...parents should develop a healthy medium between letting kids get dangerously sick and raising them in a nearly sterile environment. “In the U.S we have this idea that we need to protect infants and children from microbes and pathogens at all possible costs. But we may be depriving developing immune networks of important environmental input needed to guide their function throughout childhood and into adulthood”
A study this month from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finds that most common antibiotics — penicillins — appear to be safe. But the study raises a red flag with two types of antibiotics, sulfa drugs (brand names include Bactrim and Thiosulfil Forte) and urinary germicides (brand names Macrobid and Furadantin). These medications are typically used to treat urinary tract infections.
According to one hypothesis, vomiting reduces caloric intake, decreasing insulin secretion. Low insulin, in turn, boosts levels of other hormones that are known to play a role in the development of a healthy placenta and a healthy blood supply to growing brains.
Stories, Scribbles and Wiggles Toddler Program
Thursday, October 29, 2009, 11:00 am – 12:00 pm, Woodland Indian Baskets and Myths
Thursday, November 19, 2009, 11:00 am – 12:00 pm, All that Glitters is Gold
Thursday, December 10, 2009, 11:00 am – 12:00 pm, Polar Bears and Narwhals
Read packages and look for questionable food dyes
Here are the specific dyes called out by the FSA and/or CSPI:
* Yellow 5, Yellow 6, Red 40 (both groups)
* Yellow 10, Carmoisine, Red 4 (FSA)
* Blue 1, Blue 2 Green 3, Orange B, Red 3 (CSPI)
When the TV was on, the researchers found, both the quantity and the quality of interactions between parents and children dropped. Specifically, parents spent about 20 percent less time talking to their children and the quality of the interactions declined, with parents less active, attentive, and responsive to their youngsters.
Without adult support, children under age 3 could not learn the words directly from the program, nor could they understand them when they appeared in a different context within the video.
...back off almost entirely: to stop asking their child to do the desired behavior and say it's OK not to do it at all, stop offering praise or other rewards for doing it, and mask their attitude of engaged enthusiasm or frustrated rage with an appearance of bland disinterest in whether the child does it or not. What happens next, frequently, is that within a day or two the child starts doing the behavior with no prompting from parents or anyone else. If you try something similar with your own recalcitrant child, within a few days he or she may well be using the toilet, eating green beans, or bathing without dire struggles.
Software sold under the Sentry and FamilySafe brands can read private chats conducted through Yahoo, MSN, AOL and other services, and send back data on what kids are saying about such things as movies, music or video games. The information is then offered to businesses seeking ways to tailor their marketing messages to kids.
The advantage that children get from living in two-parent families may actually be due to family stability more than the fact that their parents are married. A new study finds that children who who are born and grow up in stable single-parent homes generally do as well as those in married households in terms of academic abilities and behavior problems.
"If you want your kids to do well in school, then the amount of education you get yourself is important," said Pamela Davis-Kean, a psychologist at the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR). "This may mean that parents need to go back to school.
"A growing number of large-scale, long-term studies now show that increasing parental education beyond high school is strongly linked to increasing language ability in children. Even after controlling for parental income, marital status and a host of other factors, we find that the impact of parental education remains significant."
Pregnant women account for 6 percent of U.S. swine flu deaths since the pandemic began in April, even though they make up just 1 percent of the U.S. population.
On Wednesday a federal vaccine advisory panel is meeting to take up the question of who should be first to get swine flu shots when there aren't enough for everyone. At the top of the list are health care workers, who would be crucial to society during a bad pandemic.
But pregnant women may be near the top of the list because they have suffered and died from swine flu at disproportionately high rates.
Infants just 6 months old can match the sounds of an angry snarl and a friendly yap to photos of dogs displaying threatening and welcoming body language.But my takeaway of this research is that it is an example of the long history of the relationship of humans and dogs and perhaps represents co-evolution as in early tribes those infants best able to discern a friendly dog from a threatening canine would be the most likely to survive.
Being active at age 5 helps kids stay lean as they age even if they don't remain as active later in childhood, a new University of Iowa study shows.
...children may colour trees blue or grass red because their memories can't "bind" together the colour and shape of an object.