Parenting Children

I have some tips and tricks for Halloween with your kids this year. We also want to keep kids safe this time of year especially those that are old enough to trick or treat alone so we will also talk about safety.

Don’t want to give out candy for Halloween? How about giving out juice boxes or kid sized waters? Try stickers or other craft items and if you have any leftovers put them into your child’s craft box for a rainy day. The other thing I have seen lately, which I love, is the mini playdoh containers. Although the older kids may rather have candy!
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A Portland Maine school board approved a measure allowing middle-school students to have access to prescription birth control without notifying parents. The plan which was approved in all but two members of the board allows the King Middle School to provide birth-control medications and counseling for sexually transmitted diseases.

Of course not all parents are involved in their children’s lives to know if their child even has a boyfriend or girlfriend. Maybe even some parents are involved but they could never let themselves believe that their children could be sexually active. I am just not sure how I feel about birth control being handed out to young children without parental knowledge.
I think sexual education is very important in schools. I think children in middle school should know about stds, health issues, and the emotional impact of having a sexual relationship. I think this should be a conversation that takes place both at schools and at home. I realize that many times it does not take place at home and maybe only on a rudimentary level at school. I applaud the Portland schools for stepping up and going beyond entry level health issues.

I know that I wouldn’t want my children to be given birth control without my knowledge. I also know if kids are aware their parents will be told they have been given birth control that many kids wouldn’t take birth control and engage in risky behaviors anyway. I am also aware that kids will find a way to do what they want to do.
I am just not sure what the middle ground is. I think our daughters are oversexualized at a younger and younger age. As paretns we need to let our daughters dress approprietly for their age. We need to teach our sons and daughters to respect themselves and their bodies.
We need to start doing this right now, because it is already too late.

In the 2006-2007 school year out of the 134 Portland students polled 4% admitted to having sexual intercourse. Is this enough to start handing our birth control or is 1 child in middle school who has had sex enough to up the sexual education given?

Are we giving sexually active teens the tools they need to stay physically and emotionally healthy and safe?
I would love to hear from parents of teens and tweens, what do you think of this new policy in this middle school?

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I was excited to review the new cookbook from Jessica Seinfeld, Deceptively Delicious, simple secrets to getting your kids eating good food. I couldn’t believe that this book would be any good, after all I bet she has a team of chefs cooking for her and her family. I was surprised by the extent of quality recipes and how well it was written.

When I first received the book the first thing I noticed what how much I liked the retro design and spiral bound cookbook. It is visually very appealing with colorful photographs and cute illustrations.
Basically, the book is about how to hide vegetables, fruits and healthier food into everyday meals. Do your kids like eggs? Then add cauliflower puree to it. If your children only want to eat chicken nuggets then make your own and add beet or spinach puree to it.
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I let my children watch TV but only certain shows and I usually record them on channels with no commercial interruptions so my children do not have to watch commercials. They have enough marketed towards them in the cereal aisle of the grocery store. I think the barrage of you have to be skinny/young/beautiful/not even a little body fat is good, is the most damaging to young girls.
Check out this video from Dove about the images that young girls are faced with day after day.

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Do you have a ton of apples around your house from apple picking like I do? Make caramel apples with your kids, they taste better then store bought and it is a fun thing to do with kids. Here is what you need and how to do it:

Ingredients:
4 very firm apples
2 tablespoons water
bag of caramels
4 popsicle sticks

Instructions:
-Remove stems of apples and push sticks into the apple where the stem used to be.

-Put caramels and water in a bowl and microwave at 30 second intervals until melted. Stir occasionally.

-When caramels are all melted, dip apples into the mixture and twist letting the extra caramel fall back into the bowl

-Place on greased baking sheet and cool in refrigerator for 20 minutes.

*you can also dip apples into toppings like coconut, chocolate chips, nuts or crushed candy bars. Just roll warm caramel apples in topping then place in baking sheet to cool.

I may just do this with my kids today!

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Are you or your children fast food fans? If you are you will be happy to hear this: Burger King has vowed to offer healthier fast-food items for children under 12. they plan to sell and market flame-broiled Chicken Tenders and apples cut to resemble thick-cut french fries. They plan to have these new menu option out in 2008.

