You already know that your parenting style is either more permissive or more authoritarian than some of your friends’ styles. But did you know that your general approach to parenting could greatly influence your child’s diet and eating habits?

I’m not sure I ever really thought of it that way, but it makes sense. Extremely authoritarian parents probably don’t let their kids slide with eating half a chicken nugget and then moving along to dessert. Very permissive parents are less likely to stress a ton about what their kids eat, as long as they’re eating something. (Yes, I’m sure there are exceptions.)

Experts are now suggesting that neither extreme is particularly productive when it comes to instilling healthy eating habits in our children. Better is the authoritative parent — the one in the middle. She is more likely, they say, to have children who eat more balanced meals because she uses positive reinforcement and sets a good example with her own diet, which therefore lowers her children’s risk of childhood obesity.

Well, I have to admit that my diet isn’t the greatest in the world, and I probably err on the side of permissive parenting at times. Maybe if I crack down on my own eating habits, my children will eventually adopt those new, healthier standards as they get older?

In sum, the researchers conclude that that efforts to control childhood obesity need to consider family dynamics.

Posted by Sunshine.

At least one woman says it does. Hara Estroff Marano, editor-at-large of Psychology Today, claims that our heavily invasive parenting methods make life too easy for our children, who then don’t learn normal coping strategies. Then, she argues, when they do face problems down the road, they break down because they never learned to deal with the conflicts that arise in adult life.

From her book: Behold the wholly sanitized childhood, without skinned knees or the occasional C in history! Kids need to learn that you need to feel bad sometimes. We learn through experience, and we learn especially through bad experiences. Through disappointment and failure we learn how to cope.

She also states that parents rush to have their kids labeled so they can receive interventions instead of learning to work around issues, and that play is undervalued as a normal tool for social development (like learning self-control).

On that last point, we agree. The rest, I’m not so certain I buy. Yes, there are advantages to not giving your kid everything he wants; he learns patience and moderation. Disappointments are a normal part of life, and I don’t think kids should be shielded from every single one of them.

But I’d be a hypocrite if I didn’t admit that I don’t want to see my kids hurting, even if I know it’s a normal part of life. It’s hard not to jump in and immediately fix everything. And where do you draw the line?

Thoughts? Are we really screwing up our kids by being too involved?

Posted by Sunshine.

As my son will turn a year old this weekend, I’ve found myself reflecting back over this past year (what a year it was!). I think I learned at least as much from having two children as I did when I went through my first year with my daughter! So I thought that other moms of two might get a smile from some of the lessons I’ve learned so far, and hopefully they won’t scare any moms expecting their second child soon!

1. The tips and tricks you learned with your first child might not work at all with the second one. With my daughter, all I ever had to do to get her to stop doing something was to look sternly at her. My son has to be bodily removed from the situation. Things like that can be not-so-fun surprises, but it’s ok — you just invent new strategies, and then you have twice as many options for dealing with each kid!

2. Multitasking is your best friend. Don’t refill the sippy cup for one kid and then pop lunch for the second in the microwave. Get the microwave going, then fill the sippy in that 20-30 second window. It sounds stupid, but little timesavers like that can add up (and leave you not feeling quite so stressed by all of the little things that crop up when all you want to do is sit down and eat too).

3. The timing of milestones is just going to be different. There are a lot of factors at work. Boys and girls tend to mature differently and reach certain milestones at different times, for one thing. I also had to keep in mind, as my son did most things noticeably earlier than my daughter, that there was a month’s difference in their gestational ages at birth. He was born stronger.

4. You might have a favorite kid at any given moment — but it changes. I’m sorry to say it, but there are moments when I vastly prefer the company of one of my children over the other. Usually it’s whoever isn’t screaming or whining in my ear! It’s normal and it passes.

5. Yes, you can love each child as much as you loved your first when you only had one kid. And watching them interact (when they’re not trying to kill each other) is more than worth the rough moments.

Posted by Sunshine.

That’s not funky punctuation on my part. We Can! is a new national program designed to put the brakes on America’s rising obesity rates in children. We Can! (short for Ways to Enhance Children’s Activity and Nutrition) is a partnership between the National Institutes of Health and the Association of Children’s Museums.

This program focuses on several lifestyle changes (such as portion control and daily exercise routines) that, when accomplished together, can lead to much healthier weights for kids and an increased activity rate, both of which have enormous benefits across the board. Bad habits in childhood often stick with people right on into adulthood, and before you know it, you’re an overweight, sedentary adult with big health problems. The best time to curb unhealthy habits is during childhood, before they’re so deeply ingrained.

We Can! can be a model for overcoming the challenges of childhood obesity and overweight, [acting U.S. Surgeon General Rear Admiral Dr. Steven K.] Galson said. “Its partnerships are demonstrating how physical activity and sound lifestyle choices can make a difference and how communities can work together to make those lifestyle choices real,” he said.

