WELL, THAT WAS EASY

 

Fellow's public school began RIOT Week today (Reading Is Our Thing) which involves, among other things, turning off the TV at home for the duration of the (admittedly short four-day) week, to focus on reading. Being an earnest and obedient grade K student, Fellow has been talking up RIOT week for a while, reminding everyone it was a week for no TV. We suggested that we could make an exception for the night this week he'd have a babysitter, but he'd have none of it - there's no TV this week, period. (Fortunately, the Red Sox and Yankees played each other last week.) The message even filtered into Tiny Girl's consciousness. This morning, when she appeared in the living room on schedule at 7 am, instead of her usual greeting - "TV! TV!" - she asked us, "This is the week with no TV, right?" And indeed she was right. So we put on some music. And while we admit her choice of CD was a bit counterproductive, it's a good first step.

 

A WHOLE NEW MEANING TO 2% MILK

Your hot-button diet scare of the day: An Albert Einstein researcher has found that women who consume dairy products appear to be five times more likely to have twins as women who do not. The culprit: Bovine growth hormone, which appears naturally in milk, but is also injected into milk cows on about a third of American farms to foster growth and increase milk production. The study's results are "suggestive," not "conclusive," and we expect that the rise in delayed childbearing is also a critical fact0r, but the good doctor says that the spike in twin births can be traced to 1994, the year that - you guessed it - BGH was approved for use on US farms.

 

Our recommendation for organic-milk producers' stocks: Buy.

WE DON'T SEE NOTHING WRONG / WITH A LITTLE BUMP AND GRIND

-- with apologies to R. Kelly, and to William Safire, whose recent "On Language" column traced the derivation of the pregnant-belly euphemism of the moment, bump. Call us old-fashioned, but at FD.com HQ, we've been sticking with tummy and belly.

 

WE ALSO HAVE NO PROBLEM WITH A LITTLE BUGGY AND GRIND

 

The Wall Street Journal (article not available online) and Publishers Weekly have raved about the new book, Rumpsringa, by Tom Shachtman, which goes behind the fascinating Amish tradition in which 16-year-olds are allowed a window to go into the modern world and test the limits of freedom, from cell phones to smoking to drunk driving. The idea is that they must freely choose to  enter into life as members of the highly-restrictive church, and cannot do so without knowing what they'd be missing. What's remarkable is that at the end of rumspringa, 80% of Amish kids decide to commit to the life, a testament, perhaps, to the power of Amish parenting. (Jedediah, pick up your quill - we see a best-selling parenting book in your future.)

CHILDREN'S TELEVISION. . . AFTER DARK

We don't get DirectTV, so we don't have access to the new premium channel for toddlers, BabyFirstTV, but this review made it sound innocuous enough, until we reached this point:

. . . ''Sandman'' turns up with particular frequency on ''Rainbow Dreams,'' the channel's late-night schedule meant to lull restless viewers of all ages back to sleep.

Repeat visitors know that we have no particular beef with children watching some TV in the course of an active day, but we've come to oppose encouraging children to lull themselves back to sleep with the TV on. We do have a firm sick-kid rule: If you're vomiting, or feverish, or very very sad, in the middle of the night, of course we'll watch TV with you as you calm down. But from our own (past) experience trying to use TV to put Tiny Girl to sleep, it backfires more often than not, simply delaying (your sleep, and) the inevitable hands-on comforting restless toddlers will need until the show's over.

May 30, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Subscribe to RSS

HEY, AT LEAST IT DIDN'T SAY "FOREVER BAREFOOT"

The blogosphere apparently got itself all worked up about the Washington Post's piece on women's health the other day, largely because of its headline, "Forever Pregnant." But the gist of the article - that the CDC is advising all women of child-bearing age to treat their bodies as "pre-pregnant," whether they have any intention of bunning their oven anytime soon - strikes us as fairly uncontroversial. The concern, according to the report, is that since almost half of pregnancies are unplanned, women should maintain proper prenatal health at all times. But the CDC's not exactly asking everyone to rush to Lamaze class. The guidelines are: take folic acid supplements, don't smoke, maintain a healthy weight and keep asthma and diabetes under control. All of which sound like pretty solid preventive medicine. As we linked here recently, America's infant mortality rate is currently on par with Latvia's, and three times that of Japan's, so it's logical to hope that improved women's health would bring that rate down.

