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Strollerderby
Hey kids! Remember how your mom blogged about your thumb-sucking habit — you know, the one you couldn’t break until you were 10? Or how you wet the bed at camp that one year? What about the time you and your girlfriend broke up on Twitter, or that embarrassing picture your college roommates shared on Facebook?
Google CEO Eric Schmidt has a solution for you. He thinks that kids should be allowed to change their names when they reach adulthood. In fact, he predicts that future laws will allow all young adults to change their name to preserve anonymity. Since a huge portion of pre-adulthood interactions now happen on social networking sites, Schmidt argues that it’s in a kid’s best interest to be allowed to erase the those early, embarrassing missteps and begin their adult life with a clean slate.
Just try to wrap your head around that for a moment.
For over 200 years kids have watched circus acts with wonder and anticipation, and not a few have hoped to run off to join it themselves. A popular New York circus camp lets kids do just that without leaving the comfort of home.
Hundreds of kids in New York are spending the summer learning skills like juggling, clowning, and walking the high wire.
Beats spending the summer in front of the Wii. So what’s the draw?
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You’ve taken some amazing vacation photos this summer, why hide them inside a photo album? The Stir has some great ideas for putting your favorite photos on display in a big way.
Dr. Laura is being slammed for using a racial slur on her controversial radio show. But NPR argues that until we stop giving power to certain words, people like Dr. Laura will continue to wield them to manipulate emotions and draw attention to themselves. How do you feel about this issue?
Ellyn Satter, who says that it’s a parent’s job to offer good, nutritious food and a child’s job to decide what and how much to eat, has created a hierarchy of food — interesting stuff. Aside: I think Satter is a genius. — Jezebel
At a home visit earlier this week, my younger daughter’s kindergarten teacher told me her class would start with just 13 kids. We were sad that some beloved friends would be moving on, but there was a bright side — small kindergarten classes mean more individualized attention and instruction from the teacher.
In fact, a recent study funded by the National Science Foundation found that a small class size in kindergarten can actually boost a child’s future earning potential by $2,000. At a time when districts are cutting back on non-essential programs, this study shows that investing in early childhood education is more important than ever.
Researchers identified 12,000 kindergarten students in 80 schools across Tennessee, then followed up with them when they reached age 30. Here’s what else they found:
Two poignant pieces on breastfeeding today: Babble’s Katie Granju writes about not being able to breastfeed Baby Georgia because her milk never came in. Meanwhile, Salon’s Jessica Roake writes about her own nursing difficulties and how they made her feel judged by other nursing mothers.
A recent study told us that the sooner a woman gets pregnant again following a miscarriage, the better. But what this study did not take into account was emotional readiness. That’s why, says Tracy Clark-Flory at Salon, it’s so important to read the editorial that goes along with the study. There’s no proof that pregnancy outcomes will be affected if parents want to give themselves time to heal.
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A Massachusetts mom thought she had her ducks in a row with a verbal agreement from her employer to take 11 weeks of maternity leave. But when Sandy Stephens, the housekeeper for a president of a small Quincy telecommunications firm called Global Naps Inc. phoned her supervisor in anticipation of returning to work, she was shocked to learn she’d been fired.
So she went to court. A Massachusetts Commission against Discrimination guideline says that employers should give employees written notification if their jobs are not protected after eight weeks — the amount of unpaid leave that Massachusetts guarantees a new mother — but since the guideline is not legally binding, the Supreme Judicial Court ruled that Stephens had no case.
But should she?
In a recent interview with Ladies Home Journal, Michelle Obama said that she never talks about weight — hers or theirs — with her daughters, Sasha, nine, and Malia, 12.
“Well, I never talk about weight with my girls. I try not to even talk about my weight. Because you’re right, it is a sensitive issue. My girls are preteens and they’re seeing their bodies in a whole different way. We have conversations around health, food, and activity. I tell them sports are something I want them to engage in because it’s good for them. It’s good to practice teamwork, to understand what it means to suffer a loss, to win with grace. It has nothing to do with weight, it has everything to do with being a well-rounded person.”
Her comments are refreshing turnaround from those she and President Obama made earlier this year during the launch of her Let’s Move campaign. Then, President Obama was remembering when Malia was getting “a little chubby” and Michelle Obama talked about changes in her family’s eating habits after their pediatrician suggested the girls’ were gaining too much weight. Both the President and the First Lady caught a lot of flack for being so openly honest about their girls’ bodies.
Unlike the First Dad, Michelle Obama seems to be a little more sensitive about what it means to be a girl growing up in America today, where you can’t even be a four-year-old in a pair of swimming trunks without the entire country going into cardiac arrest.
Like Obama, I’ve never discussed weight as something that can be good or bad with my girls either. They’ve never heard me call myself fat or disparage any part of my body. I’ve even cheerfully tried on swim suits with them watching on (even if inside I was vowing to do 1,000 situps a day from that moment on.) We have frequent conversations about healthy choices, about staying active, and about how taking care of our bodies is a form of self-loving. But we also talk, too, about how people’s bodies are just different — size included.
Avoiding body image issues in today’s America isn’t easy for pre-teen and teen girls, but my hope is that by de-emphasizing it at home, we can help our girls build enough confidence to fend off those unhealthy messages as they get older.
Do you discuss weight with your kids?
Photo: Alex Johnson, Flickr
More:
5 Websites to Ban from the Family Computer
10 Things Parents Can Do to Build Reading Readiness
Older, Overweight Moms at Risk of Breastfeeding Difficulties
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