Parenting Children

Today, Friday May 25th is National Missing Children’s day. Every day children in this country goes missing. I know we all think of missing children as abducted by a stranger but parental abduction is the leading cause of missing children accounting for over 78% of all child abductions.

This Friday lets all strive to keep the children in our lives safe. Get a free missing child care kit, for the worst case scenario this information in a safe place may help police locate your child.

Teens and tweens are not altogether safe either, get a free internet safety kit.
Half of teens 13-18 have communicated online with someone they have never met.
One third have talked about meeting in person someone they only know online.
One in 10 have learned that someone communicating with them online was an adult pretending to be much younger.

Talk to your children about strangers, about how to dial 911 in an emergency and to trust their instincts about adults.

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On Tuesday a mother gave birth to twins at Hackensack University Hospital. So? Even I did that, at that very hospital.
This birth will go into the record books though because the mom was 60 years old!

60 year old Frieda Birnbaum gave birth to twin boys via caesarean section is the oldest woman to give birth to twins in the United States.
She has three other children ranging in ages from six to thirty three years old.
She says she is wonderful and her boys are doing very well.

What do you think of being a mom again, to twins no less at 60 years old?

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According to the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA) pregnant women who are on bed rest can and should be doing some low impact, approved exercises.

Each year in the US an estimated 700,000 woman are put on bed rest. This can be physically and emotionally not ready for the upcoming birth of their child and postpartum.

A physical therapist out of the University of South Alabama has designed some exercises that she thinks can and should be done from the bed and helps minimize the loss of muscle tone and strength.
It is also helping pregnant women be as comfortable as possible.

Remember to enter my photo contest and win one of five free pro memberships to greetingflix.com!

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This week in New Jersey, a two and a half year old girl was killed when a 27 inch television fell on her head. I just remember hearing a similar story late last year out of New York.

Sadly this happens every year in this country. There are no national numbers for fatalities from falling televisions, but in 2005, U.S. emergency-room doctors treated 2,600 children younger than 5 injured by falling televisions, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.

With televisions getting bigger and placed in reach of children, the dangers also grow. The majority of the weight of a television is in the front and if placed on an unstable surface or not secured, there is a potential for disaster.

The right thing to do is never leave your child unattended in a room. the mother in the case in NJ, left the child to go to an adjacent room to change a diaper. Also, go around your house and make sure everything is child proofed.
Hold your kids close tonight.

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Asthma is the most common chronic illness in children. Over 9 million children suffer from asthma in the United States. Just ask me, I was diagnosed with asthma when I was seven years old.
If not properly diagnosed and treated asthma can me life threatening.

An asthma episode is a series of events that results in narrowed airways and there are various things that trigger an asthma attack and each child reacts differently to the factors that may trigger asthma, including:
illnesses, exercise, stress
allergic reactions to allergens such as feathers, pollen, mold spores, animal dander, dust,and cockroaches
cigarette smoke (second hand smoke)
(more…)

The New York Times reports that after many years of progress, the infant mortality rates in Mississippi and other southern states have started to increase.

Mississippi’s infant mortality rate is particularly concerning. Between 2004 and 2005 it jumped from an average of 9.7 deaths of babies per 1,000 to 11.4. And while the infant death rate increased for both whites and blacks, it was dramatically higher among blacks, the newspaper said.
What is partly responsible is the fact that African Americans are more likely to have diabetes then any other race, although Hispanics are reaching record numbers. Also the fact that hypertension, obesity and little to no prenatal care is an epidemic throughout poverty stricken areas, the south included.
The other states that had rises in 2005 (the last known mortality statistics) included South Carolina, North Carolina, Alabama, Louisiana and Tennessee.

Researchers say that diet and poverty go hand-in-hand in causing the infant mortality increase. We know that childhood obesity is on the rise in our country, along with the rise of obesity in adults.

Other factors in the death toll include premature births, low birth weights, SIDS, birth defects, congenital defects, accidents and disease.

What can we do to change this? There is only one thing to do, educate the people in these povertiy stricken communities where there are no outreach programs. Bus social workers and nurses into these areas to help the women who do not have transportation or cannot afford to travel to the nearest clinic weekly.
If the answer is so simple, why isn’t it being done?
Money.
These programs need money, volunteers and resources and the sad fact is, that the poor women and children of this country come last.