AND WHAT HAS YOUR SON ACCOMPLISHED THIS WEEK?

 

Seven-year-old Braxton Bilbrey swam 1.4 miles from Alcatraz Island to San Francisco. Inspired by the story of a nine-year-old who'd accomplished the same feat last fall, he began training two hours a day, four times a week to prepare for his own attempt, successfully completed Monday morning. Questioned about the wisdom of allowing a seven-year-old to do a long-distance swim in the chilly waters of the Bay, Braxton's coach and parents said, "Hey, at least we didn't send him out on a super-marathon."

BUT DON'T MISS THIS WEEKEND'S BIG DYSENTERY DANCE IN PARK SLOPE

 

Nothing makes you appreciate living in a country where a comfortable 95%-plus vaccination rate affords you the luxury of having "chicken pox parties" than reading about a region where, for want of a 15-cent vaccination, children are dying of measles by the thousands, and courageous mothers are rounding up neighbors and their kids to bring them in for life-saving shots.

FREELANCE DAD: SECRET GERMOPHOBE

At least a quarter of the phones in New York City subway stations are out of commission, and we suspect the number is even higher on the street, but that's not our problem with the city's public phones: It's that they appear so filthy, and yet, they are phones, and so Small and Tiny are constantly grabbing the receivers as they walk down the street, saying hello and trying to find out who's there. ("It's Grandma!") And we swear we can just see the TB cells hopping into their mouths and ears.

 

THE ONLY WAY TO FLY

We've never dosed the kids with Benadryl to knock them out for a long flight, as several families seem to have confessed doing to the Wall Street Journal. But apparently it's not out of the question, either, despite the predictably feverish attacks from opponents the Journal found on parenting message boards:

The controversy seems to arise more from differences in  parenting philosophies than safety concerns. The American Academy of Pediatrics  doesn't have a position on the matter, and individual pediatricians vary in  their views. "If you asked 100 pediatricians, you'd get 20 strongly in favor, 60  who didn't think about it much, and 20 strongly opposed," says Richard Gorman,  past chairman of the American Academy of Pediatrics' National Committee on  Drugs. "Good doctors can disagree about this, just as thoughtful parents can disagree."

Now, have we ever offered Tiny Girl nighttime cold medicine a day or so after her major cold symptoms may have passed? We'll never tell.

May 24, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Subscribe to RSS

THE FD.COM DISTURBING STATISTIC OF THE WEEK

The Journal ran an "Informed Patient" column the other day on new tools to screen mental-health risks in children, which also discussed the push to have (non-psychiatrically trained) general pediatricians perform routine mental-health checks of all their patients. Good idea? Maybe. But probably not if it can be expected to produce nationwide the results found by Dr. Walter Harrison of Lynn, MA, "who chairs a state task force advocating mental-health screening for children," and therefore has a horse in this race:

 

Since he began regularly screening children in his own practice a few years ago, he says he has referred 26% of his patients to a mental-health care provider, compared with an average of 6% of children who are referred to such providers statewide.

That's a better than one-in-four referral rate. Now, extrapolate nationwide. Sit. Shudder.

THE FD.COM FULL-DISCLOSURE STATEMENT OF THE WEEK

We've said it before, and we'll say it again: We are big fans of the scrappiest, most Semitic daily paper in town, the New York Sun. Yesterday was a tough day for the paper, though, as it had to deploy full-court disclosure in its scoop about an impending real-estate move by the 92d Street Y:

The 92nd Street Y announced yesterday that it is leaving the Upper West Side, selling its townhouse there in order to raise funds for a major renovation of its flagship facility on the Upper East Side. . . . The philanthropist Michael Steinhardt purchased the building at 35 W. 67th St. in 1997. . . . Five years ago he donated [it] to the 92nd Street Y which. . . named the building the Makor/Steinhardt Center.  

The move caught the Steinhardt family by surprise. . . . [T]he former chairwoman of the Makor/Steinhardt Center board, Sara Berman. . . who is Mr. Steinhardt's daughter [and] who writes a weekly column for The New York Sun. . . questioned the appeal of the 92nd Street Y building to the younger crowd Makor appealed to. . . . Mr. Steinhardt, an owner of the Sun, was on a plane to Israel and could not be reached for comment.

