website- also has some pretty great resources, but want I want to share here is the impact this book is having on my treatment of LP's sensory disorder. LP has SPD, sensory processing disorder. He is also a highly sensitive person, born to two HSP in a family full of them (some of them may not know that, but that's really okay!) But there is more. He has what the specialists are calling an interesting profile. I'm pretty sure they mean he is not yet autistic. And they are right. He has currently "passed" two autism screenings, but he has all sorts of small developmental delays and rigid behaviors that make professionals keep shaking their head in wonder.

I think our beloved speech therapist is right. It doesn't matter what you call it, as long as you treat it. You can call LP an elephant, PPD autistic, SPD or a small bunny, but he needs Occupational Therapy, Speech Therapy and probably some form of special education to help his play develop to the next level. As long as he is getting these, we are fine. I've been fighting the school front battle for a while now, but Healthy Child, Healthy World has given me a little pause as to whether there is another front to be fighting this stuff on.

There are lots of things running in our blood streams, most of which we can't control: flame retardants, pesticides, chemicals and air pollutants, fumes from perfumes, cleaners and off-gassing of carpets and plastics. This is where the indoor plants came in, literally, into my home from Lowe's today: ivy & palms to help clean things up around here. This is where the flame-retardant free pajamas also came in - though ordered from the overly pricey Hannah Anderson catalog - and the underwear too - but I can see his skin reacting to things. It is sensitive in the extreme. I wonder if the reason our specialists see autism is because LP engages in some of the behaviors that they usually see before they end up diagnosing a kid with autism. The truth is we don't really know what is causing it, nor what is causing ADHD, SPD and a host of other developmental delays. LP is currently delayed in at least three areas: receptive speech, fine motor and social/emotional. Why? Who knows? Can I make it better? Who knows, but it seems clear that some things can make it worse - or have the potential to make it worse. The reality is that lots of chemicals have not been tested for safety yet, really most of them haven't.

Reading this book has really motivated me to reduce LP's burden of what we are asking his body to process, how many chemicals, how often - cleaner air & cleaner jammies are our first step in this area.

There are still a few places I could be doing more, more for our health, more for the environment. I'm sure this will continue to be so. What I like about this book is that the full spectrum of participation, engagement and education about these issues is expected and welcomed. I can' t tell you how bad the taste in my mouth was when upon meeting a local environmental activist she informed me that she and her family would be prepared for peak oil, but other people would not be. I am actually totally comfortable with whatever level of disaster preparedness people want to have, she just seemed smugly superior about all the people who she felt were about to suffer, while she ate out of her solar oven in years to come.
This book isn't like that - my one critique is that it seems directed solely at middle class & up parents - which is fine, every book needs an audience - but I'd like to see the folks at Healthy Child, Healthy World tackle a range of issues that would impact kids whose parents aren't even close to being in a financial position to pick organic grapes over conventional, let alone an organic crib mattress over a conventional one.
I lay that challenge though for all of us, myself included. This is one area of clean-up that I could really work on in my own life. May my next drop-off at a local food bank be a bag of organic brown rice, not a canned soup. When I want better school lunches, let it be for kids all over my state, not just my wealthier town.