We Can! is an education program to help children aged 8 to 13 years old to maintain a healthy weight. It’s being implemented in more than 450 communities in 44 states.

The newest cities in the program are Boston, Las Vegas, and Pittsburgh.

A full third of American adults are overweight. Let’s do something now so that our kids won’t follow in our too-heavy footsteps.

Posted by Sunshine.

The price of divorce. You might think that the current trend of having and raising children out or wedlock or from divorced families does not effect you, but it does. It effects every taxpaying American. Studies estimate that the cost to US taxpayers is about $112 billion a year. They are calling it “family fragmentation”, and these days, nearly 40% of children are born out of wedlock. What makes up the $112 billion?

“…calculations were based on the assumption that households headed by a single female have relatively high poverty rates, leading to higher spending on welfare, health care, criminal justice and education for those raised in the disadvantaged homes. The $112 billion estimate includes the cost of federal, state and local government programs, and lost tax revenue at all levels of government.”

The study was commissioned by 4 groups who are trying to encourage more traditional families, and would like to see government money going into programs that benefit married couples. Those with opposing views say that these marriage programs are a good idea but by themselves are not going to put a dent in the $112 billion amount, and think that creating more decent, stable jobs is the way forward.

What would you do… to save your child’s life? A couple in Canada are in the middle of a controversy because they are trying to conceive a child that is a genetic match to their existing child who is battling leukemia. They are wanting to do pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, where the embryo is tested to ensure a match before it is implanted. Canadian hospitals are unwilling to do this, so the couple will be traveling to America for the procedure. The father can see how it could raise ethical questions, but all they are trying to do is save the life of their child.

Where is it???? Nicole Kidman is in her seventh month of pregnancy… where is she hiding the baby? (ok…I admit to being a wee bit jealous!)

An interesting new study suggests that both a child’s temperament and the relative strength of the mother-child bond can affect the quality of conflicts (level of aggravation, for example) between moms and their two-year-olds, but had nothing to do with how often conflict arose.

Interactions between 60 mothers and their children were observed during two sessions — a 50-minute lab visit when the children were 30 months old, and a 90-minute home visit when the children were 36 months old. The Lehigh and University of California, Davis, researchers recorded details of all episodes of conflict, including whether mothers and children displayed compromise, justification or aggravation (simple insistence without explanation or threats), and whether there was a resolution.

In both sessions, mother-child conflict occurred an average of 20 times an hour, with a large degree of variation in frequency of conflict (from five to 55 times an hour) and the quality of conflict.

(Fifty-five times an hour?? And I thought my kid went on a button-pushing rampage some days!)

Researchers found that more active children who were less able to control their behavior had more instances of conflict than less active/more self-controlled kids. (Um, yeah…I have yet to meet a two-year-old with much self control.) Children who felt more secure in their relationship with Mom (mother’s availability and responsiveness, etc.) and their mothers were more likely to experience conflicts with adequate resolutions, not just “No, you can’t do that, end of story” and a subsequent fit. (Or is it that children whose mothers helped them find a compromise or helped them understand the reasons for a “no” feel more secure in their relationships with their mothers? Hmm…)

Posted by Sunshine.

My daughter is obsessed with Dora the Explorer. I mean, freaking obsessed. She’s not so keen on other things, like brushing her teeth, eating supper, etc.

A week or two ago, I had a sudden flash of insight. It might make me a bad mom, but what if I could take her obsession and twist it to my advantage? There was a bad storm that night, right as her bedtime rolled around. My sweet girl told me she was scared of the noise, so I lied through my teeth and told her it was Dora and Boots (Dora’s monkey companion, in case any of you have miraculously escaped watching this show) playing a ball game inside their house. The noise was the ball hitting the wall.

Oh, and if she saw any flashes of light, that was just Dora’s mommy taking pictures of their game.

I felt kind of like a heel for lying to my daughter, but she got into bed and went to sleep with no tears.

Since then, I’ve tried the Dora tactic with other things. Of course any respectable kid-idolized character would, say, let her mom brush her teeth and hair after a bath, right? And I’m sure Dora eats her fruit and veggies and actually lets her mom wash her character-themed sheets (if Dora had Dora sheets, that would be weird though) without screaming and crying for a solid half hour over it…you get the idea.

It’s not that I press her to do things because “Dora does it” — she’ll get peer pressure soon enough without that!, but rather, when she does something the first time I ask her to, I tell her she’s a good helper just like Dora. It might not work out so great long-term, but right now that Dora obsession is responsible for a lot fewer battles in my day.

Gracias, Dora!

Posted by Sunshine.

Who do you save for? Your children’s college education, or your own retirement? This is a topic that is on many adults’ minds these days. It used to be that responsible parents put away money to (help) pay for their children’s continuing education. But these days some financial advisors are saying “whoa there, you need to look out for yourself in your golden years.”

