growing children

About Parenting: messed-up parenting

2010-03-23T10:12:00.000-07:00

The blog is still at it's new site: http://parenting201.org but as some still come here to look - I do want you to know about my recent parenting e-book.

You can buy it or enter a contest to win a copy.

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Read to bottom for contest and rules for winning a copy in the

Honor your tax deduction contest

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Can you mess up in your parenting and still have great kids?

Of course you can!

Parenting is not a science but if you know about child development and read this book - you'll realize you can do it with

less anxiety and much less guilt.

Buy online at e-junkie VIA PAYPAL

Only $9.97 [USD] for an instant pdf file download

99 pages packed with useful information

Buy it here:

FYI - you do not need a paypal account to use paypal

YOU CAN TOTALLY SCREW UP AS A MOM AND STILL RAISE GREAT KIDS

If I, a Developmental Psychologist with an expertise in early childhood, messed up – why should you expect to be perfect?

And while the title is directed at mommies; all I have to say here is meant for daddies too. In most homes still, yet, whatever; mommies are the major child caretakers.

This book was written to hopefully help alleviate the guilt that parents feel before during and after raising their child.

caveats - please be sure to read

If you are a person who thinks daddy or mommy is not to be questioned - do not buy this book - you will be offended..I also have a New York style sense of humor [sarcastic and odd] so if that offends you - please do not buy my book...you'll be unhappy.

Excerpts

From the Introduction

Another parenting book? Yup!

But this one is different – why? Because I am writing it and I have great ideas that I don’t mind sharing with anyone who asks and even with those who do not ask! And at 70 years of age I am entitled to say what I want .

I’ve long been a Dr. Seuss fan and love this:

Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.

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For those who don't know me, I have been in the field of Developmental Psychology since the early 60's when I entered graduate school. I was a college professor, wrote a few text books and edited a life span series. Now I want to get information out in a more readable and less paper intensive fashion so I am authoring e-books about psychological development.

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Conversation with my son

My son read the manuscript, of course, and so I asked him for comments.

First he said he did not remember all that I wrote about his early years but he was sure I was accurate about them...

What he did recall was that he felt I was unique because he had a say in decision-making and some of his friends seemed not to have that say. Not that we did as he suggested but that his voice was heard. I was not a totalitarian!

He still calls me his “parental unit” and said that while he is not all that keen on my writing about parenting him, “it’s my life and whether or not I like it, you were there too.”

Yes he has known this book was in the works and has hinted that he may comments to make if I do the parenting teen one.

[not so sure I want to hear those comments again ]

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This is an honest, thought provoking, informative, inspiring book!

The exercises are great for self-reflection/examination, and the writing is very accessible. This book will help many new and veteran parents better understand their children - even if you are not a parent this book will help you understand children and their worlds.

Well done! This is amazingly awesome :)

Rabbi Shai Specht

RabbiShai.com

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You can buy it here now

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from Chapter 1

Lynn’s take on family labels

I hate the term “broken” family. No family is broken. Families are all different. Broken implies a negative that may or may not be there – much as a family that stays married can be either a positive or negative environment. Marriage and divorce are not the biggest factors that define the quality of a family.

The same goes for adopted children – they dislike being asked about their “real” parents when one means the birth parents. The real parents are the ones raising them.

I felt this way before I had a child and I certainly came to dislike the labels more after his father and I divorced. We may have been dysfunctional – but we were not ‘broken.”

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It's excellent. I wish there'd been something like it when I was raising mine.

She pulls no punches. Straight to the point. Hope parents buy it.

She deserves to be heard.

Mara

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from Chapter 6 Behaving

To behavior “properly,” that is in accordance with the rules of one’s culture,
people need to know what the rules are. Then they can distinguish right
from wrong.

But, and as they say this is a big but, they also need to want to act in
the correct way and they need the ability to control themselves.

So ask – can young children even be considered as having morality or being
capable of behaving in the adult definition of these terms?

I think not.

The start of this process of moral development and behaving is the ability to
put yourself in the place of another - and that’s a high level cognitive
concept.

I’ve written before that cognitive growth is at the root, so to speak, of all
development – and here it is again. You need a certain amount of complex
cognitive ability to behave in what we call a moral fashion.

But being moral is not the same as being well behaved. In fact many of what
we call “well behaved” children are only behaving out of fear. An older study
indicated that scaring children into behaving as the adult wishes them to
behave tends to result in the behavior only happening when that adult is
around.

For example – if a parent threatens or scares a child about crossing streets –
that child is more likely to look around for the parent – and NOT look at the
traffic. The same can be true for school behaviors. “Well behaved” children
tend to be loved by teachers but it does not mean the child is sitting there
learning academic material – they may be sitting there with all their thoughts
focused on keeping still because they were scared into thinking that was
“correct.” This behavior takes up a lot of mental energy – energy that is not
going toward learning school material.

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From Hayley in Perth

http://allthingswomen.blogspot.com/

You just never know where your words are going to end up!
I was on Twitter chatting with a friend and I told her about my daughter and something she had said when she was a young child. She'd drawn a picture of the family but her younger sister was missing from the picture. When asked where she was, she replied with a very serious face, "She's still in the pencil, silly." We all erupted in laughter because she was such a funny little thing.

Well, Dr Lynn Dorman Phd, an American Psychologist was in the process of writing her e-book, "You can totally screw up as a mom and still raise great kids!" She sent me a direct message asking if she could use that quote in her e-book.

Well, surprise, surprise, her e-book is finished and there is Sarah's quote on Page 84.

I love the thought that a 70 year old woman would take the time to share her wisdom with the younger generations. There is just something very special about our Elders and it touches my heart when they desire to reach out and pass on what they know.

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Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction
Chapter 1 Before We Talk Babies And Children Let’s Talk “Uniqueness”
Chapter 2 Okay Now Let’s Talk Babies
Chapter 3 Early Infancy
Chapter 4 Infancy 1-3
Chapter 5 Those Developmental Tasks
Chapter 6 Behaving - What On Earth Does That Mean?
Chapter 7 Putting It All Together And Taking It On The Road
Chapter 8 Those “Pesky” Other “Things” That Raise Your Children
Chapter 9 Conclusion

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You Can Buy the Book Right Here:

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Or you can enter the

Honor your tax deduction contest.

Win a free copy of You Can Totally Screw Up As A Mom And Still Raise Great Kids

How?

Write a short vignette about the ways in which you screwed up as a parent and how your kid came out okay anyway.

Or write a short vignette about how your own parents screwed up raising you and how you turned out fine.

