Lock up the cough syrup. 3.1 million children have consumed large quantities of OTC cough syrup to get high. Yup. By children, they consider 12 years old and up. But still, that is pretty concerning, especially from my point of view as a mom of a few tweens. This comes form the results of a 2006 survey conducted by the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. The increase is higher among black and Hispanic youths. The increased instances of OTC drug abuse is worrying.

A lot of teens are having sex. But they are being responsible about it. A study of teens across Europe and North America is in, and a “substantial minority” of 15 year old teens admit to having sex. The number varies from country to country, with boys being more apt to report having had intercourse than girls. The good news is that of those who admit to having sex, 82% report having safe sex - using condoms or pills to protect themselves.

Pammy is preggo. I assume when I say Pammy most know I am referring to Pamela Anderson. In case you are wondering, she is still going ahead with the divorce of baby-daddy Rick Salomon. They were married a few months ago. It will be Pamela’s third child. I wish her the best of luck!

Is there a boys education crisis? Recently, girls have been outperforming boys in school.

With girls outperforming boys these days in high school and college, educators have been sparring over whether there is a crisis in the education of boys. Some suggest the need for more single-sex schools, more male role models or new teaching techniques. Others are experimenting with physical changes in classrooms that encourage boys to move around, rather than trying to anchor them to their seats. But as they debate, high-priced tutors and college counselors have jumped into the fray by charging as much as $100 an hour and up to bring boys to heel.

A big part of this is boys lack of organization and lesser ability to multitask. Now that I read this, I can see a difference between my 11 year old son and my 9 year old daughter. This is one thing i will keep an eye on as my tween is getting bigger!

Setbacks in children’s health insurance. 2007 began with a lot of hope. Democrats proposed, and many Republicans supported, a big increase in the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). The idea is to provide health insurance to all children with a family income up to double the poverty level (and for some states even higher). What is the holdup? Government bickering. There are concerns that middle-income families will give up their private insurance for this public one. After a year of to-ing and fro-ing, an extension was agreed in the House last week that in effect makes each state responsible for seeking out and covering lower income families before middle income ones can benefit

The directive said that before states cover higher-income children, they must meet the following threshold: At least 95% of children eligible for Medicaid and SCHIP with incomes less than twice the poverty level must be enrolled in those programs.

Many states say meeting that threshold is nearly impossible. But that’s not all the directive said. Even if states meet that threshold, the middle-income children will have to go without private coverage for a full year before they can enroll in SCHIP, and their families will have to pay premiums or co-payments that are 5% of their income.

I am trying to remain a neutral NewsSquawker here, so I will just say that it would be an amazing day if/when all Americans have health insurance. Currently, there are 9.5 million uninsured American children.

Yay California! As of January 1, a new law was passed that makes it illegal to smoke in a cars with minor children present. There is a $100 fine if caught. California joins Arkansas and Louisiana who have already passed a similar law. Only 47 more states to go!

In our health-conscious postmodern society, why are children breaking their arms more often? Why are they developing rickets, the 19th century “soft bone” disease? And why might they be at greater risk of osteoporosis than our own parents and grandparents?

The answer: a lack of this critical bone-friendly trio: sunlight, calcium, and exercise.

Almost half of peak bone mass develops during adolescence, and the concern is that missing out on the strongest possible bones in childhood could haunt people decades later. By the 30s, bone is broken down faster than it’s rebuilt. Then it’s a race to maintain bone and avoid the thin bones of osteoporosis in old age.

“There’s some early data showing that even a 10 percent deficit in your bone mass when you finish your adolescent years can increase your potential risk of having osteoporosis and fractures as much as 50 percent,” says Dr. James Beaty, president of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons.

Less than 25% of all adolescents get the recommended amount of calcium.

I thought that calcium was the most important factor by far in bone density and bone growth, but I was wrong: Strong bones require more than calcium alone. Exercise is at least as important. Consider: The dominant arm of a tennis player has 35 percent more bone than the non-dominant arm.

We already know that our children get less exercise than kids in generations past. But what does sunlight have to do with it?

Vitamin D (which the body absorbs from sunlight) is crucial to calcium absorption. If kids aren’t getting outside often, their bodies probably aren’t getting enough vitamin D, which in turn ratchets down how much calcium their bodies are absorbing.