Angry as Pop may have been, however, credit the Sun for some restraint: They held the article for page 2.

May 19, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Subscribe to RSS

HARD ROCKERS: THE GRADE-SCHOOL YEARS

Any White Stripes fans out there ever given a close listen to "We're Going to Be Friends" in the middle of the White Blood Cells album? It might as well have been written by Dan Zanes (his new album came out this week, BTW):

....Well here we are, no one else
we walked to school all by ourselves
there's dirt on our uniforms
from chasing all the ants and worms
we clean up and now its time to learn

Numbers, letters, learn to spell
nouns, and books, and show and tell
at playtime we will throw the ball
back to class, through the hall
teacher marks our height
against the wall

PLAN YOUR SUBWAY SUMMER NOW

New York City Transit has a couple of summer traditions: The weekend shutdown of half the lines in the system, and super-cool outings for families in and out of the Transit Museum in Brooklyn (admission free if you listened to us and got a New York Hall of Science family membership). You can get all the details here; highlights include nostalgia rides to Coney Island on vintage subway cars on July 22 and August 20.

IT’S HARD OUT HERE FOR A LITIGATOR

BusinessWeek reports that FAO Schwartz has been hearing pitches from new toymakers and game designers as executives attempt to freshen the store with unique new product. One recent presenter was Tina Eskreis Nelson, a lawyer, like her husband, who created the game to help teach her three preschoolers about what mommy and daddy did all day. In contradiction of all logic, the game has gone into wide release:

She started with three pieces of cardboard, Velcro, and blank business cards, eventually designing a game where players proceed through law school, run a practice, and try amusing, family-friendly lawsuits. Draw an "Appeal" card and you may find the Court of Appeals has ordered a new trial -- and this time your client got an additional $2,500. Pick one from the "Lawsuit" pile and you may find your client's trade secrets on how to make a book out of candy have been divulged.

Draw a "Verdict" card and you may find the judge sentences you to play outside and never open this game again.

CLEARLY, THE ARMY NEVER SHOULD HAVE ASSIGNED BARBIE TO GUARD DUTY AT ABU GHRAIB

Agnes Nairn provides us with one of our favorite recent out-of-context quotes:

On a deeper level Barbie has become inanimate. She has lost any individual warmth that she might have possessed if she were perceived as a singular person. This may go some way towards explaining the violence and torture.

NOW THAT YOU MENTION IT, LLAMS WOLLEF HAS A NICE RING TO IT

In case you missed it (and how would that be possible), the Times reports that the name Nevaeh (heaven spelled backward) has made an almost unprecedented leap into the ranks of the nation's most popular girl baby names, landing last year at Number 70. African-American and evangelical families are in large part responsible for the name's rapid rise.

Fifteen years or so ago, the Times does not go on to report, many evangelical parents had named their daughters Heaven, but that trend has been all but abandoned since that first generation of girls entered high school and began facing the inevitable jokes: "How do I get into Heaven?"; "Is there room for all of us in Heaven? "; "Will I find my dog in Heaven?"; "I'm finding it hard to believe we're in Heaven"; "Who Are the Five People I'll Meet in Heaven?" etc.

May 19, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Subscribe to RSS

KANSAS ONCE AGAIN TURNS ITS BACK ON NATURAL SELECTION

The state has passed a law barring anyone under 15 from getting married, after a pregnant 14-year-old Nebraskan came to the state last year to marry her 22-year-old boyfriend. Previously, the state had set no minimum age for marriage but had required parental or judicial approval.

YOU'RE RIGHT, GENERAL. THAT GIG INFLATING AIRPLANE TIRES FOR YOU DOES SOUND PRETTY GOOD AFTER ALL. WHERE DO WE SIGN?

The US Air Force has unveiled a new recruitment program and Web site for teenagers, called What Am I Gonna Do Next? and, yeah, we know you're busy, but you have to visit this site for an stunning look at how the government plans to fill its next-generation military. On a quick tour of the site, we found that whatever our interests or passions (there's about a dozen general categories on the home page), there's a wide variety of careers open to us - in the Air Force. Nowhere else. And that's OK; it's a recruitment site.

