FDA says moms are using herbs not proven safe or effective

Fussiness and teething — when I lead first-year parenting groups these are two of the hottest topics, and everyone has a different option about how to alleviate them.

According to a new study by the FDA, lots of moms are going the herbal route — choosing to give their infants teas and herbal remedies for colic and teething pain. That’s a fact that doesn’t please doctors, since there is little evidence that they work and that they are safe.

Here’s what moms are giving their babies for discomfort, and why researchers wish they wouldn’t: Continue reading »

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Bloomberg's Budget proposal includes cuts in child care which will affect many single moms.

I don’t envy any mayor, especially Michael Bloomberg, for being the mayor of New York can’t be easy. With so much diversity comes countless points of view such that virtually every decision made is a potentially controversial one. Except, sadly, ones which pertain to childcare.

While decisions adversely impacting senior centers or libraries are sure to cause great strife, changes to subsidized childcare go virtually unnoticed, except of course, to the folks who bare the brunt of those decisions. And those folks?

Often, they’re single moms.

Continue reading »

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Are daycare centers and home facilities safe?

It’s been a bad week for childcare facilities. On Friday, a licensed Pittsburg daycare, R&B Childcare Services, was shut down and the owner arrested after police raided the facility and found $6,000 worth of crack cocaine, several bags of sex toys and $4,000 cash on the premises, where 10 to 15 little kids were enrolled.

And in a more disturbing and violent case, Jessica Tata, the owner of a Houston daycare has fled the country after a warrant was issued for her arrest over the daycare fire that killed four small children and injured several others. From the information available, Tata allegedly left a house of toddlers alone while she went to the supermarket.

While she was gone, a fire seems to have started from a pot left heating on the stove.

Both stories are upsetting, the second one tragic. And it leaves some parents with the questions: Is daycare safe – and how do you know?

Here are a few things we can glean from these cases:
Continue reading »

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Best Companies for Working Mothers

Working Mother just released its 25th annual list of 100 Best Companies. Bank of America, Deloitte, Discovery, Ernst & Young, General Mills and IBM are among the top ten.

To land a spot on the list, businesses answered more than 600 questions about the benefits they provide to support working mothers and their families. Working Mother then scored companies based on a variety of factors, including workforce representation, childcare, flex time programs, and maternity leave policies. All of the winning companies provide private lactation rooms as well as assistance finding elder-care services.

Working Mother’s list began in 1986 with just 30 companies and by 1992, the list grew to 100. IBM and Johnson & Johnson are the only two companies that have been on Working Women’s list from the beginning. Luckily, times have changed in the past 25 years and thanks, in part, to these companies, being a working mom has generally gotten easier. Continue reading »

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Spanish speaking sitters and nannies are in high demand these days. Eager to give their kids the benefit of a second language, parents are seeking out sitters who will speak Spanish with their little charges.

For nannies from Latin America, the trend is a boon. Suddenly, their Spanish is an asset, not a barrier to getting a job. For families, their kids get an immersion in a second language that no lesson program could hope to match.

Raising a bilingual child is hard work. Even in families like mine, where one parent is a native speaker, the second language often doesn’t “take”. Having a caregiver immerse your child in it for many of her waking hours helps their little brains absorb the language skill and use it.

And more and more research shows how beneficial a second language is for young children. It doesn’t make them “smarter”, but it does lead to more creative thinking. Plus, being multi-lingual is a practical skill all on its own that they can use throughout their lives.

Continue reading »

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The first week after my older daughter, Jesse, was born, all she did was sleep. My husband and I wondered why everyone had told us that the early days of parenting would be so hard. Then, week two came and Jesse finally woke up. And boy, was she one pissed off baby. She cried. A lot.

Nothing seemed to calm Jesse’s wailing. We rocked her. We sang to her. She continued to cry. Believe it or not, one doctor told me that she was just a difficult baby and that she was destined to be a difficult toddler and a difficult teenager. Maybe she’d even end up in jail. My husband and I freaked.

Then when I took Jesse to “Baby and Me” class at the local Y, things got worse. The other babies cooed and slept. Jesse howled. What was wrong with my baby? Even worse, I feared it was all my fault. I was doing something to make her cry. I was a terrible mother.

One particularly difficult night when my husband and I had tried unsuccessfully for hours to comfort Jesse’s incolably crying, we looked at each other and wondered, “What have we gotten ourselves into?” Luckily, we had a pediatrician who calmed our fears and told us it was likely that Jesse had colic. Continue reading »

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