I think the problem is not with the menu at any fast food chain, although I think they are usually terrible. You can make a sensible choice like a salad and a water at any fast food place these days. I think a parent has to make healthy choices for themselves as well as their children to make a difference in this overly obese country. Maybe not stopping at the fast food chain at all is the first step.

fast food, healthy fast food, parenting, obese children, kids

Have you heard of kajeet yet? It is a new pay-as-you-go cell phone designed with kids in mind. It is very parent friendly also which is nice to be able to control all the features for and with your kids. I do not think all kids need cell phones but with dance classes, sleep overs, after school activities and working parents, I think it is a great idea. When I got the chance to review this phone for you guys, I jumped on the chance.

Here are just some of the features the kajeet phone has:

Wallets: they have parent wallets and kid wallets, use your wallet if you want to make all the decisions about usage, but use the kid wallet to teach kids money management. Have him track his usage, text messaging and downloads.

Pay As You Go: kajeet starts you out with $5.00 but you can add money into your account any time. People can even gift money towards the usage and minutes never expire.

Feature Manager: Decide what features your child can use with online managing. There are a ton of features like instant messaging, web browsing or downloads.

Time Manager: Parents can decide when their child’s phone can be used. You can make sure there are no late night phone calls when your child should be sleeping or during school hours.

Safety: All kajeet handsets are GPS-capable, which means there is a chipset in the phone that will help provide location information to a capable emergency service provider when a caller dials 911.

All in all, I think this phone is great for tweens and teens. It is sleek and stylish with a ton of features kids would love. I know I would feel safer (and my wallet would think me) dropping my kids off wherever they go with this phone.

kajeet, cell phones for kids, kid’s cell phones, tweens, teens, kids, parenting, parenting children

Since we have had many tooth related talks in our house lately we are more aware of brushing our teeth well and trying to relay that to our children. Of course my children are too young to brush their teeth by themselves just yet, but even I have a hard time remembering just how long I have been brushing my teeth. Are you supposed to brush for two minutes? One minute?
My electric toothbrush has an automatic turnoff and now here is sort of the same idea to get kids brushing.

Toothtunes is a toothbrush that plays your favorite music in your head for two minutes, the recommended time for tooth brushing. You can even pick from your favorite songs. For $9.99 it won’t break the bank either.

If this doesn’t get kids brushing, nothing will!

kids, children, parenting, parenting children, toothbrushes for kids, toothtunes

Have you heard of this new show that is to be premiering on CBS this fall called Kid Nation? It is a modern day Lord of the Flies where they will be 40 children aged 8 to 15 years old, that are all on their own in a old mining town in New Mexico. Their mission to fix adult’s mistakes and make the ghost town into a town that works.

They are left to fend for themselves, they need to make sure they sleep, eat and work all while dealing with things many of these children have not dealt with before, isolation, homesickness and maybe even breaking some rules. Rules that they themselves made.

I have read that CBS would not say how close these parents were to the set or if they had any invovement with their kids at all during the 40 day stay. As for it being a good show, that remains to be seen, I like reality TV but this seems like pushing the envelope.
The show is also under some harsh critisism from the state child labor law officials saying that the kids sometimes worked 14 hours a day to rebuild the town.

I wonder who these parents are who sign away their children’s lives for 40 days. I would never want to be separated from my young children for 40 days never mind unsupervised and with 39 other children. When I have teenagers I may just change my mind. Please, take them for 40 days, I will pay you!

I want to know what you think of this show, will you be watching it with your children? Would you let your children do a project like this one? Is this a little too real for young children or is it inspiring?

Kid Nation, TV shows, teens, preteens, parenting, family, parenting children, kids, media, television

A Newark NJ school district has apologized to a student and issued new yearbooks after they blacked out a picture of two boys kissing in all of the yearbooks.

In the photo, a student Andre Jackson is seen turning his head back over his right shoulder and kissing his boy friend who does not attend that school. It was blacked out after the district’s assistant superintendent who oversees the city’s high schools, was concerned that the photo could upset parents.

The photo was on a personal tribute page, that Andre Jackson paid for himself. Apparently the yearbook had pictures of heterosexual couples kissing throughout the book that were not blacked out.

I am not sure I would want my child’s yearbook to have any pictures of couples kissing, I don’t really think it is necessary. I guess if it were a personal page, which was paid for by the student, censoring it is not right. I personally have no problem. with same sex couples, or anyone showing affection in public, to a degree. I know that I would not like a picture blacked out of my yearbook, that I paid for, if it was an issue of a suggestive picture, it should have been brought up before the books went to press. The boy should have had the option to swap out the picture for one that was less “suggestive” if that was the problem.