It sounds to me like the best remedy for this disturbing trend is to get outside with the kids, have some good old-fashioned winter fun, and then come in for hot chocolate made with vitamin D-fortified milk. I can handle that!

Posted by Sunshine.

Family Life and Onset of Puberty: A new study published in the journal Child Development finds that good parental support and low marital conflict are associated with later onset of puberty in girls. Early puberty has been linked with a higher likelihood of mood disorders, substance abuse, teen pregnancy, and cancers of the reproductive system. According to one of the researchers: “These results replicate and extend previous longitudinal research indicating that higher levels of positive investment and support in family relationships in preschool predict lower levels of pubertal maturation in daughters in the seventh grade.”

School Readiness and Home Environment: By studying 420 pairs of five-year-old twins, researchers report that environmental factors - such as family resources and income, parental attitude toward learning, and quality of child care arrangements - are associated with school readiness. “Our results have important implications for preventive interventions,” said Michel Boivin, Canada Research Chair in Child Social Development and professor of psychology at Laval University in Quebec City and one of the study’s authors. “They should be seen as a further incentive for continued implementation and evaluation of preventive intervention programs aimed at improving the level of school readiness in children from at-risk families.”

Smoking and Pregnancy: A University of Aberdeen study finds that baby boys of women who smoked during pregnancy are more likely to have abnormal penises and poorly descended or smaller testicles.

If you’ve ever thought, while chasing after your son, “This kid will be the death of me,” well…you may just be right! This according to Virpi Lummaa, a Finnish evolutionary biologist who searches through centuries-old birth, marriage and death records looking for patterns. What she’s learned from studying the premodern Sami people of Finland:

Among this group, she found that those who bore sons had shorter life spans than those who gave birth to daughters. This discrepancy has to do with birth weight—male babies are typically larger—as well as testosterone. “Testosterone can compromise your immune system; it can affect your health,” Lummaa says, and the mothers of sons proved especially susceptible to endemic infectious disease, such as tuberculosis. “Boys are a little bit more costly” to raise than girls as well, because they drain more physical resources from their mothers, she adds, as has been seen in other mammals, such as the red deer. Sons also are not as likely as daughters to stick around to help their mothers out later in life.

Boys may also be costly for their younger siblings. Those born after a son tend to be physically slighter, have smaller families, and are more likely to die from infectious diseases. These results held even if the older brother died in childbirth.

This phenomenon is particularly evident in twins where one is male and the other is female. Of 754 twins born between 1734 and 1888 in five towns in rural Finland, girls from mixed-gender pairs proved 25 percent less likely to have children, had at least two fewer children, and were about 15 percent less likely to marry than those born with a sister. This brotherly influence remained the same regardless of social class or other cultural factors and even endured if the male twin died within three months of birth, leaving the female twin to be reared as an only child.

In these cases, Dr. Lummaa believes that testosterone exposure in the womb is to blame.

Another odd finding: While the presence of a grandmother in the family home is associated with the survival and later reproduction of her grandchildren, grandpa provides no such service:

“If anything there’s a negative effect,” she concludes. This could be because of the cultural tradition of catering to men, particularly old men. “Maybe if you had an old grandpa, he was eating your food,” she speculates.

Of course, these findings are based on people who lived before modern medicine, and it’s rare in the developed world to find a grandfather wrestling a chicken nugget from a toddler. Interesting, nonetheless.

Gotta go, the boys are tearing the house apart…

Posted by MommaSteph.

I came across an interesting article about boys. Time Magazine did an extensive research on a so-call boys crisis across the nation. My three boys are part of that statistic so I was very concerned on how this affects their development into adulthood.

There was, for example, Harvard psychologist William Pollack’s Real Boys (1998), which asserted that contemporary boys are “scared and disconnected,” “severely lagging” behind girls in both achievement and self-confidence….Statistics collected over two decades show an alarming decline in the performance of America’s boys–in some respects, a virtual free fall. Boys were doing poorly in school, abusing drugs, committing violent crimes and engaging in promiscuous sex. Young males lost ground by many behavioral indicators at some point in the 1980s and ’90s: sharp plunges on some scales, long erosions on others.

