This is how some girls can boast they spent their summer vacation

It’s not unusual for an aspiring model to be told she needs to lose weight. Or cut her hair (or grow it long). Or tone her arm muscles. Or tweeze her eyebrows. But telling a girl she needs to “work on her height?”

Presumably there’s a pill for that in the back of some magazine, somewhere (“Rub this cream on your legs and get taller in just 10 days!”), but short of a miracle growth spurt, height is one of those things, like parents, that you can’t really do much about once you’re dealt yours in life.

Still, a real live girl — a 15-year-old one — was really, really told that she needs to “work on her height” at a modeling camp in Manhattan that’s run by a former staffer from Vogue, Heather Cole. The camp, $999 for a four-day session, is filled with wannabe runway models and aspiring couturiers.
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Will this kid remember this moment?

What is your earliest memory? How old were you? Do you have a whole event remembered, or just fragments of sensation? Are you sure this memory is real?

Memory is tricky stuff. Especially our earliest memories, which fade over time. As any parent knows, young children have an amazing capacity for memory: they can recall events going back practically to babyhood, with a surprising amount of detail. But then these memories fade. By the time they reach their teens, most children can’t recall anything before about age 3, and as we get older, our childhood memories fade even more.

We don’t have to lose these memories entirely, though. There are tricks parents can deploy to preserve childhood memory. It’s worth doing. A recent study shows that kids with stronger early memories also have better self-esteem and coping skills.

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Can you imagine your child in a kept woman's shoes?

When you imagine what your daughter will do when she grows up, “professional mistress” probably isn’t on the list of career choices you’d dream up for her. And here in the States, it’s a pretty unusual occupation.

Not so in China, apparently, where girls growing up to be mistresses is a real problem. One the state is tackling, in part, by adding an educational unit to their curriculum discouraging young girls from becoming kept women.The educational program will focus on elementary-aged girls as well as high school students. The goal is to encourage girls to rely on themselves after college, rather than rushing into the arms of a sugar daddy.

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Ask parents what they worry about when their girls spend time online, and predators are at the top of everyone’s list. Immediate threats to our kids’ welfare are obviously every parent’s primary concern. But there is more to worry about online than a predatory attack—and there are fewer controls in place protecting our daughters from these more subtle threats. Several experts recently revealed their biggest worries about girls using the internet. Here are the 5 biggies:

1. Online predators

The internet can encourage a false sense of trust and connection.  There are many technology tools available to help filter questionable content, but parent education and monitoring is a must.

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Otoplasty is one of a few common cosmetic surgery procedures performed on kids

Would cosmetic surgery on kids cut down on the instances of bullying? Some families seem to think the answer is yes, and statistics from the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery point to the fact that over the past decade, the number of children and teens who have gone under the knife for non-medical reasons increased by nearly 30 percent. Some experts argue that bullying is partly to thank for the increase in cosmetic procedures.

Lots of kids adopt defense mechanisms to ward off teasing and bullying for protruding ears, for example. But in some cases, when words aren’t enough, they’re resorting to procedures like otoplasty (pinning back the ears).

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I’ve heard of some horrible things happening in the name of “beauty”, but this story is right up there: Kerry Campbelll, a mom in San Francisco home-injects her daughter with Botox to prevent development of wrinkles. (Because I don’t know about you, but once I hit 8 and a half, my face started going WAY downhill.) This mom is convinced that she is doing this for her daughter’s own good. Her daughter, perhaps unsurprisingly, is on the kiddie pageant circuit—and her mom feels that her daughter’s perfectly smooth skin will give her the edge she needs to become a star.

So many things wrong here. First, the fact that Botox is not approved for children and we have zero information on the effects of botulism toxin on growing bodies. But the thing that really freaked me out about this story was how directly this mom equated the modification of her daughter’s body with her hopes for stardom. It’s not that she thinks these treatments will help her daughter become famous. She seems to see them as an instrumental tool for her daughter’s career. And naturally, her third grader does too—which is why she’s begging for injections whenever she sees an expression line form in her face.

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Should Mommy look like Barbie?

I got a request yesterday to review a book called “My Beautiful Mommy“. It is, no joke, a children’s book written to help little kids prepare for Mommy’s upcoming plastic surgery.

A.K.A. The Most Wrong Thing I Have Ever Been Asked to Review. I was tempted to ask for a copy just so I could write “World of No” all over it with a Sharpie, but I didn’t want to risk having it in my house where my kids might see it and find out such a thing exists.

I suppose if you’re the mother of a young child, and you’re planning to have plastic surgery, you might want a helpful book to show the kids what to expect. That’s better than Mommy coming home one day looking like Barbie with no explanation at all.

But why are we glorifying plastic surgery to kids? Why would a mom with a young child get plastic surgery at all?

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