All entries must be emailed to contest@parenting201.org and sent in by April 24^th at 9PM PDT

[This allows the last-minute tax doers to have time to write theirs]

By submitting an entry you are agreeing that what you write and submit can be posted on the website http://parenting201.org and possibly be used, with attribution, in other written formats.

A panel of judges will read all the entries and one daddy and one mommy winner will be chosen by Mother’s Day 2010 [May 9^th]

Go and have fun writing.

BLOG HAS MOVED

2009-09-24T17:44:00.000-07:00

If you are here looking for posts on child development, parenting or healthy children - all is now on a new website:

http://parenting201.org

it's still in development so go tell me what you want to read

Late December Thoughts

2007-12-25T11:57:00.000-08:00

As we wind down another year we tend to do as the god Janus did [hence January] we look both forward and backward and see a door to a future. This time of year can be depressing for many; it’s dark in some parts of the world, it’s a time for recounting [Janus looking backward], a time for family gatherings [and all those potential conflicts] and this year it is the middle of a long drawn out primary season that has yet to see a primary vote. But votes will occur when Janus looks forward.

For those of us with birthdays in December and January there is the additional counting and re-counting. Not only is the year changing – we are adding another year to us at the same time. So on this nearly eve of Janus – I am reflecting doubly – as I am one with a January birthday. After many decades of life – I still see a positive future for us all – but we need to envision it and work toward its effect.

I have been known to get pessimistic about the sorry state of our country but I take heart form my son’s hypothesis that everything has a way of balancing itself out. Guess that comes from having a psychologist for a mother. It’s the homeostatic idea of life, ecology, biology, etc. But I never applied it to politics like he does and that’s why he’s a sociologist ☺

My optimism for 2008 and beyond is that we, as a country, will do more to take care of our own citizens; the young, the middle and the older ones.

That we will protect our food supplies and stop allowing foods in the system that are rife with pesticides, bacteria, hormones and worse.

That we will protect our farm land and stop poisoning the grounds that are so vital to growing good foods.

That we stop poisoning the air we breathe.

That we stop feeding hormones to our food supply.

I could go on - but in short: That we will love, nurture and provide for all people from cradle to grave by giving food, shelter and medical care so that all can experience the most optimal development that is possible.

Besides when you see this symbol outside your house on a cold December morning – you just have to have a positive outlook.

Vaccine recalls

2007-12-14T14:38:00.000-08:00

Merck is recalling 2 vaccines used for children under the age of 5....

Merck is pulling 11 lots of PedvaxHIB and two lots of COMVAX. PedvaxHIB is a vaccine that protects against infection with haemophilus influenzae type B (Hib), the bacteria that causes meningitis, pneumonia, and bloodstream infections. The COMVAX vaccine protects against haemophilius B and hepatitis B, a virus that can cause liver disease.

Full article HERE

Information about unsafe toys

2007-11-17T13:14:00.000-08:00

With holiday season in full sales-display mode it’s time to really pay super attention to what you buy for your children – especially if buying toys.

22 toys were recalled in October – and with more and more hitting the stores form now until January sales time – I’m guessing more will be recalled – but you might already have bought them or are in a hurry and get caught up in the shiny pretty mode...and not the look at where it is made mode.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission and the recalls can be found here: http://www.cpsc.gov

Click on the tab for recall and product safety – you can then look by month or by products.....

You can also sign up for email recall notices at the site.

Also there is a toy recall site: http://toyinfo.org - but beware - it is a site of the Toy Industry Association.

I can’t tell you what to buy or not buy for your children – but please – place your child’s health above all else. Children do not care how much you buy them or what you pay for it – that’s all hype put out by the toy companies and the stores and why? They want you to go into debt before January 1 only because they ant to make tones of their yearly income before January 1.

Yes I am a cynic. But I am also a parent and a developmental psychologist and my goal as both is to have optimal development and that, to me, does not mean caving in to the ads. It means teaching children the difference between want and need – and that means you have to disagree with the TV programs that keep preaching to children to tell your parents you need...x,b,y,z,a,c,d,etc,etc.

But do remember you are the adult and you are in charge; your children and your wallet will be the happier.

Another toy recall alert!

2007-11-07T17:25:00.001-08:00

Please read and check to see if you have Aqua Dots [US name] or Bindeez [Australian name] in your child's toy collection.

These are very dangerous as they contain a chemical that if swallowed converts into what is called the "date rape drug."

Full article HERE.

If I still had a child at home - I would not buy anything made in China - China does not inspect these nor it seems does the US and now Australia. The corporations and mr failure's cronies are happy to make money and wait to see if kids get sick or die!

Breast feeding

2007-10-01T15:31:00.000-07:00

Go ahead and breast feed - it's the best food for a baby

From an op-ed in the L.A. Times ...

What science the Bush administration chooses to stifle or promote seems to be a matter of politics and economics. According to a recent story in the Washington Post, the multibillion-dollar baby formula industry pressured the Department of Health and Human Services to weaken a 2004 public-service campaign promoting breast-feeding -- and it worked, even though the science supported the other side.

Numerous studies suggest that breast milk protects infants from developing certain illnesses and that formula-feeding increases their health risks.

The ad campaign was designed to drive home that point. Now the health of millions of infants is at risk because mothers don't have the scientific knowledge the ads would have conveyed to make an informed choice between breast- or formula-feeding.

According to the Post, a recent report by an agency within the Health and Human Services Department makes the same point as the canceled ads but has also been downplayed by the government because of pressure from the formula industry.

Full article http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/sunday/commentary/la-op-orent30sep30,1,5921620.story

As a Developmental Psychologist who advocates "real" science and breast feeding for optimal development in infants - this is sickening!

Don't children count anymore? Rhetorical question - of course they don't...they don't vote!

Recall alert - CRIBS - September 21

2007-09-21T15:25:00.000-07:00

Now it's cribs from China that are being recalled:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Simplicity Inc, a supplier of baby furniture to Wal-Mart Stores Inc and other big retailers, is recalling about 1 million Chinese-made baby cribs that have been linked to at least two infant deaths, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said on Friday.

The drop-side can detach from the crib, which can create a dangerous gap that leads to an infant being trapped and suffocated, the safety agency said in a statement. It urged parents to check all Simplicity-made cribs to ensure the drop- side is installed correctly.

The cribs, priced between $100 and $300, were sold by U.S. retailers and chains, including Target Corp's Web site, Big Lots Inc and family-owned Meijer Inc.

Full article HERE

Are you a worrier?

2007-09-19T17:31:00.000-07:00

I was talking recently to some parents and to-be parents who say they worry...worry about doing the "right" thing, worry about their child's future, worry about their own life now that parenting is upon them...or about to be upon them.