Studies are conducted based on data compiled over past years. No wonder people were calling for some real action in the 1990’s.

In recent years, much attention has been given to girls so they can explore their full potential. They now outnumber boys in colleges and they are now competing every profession that used to be entered only by males. Newsweek published an article on how the eduction system has been favoring girls, in which they said: “Boys are biologically, developmentally and psychologically different from girls—and teachers need to learn how to bring out the best in every one.” No system can design with just one gender on mind, they must satisfy the needs of a diverse set of personalities.

A child, whether is a boy or a girl, needs to feel connected to what she/he wants to achieve. This is the why is so important to give them extracurricular activities. A boy may not be “in love” with going to school, but getting there and playing in the basketball court can be a great motive to attend classes. What I like the most about the Time article is it finds that although there is no question that girls are doing better that boys, we are all turning our attention to boys. Boys are given more opportunities to make decisions and to get in touch with life’s difficult moments. They are improving in reading and math and are doing better on aptitude tests. Teachers are getting more involved with boys at early stages of education. It still a long road but we are getting there one step at a time. We need to let boys know that asking for help does not make them weak.

I love to spend time with my boys and to let them know I’m behind them a 100%. Last night my son lost a swimming competition by just a couple of milliseconds. He was frustrated and cried a lot. Today he woke up and he told me that we really wanted that third place (he got 4th) but that he will work hard for it next year. He said: ” I did my best and I think I did OK. I’m still a little sad but I’m heading back next week to keep on training. I hope you are proud of me and I will not let this get me down.”

My boys are part of the statistics, but I’m working very hard so that they can be part of that turning point in the numbers. Let’s all work on helping our boys.

Posted by momcrazyforkids.

Potty training. Something that I admit has been pretty easy with all of my kids, and we are well on our way to being completely potty trained with my youngest, who turned 2 in June. I am surprised at how well he is doing and how quickly he caught on. Looking back, though, I think the key with all three of my kids was waiting until they were ready. For the most part, they all exhibited the same signs and behaviors, even though they all potty trained at different ages.

They say that boys are harder to train than girls, but out of my three kids, my son is training the earliest, so I am not sure if I agree with that. So how do you know if your child is ready? What are the signs?

Most experts say children are ready for potty training between the ages of 2 and 3, but according to the Mayo Clinic, potty readiness is more of a physical readiness than an age, and starting before they are physically ready may only result in longer potty training. Some signs to look for to determine readiness are (according to the Mayo Clinic):

Does your child seem interested in the potty chair or toilet, or in wearing underwear?
Can your child understand and follow basic directions?
Can your child ask simple questions?
Does your child stay dry for periods of two hours or longer during the day? Does he or she wake from naps dry?
Does your child have fairly predictable bowel movements?
Does your child tell you when he or she needs to potty or poop?
Is your child uncomfortable in wet or dirty diapers?
Can your child pull down his or her pants and pull them up again?

If your child exhibits some or all of these signs, you may be ready to begin potty training. Many people begin by putting the potty in the room the child plays in most often. Encourage him or her to sit on it (either with or without a diaper).

When your child is ready, move the potty to the bathroom and when he/she is ready, sit them on the potty without a diaper. Schedule regular bathroom trips and offer praise for sitting there. You may have many unsuccessful trips to the bathroom before having success, but that’s OK. Be patient and consistent and praise them for sitting there and trying.

Be ready to get to the potty FAST. As soon as you see your child hide behind the chair, grunt, or make strange faces, get to the bathroom.

Use incentives. Praise and positive reinforcement is so important. After my son pees or poops on the potty, everyone in the house starts clapping and wooting. He loves it. Some children respond to stickers or sticker charts. It’s OK to use something to motivate your child.

Make sure all of your child’s caregivers follow a similar potty routine that you do. Both sets of grandparents have potty chairs at their house for Christopher to use when he is there, and we try to keep the same routine. Consistency is the key.

Above all else, remember accidents are unavoidable. They will happen, and when they do:

Remain calm. You may say something like, ” You didn’t get there in time this time, but next time you will get there sooner.”

Offer reminders, especially when they are playing. Often children will become absorbed in what they are doing, and always be prepared with changes of clothing and absorbant underwear.

Keep at it and don’t get discouraged. Before you know it, diapers will be a thing of the past.

