Can You Train Your Kid like Your Dog?

Did you know that many of our most tried and true parenting techniques — timeouts and positive reinforcement, for two — are  actually based  in animal research? I didn’t. But both are rooted in the science of operant conditioning which became prevalent in the early 20th century.

Operant conditioning is essentially the idea that you can encourage some behaviors and discourage others by using positive or negative reinforcement. If you took basic psych in college, you’ve heard of BF Skinner and his conditioning chamber aka “Skinner box”, some variation of which is still used in much psychological research. And probably had the same reaction I did — how cruel! But in fact, Continue reading »

Gadget Claims It Will Improve Baby Photos

Time is running short to get that perfect shot of your kids for the annual Christmas card, if you’re the sort of person who does such a thing — I am not. However, I do enjoy taking pictures of my kids in my own amateurish snapshotty way and I find getting a baby to both 1) hold still and b) look at the camera is an enormously ridiculous challenge.

Not sure how I feel about this solution from Shutterbuddy, though: Continue reading »

Companies Are Wooing Parenting Bloggers

Companies are increasingly reaching out to parenting bloggers instead of more traditional channels to market their products. If you’ve got a blog that more than three people read, you’ve probably gotten offers for free stuff to review.

This article details the gifts, trips and free products that companies lavish on some bloggers. I was at an event Continue reading »

Children and Child’s Pose

Yoga for grownups — women especially –has become so widespread as to almost be a cliche. Say the name Rodney Yee to just about any middle class woman and watch the response. And I’d be willing to bet many of us have taught our kids a few poses or had them hang out with us while we do our routine (which in my house always devolves into giggles, as I see a little face peer quizzically up at me during a downward dog or feel a cat attack my feet during what is supposed to be relaxation pose).

More and more studios and schools are offering yoga classes to kids. While some are pretty simple, others boast teachers certified by commercial programs and whole curricula built around yoga. Continue reading »

They Say: Chocolate Milk Might Just be Good For You

I swear to God my daughter didn’t beg me to write this story: A new study shows that chocolate milk can reduce inflammation.
A small study done in Barcelona had 47 volunteers age 55 and older who were at risk for heart disease drink skim milk mixed with a sachet of soluble cocoa powder for four weeks, then switch to drinking plain skim milk. Researchers found that they had reduced markers for inflammation and higher levels of HDL “good” cholesterol after the chcolate milk regimen.
The high levels Continue reading »

Sesame Street’s Best Musical Guests

There’s no question that kids’ music about nine million times better than it was when I was a kid. Even when I was babysitting, Raffi (gag me) and such sugary sweet stuff was the order of the day. But we’ve got Dan Zanes, Elizabeth Mitchell, and even traditionally more grown-up oriented artists like Barenaked Ladies and They Might be Giants making music for kids.

And I credit Sesame Street. In its 40 years of kid’s TV awesomeness, they’ve had some amazing musical guests. And that continues to this day. I think seeing stuff like Stevie Wonder and Johnny Cash on our favorite TV show changed our perspective on what “kids’ music” actually is, and led to wanting, and getting, much better stuff for our own kids. And the musicians that watched it as kids were clearly also influenced and are including their own kids in their musical lives and taking our kids along for the ride.

The Houston Press marked Sesame Street’s 40th birthday this week by posting a list of Sesame Street’s top ten music guests ever. While I seriously disagree with some of them –Andrea Bocelli, really? Denyce Graves did a similar guest shot that was way better — any list that includes Feist doing a riff on “1-2-3-4″ with the Muppets can’t be all that bad (see it after the jump). Continue reading »

Show Racist JOP How Much Your Kids “Suffer”

Sometimes, the only way to combat ignorant people is to just confront them with the reality of their wrongheadedness. You can do it violently or aggressively — or you can simply and gracefully show them the beauty of the truth.

That’s what Suzy Richardson is doing. She’s a happily married mother of four married to her firefighter husband, with whom she is raising their four children ranging in age from one year to 11 years old. She’s also a white woman married to a black man, and those four children are biracial. So she took a good bit of issue with former Lousiana Justice of the peace Keith Bardwell’s much-publicized refusal to marry an interracial couple. Continue reading »

More Than Half of Kids Will Someday Get Food Stamps

I know times are tough, but this is troubling news: Half of all American children are expected at some point to be on food stamps. That statisitic is based on research conducted at Cornell University, who analyzed the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. That study followed about 4,800 households in the U.S. over the course of 32 years.

Even more troubling, Continue reading »

New test Can Predict Fertility Decline

Unlike a lot of people who deal with infertility, I had a diagnosis and an expectation that things would go not so well long before I was remotely interested in having kids. I was diagnosed with PCOS at age 23 and my wonderful primary care doctor was fairly nonchalant about the fact that when I did want to get pregnant, a little Clomid would do the trick.

It didn’t. But at least I was able to tell my now-husband that getting pregnant might not be so easy once things started getting serious, so neither of us were especially surprised when things didn’t go so well. Many of my friends who also faced down infertility said they envied me that, that I was able to tell my partner long before we were formally committed and let him decide if he was up for the challenges we might face.

A new genetic test might give a new group of women that chance. Continue reading »

Inflatable Seat Belts Soon to be Available

Despite being born and raised in Detroit, I am not what you’d call a “car person.” Give me a safe, fuel efficient car that holds all my crap and doesn’t break down every few months and I’m happy.

So when my pal Jeanne passed along an invite to a Ford parenting blogger event they were having to promote an new safety innovation, I was intrigued but not expecting to be very interested. Well, I was. The innovation — inflatable seat belts for the rear seats — was actually pretty cool, despite this dude’s funny take on it (in-car pinata!). They look and perform just like regular seat belts, except they are a lot softer and sort of padded (to incorporate the air bag). They have a heavy, odd looking buckle, which locks into place like a regular seat belt. In the event of a crash, a canister of cold gas shoots through the buckle and inflates the air bag inside the belt withing 6 milliseconds, cushioning the backseat passenger and distributing crash forces more evenly across their bodies.
Continue reading »