I have never been a girly-girl. I used to be a tomboy, and even now I’m drawn to plain shirts and comfortable jeans more than cute skirts and more feminine blouses.

With my daughter, however, it’s a totally different world. I dress her in pink - a lot of pink! - and at least half of her spring/summer wardrobe consists of dresses. She has as many skirts as she does shorts, and lace, ribbons, and frilly bows show up as often as I can make that happen.

My family doesn’t understand this at all. To tell the truth, sometimes I don’t understand it either. Why am I not drawn to dress her as I dress myself? It’s not some deep-seated need to live a girly life vicariously through her; my grandmother and mom would have been only too happy to dress me that way if it had ever been what I wanted! And it’s not that I think that dressing her the way I do is the only way to present her beautifully; she is beautiful no matter what she wears or whether there’s dirt on her face and yogurt in her hair.

I suppose it’s partly for practical reasons that my little girl wears so many dresses. In the summertime, it’s the coolest option other than letting her go naked, which might not go over so well at the mall or the grocery store.

I do dress her in pants or shorts and a shirt for playground trips and other places where she might do a lot of playing instead of just walking or riding, and I’ll respect her wishes if the time comes when she doesn’t want to dress like a pint-sized princess. For now, though, I’ll let her wear lacy dresses and big bows, and love every minute of it.

Let’s face it: There’s just something sweet about a happy little girl twirling around in a pretty dress.

Moms of girls, do you dress your young daughter(s) the same way you were dressed as a child? Do you dress her more/less girly based on her personality, or on other factors?

Posted by Sunshine.

The vast majority of us might describe our lives as hectic on any given day. Many of us barely see some of our family members on certain days, much less sit down at a table for a meal with them, especially during sports seasons and academic crunches.

Here’s a sound reason to clear those schedules and plop everyone down together for supper: New findings from a recent study suggest that adolescent girls who sit down with their families for at least five meals a week may be less likely to develop eating disorders.

Makes sense to me…as long as the family is enforcing positive eating habits and the mealtime environment is a pleasant one (that doesn’t include parents saying things like, “Are you eating another biscuit? Your jeans won’t fit tomorrow!” at the table - and yes, I had friends in high school whose parents said those things). We can bolster our girls’ self-confidence and help them embrace a healthy body weight, and apparently sitting down at the table with them is a great way to do that.

The study is unclear as to exactly why family meals may help girls stay away from eating disorders, but does it really matter after a certain point? Mealtime together is important in so many other ways - it’s a chance to reconnect, to let everyone unwind after a busy day or before a big event. My household could stand a few more of those family meals, and even though my kids are pretty small, I think I’ll go ahead and work on that so that by the time my daughter enters those fragile self-esteem years, it’ll be a routine she can look forward to, a bit of stability in the everyday rush.

Posted by Sunshine.

Important FDA notification out today: The FDA is expected to issue a warning telling parents not to give any cold medicines to children under two years old “because serious and potentially life-threatening side effects can occur.” We first heard about this last fall, when there was a recommendation not to give medicines to children under six, however today’s announcement is the first time the government is ruling on this, as there are fears that parents did not take the previous warning seriously enough. So please, have a look in your medicine cabinet and safely dispose of these medicines.

Girls can face prejudice in college applications. Recently, I wrote about how girls are outperforming boys in school. Well, this is turning into a negative thing when it comes to applying for college. Some colleges admit to accepting boys of lesser qualifications than their girl counterparts only to keep enrollment somewhat equal in the schools. NBC has an interesting series, The Truth About Boys & Girls, and in one of their most recent segments they speak about this. I imagine a lot of girls are not happy, and personally (from a female POV) I don’t like this and would be disappointed if someday my daughter did not get accepted to a college for this reason. Likewise, I would not want my son to be accepted if he did not have the real qualifications required.

I remember years back when I applied to school and I was filling out the forms where they ask a lot of personal information. I remember being frustrated that some minorities were being accepted with lower scores so that schools can meet their quotas, and I am thinking that this is not too much different than that. However, it is really disappointing to know that you had what it takes to get into your school of choice, but it didn’t work out due to reasons out of your control. If this happens to my daughters, I am going to offer up some good ole “mom advice” that everything happens for a reason and sometimes we don’t understand why, but we just need to have faith that it will all work out well in the end.”

Precocious puberty. Precocious puberty is when girls under the age of ten years old begin puberty due to an estrogen imbalance. It is now thought that nearly 10% of all girls might be impacted. In the most extreme of cases, it has been noted in little girls as young as three years old. In the more extreme cases, this can be treated to allow the girl to develop at a relatively normal age, however for many they are faced with some awkward years at a young age.

I have heard other mommy friends make the occasional comment like “girls should not eat Chicken McNuggets because the hormones injected into the chicken meat can make girls enter into early puberty” and I always thought that was silly, but now I wonder if there is some truth to this. Is it possible that genetically modified meats and produce are harming our children? I attempted to do some googling on the topic, but most articles I saw were biased towards a certain agenda, so I am just not sure what to believe. In any case, back to topic. If you have concerns about your own daughter, please raise them with your doctor.

A seven year old life saver! When seven year old Ben Mathensia saw a classmate choking on a plastic toy figurine, he used his smarts to give the boy the heimlich maneuver, saving the boys life. I never thought to teach my children this at such a young age. This is inspirational and you bet my kids are going to be enrolled in an age-appropriate first aid course!