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In two separate shootings on a Virginia Tech Campus around 9am today, left as many as thirty one people are dead including the gunman. There were also many more injured and the authorities are looking into whether the gunman was killed by his own hand.
The scene was described as “mayhem” as students and police were running through campus, two students even climbed out of windows to get out of the shoot up.

The first reported shooting occurred at West Ambler Johnston Hall, a co-ed dormitory that houses 895 students. The second shooting was in a classroom.

What leads our children to kill each other. What are we doing as parents, or as a society to make children feel that taking revenge my not only killing themselves but other classmates, teachers, faculty and friends is the answer?
Is this the legacy of Columbine? Is it due to the increase of bullying or the availability to firearms in combination with lax parenting?
How can we save our children?

Any reasoning you give it, the answer is still the same, it is a terrible tragedy. It is the deadliest school shooting in US history.
All of the students and parents are in my prayers today, not only as a mother but as a human being.

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The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation plans to spend $500 million dollars to help eradicate childhood obesity in the United States.
Obesity among children is now an epidemic with 25 million kids under the age of 17 obese.

It is not only the ridicule these children endure on a daily basis because of their weight, it also comes with many health risks usually only seen in adults like high cholesterol, type II diabetes, heart disease and the fact that many are going to die young because of these factors.

Factors that can lead some child to become obese are overweight or obese parents, low physical activity, live in low income, urban areas and
heredity.

Prevention not treatment is the best way to fight childhood obesity. Education of pregnant mothers on diet, food groups and exercise and I think, programs that can take these women to grocery stores and show them how to shop on a limited budget. Physical Education needs to be mandatory in all schools for kids. Schools need to have a better balanced meal plans for students. Computer, video games and television times have to be monitored.

This funding from The Robert Wood Foundation I hope will tackle some of these issues and help, but more help is needed. What do you think we can do to eradicate this problem with our children?

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I think compared to most kids our children do not watch a lot of television. They do watch TV in the morning after they wake up and they may watch one show in the afternoon after a nap. I have shows that I like them to watch and others that I do not. They also rarely watch live television. I TiVo the shows I like on Noggin, which doesn’t have commercials during the show. They also love shows on PBS, no commercials for the golden arches or silly Barbie dolls there either.

According to the Washington Post, a new study done on commercials in 2005 found that “Food is the number one product advertised to kids, followed by media such as music, video games and movies”.
You know what kind of food they are talking about, it is not fruits and vegetables.

The study found that 8-to-12-year-old children see the most food commercials, an average of 21 a day which is 7,600 ads per year, 13 to 17 years old viewed 17 food ads a day, an annual total of more than 6,000 and kids ages 2 to 7, saw 12 food ads per day, or 4,400 a year.
That is a lot of candy, snacks and fast food ads.

After food, the most common products in televisions ads aimed at children and teens were music, video games and movies.

We know advertisers love teens and kids. They want the cereal box with the toy inside, they love the toys from their favorite movies and have you seen the gummy snacks lately? Every box is another character from Cinderella, to Spiderman to Animal Planet.
Don’t even get me started on the cereal aisle.

It is bad enough that they come home from preschool and ask me for all of the things they never knew existed that their friends had like yogos, or gummy snacks.
This study made me realize that I will be taping our kids shows and skipping the commercials for a long time to come!

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There is a new study out that says pregnant woman who eat meat at least six or seven times a week, may produce sons who have a lower sperm count.
The reason isn’t clear but they do think it has to do with the pesticides, hormones and chemicals found in beef and they are affecting the testes of the male babies while in the womb.

There are six different anabolic hormones that are used in cattle in the US and Canada, three are synthetic and three are natural. All of these have been banned from use in cattle in Europe in 1988.

The women, who ate at meat at least seven times a week, had sperm concentrations 24.3 percent lower then sons whose mothers did not that much beef. They were still fertile, but may take longer to conceive a child.

I am not sure what to think of this study. When I first read it, I thought to myself “It is always something, don’t eat big fish, no sushi, beware of deli meats and no soft cheese!” What should you eat when you are pregnant?
Any regular readers of this blog will know how I feel about organic foods. When I was pregnant I know I watched what I ate, other moms I knew ate whatever they felt like.
I know I did have aversions to meat and chicken and did not eat much of those my entire pregnancy.
I also think pregnant women need protein but there are many different ways to get protein then from meat.