Posted by Mally

We’re in the throes of deciding what do to in a couple years when our oldest will be kindergarten-age. Public? Private? Home school?

One option that is not available in these parts is an all-boys’ school, and that’s too bad. New research suggests that boys have been falling behind academically (particularly minority and economically disadvantaged boys) largely because the modern classroom and curricula tend to favor learning styles that are more common to females:

“The public schools teach to girls. You have to be able to follow the rules and color in the lines,” said Livermore parent Missy Davis, who moved her son, Collin, to the private, all-boys Pacific Boychoir Academy in Oakland after he struggled in coed public and parochial settings. “Boys get labeled immature and disrupting. (Teachers) don’t know how to utilize the energy.”

New brain scan and related research tends to back up the gender-specific learning styles theory:

— Males use more cortical areas of the brain for spatial and mechanical functioning, while females use more for words and emotions — meaning boys tend to benefit from hands-on learning, while girls are better auditory learners who write and use more words.
– Boys have less of the “calming chemical” serotonin and more testosterone, making them more fidgety, impulsive and competition-driven.
– Boys’ brains go more frequently into a “rest state,” leading to “zoning out” or moving around to try to stay focused.

And while some innovative teachers have found ways to help boys survive an environment that is apparently antithetical to learning for them (one teacher gave her students Koosh balls to play with and found they helped boys expend their extra energy in ways besides dunking some girl’s pigtail in the inkwell), I like the idea of the clean break. You don’t even need an all-boys’ or all-girls’ school to accomplish single-sex education, just segregated classes.

(more…)

Yesterday my sons had their first official swimming competition. They have been training for three years and swimming has become an important part of their lives. We got there early on Saturday. Everyone had dreams about the competition and everyone was very anxious about the day.

First it was my six-year-old. They called out his name, and I was a nervous wreck. He stood there. On line 3. So concentrated and so big! I couldn’t believe how big he has gotten. I was wondering if that handsome and tall boy was my kid. Apparently he is not a baby anymore. He stood there and when it was time to go he swam and swam. I screamed and screamed. He kept going and going. And after the longest minute of my life he got to the other side. He finished in first place and we were the proudest parents in the place.

Then it was my oldest son’s turn. Since he is older, he had more competition and more nerves. Suddenly they called out his name. He was standing in line 4 with another seven kids. Oh my God, that’s my baby! And then the announcer said: Ready, set, go! And off they went. He was swimming hard and was head to head with the boy next to him. When he was half way through I heard all the other parents on his team screaming: Manuel, Manuel! They were all cheering my son and I was speechless. Finally he got to the line and he won. Out of the 32 participants in this regional competition he won and made it to the finals. I saw his face and we screamed and hugged and jump. All at the same time.

They both came up and hugged my husband and me. Then my oldest looked at his father and said: “Daddy, Happy Father’s Day. This is my gift for you”.

We both looked at each other and realized that our baby was growing up.

Our house was a mess, we did not have time to pick up the laundry, I needed to buy some more Father’s Day gifts and my sons had a fight just before the competition. But you know what? These little moments are what makes parenthood a unique experience.

And for that I will always be grateful…

Posted by Momcrazyforkids.

Heelys, roller shoes so named because the wheel is in the heel.

Let me start by saying I do not like these shoes one bit. It’s not so much the concept of the shoe I don’t like, but the way they are used. Kids are heeling around in malls, on crowded sidewalks, restaurants, and near stairs. If I were to put on a pair of rollerblades in a mall, you can bet I would be asked to remove them. So why are these any different?

I have to admit, I am surprised it took so long for a report like this one to come out. In one year, nearly 1600 injuries and one death have been reportedly caused by these wheeling shoes.

With these new numbers, the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons has issued a recommendation of helmets, wristbands, and knee pads while wheeling around on these snazzy sneaks. I am willing to bet, however, most children will not heed these warnings.

The company, Texas based, is maintaining that the shoes have a better safety rating than skateboarding, inline skating, and swimming and did not comment on the new statistics.

Warnings or no warnings, I just wish kids would use a little more common courtesy when wheeling around in these shoes.

So, what do you think? Should Heelys be banned? Cast your vote.

Posted by Mally