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Strollerderby
How cool would your tween be about being relegated to a booster seat?
New recommendations out today say children should ride in rear-facing car seats until they’re 2 years old, and children who’ve outgrown front-facing seats should remain in booster seats until they are 4 feet 9 inches tall.
The American Academy of Pediatrics and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration issued separate but consistent findings that older children — sometimes as old as 12 — should remain in booster seats longer until a car’s lap-shoulder belt fits them properly based on crash evidence, which found that older children with ill-fitting belts can suffer from abdominal and spinal injuries in a crash.
12-year-old Alex Miller, rocking the Bieber bowl and a fat paycheck.
You might want to hire 12-year-old Alex Miller of San Jose to be your next IT guy. This computer whiz kid found “a valid critical security flaw buried in the Firefox web browser,” and was paid $3,000 by Mozilla for 15 hours worth of work. That’s $200 an hour, my friends. Beats taking out the trash!
And get this: Miller donated his first hundred dollars to his neighbor’s nonprofit organization, Unconditional Love Animal Rescue. Attention ladies of the 7th grade: forget Bieber. Alex Miller is where it’s at. Continue reading »
Justin Bieber Launches Scents for Tweens
Justin Bieber is not only a famous teen pop sensation. He is also a teenage boy. And as such, he no doubt smells like a teenage boy. Perhaps that’s what gave the 16-year-old the incentive to create his own fragrance.
Called ”My World,” the new fragrance is far from a traditional perfume or cologne, according to WWD.
First off, it’s unisex. Secondly, rather than be distributed in a glass perfume bottle, instead the fragrance will be sold on wristbands and dog tags which are infused with the scent. Continue reading »
Is Noah Cyrus following in Miley's footsteps?
Noah Cyrus, Miley’s 10-year-old sister, is getting a lot of flack for being photographed wearing what many believe to be an inappropriate outfit for a girl her age. But it’s not the short-shorts or the tight tank top that has everyone in a tizzy. It’s the dark blue bra peeking out from the top of her shirt that has tongues wagging.
It’s tacky! It’s inappropriate! It’s way too sexy! What is a ten-year-old girl doing wearing a bra anyway?
The general consensus seems to be that this is just another example of a Cyrus girl acting trashy and trying to grow up too fast (see Miley’s new “Who Owns My Heart” video and Noah’s sexy Halloween costume from 2009). Continue reading »
If you don't stop leaving your skate board around, young man, no iPod for a week!
By the time the average American kid is 12 years old, they’ve got an iPod, a smartphone and a Facebook profile. So it makes sense that many parents are turning to “digital grounding” when their kids misbehave. But according to Dr. Jennifer Hartstein, contributor to the CBS Early Show and child and adolescent psychologist, “the punishment has to fit the crime.”
For example, she says, don’t threaten to delete your child’s Facebook page, which may make them feel as if “the world is ending.” (Please, I think if my Facebook page got deleted I’d cry for a day, too.) Instead, you should change their password so they can’t access their social network for a specified amount of time. Hartstein also suggests “friending” your kids on Facebook so you’re able to monitor their activity.
Most parents have no problem banning TV or video games in order to reprimand their children but would be much more hesitant to keep tweens and teens from their phones, since cell phone use makes life easier for the whole family. But Regina Lewis, a consumer advisor at AOL, says there are ways to customize your child’s cell phone plan that will allow them only to receive calls from and make calls to family members, blocking calls from friends. If your child’s been really bad, you can also turn off their ability to text message, which Lewis says might cost $5/month. For the service, that is. And $50/month in co-pays for therapy.
So would you do it? And how hard is digital grounding to enforce? Continue reading »
Because it feels like the end of the world as we know it.
According to The Frisky, from a story by TODAY show staff, a Philadelphia-area mother called local aesthetician Melanie Engle, asking her to wax her 8-year-old daughter’s bikini line. Engle says, “This wasn’t about the girl developing hair early — it was the mother’s obsession with wanting her daughter to be a supermodel.” Oy.
Diane Fisher, owner of Eclips Salon in the D.C. suburbs, says, ”Some kids do have a lot of hair. A 10-year-old with a dark mustache is going to feel self-conscious, and is going to ask for waxing.” Okay, maybe. But I’m a hairy girl. I’ve got a moustache that until very recently I let fly in the wind like Frida Kahlo, but you know, I’m trying to date now, so I Nair that thing off. But I’m 33 years old! I can do that. When I was 13 I used to comb that same moustache in the mirror.
The Frisky notes that Wanda Stawczyk of Wanda’s European Skin Care in New York told the Post, “In 10 years, waxing children will be like taking them to the dentist or putting braces on their teeth.”
Oh. My. God. Continue reading »
Tween girls are wearing makeup more than ever these days. A consumer market research group recently ran the numbers and revealed that from 2007 to 2009, the percentage of girls ages 8 to 12 who regularly wore mascara and eyeliner nearly doubled. The number of pre-teens who wore lipstick also increased. While the researchers didn’t delve into the perfume-wearing habits of these girls, it would stand to reason that if they are trying to look more grown up, they are probably trying to smell older, too.
Perfume makers have been targeting young girls for some time. Britney Spears and Miley Cyrus both have signature fragrances that appeal to girls who are still in elementary school. And popular mall destinations like Abercrombie and Fitch and American Eagle also hawk their own line of fragrances. But while many parents may be aware of the potential dangers associated with cosmetics (allergic reactions and exposure to endocrine disruptors among them), most assume fragrances to be safe. Continue reading »
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