I know my book will be of value to these parents and others....

It will soon be ready...and I'm thinking of a tentative title along this line:

I'm a child psychologist and I screwed up:
so why should anyone expect to be a perfect parent?

And I have asked my son to write a testimonial....

Lead in toy products

2007-09-04T20:10:00.001-07:00

Children and lead do not mix...young children put everything in their mouths so lead in children's toys is very BAD

Here is another Mattel toy recall:

The latest recall involves three Fisher-Price toy models and eight Barbie brand playsets. No Barbie dolls were included.

Mattel instructs people to go to its Web site (click HERE) to establish whether they own an affected toy. After they fill out a form and send back the affected parts, Mattel will send them replacement and bonus parts.

What to do when......

2007-08-18T18:34:00.000-07:00

I am often asked “what do you do when....?”
Or “What do you do to get [child] to do [x]?”
Do you reward, punish, time out, ignore, etc.
And if so, what do you do to punishment, to reward etc.

It’s a long list of questions when you fill in the blanks – and there are no specific answers that I can give you...

How you raise your child is up to you – assuming you do not abuse or neglect.

For each question asked, I can pose back a whole lot more:

Why do you ask?
What about the situation is important for your child?
Is this your issue or the child’s?
What else is going on in your home? Work?
Is this issue worth a big fight?
In the long run is it really that important?

I do not know your families and cannot answer specific questions...but I can give some education and advice.

Your child is yours; he/she is an individual with a set of experiences, feelings, thoughts and interests that are different from yours and different from all the other children in the class or neighborhood.

If you read some earlier posts, you saw that I wrote about uniqueness, cultural, familial and other differences. All these factors go into making your child one special being who is, at the same time, a citizen of your home, neighborhood and universe.

It’s tough being a kid – you need to learn a lot, to practice what you are learning and to ultimately make your own way in the world while still being a social creature who lives among parents, family, classmates and all.....

Here is a personal example... my son was never a good student in his early years. Did I punish him for failing classes or not doing homework? No - I explained that these were his choices and that no matter how he did in school I loved him – but that I was disappointed about those choices he was making.

Years after finishing high school, he finally decided he really wanted to go to college and was turned down in his first application due to his high school grades..[I did not say I told you so.]

So off he went to a community college and then transferred to the school that had turned him down - where he is now on the Dean’s List and invited to be part of the Honors College....

Would he be here now if I had forced the issue when he was younger? I don’t think so – neither does he...

One of his comments to me a few years ago was that I picked my fights carefully as he was growing up. There were issues I ignored and some I did not – but to the now grown-up him the one’s I picked as issues were the ones that he now knows are important as values to live by.....and it was great to hear him say that – because for me, in the long haul, having an adult child who is a caring, thoughtful human is the important part of child rearing.

Others may disagree -- but go back to where I started this post – how we raise our children is a choice we make. The scary part is that we do most of it in hopes that it works out.

But I am also a believer in the idea that we can always change - so if you make what you consider a mistake with your child – you and your child can always make changes in what you are doing.

More lead in toys

2007-08-16T17:16:00.001-07:00

Again if you have young children around - or know of any with Mattel toys in the house - please read and take action if necessary...

If this weren't so serious, the saga of ongoing recalls of products made in China would be a running joke..... Today's recalls are about toys - again...from Mattel - again.....

One recall is due to lead; the other due to small magnets....

The company, in a statement issued from its headquarters in El Segundo, Calif., said it was recalling a total of 436,000 Chinese-made toys, more than half of them marketed in the United States, that had “impermissible levels of lead.” The toys are die-cast vehicles featuring the Sarge character from the movie “Cars.”

Mattel said the hazard in the products, made between May and July, was discovered as part of an investigation of all its toy manufacturing that began in July after it received a tip about lead-based paint. The latest move involves toys from a different Chinese contractor than the one that produced toys recalled earlier this month, it said.

The separate action today involving a design flaw in 18.2 million magnetic toys, about half of them sold in the United States, expanded a recall initiated last year after reports of deaths and injuries to children who ingested magnets that had come loose. Mattel said the recall covered 63 varieties of toys, made since 2002 and sold before January of this year, including 44 Polly Pocket toys, 11 Doggie Day Care toys, 4 Batman toys, a One Piece toy, and two Barbie toys.

Here is a link to the Consumer Product Safety Commission listing all recalls [so far] for this month

http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prerelaug07.html

Beware- more leaded toys

2007-08-01T20:01:00.001-07:00

This in the news today:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Mattel Inc.'s Fisher-Price division is recalling almost 1 million toys made in China because their paint may contain too much lead, marking the latest in a string of recalls that have fueled U.S.-China tensions over the safety of Chinese products.

Mattel said the 967,000 plastic toys, which include popular preschool characters like Elmo, Big Bird, and Dora, were made by a contract manufacturer in China using a non-approved paint pigment containing lead, which is in violation of its standards.
Full article HERE

Why are all these dangerous products still coming in? We have had bad pet food, bad people food and bad children's toys. No one seems able to stop them because no one is monitoring our safety! We have few person who do the actual inspections - in fact there are fewer food safety inspectors than back in 2002 and we import more and more stuff - with fewer and fewer inspections!

This from an administration that pretends to be concerned with public safety - when they are in reality more concerned with scare tactics and keeping people afraid.

After all - Fear is good for republicans...

Toss these children's snacks!

2007-07-01T11:12:00.000-07:00

If you have any of these Veggie Booty snacks around - throw them out!

Snack implicated in 17-state Salmonella outbreak

Jun 29, 2007 (CIDRAP News) – An epidemiologic investigation of 52 cases of Salmonella infection in 17 states, most of them in children, has prompted a nationwide recall of a snack called Veggie Booty, federal health agencies reported yesterday.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advised consumers to throw away any Veggie Booty on hand. The snack is made of puffed rice and corn with a vegetable coating and is sold in flexible plastic foil bags in 4-ounce, 1-ounce, and half-ounce sizes, federal officials said...The FDA listed the states and numbers of cases in the outbreak as follows: California, 7; Colorado, 5; Connecticut, 1; Georgia, 1; Indiana, 1; Massachusetts, 3; Minnesota, 2; New Hampshire, 2; New Jersey, 2; New York, 13; Oregon, 1, Pennsylvania, 3; Tennessee, 1, Texas, 1; Vermont, 3; Washington, 4; and Wisconsin, 2.

Full article HERE

Sad statistics

2007-06-26T18:25:00.000-07:00

In Oregon, where I now live, the number of neglected and abused children has risen...in fact it reached a 10 year high in 2006...