What do you think about what the school district did? Do they owe the student a public apology?

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I am trying to get my kids to drink more water. As it is, their “juice” is 90% water and 10% juice. When we go to a restaurant I still water down their juice and if they ever get a sip before I can water it down, their eyes go as wide as saucers. “So this is what juice really tastes like”, I am sure they say to themselves.

I love water and I drink it every day, all day. My kids would rather drink juice, of course, but I was encouraged that those days would be over when the nice ladies of Hint sent me some water to try.

Voted best flavored water by Health magazine, hint is a water that is different from everything else you have tried. It has no sugar, no preservatives, no artificial sweeteners and zero calories. What could be better?
It just has a nice, natural, slight flavor to the water that your body needs and loves.

If you are looking for something different to drink for you or your family that is healthy, hint is perfect. Don’t see hint at a store near you? Don’t worry you can even buy it online!
Try all the great flavors, but my favorite is pomegranate-tangerine.

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I have exciting news, if you read my post about child/infant CPR and you are looking to order a copy for yourself or as a gift, you are in luck.

Hurry and order your copy now to receive 10% off your order! Enter the coupon code: Tracy during checkout and enjoy 10% off.

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Drowning is the second leading cause of unintentional injury-related death among children ages 1 to 14.

Most happen in backyard pools or open water areas. Most drownings happen while children are being supervised. The SAFE KIDS study examined data from 496 child-drowning deaths from 2000 and 2001 from 17 states and found that 88 percent of the drowning victims were under supervision.

Children can drown in as little as one inch of water. That means that the bucket you have outside, your hot tub, toilet or wading pool are all potential dangers. “Two minutes following submersion, a child will lose consciousness. Irreversible brain damage occurs after four to six minutes and determines the immediate and long-term survival of a child. The majority of children who survive (92 percent) are discovered within two minutes following submersion, and most children who die (86 percent) are found after 10 minutes. Nearly all who require cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) die or are left with severe brain injury.”

Do you feel confident about performing CPR? Could you do it accurately? What about your teenage babysitter or your neighbor?
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My children are new to the world of games. They have a V Smile learning game system that they can play once in a while and they have a few board games that we play together. They love to play especially my daughter who perfectly sets up the board and places the cards in neat piles.

Last night after dinner, we played a rousing game of Candy Land, one of my favorites. A couple of turns into it, my daughter got a card with a dot on it, which means (for you non C.L. playing people) you have to stay on that color until you pick another card with that same color on it. She denied that was what it was.
Keep in mind she has played this game about 50 times and knows the rules, she just didn’t want to stay on the blue square.

Then she tried to cheat again, at which point I told her, it was ok if she didn’t win, you can’t win every time and the game was still young. Look at me I am all the way at the end and I am not crying. I explained that nobody likes to play with a poor loser or winner.

On one hand she is only four, she wants to win, I get that. Her twin brother wants to win too, but he is not crying. Should I look the other way when she cheats? Should I make sure to catch her cheating and tell her to stop it? If everyone looks the other way when a child cheats to win or only plays games they know they will win, I think that is a great disservice to my child. In the real world nobody will do that for them.
Winning is great but just playing the game is also just as great.

Moms, please help me out!

kids, preschoolers, children, families, kid’s games, board games, parenting, parenting kids, parenting twins, twins, moms

I remember taking my kids to a movie, and I was so mad that in this cartoon movie for children words like stupid and name calling were peppered throughout.
If a movie is geared toward children it doesn’t automatically mean that it is appropriate for kids of all ages. I found out the hard way. I mean what if you never saw Bambi and thought it was a sweet, light tale of a young deer with no cares in the world? I know to this day I will never watch Dumbo again, it made me so sad.

Now there is www.kids-in-mind.com. It is a web site that has a movie rating system which allows you as the parent to read about the movie and decide if it is something you want your child to view, what the message of the movie is and if there is strong language or substance abuse. Information that the traditional MPAA rating system doesn’t let you know.

While some movies may have a low sex and violence rating it may have a higher “gore” factor. The site has new release movies as well as older movies you can rent on video.

I think it is a terrific resource for parents, who don’t always have the time to research the movie and themes, this site allows you to do that quickly and thoroughly. I know I will be using it in the future, especially with free movie days this summer.

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