Source: Real Simple

I'm really behind on my Halloween preparations. I still have to pick up a costume for Jake, who will be trick-or-treating at his daycare as well as around our neighborhood. He hasn't warmed up to candy yet, but it won't be long before I'll have to limit his sugar consumption.

To avoid the hazards of sugar on our children's teeth, husband-and-wife dentists Drs. Kapil and Vidhima Davar of Bel Air Pediatric Dentistry have some tips for parents:

This Halloween, your firemen, ballerinas and superheroes will return with bags of candy eager to gnaw on their hard-won Snickers bars, Skittles and candy corn. The list of Halloween candy can be endless – as can the dangers sweets can cause to your children’s teeth.

When plaque, a thin film of bacteria on teeth and gums, mixes with sugar, an acid forms that attacks the teeth. Over time, the acid can break down tooth enamel and cause tooth decay. But parents can protect their children and enjoy Halloween safely.

Limit how much Halloween candy your children eat. Serve them a healthy meal before trick-or-treating, so they’re not hungry when they return. Store candy in a room other than your children’s bedroom, so it’s less tempting. Offer them healthier snacks like trail mix and raisins instead of sugary candy.

Serve Halloween candy during meals. Increased saliva production and other foods will help naturally wash away sugary candy particles and reduce the risk of tooth decay.

Offer your children sugarless gum after they enjoy their candy. Sugarless gum, approved by the American Dental Association, increases saliva production and helps wash away candy particles.

Practice good oral hygiene, including brushing twice daily and flossing once daily.

Visit your child’s pediatric dentist for regular checkups. Pediatric dentists have specialized training and experience caring specifically for children’s teeth.

Your children can enjoy the spoils of trick-or-treating without the dangers of tooth decay. You can help them enjoy Halloween candy in moderation while continuing good oral hygiene and regular dental checkups.

Posted by Hanah Cho at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Health, Holidays
        

Here's Liz Atwood with this week's Tween Tuesday

Don’t you hate it when kids don’t listen? Lately I’m worried more about the kids not hearing. Both of my boys have taken to spending a lot of time with their iPod earbuds stuck in the ears. Part of the reason is they have different tastes in music so when we’re traveling they will listen to their iPods rather than listen to the radio. Another reason seems to be they abhor the sound of silence, so when they are reading or doing their homework they are listening to their iPods. And I’m sure at least one of the reasons they seem to always have cords dangling from their ears is they don’t want to listen to me.

But there is clear evidence that listening to music that is too loud or played for too long can damage one’s hearing. An article in the Journal of the American Medical Association last year found that 1 in 5 adolescents has some hearing loss and that listening to portable music players is partly to blame. According to the Hearing Loss Association of America, if you can hear the music while standing next to your child who is listening to a portable music player, he probably has the music turned too loud. Over time, a child suffers hearing loss and will crank the volume even higher.

One rule of thumb is to limit exposure to less than an hour and to keep the music volume so the listener can still hear someone talking three feet away. Now if I can just get my kids to listen so they will still be able to hear.

Posted by Hanah Cho at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Teens
        

New and veteran parents alike are inundated with do's and don't's from medical professionals, other moms and dads, in-laws, friends, the list goes on and on.

The latest comes from the American Academy of Pediatrics, whose doctors are urging again that parents should limit television watching for infants and toddlers under 2. According to the New York Times:

Video screen time provides no educational benefits for children under age 2 and leaves less room for activities that do, like interacting with other people and playing, the group said.

The recommendation, announced at the group’s annual convention in Boston, is less stringent than its first such warning, in 1999, which called on parents of young children to all but ban television watching for children under 2 and to fill out a “media history” for doctor’s office visits. But it also makes clear that there is no such thing as an educational program for such young children, and that leaving the TV on as background noise, as many households do, distracts both children and adults.

Jake, who's now 22 months old, has his favorite shows: Phineas and Ferb, Diego and Dora. We try to limit his television watching to about an hour a day but I'll admit it: it would be impractical for me to turn the television and computer off entirely.

Every family is different. What rules have you set on television watching or any other uses of computers and hand-held devices like smartphones and iPads?