I am a believer that much abuse comes about due to lack of knowledge of basic child development. While working in this field in Washington, D.C., I saw abused infants - abused because parents thought that the baby was "disobeying" them or was "out to get" them. Many also expected children less than one-year-old to be completely toilet trained!

If those parents had known that infants don't have the capacity to "disobey" and their bodies could not be toilet trained in infancy - maybe those children would not have been hurt?

I also believe that the increase in poverty rates is a factor and that won't change until we have people in Washington,D.C. look at the human effects of the outsourcing of many jobs and the stress on families trying to work and raise children with little support.

Beware what toys you buy!

2007-06-17T13:38:00.000-07:00

In other of my blogs I have info about recalls on pet food, people food and products but now it's time for a toy recall.

I have taken to looking carefully on products to see from whence they come - if it's made in China - it stays in the store..Why tae chances with anyone's health..clearly the Chinese manufacturers are learning form us - if the bottom line s good for the company - who cares how many people/children/pets are damaged!

From the NY TImes

June 15, 2007
Thomas the Tank Engine Toys Recalled Because of Lead Paint
By ANGEL JENNINGS

The toy maker RC2 Corporation pulled a number of its Thomas & Friends trains and accessory parts off the shelves yesterday after learning that the red and yellow paint used to decorate more than 1.5 million of the toys contained lead.

Lead, if ingested by children, can cause long-term neurological problems that affect learning and behavior.

“Parents should not delay in getting these toys away from their kids,” Scott Wolfson, spokesman for the Consumer Product Safety Commission, said yesterday.

An alert posted at a Web site devoted to the toy line, www.totallythomas.com, included a list of more than two dozen items affected by the recall. The company noted that toys that bear a code containing a “WJ” or “AZ” on the bottom of the toy or the inside of the battery door are not included in the recall.

Full article HERE

What is a family?

2007-06-08T17:04:00.001-07:00

Back again - but I haven't stopped writing about child development - it's just that I am busy on doing it in book format and got on a roll with this and other writings....

So here is a draft chapter on: What is a family?

First answer this for yourself......

What is a family? Whatever is your first definition – write it down and hold it in mind.

Now mentally add in-laws – then add children –[ and we’ll keep it at two kids for now]

Next we will have that couple divorce as that’s fairly common.

Then – we’ll have it be an amicable divorce and have each former spouse re-marry and remain in communication with their former spouses.

Now mix in the new in-laws and the already existing children of the “new” spouse.

Go back to your original family – the one with two kids – now how many “grandparents” do they have - how many aunts and uncles and cousins?

How does this “new” family allot time for everyone to spend with the “birth grandparents?” How do the divorced parents allot time so all kids get to spend time with “birth” parents all the while they try to have time to spend with each other? What if for some reasons they cannot coordinate their schedules with those of the other “birth” parent?

Now have these two new couples each have a child – does the new addition get to go visiting with it’s siblings when they go off to the “birth” parents home? Or does this new addition get to stay “home” and feel different?

This is a common scenario if you start with one divorce with each parent re-marrying. What if anyone of the members of the above family divorces again? And remarries again and again? What if the grandparents divorce? What if aunts and uncles divorce?

Can you visualize the amount of decision making that must go on to keep this “family” in contact with all its parts? It can get mind-boggling but many children live in this kind of complicated world and come out fine. For them – this IS their family. It may be different from that of their friends but it is a family.

I hate the term “broken” family – no family is broken – families are different – broken implies a negative that may or may not be there – much as a family that stays married can be either positive or negative. Marriage and divorce are not the biggest factors that define the quality of a family.

The same goes for adopted children – they dislike being asked about their “real” parents when one means the birth parents. The real parents are the ones raising them.

Our choice of words about families and relationships can create issues that are not there.

There are various family formations – the one we have in the USA is usually the nuclear family – two parents and their kids in one house. This is very rare in the rest of the world – it accounts for only about 1/3 of the world’s families. The rest of the world lives in many different arrangements and now even in the USA we are seeing more of those other arrangements. We have our parents move in with us to help with childcare – we live near our parents so they can provide childcare. We have live-in help or daily help for our children if both parents work.

We have single parents, gay and lesbian parents, dual career parents, couples who choose to not marry even when there are children, and couples who choose to remain childless. They are all “families.”

Now ask yourself: Is your definition of family the same as it was when you started reading these notes?

Lastly we now have a “new” generation – parents with their own minor children who are also the caregivers for their aging parents. Many are having children in their 30’s and 40’s [some even in their 60’s!] and as we are all living longer, the aging grandparents are in need of more support just as the children are in their teens or in college but still in need of parental support. I like the term “sandwich generation” as that is what it feels like – as opposed to the other term – middle generation squeeze. I speak from my own experience and that of many of my friends – it is a sandwich-like feeling – and one is emotionally torn.

Many of us who went through some trying times with our own aging parents have had long conversations with our own children about end of life issues and how to deal with potential changes in mental status, etc. It is an issue that many will be facing as we stay alive longer.

Happy family!

Increases in infant mortality

2007-04-21T13:16:00.000-07:00

From the New York Times

For decades, Mississippi and neighboring states with large black populations and expanses of enduring poverty made steady progress in reducing infant death. But, in what health experts call an ominous portent, progress has stalled and in recent years the death rate has risen in Mississippi and several other states.

The setbacks have raised questions about the impact of cuts in welfare and Medicaid and of poor access to doctors, and, many doctors say, the growing epidemics of obesity, diabetes and hypertension among potential mothers, some of whom tip the scales here at 300 to 400 pounds.

“I don’t think the rise is a fluke, and it’s a disturbing trend, not only in Mississippi but throughout the Southeast,” said Dr. Christina Glick, a neonatologist in Jackson, Miss., and past president of the National Perinatal Association.

For the full article click HERE

Childhood Obesity

2007-02-28T18:35:00.000-08:00

Childhood obesity has become a much more serious health problem than we want to admit.

Look at the news about the 200 pound 8-year-old in England who made international news. It was such a serious problem that the British agencies held a hearing to determine if the child should remain with his mother. It was considered a case of abuse/neglect.

We think of abuse/neglect as severe punishment or locking kids in closets - but it will only be a matter of time before obesity is on the list of what is considered neglect on the part of parents here and elsewhere.

No government yet wants to start removing children to foster care due to obesity - but we as a culture have to look out for children - society has an interest in its children...and obesity is shortening lifespans - isn't that abusive?

Do we allow children to eat what they want? Or do we as adults control what food they eat?

What's your take on it?