What do you think of this study? If you are pregnant will it keep you away from meat, or do you eat what you want to eat?

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About 12 percent of women (7.3 million) in the United States aged 15-44 had difficulty getting pregnant or carrying a baby to term in 2002, according to the National Center for Health Statistics of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Infertility is defined as not being able to get pregnant after at least one year of trying or who are able to get pregnant but have multiple miscarriages.
Some of the things that increase a couples chances of infertility are:
age
smoking
STDs
stress
over or underweight

Ovulatory infertility which is the inability to produce viable eggs, is a common cause of infertility in women. But a new study shows that iron supplements can help.

Researchers followed 18,000 registered nurses, ages 24 to 42, who never had a history of infertility. Their findings showed that nearly 4 percent of women who try to conceive will experience some form of ovulatory infertility. Taking iron supplements prior to and during attempts to conceive can reduce that risk by 40 to 60 percent.
They found that women who took larger doses of iron (more than 41 milligrams a day) were 62 percent less likely to have difficulty with ovulation.

I was told to take a regular women’s vitamin when I decided to try to have a baby but I know many of my friend’s doctors have put them on prenatal vitamins. You would assume a prenatal vitaman would have enough of everything that your body needs to carry a baby but they do vary quite a bit so check the label and if you are concerned you are not getting enough iron, check with your doctor.

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I had already discussed the mandated HPV vaccine in Texas, but now there is some new information.

An analysis of reports of serious medical problems following vaccination against cervical cancer with Merck’s Gardasil found that two-thirds of patients required additional medical care, a vaccine safety group said Tuesday.

The National Vaccine Information Center looked at a report from the federal Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System on problems following vaccination against the human papillomavirus (HPV) during the last six months of 2006.

Of 385 adverse events reported, two-thirds required further attention and one-third occurred in children 16 and under. In almost 25 percent of those cases, patients also received one or more of 18 vaccines that Merck did not study, in combination with Gardasil, NVIC said in a prepared statement.

U.S. Food and Drug Administration, as well as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are nopw saying that Gardasil should not be given at the same time as any other vaccines and that patients should be monitored for at least 24 hours after the vaccination for complications.

If this is not reason enough not to require young girls get a vaccine that is fresh to the market, I don’t know what is.

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Next time your child complains that there is “nothing to eat” remind them that 18,000 children die every day because of hunger and malnutrition.
The number is staggering.

Now remind yourself that the next time you are wandering around the grocery store complaining that you don’t know what to buy.
I know I will.

Texas is the first state to mandate that all 11-12 year old girls be given the HPV vaccine before entering 6th grade. HPV is the human papilloma virus which can cause some types of cervical cancer.

Texas Governor Rick Perry signed legislature which mandates all girls get the vaccine of Gardasil which is manufactured by Merck, by the school year 2008. As of right now this is the only vaccine for HPV that has been approved by the FDA.

The shot which is given in three doses over six months, is not 100% effective in all cases and is effective only about five years. Each dose is $120 earning Merck $360 per vaccinated person.

I am not opposed to people being vaccinated if they want to be, I am not opposed to a vaccination that can stop people from transmitting a STD, but I am opposed to mandating a brand new vaccine.
Especially when we know how big Pharma is in bed with the government, including the lobbyist for Merck in Texas who was chief of staff for the Governor from 2002 to 2004.

The National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) maintains that Merck’s clinical trials did not prove that the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, touted as preventing cervical cancer and genital warts, is safe to give to pre-adolescents. “There is too little long term safety and efficacy data, especially in young girls, and too little labeling information on contraindications,â€? said NVIC president Barbara Loe Fisher.

I want to know what you think. Would you give your daughter this new vaccine? Are you like me and wonder why there isn’t the same vaccine for boys?

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source

I have shown you the video before. It haunts me to this day.

Go comment over on this site because for every comment she gets she is donating $3 to the non profit foundation started in Kyle’s name.

If you want to donate on your own or find out more information please visit http://www.kyledavidmiller.org

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