The reality is, a lot of benefits you may be expecting when you become a senior citizen just night not be there. And one of them is employment subsidized healthcare. Fidelity has been doing an annual survey, and they estimate that a couple retiring this year (65 years old) will need to have $225,000 saved only to pay for health requirements during their retirement. That assumes they do not have employment subsidies and this is the amount over what Medicare will contribute.

So now a lot more parents are putting less into college savings. Many themselves did not have assistance and they figure “where there is a will there is a way” and their children can be motivated to find funding themselves if going to college is their goal.

There is nothing wrong with looking out for number one - yourself. That does not make you a bad parent. And if you can take care of yourself, it is one less thing your child will have to think about when you are getting older. So, tell them you are doing them a favor, they just don’t realize it yet.

I think of myself as a bit of a safety-obsessive, so imagine my chagrin when I happened upon an article in a recent Good Housekeeping and learned that I didn’t know squat about how to safely use nonstick pans. I didn’t even know there was an unsafe way, outside of chipping off the coating with metal spoons.

If you’re as clueless as I was, here’s the dope: Nonstick cookware is safe, experts note, so long as they’re not overheated.

“There’s a whole chemistry set of compounds that will come off when Teflon is heated high enough to decompose,” says [chemistry professor and Teflon expert Robert L.] Wolke. “Many of these are fluorine-containing compounds, which as a class are generally toxic.” But fluoropolymers, the chemicals from which these toxic compounds come, are a big part of the coating formula — and the very reason that foods don’t stick to nonstick.

If the danger begins when pans overheat, then how hot is too hot? “At temperatures above 500ºF, the breakdown begins and smaller chemical fragments are released,” explains Kurunthachalam Kannan, Ph.D., an environmental toxicologist at the New York State Department of Health’s Wadsworth Center. DuPont, inventor and manufacturer of Teflon, agrees that 500 degrees is the recommended maximum for cooking.

The problem is, it’s very easy to get your pans to the “too hot” state. In Good Housekeeping tests, a lightweight pan hit 514 degrees after 2 and 1/2 minutes of preheating two tablespoons of oil on high. And at very high temperatures, above 660 degrees, nonstick cookware can even start to give off fumes that can induce a flu-like illness in people (and can kill pet birds).

So how do you keep the chemicals out of your food and air? Some tips:

• Never preheat an empty pan (and even preheating a pan with oil in it can be risky).
• Don’t cook on high heat when using nonstick pans. Go no higher than medium.
• Ventilate your kitchen when cooking to clear fumes.
• Don’t broil or sear meats in nonstick cookware.
• When buying nonstick pans, choose heavier models, which are less likely to overheat.
• Don’t use metal utensils that can chip the nonstick surface.

I’m sticking (so to speak) with my Teflon pans for pancakes and bakeware, but I’ve decided to save up for some good quality uncoated pans for when sticking is more or less a non-issue. In the meantime, it took me about a week to break the habit of turning the burner to high when cooking with nonstick, but now I’ve got it down pretty much. It takes longer to cook on medium, but sacrificing a little convenience to keep my family safe is a no-brainer.

Happy - and safe - cooking!

Posted by MommaSteph.

No, that’s not some plea for dirty comments.

The ’sex talk’ I mean is the ‘birds and bees’ conversation of old. You know, The Moment when you tell your kids where babies really come from, and how they get there. A new study shows that the big talk should really be more of an ongoing discussion.

“It’s important that parents set a foundation early on in talking with their kids about sex so that it becomes part of the norm in their household,” said study lead author Steven Martino, a behavioral scientist at RAND in Pittsburgh. “As children grow and have experiences, you want them to feel it’s natural to talk to their parents. When asked where they’d like to get their information, kids say from their parents more than anyone else.”

I don’t remember feeling that way as a teen. Hmm.

The study followed hundreds of teens and their parents. The families were divided into two groups. One group of parents completed a course in how to keep a discourse on sex and related topics open with your child; the other group did not.

Follow-up surveys were completed at one week, three months and nine months after the intervention began. The surveys were designed to assess 22 sex-related topics, such as the consequences of sex, how to make decisions about when to have sex, how to say no if you didn’t want to have sex, how well condoms prevent sexually transmitted diseases, and more.

[W]hen teens and their parents had more conversations — repetition — teens reported feeling closer to their parents and felt they could talk more openly with their parents about sex and other topics.

Go figure - the more you talk about something, the less taboo it becomes.

While I obviously haven’t been a parent long enough to encounter this situation, I can’t imagine making sex as closed-off a topic as it was during my adolescence. My parents basically told me, “Don’t do it before you’re married - premarital sex is a sin,” and left it at that. I didn’t follow their advice, such as it was, and I hope I can create a more informative, open atmosphere for conversations on sex when my kids are old enough to be curious. I’d love to not have to think about my kids having sex until they’re 40, but since that’s not rational, I’d still rather them come to me than shut me out.

Posted by Sunshine.