Comment below

Vitamins

2007-01-26T14:37:00.000-08:00

For those who have been regular readers of this blog, you know I prefer "real" food to products with unpronounceable names in them....It's why I have been taking a daily vitamin that is food based - and not one "made" in a lab with who-knows-what in it.

I was alerted to an article about vitamins - which you can read it here

In short it's an article about food-based vitamins v. synthetic ones and contained information I was not aware of concerning the synthetics and the idea of talking in terms of milligrams.

It's worth a read if you take vitamins and especially if your children take synthetic ones.

Healthy happy new year

2007-01-03T19:34:00.000-08:00

An oldie but goodie article of mine...well not that old : - )

Healthy living for the 21st Century

When we were young we heard what are called "old wives tales" about health and food...We rolled our eyes and looked at our mothers as if they were aliens...Now we are learning that our mothers were correct.

Maybe they knew what Hippocrates said:

"Leave your drugs in the chemist's pot if you can heal the patient with food."
"Let food be thy medicine, thy medicine shall be thy food."

Or maybe they read Maimonides:
"Let nothing which can be treated by diet be treated by other means."

Or maybe they knew this Chinese proverb:
“He that takes medicine and neglects diet, wastes the skill of the physician.”

Whatever knowledge they had - those old wives - our parents and grandparents - they seemed to know a lot about nutrition.

My mother was adverse to seeing a physician unless absolutely necessary - something I took note of as she lived to 95. She believed in eating well and letting one's body take care of itself. She fed us well and grew most of the vegetables we ate. But - and it's a big BUT.... the soil was in better shape when I was a kid.... and that was in New York City!

Today we have depleted the soil and no matter how organic our food - it is missing what it used to have way back when - and what is missing are many essential nutrients. The environment is more toxic than it was, food is more processed, and it is usually picked before it is ripe and very often cooked to death.

If the soil and environment have worsened, is there anything we can do to grow older better? Yes - we can supplement our diets with glyconutritional products.

“Glyconutritional products will play a leading role in the 21st century's emerging wellness industry. The driving determinant will be the growing realization that optimal cell-to-cell communication is one of the most critical functions of the life process and is fundamental to immune system health."

And if our cells do a better job of talking to one another, who knows what they can start talking about! So listen to your body now - it talks to you and tells you what it needs - and it can do a lot more communicating if given the appropriate equipment.

Newer equipment

I'm a skier so let me use a ski analogy. Skiing can be tiring and it's even more so with older bodies and older equipment. When I first skied we had leather boots with laces and very heavy long skis with heavy bindings. But I was a lot younger then - in my 20's and I hardly noticed how tiring it was - it was too much fun. As I aged - into my 50's - I began to think there had to be a solution to all the work the skiing knees do and I fell in love with what were called shaped skis or parabolic skis. I was the first I knew to buy a pair and it made all the difference for my body. The skis do the work! I'm into a newer shorter pair these days and will continue to monitor newer models of skis as it makes more sense to let the equipment do the bulk of the hard work.

At the same time I learned of the new ski equipment, I also came across new inner body equipment - glyconutrients. For sports fans, think of glyconutrients as the nutritional version of shaped skis, lightweight bikes or titanium softball bats. It's all about that new equipment helping us do what we do better and to doing it as we age.

The ingredients in glyconutrients are not "new" - they have been around probably forever and used to be found in our daily food - but no more. The ingredients have been re-discovered and combined into products; products that protect and nourish our cells and regulate our organs and organ systems.

Way back when we were in school the up-to-date science of the time was adequate for then but it was missing a lot of information we now know about. I know from my own field of Developmental Psychology that advances in technology lead to advances in developmental knowledge. The same is true of all sciences, including glycobiology. In this new field, over 20,000 articles have been written in a few short years. Why so many and why so fast? "This breakthrough discovery exposed the missing link that has the scientific community, health researchers, and pharmaceutical companies scrambling to get up to speed on this incredible science. "

Science and medicine have long tried to break the code by which the cells of the body communicate with one another in order for its complex functions to occur. Just as biochemistry is the chemistry of life, this mysterious code is the language of life. For years, scientists focused on proteins as the primary communication molecules. Early in this century however, a theoretical mathematician at the Weisman Institute calculated the number of molecular configurations possible with protein molecules and the number of known chemical command signals needed to run the body. She concluded that there were not enough protein configurations possible to supply all the messages. Another code was required - a sugar code.

Of the 200 monosaccharides [sugars] that occur naturally in plants, eight are known to be components used in cell-to-cell communication. These eight sugars are glucose, fucose, mannose, galactose, xylose, N-acetylglucosamine, N- acetylgalactosamine and N-acetylneuraminic acid. Only two of these, glucose and galactose, are commonly found in the foods we eat. The others need to be put into our bodies in the form of nutritional supplements.

Glyconutritional products will play a leading role in the 21st century's wellness industry. The driving determinant will be the growing realization that optimal cell-to-cell communication is an important function for the life process and is fundamental to immune system health. And - it is what will allow us to be healthier as we age.

"that" time of year

2006-12-17T16:42:00.000-08:00

No matter what holiday you celebrate, this can be a trying time of year - but especially for young children who have no real idea about what is going on.

Thinking back to the Halloween post, what do young children really think when they see a santa on nearly every corner? And what of the parent/friend/stranger who "plays" santa? Is that as confusing and perhaps scary as putting on a Halloween costume?

I can't know what your child thinks, but to err on the side of caution, assume it's all a very confusing set of images for a young child.

And then we have the stress factor....from Thanksgiving thru early January most people are not at their best. Even if we are not out shopping for gifts we do need food and other stuff and also off to work - and so we are in traffic, line and around fraying tempers.

I'm not sure what the solution is for you but I had and have my own for me.....and that's what all need to do - find something that works for you and your family so that the stress is not an additional factor for the young child or children...

Peace

Halloween

2006-11-02T19:02:00.000-08:00

I was reminded the other day about young children and Halloween. They do not like the costumes. Why? Because for young children the line between fantasy and reality is not a clear line. Remember that for children, seeing IS believing, so you can start to think about what goes on in the child's mind on Halloween with all it's costumes.

Maybe it goes like this: "If I put on a mouse costume then I AM a mouse. " [Then I'm not John anymore and that's scary.]

Children get upset when parents put on eyeglasses or change hair styles. "Maybe you are NOT my parent - but some other person."

So Halloween is not a fun thing until you are old enough to know about object constancy....until then, changing visions may mean the object has really changed.

Behaving - what does it mean?

2006-10-31T16:25:00.000-08:00

We all want our children to "behave." The eternal question is what does it mean to behave? Each family, each culture, each society has it's own "rules" for it's citizens. What I want my child to do may not be what you want your child to do so maybe it's better to talk in developmental generalities?