Posted by Hanah Cho at 10:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Parenting in general
        

Here's Liz Atwood with this week's Tween Tuesday

Most of the time, I’m trying to get my boys to put down the video games and log off the computers and connect with the real world. But I recently came across a tween website that your kids may enjoy. Called Kidsvuz the site is designed to let tweens share videos and reviews of toys, books, games and shows.

Two mom bloggers, Rebecca Levey and Nancy Friedman, came up the idea as a way to give kids a safe and easy place to share their views on everything from Harry Potter books to Ugg sneakers. The site launched earlier this month and is monitored by a panel of parents.
Kidsvuz includes:

• An integrated webcam so kids can record their videos while they sit at their computers
• A film school that teaches kids how to make videos
• Social media features that lets kids create communities based on shared interests

If kids are going to spend time in front of the screen, it makes sense that they do so with a site that is safe and challenges them to think a little.

Posted by Hanah Cho at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Teens
        

Here's Liz Atwood with this week's Tween Tuesday

Halloween is less than three weeks away, but you wouldn’t know it at my house. Sadly, it seems, the kids really are growing up. The boys haven’t asked to put up decorations or visit a pumpkin farm or even go to the party store for costumes. The fifth grader seemed ready to take a pass on trick-or-treating altogether until he learned that his dentist was giving $1 for every pound of candy his patients turn in. Now the kid sees the chance to make money and vows to stay out until midnight collecting as much candy as he can. The older one, who is 15, gave up trick-or-treating a couple years ago, but a girl he likes is going and I’m sure she could persuade him to join her.

It all feels so strange. In the houses where the kids are still small, they have the pumpkins out and the decorations in the yard. I recall how much effort I used to put into the holiday. When my older son was small, I made his Halloween costumes. The first was a bunny outfit (think Christmas Story) and then a bear outfit. By the time he started pre-school he would have nothing to do with homemade costumes and so we started on to the action figures, vampires and ghouls. I used to spend a fortune on decorations.

Now our house looks plain. It looks like “old” people live there.

In the spring, we gave up the Easter egg hunt. Trick-or-treating is looking pretty iffy. These holidays really do feel different when the kids start to grow up.

UPDATE (11:06 a.m.) Click here for a guide of Halloween activities.
Or if you want to search by location, go here.

Posted by Hanah Cho at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Holidays, Teens
        

The cover of the latest New York magazine shows a naked woman, strategically holding her pregnant belly.

That image has been done before ala Demi Moore's infamous Vanity Fair cover. But what's jarring is that the woman looks like a grandmother. The tagline reads: Is she just too old for this?

The article is long but I highly recommend it. It touches upon some issues we've discussed here.

When are you too old to have a baby? Why are women delaying parenthood? Is there ageism involved? Does biology determine our maternal fate?

Has reproductive technology helped women or opened a Pandora's box so to speak? Are older pregnancies only available for women with the financial means?

Here are some interesting facts that the author Lisa Miller points out:

The age of first motherhood is rising all over the West. In Italy, Germany, and Great Britain, it’s 30. In the U.S., it’s gone up to 25 from 21 since 1970, and in New York State, it’s even higher, at 27. But among the extremely middle-aged, births aren’t just inching up. They are booming. In 2008, the most recent year for which detailed data are available, about 8,000 babies were born to women 45 or older, more than double the number in 1997, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Five hundred and forty-one of these were born to women age 50 or older -- a 375 percent increase. In adoption, the story is the same. Nearly a quarter of adopted children in the U.S. have parents more than 45 years older than they are.

The baby-having drive in this set is so strong it’s recessionproof. Since 2008, birthrates among women overall have declined 4 percent, as families put childbearing on hold while they ride out hard times. But among women over 40, birthrates have increased. Among women ages 45 to 49, they’ve risen 17 percent.

Almost all my friends had their first child in their early- to mid-30s. So, I think many women can relate to the rationale offered by the older mothers interviewed in the story: They wanted to get settled in their careers, be financially stable, find the right man first, etc. Even now, at 33, I am still trying to figure things out: career, family, marriage, where to live, whether to buy a house, on and on.