New celebrity mommy’s. Both Nicole Richie and Christina Aguilara gave birth one day apart in the same hospital. Nicole is proud momma to a baby girl, Harlow Winter Kate Madden, while Christina named her little boy Max Liron Bratman.

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!

Changing advice for childrens allergies. Doctors are changing their recommendations for childrens allergies. It used to be that they thought children’s allergies could be avoided by avoiding certain foods during pregnancy, drinking soy milk, or delaying solid food until after 6 month of age. Not any more. Pretty much the only advice that still holds true is that breast feeding does appear to prevent children’s allergies. As for the others, there is no scientific evidence to prove that they work.

Another good reason to eat together as a family. Studies show that girls who regularly eat meals with their families are less likely to have eating disorders. The same does not hold true for boys. Researchers are not sure why there is a gender difference, but speculate that this could be a result of girls being more influenced by interpersonal and familial relationships present at family meals, or perhaps that they are more involved in the food preparation process.

Poor piggies! Scientists in China have successfully bred florescent green piglets. These were born from a mother who was injected with this. Scientists are all happy because they now think they can breed special pigs, and especially ones that are suitable for human organ transplants. Honestly, this kind of creeps me out. I am still not sure how I feel about all of these amazing medical advances. On one side it sees like a great thing to cure all of these strange diseases, but the other side of me wonders if we wouldn’t have all these strange diseases if we weren’t constantly destroying our environments with all of the chemicals we produce in the first place? I mean, florescent green chemically altered pigs doesn’t seem too healthy now, does it?

Elective C-sections gain popularity. It seems as though this is a topic that a women usually have a very passionate stance about - one way or the other. Some wonder why in the world a woman would actually elect to have a C-section over a vaginal birth, others consider it a perfectly acceptable way to give birth and wonder why everyone else, stranger or not, feels free to weigh in (and often criticize) their personal decision to have this elective surgery.

The safest way to give birth is an uncomplicated vaginal delivery. The problem is, that is an impossible thing to predict in advance. More and more women these days are electing to have a C-section, even first time mothers with no previous birthing experience. Doctors are not sure why this is gaining in popularity. As the rate of elective C-sections has increased, so has the rate of maternal mortality. At least it has in 2003 and 2004, data from 2005 and onwards is not yet available. But it has not been proven that the maternal mortality rate is linked to the increase in C-sections.

Doctors and researchers would really like to figure this out and have a factual basis to the question “which one is safer”, however structuring how to research this as an unbiased test proves very difficult - it basically would amount to a large group of women agreeing to being randomly chosen to give birth either vaginally or by C-section.

My bet is that this will remain the topic of heated discussion for years to come - research will not change women’s passion regarding this. In the end, it is the woman’s body and her individual choice as to her birthing plan. So please be supportive of your friends and loved ones no matter what they decide!

A girls self-esteem impacts her chances of obesity. A study shows that girls who consider themselves to be “popular” gain less weight as they grow up then those who consider themselves “unpopular”. What is interesting is that researchers now see that a girl’s perceived social status is not just something she can grow out of as she grows up, it can as well have future health impacts. On a somewhat related note, studies have shown that obese girls also more likely to avoid going to college. Having a tween daughter myself, I am always hopeful that she will not grow up to be one of those uber-popular girls a-la the “Mean Girls” movie. But I do hope to instill in her a healthy dose of self-esteem, and I hope that her teen years aren’t too dramatic. Time will tell…

Is she or isn’t she? She IS! Nicole Kidman’s publicist just announced that the actress and her husband, Keith Urban, are expecting their first child later this year. See, I told ya so! *wink*

Is a sperm-donor a father? The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania recently decided this is not necessarily the case. A woman asked a man she knew to be the sperm donor so that she could conceive a child. The woman agreed that this was a sperm donation only and that the donor would have no financial responsibility nor would he have any visitation rights. Well, after that she decided otherwise and took him to court to grab his cash.

Lower courts decided that he should pay, and he was ordered to pay more than $60,000 in back support. The recent PA Supreme Court decision overturns this, favoring donor’s rights.

“Where a would-be donor cannot trust that he is safe from a future support action, he will be considerably less likely to provide his sperm to a friend or acquaintance who asks, significantly limiting a would-be mother’s reproductive prerogatives,” Justice Max Baer wrote in the majority opinion issued last week.

What they didn’t tell you about the HPV vaccination. It is turning out to be the most painful of childhood vaccinations, and girls are actually fainting from it. Girls are complaining it burns when the liquid goes in and their arm is sore the next day. Ok, that’s not so bad, and to prevent cancer and disease a moment of discomfort does not seem unreasonable. I remember as a kid there were some shots that hurt my arm for a few days after (perhaps it was the smallpox shot… yes I am that old!) Perhaps this vaccine is getting a bit more bad press because of the initial controversy surrounding it?

Rock bottom. Police were called to Britney Spears home where there was a 4 hour custody standoff ending with KFed taking the kids and Britney being taken off in an ambulance. Those poor little boys. Let’s hope they are taking her away somewhere safe for a looooonnnggg time so she can get the help she obviously needs.

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.