Behaving is means following the rules of your own society - but in order to do that, people need not only to know what the "rules" are but to have the ability to distinguish right from wrong. they also need to want to act in a correct way, and they need the ability to control themselves.

That's a lot to ask of most people, let alone young children. Here's an example of "behaving." Long ago, a friend came into her living room to find her 5-year-old carefully smearing toothpaste on a wooden tabletop. After counting to at least 20, she asked him "What are you doing?" "Mommy," the child said, "the toothpaste cleaned my teeth so good, I wanted to clean your table for you." She thanked him for helping her and proceeded to explain that just as there was a special cleaner for teeth, there was one for tables and showed him where the table cleaner was.

[Before going on I do have to add that we now know that toothpaste is a good cleaner for tables and this kid was way ahead of the curve on this : -)]

Many parents might have said " Don't do that" or punished the child in some way....But what did this child learn about "rules?" He learned there are other ways to be helpful [wood polish] , that he was a good kid for helping mommy, and that we can discuss behaviors. The child may not have been aware at the time that all this was being learned, but it was a step on the path to making decisions about himself and his behavior.

Back to school?

2006-09-15T15:38:00.000-07:00

I took off from blogging a lot this summer and enjoyed doing things with my son who spent the summer here...

Children are back to school and back to eating those lunches you make...please make them healthy!

We are entering a new generation of obesity and now it's not just adults who are obese - it is expected that the number of children who are obese will hit 20% by the year 2010 - that's only FOUR years from now.

I heard or read somewhere that we are reaching that stage in obesity where this or the next generation of children will NOT have a longer life span than the parents...

Not only is obesity bad in and of itself, it makes all other medical problems worse....

I've been blogging about healthier children for a while now and hope the readers of this blog are among those who will not have obese children...It is something parents have control over during the child's early years...and good nutrition early on can never be a bad choice...

Please watch what your children eat and make sure they get exercise....

Sifting and shifting

2006-08-08T16:31:00.000-07:00

How do you think about "things?" For starters , your brain probably starts an internal search for a likely category [or folder] in which there are already files similar to the "thing" you are thinking about. For example, since it's baseball season, and I'm a Red Sox fan, if you ask me a question about baseball, my mind goes to my sports folder, leafs through to the baseball section, then filters your question through what it finds there. If your question raises some new issues for the baseball file in my brain, then I work to fit the new information into the existing file - or I can start a new one. This is what I call sifting and shifting. And all of this happens without my being fully aware of the process.

How does the child do this? Children are not born with their parent's folders and files : ) they have to start their own filing systems : ). They do this first by licking, tasting, smelling and touching [there was a reason Freud called his first stage "oral." This very tactual process allows the child to start developing a folder for the object being so tastily "thought" about. As the child continues to interact with that same object, the files in that folder grow. The next time there is an interaction the child already has some information about that object and now can compare and contrast the new information to that which is there. And each interaction builds the files and folders in that child's brain.

Language

2006-07-04T08:18:00.000-07:00

I overheard a conversation the other day. The mother of a one-year-old was saying that her daughter's language development had seemed to stall - but she was running all over the place. That happens - the two pieces of the development puzzle sometimes compete with each other. Some adults, the saying goes, can't "think and chew gum at the same time." Well - in adults we see it as funny - in kids - it's often part of the pattern of language development.

The body needs all that energy either for speaking or for running - and at this point in time - maybe the required energy amount is so great it can only be used for one aspect at a time. After the running is under control - the language will zoom ahead. It hasn't stopped developing - it is still undergoing the process - it's just that we aren't seeing it - or hearing it right now.

Can you put yourself in the place of a young child and listen to the language surrounds that child lives in? One researcher [Friedlander, 1971] gives a great description:

Careful analysis of home language interactions, well recorded on quality audio equipment, ends to breed an enhanced respect for the awesome intricacy of the language learning process in its natural habitat. As one listens to such recordings, it seems altogether inexplicable how so delicate a fabric as language can be woven from such crude, chaotically tangled, poorly organized, and seemingly random raw materials as the natural sounds that surround an infant in a bustling household...Speech articulation in adult and sibling conversation is almost uniformly poor...Speech messages and language signals are deeply embedded in background noise; sound intensity levels are often inaudibly low or assaultively high; the speech stream flows with great rapidity; two or more people are often speaking at one time; and grammatical structures are often incomplete or very distorted. In such a mess, what is the stimulus?

Think about the non-human background noise we live with pets, appliances, TVs, radios, traffic, airplanes, etc. Yet in every culture children do learn their own language and sometimes more than one language - and they learn in spite of all else that is going their lives :- )

Cognitive Development

2006-04-10T13:50:00.000-07:00

The periods of infancy, toddlerhood and early school-age are remarkable for the amount of cognitive development that takes place and even more remarkable that it comes out the way it does and works it’s way into the right form for the culture.

Children's thought processes are not like those of an adult. Thinking is related to how people see things, hear things and then sift and shift those "things" around in their head - and children do these differently than do adults.

Often adults want to say the child is "wrong" when they say, see or do something different from what adults would do. But they are not wrong - they are children! Think back to when we talked of biases.

In most families there are those hilarious anecdotes centered around the child doing what children do – interpreting the world their “correct” way. I remember a friend of mine whose four-year-old daughter said she wanted to play the piano. She asked her mother to get her a certain book of music and open it to a page where a favorite song appeared. The child sat down at the piano, hovered her fingers over the keys and waited. A short time later the child said “nothing’s happening.” After a mother- child conversation about this it turned out the child had the concept piano, book, hovering fingers make music. After all she had seen her mother sit down open the book hover her fingers over the keys and suddenly there was music.

What she did not know was that there were other steps to the concept - one of which was that the fingers had to MOVE onto the notes. She had not SEEN that part of the concept and what she did not see could not be used in her thought process. You might say but she had to have seen the fingers move - well - yes - her eyesight was perfect- but seeing and “seeing” are different phenomenon.

One time I was testing a 5-year-old and the IQ test required the child to copy a diamond shape. The child drew a perfect circle. I asked my usual “are you sure you are done?” and he said yes he was done and added “I drew the diamond ring for you.”

According to the test he failed that item - he might not have really listened to the instructions or he might have and did his own thing anyway. Children are like that.... It’s also why I don’t like IQ tests for giving a score - they are often more useful as measures of what the child’s thought processes are.. Incorrect answers [those that don’t agree with the test manual] are often of greater value to the tester than an IQ score. That’s my personal bias when I am the tester but that’s a topic for another time.