But I have to admit that it was a little off-putting to read about women in their 50s getting pregnant because of reproductive technologies that make that possible.

I think of my parents who are approaching their 70s and wonder how long they'll be able to see Jake grow up. Imagine becoming a parent in your 50s and you'll be nearly 70 by the time your first child is off to college. Older parents in the article acknowledge that they may not be around when their children are adults based on the math.

The author addresses the arguments against old parents:

They rest on the assertion that people above a certain externally imposed cutoff should not have children because it is not natural—and nature is a historically terrible arbiter of personal choice. American states used to legislate against interracial couples on the basis that miscegenation was “unnatural.” Some conservatives continue to fight gay marriage and gay parenthood on the grounds that homosexuality is “unnatural.” Broad-minded people see these critiques for what they are: bias and personal distaste hiding behind an idea of natural law. And yet some of these same broad-minded people still feel comfortable using chronological age to sort the suitable potential parents from the unsuitable. That’s because those judgments, and the backlash they’re fueling, are a product of ageism, the last form of prejudice acceptable in the liberal sphere. Sitting so ostentatiously on the boundary between “youth” and “age,” 50-year-olds threaten an image we hold of good parents (i.e., the handsome, glossy-haired ones depicted in the house-paint ads). By acting young when they’re supposed to be old, they cause discomfort for the people around them. Parents like Kate Garros have felt this all too acutely. “If you don’t meet people’s expectations of what a mother looks like, they can’t hack it,” she told me.

Perhaps, at the end of the day, we should accept individual choice. If you have the means and could conceive when you feel you are ready and you happen to be in your 50s, well, then congratulations?

Posted by Hanah Cho at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Expecting, Parenting in general
        

Are you buying less diapers or trading down to cut costs?

A recent story by the Wall Street Journal points out that the volume of diapers sold in the U.S. fell 1 percent in the four weeks ending Sept. 4 from a year earlier.

Here's an excerpt:

Dollar sales fell nearly 3 percent, indicating parents are both cutting back and trading down to cheaper private labels.

Dollar sales of diapers in the four weeks fell 4 percent at Huggies maker Kimberly-Clark Corp. Procter & Gamble, maker of Pampers and Luvs, saw dollar sales drop 2.5 percent. Even generics were down, with sales of private-label diapers slipping 0.5 percent.

Consumer Edge Research analyst Javier Escalante says "this has never happened in this country before -- this is a very rare circumstance," and adds that the fact that people are having fewer babies is itself a strong indicator that the economy is influencing parental behavior. "That's a huge decision," says Escalante.

The WSJ makes an interesting connection between slowing diaper sales and the uptick in diaper rash ointment purchases. Analysts and pediatricians tell the paper that "the higher sales likely reflect either less frequent changes or a shift to lower quality diapers."

If you keep reading, you'll discover the fine print:

Still, there are reasons to approach the data cautiously. The U.S. birth rate has declined since 2007, and it isn't clear how much of the drop in diaper buying is due to penny pinching and how much results from fewer kids. Changing technology -- more absorbent diapers, for example -- also make comparisons difficult. Finally, the cohort being surveyed is always changing because parents buy diapers for a few years and then move on.

Okay. Given that the data seems squishy and the reasons for the sales decline unclear, does the story seem odd to you?

Maybe I missed it, but the story doesn't mention that parents are using cloth diapers, which could account for lesser sales.

What do you think?

Posted by Hanah Cho at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)
Categories: Babies and Toddlers, Parenting in general
        

Here's Liz Atwood with this week's Tween Tuesday

Here are three words I’d like to ban from my house: “I don’t care.”

Those words, and the shorter variant, “Who cares?” are the responses my kids give me when I tell them it’s time to do their homework or do their chores. It is their response when I start to nag them about picking their clothes off the floor or cleaning up their dishes.

“It’s time to walk the dog,” I say. “I don’t care,” they answer. “You need to make your bed,” I say. “Who cares?” is the reply.

Let’s face it, it’s hard to live with tweens and teens sometimes. But it helps knowing that my kids aren’t the only ones with a mouth. Here are some good suggestions from Parenting.com on how to fix that rude tween behavior.

Posted by Hanah Cho at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Teens