I mentioned that the above example may have related to what the child heard. Like seeing is not always “seeing,” hearing is not always “hearing.” Most of us know about the “icing” song - [“My country ‘tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of the icing.”] We hear of Round John Virgin [“round yon virgin” and laugh. The child saying these things is not trying to be funny. It’s what he/she is hearing. When you hear words you try to fit them into already existing concepts - that’s the sifting and shifting part of learning. If you don’t now have a particular concept - you shift and sift into one’s you do have.

As you get older, and develop many different kinds of concepts, you tend to put the words into a more correct “location.”

All this leads to interesting ideas that get studied - especially in different cultures. If you don’t have a word for a concept, can you actually have that as a concept? If you don’t actually see [perceive] something, can you have a word for it? And can you have a concept for it? Language, concepts and perception are tied together in our brains.

We are mostly products of American culture and TV and we have a set of concepts, perceptions and language more or less typical for our culture. But that can be very different from what is thought, perceived and spoken of elsewhere - even if you and the person from a different culture seem to be looking at, talking about and thinking about the same thing.

Can you even imagine how a young child tries to figure it all out?

And does!

What kids "see"

2006-03-01T11:57:00.000-08:00

Different points of view!

Here's my dog from my the view point of a baby who crawls on the floor and then from the adult point of view.

Here is a hanging plant from the view of a toddler who can walk under it.

And here is what an adult sees.

The TV set from the floor or low child type seat.

And from an adult view.

Take a crawl along your floors - see what your child sees. If you have a toddler- take a walk on your knees!

Seeing IS believing!

2006-02-03T18:34:00.000-08:00

Baby does see! Even that newborn sees. We are born able to see yet I still hear well educated adults saying that their newborn "looks as if she is looking at me but I know she can't see me."

Well the adult is incorrect. The newborn sees but has more accurate vision in a range of about 10 inches. That's just about the distance baby is from the adult face when the baby is being held or being breast fed.

As the baby ages, the vision improves and we see babies actively watching and following objects with the eyes. Remember what was said in the last posing about our "old" perceptions of children. Go look at the picture of the newborn. See how large the head is? The head of a newborn is almost it's adult size - it's BIG. The head is well developed at birth and the eyes work - but the head is still too large for the baby to control - so the eyes follow but it will take more growth for the head to follow. [That's also why we carefully hold a baby's head when we pick it up and cradle it.]

As the baby develops, perception is an important part of the cognitive process. For a young infant, if an object can not be seen - it does not exist! So seeing IS believing.

An interesting task for adults is to get ourselves down on the level of an infant and start looking around. What do you REALLY see? More about this next time - with photos.

What are children?

2006-01-22T11:08:00.000-08:00

That may sound like an oddball question but we need to ask it. Are children just smaller versions of adults? Are children just good imitators of the "adultness" around them?

Many years ago the above two questions would get a resounding "yes" or a "strong maybe." Next time you are at a museum look at the old masters paintings of families - the children are dressed in adult-like clothing and their proportions are adult-like. Did the artist "see" this when painting or was it such a prevalent attitude that the artist intentionally "missed" the actual size of the child in order to appease the family - who was paying for the painting. Compare those children with the one above and note the head size differential.

Children being seen as something different from adults was not a viable notion until the early part of the 1900's - not that long ago. There are still persons today who think children have no ideas of their own and are molded solely by what their parents do. And there are those who still attribute adult-type thoughts and intentions to their children.

Children are different. Yes they are the same species as the adults who raise them but how they function - how they learn, think, talk follow a child's path of development - not an adult path.

Cross Cultural Studies

2006-01-09T17:00:00.000-08:00

Another way to look at development is to study different cultures. This allows us to see the vast range of behaviors in humans. Most research that you read is based in the USA and is limited by our own cultural models.

The most usual behaviors studied are in the realm of child rearing and family living arrangements and we find variations that are far outside the normal distributions of those behaviors that we find in the United States.

Child rearing practices

Last year after the tsunami you might have noticed on TV and in the papers news about "baby 81" in Sri Lanka. If you noticed, he had a mark on his forehead, a black "mottu," put there by a nurse to ward off evil. There are many cultures that put a mark somewhere on an infant or child or put an amulet on an arm or leg. Some cultures cover the bed of the sleeping infant with black cloth to ward off evil.

[Some pediatricians in the United States would suggest that our infant talcum powder and whatever else we sprinkle on babies fit into the same category.]

Sleeping

In many cultures infants and young children sleep with their parents. In our culture this is usually taboo as we have some cultural prohibitions about where children sleep and with whom. There is recent research on this topic that does suggest that even in the United States infants should sleep near the parents and even in the same bed.

Weaning and toilet training

In the United States we tend to use a calendar or an aging system to mark when children should do things. If you asked most American parents when their children were weaning or toilet trained they will give you the child's age. Parents sometimes feel that the earlier the child is toilet trained the more "brownie points" they get. This is one of my personal biases. I have see too many cases of child abuse resulting from a child wetting a diaper when the parents thought the child should have stopped doing so.

In other cultures toilet training is just not an issue. This is especially true in warmer climates with houses with dirt floors. There is no stigma attached to when and where you go but like with puppy training the goal is to go outside the house.

Regarding weaning - in many cultures an infant is breast-fed for years. More recently there has been a move in the United States to encourage longer periods of breast-feeding.

The above issues about sleeping and breast-feeding are just a few examples of where cross-cultural findings have affected what is now suggested in the United States. But it takes decades for some ideas to take hold here when they’ve been practiced forever elsewhere.

Another cross-cultural factor is what defines a "family." In the USA we mainly have what is called a nuclear family, a set of parents and their children, all living in one house. This is a combination found mostly in Western cultures. Other cultures have a wider variety of living situations. Living with or next to relatives is quite common; calling all people in your immediate neighborhood or village “family” is found in various parts of the world. In some cultures, parents with many children may share their children with relatives who have none. None of this is “right” or “wrong” - each culture determines it’s own rules and values.

Language

All infants start life being able to make all human sounds. Even that eu French sound and the African click. Where did they go? Well - did your parents keep encouraging you to make those sounds? Do you encourage them in your children?

Toys

In some cultures children play with the adult tools such as machetes; tools that many American parent would cringe at.

Physical activity

Barring illness, children have the capacity to be very active. Yet here we label active children as having ADHD and medicate them [opps yes I have strong biases!] Look at the current crop of Olympians - Americans are no longer in the elite categories in many sports...One could ask if we are deteriorating physically or is it that we no longer allow our children to develop in that area?

Intellect

Cultures differ in their emphasis on school education. Some do everything possible to ensure that the children are well educated - from early on. Some don't - and some say they do and yet they don't.

The oops where have I been query.

2006-01-02T10:40:00.000-08:00

I'm glad we are into 2006. The end of 2005 was too busy for me...getting ready to teach again and having a friend in town - which meant skiing and a short vacation to the Olympic Peninsula :).

But my resolution is to do my blogs regularly - starting today.

Studying Children

How do we study children? I have been known to say that there are two professions that are difficult - being a veterinarian or a pediatrician - both require working with organisms that can not always communicate clearly what feels "wrong."

Studying children sort of fits in here too but I have been a researcher - with newborns, infants and 5 year olds. The main difference is that researchers are working with populations that need not communicate what is "wrong" and we just need to find ways to measure what communication IS there.

Research comes in many forms - studying individuals or groups, short term or long term studies, and combinations of the forms.

How do we know what changes occur say from year 1 to year 2? We can study the same child for the year or we can look today at a 1-year-old and also look at a 2-year-old and measure the differences. Studying the same person over time is called longitudinal research. Studying the two different children is called cross-sectional research. Both are valid types of research.

Much of what we learned about development in the past came from longitudinal studies, mainly at universities, and which were funded for decades. Going back to the last post, can you see how the investigator can have a biased approach? Not to say they did or that the research was flawed, but when you study the same people over time you, as the investigator, are now part of that person's life and being the one studied is part of the persona of the people in the study.

Cross-sectional research is less affected by long term biases but the draw back here is that the researcher is studying two different children with all that entails. Getting two different yet "matching" groups of individuals is done statistically. Factors are matched as best they can be- such as family make-up, education levels of parents, type of neighborhoods lived in, etc.

All research has flaws and all researchers have flaws - we are all human. But the knowledge we have gained over the decades from all kinds of research and researchers has led to an understanding of child development.

Another caveat - gains in technology have led to gains in the study of humans. For example, when I was in college, child development was a relatively small field of research and there were few text books on the subject! When I was in graduate school, researchers were finding ways of studying infants; some were looking at perception and language development and very few were interested in fathers! Now infancy, fathers, prenatal, early postnatal, and language and perception are major fields of study.

Just imagine what we will know in the future.

The "Oops - that's not me" syndrome

2005-10-24T15:02:00.000-07:00

Even before we start investigating the development of children, two caveats of sorts about psychology and humans are needed.

1. The uniqueness of psychology

Psychology is a social science. Social sciences are the only sciences where the investigator is of the same species as the investigated.

If you think about it, rocks do not study rocks. Atoms do not study atoms. Dinosaurs do not study dinosaurs, etc.
People do study people and this leads to potential problems in the "doing" of psychology.

We all come to the observation and study of people with our own “biases” based on our culture, background, age, sex, race, etc. This is wrong or bad - but it is an important factor to consider when reading about, looking at, and studying people.

We tend look at "other" people through our own eyes – we cannot help doing so - but we have to be aware of this factor.

As an aside, we tend to do the same thing when we look at other living species…How many of us have said “my dog is sad,” “my cat is happy,” or “my bird looks interested.” And – we tend to do this with inanimate objects as well…You don’t have to answer publicly - but how many have said things like: “That light turned red just to get me.” Or “It rained today because I had planned an outdoor event.” And how many of us attribute nasty characteristics to our cars when they fail to do as we wish? Your DVD palyer? or VCR? You might think of similar ideas you have had.

If it is this easy to attribute feelings and intentions to non-humans - live or inanimate - can you see how much easier it is to attribute characteristics to humans?

2. The uniqueness of humans

When reading about research findings we are often tempted to say “but my family is/was not like that.” Or “that happened to me and I grew up okay.” You are correct, your family is/was not like that and you did/do make different decisions, but that does not mean the research is not correct.

Research results are the culmination of people studying many people. Research results reflect the “average,” not the specific. You should know that in statistics there is a factor called the standard deviation and it reflects the variance around the standard or norm. For example, the average IQ is 100 but there is a standard deviation of about 15 [depending on the test used] which means that the average IQ is anywhere between 85 and 115.

Most of what is studied in humans falls into a “normal” distribution – with a standard deviation. Therefore you can be somewhat different from the characteristic noted and still be “normal.” Or it is entirely possible that you and/or your family are very different. That means you fall outside the standard deviation. That is not a “bad” thing – and it may be a very good thing – like an IQ of 150 is outside the norm but is considered a “good” number. Nothing about research findings indicates bad v. good....all research does is point out an average range and variations....differences have no goodness/badness values!

So when you read about research, remember it’s all about the numbers….not the individual children or families.

Your kids; my kids

2005-09-11T17:27:00.000-07:00

This blog is not and can not be about how you should/could/would raise your child....Why? Because your child is yours and mine is mine. I didn't want anyone telling me how to raise mine and I won't think of telling you how to raise yours. What I can do though, is suggest ideas, raise questions, and mention what research shows about children.

Parenting skills require thinking - about the child, about yourself and about the interaction between you. Add in a spouse, other children, pets and life - and you get a more complicated scenario. I'll do my best to keep the "scenes" as simple as I can when first introducing topics but then will raise questions about the influences of the "added" effects.

Also because much of what I will be writing is based on American research, what I say will be more true of American kids than kids around the world. Some information from other countries will appear so that we can see the differences in child rearing and ask if any of it makes a difference..and since we are a country of many types of families, some of what we learn from other cultures may explain your or your neighbor's in-home culture.

Growing Children

2005-08-21T19:16:00.000-07:00

Many years ago I wrote a book called Growing Children. My co-author, Freda Rebelsky, and I have been asked how people can get copies as it is out of print. We tried to interest some publishers in re-printing it but there was no interest. Maybe because it was a paperbound book and only 70 pages of text... [read cheap to do and can't sell for $100]. So with blogging abounding I decided to do a blog with the same name and as I hold the copyright I will publish some of it here and add more..

If there is a ground swell of interest in the book as a book, I can make it into a pdf file and offer it for sale here -

and in the interim you can read my blog for free -

I recently taught an online course in lifespan development and one thought that ran through my head was that there is a lot more information available all the time and seemingly each year a new edition of a book appears and the costs are around $100. Yes we learn more about development all the time - but does that mean we need to keep re-doing book? Isn't there some part of development that more or less stays consistent? Or isn't there basic information for people who are not going to be psychologists in the academic world...

I think so- Psychology for the non-psychology major....for the parent, the high school student, the engineer, the CEO, the HR person etc...anyone who wants information without the list of the studies that led up to the information.

That is what Growing Children was originally intended to be - it was a small textbook on child development for the non-psych major and now it will be the blog for whoever wants to know about child development...