But then, try this: Choose the category, "Fame and fortune, here I come," symbolized by a shiny dollar sign on the home page. Within two clicks, you'll discover that whether you hope to be a movie star, reality TV phenomenon, or pop icon, all of those dreams lead to total failure, abject poverty, and crushing depression. You're much better off jumping out of planes, or making sandwiches for fighter pilots.

Wow.

(via Mediabistro.com)

IN A CRIMINAL OMISSION, MACE WINDU, ONE OF THE GREAT MASTERS OF OUR TIME, WAS SOMEHOW EXCLUDED FROM THE LIST

Edutopia, the education magazine brought to you by "Star Wars" creator George Lucas, has come out with its 2006 list of "The Daring Dozen: 12 Who Are Reshaping the Future of Education." (Wait, can you actually reshape the future?) It's a worthy list, but for our money, one of the most interesting is Carol Flexer, who "hopes that her research into the auditory quality of classrooms will make the front row and the back row equal learning environments." She might run into some opposition from eight-grade boys who choose to sit in the back row, but that's down the line.

IF SOMEONE CALLS YOUR TEEN DYSLEXIC, ASK THEM TO PUT IT IN WRITING

It could eventually help him on the SATs, where getting extra time to compensate for (real or imagined) learning disabilities is the new Kaplan. Slate basically argues that now that test prep materials have trickled down through the education system from haves to have nots, the haves have begun "therapist shopping" in earnest until they find a professional willing to sign a diagnosis of dyslexia or ADD, which will bring them extra time to complete the SAT:

Only about 60 percent of D.C. graduates take the SAT. Few get extra time on tests in the low-income Southeast section of the city, where in four high schools, not a single student passed an AP exam last year. It's a troubling example of the disequilibrium of opportunity. . . .

California law requires accommodations for anyone "limited" in a major activity, which some legal experts have defined as inadequate in relation to one's peers. It's a Lake Wobegon-in-reverse standard of disability. And it could give virtually anyone with an average mind and a wealthy family a leg up on the admissions test.

WHY DID THE CHICKEN CROSS THE ROAD?
NO, IT'S NOT TO GIVE YOU BIRD FLU - HE'S JUST FOLLOWING THE ELEPHANT

Writing in Slate, Gregg Easterbrook argues that our national fear of the theoretically imminent bird flu pandemic may be a little misguided, given that the disease has so far killed, well, very few people. (And the latest news indicates that it may be just about done killing people in any event.) But the bird flu scare has sparked a national review of our public health resources, one which he recommends we redirect:

Now back to diarrheal disease, which causes far more fatalities than bird flu is ever likely to and whose victims are mostly children. About a decade ago, noble researchers at the children's hospitals of Cincinnati and Philadelphia discovered two rotavirus vaccines; by last year the vaccines had been perfected for general use by Merck and GlaxoSmithKline. American and European children will soon begin receiving these vaccines routinely, though their risk of rotavirus is small. In the developing world, however, where the risk is great—85 percent of diarrheal deaths occur in poor nations—the $200-per-course cost of the vaccine is prohibitive. If the wealthy nations of the West put their shoulders to this wheel, surely mass manufacturing could bring the cost of rotavirus vaccine way down, saving tens of millions of developing world lives. Instead we're spending billions of dollars to barricade ourselves against mutant chickens.

ARE WE THE ONLY ONES WHO FIND SOME IRONY (BUT NOT THE DELICIOUS KIND) IN THE FACT THAT SHE'S A CHILD PSYCHIATRIST?

A 63-year-old British child psychiatrist is about to give birth, thanks to the miracle of fertility treatments: “We take our responsibilities very seriously and regard the best interest of the child as paramount,” [Patricia] Rashbrook said. . . . the pregnancy “has not been an endeavor undertaken lightly or without courage.”

Doctors plan to deliver the child, confirm that it is healthy, and then transport it immediately to the couch in its mother's clinic, where it will begin exploring its mother issues.

DAMMIT, WE ALWAYS GO TO THE ZOO ON THE WRONG DAY (AND IN THE WRONG COUNTRY)

And so while we watch the sea lions and penguins going through the motions, we miss great shows like this:

Bears killed and devoured a monkey in front of horrified visitors at a Dutch zoo, officials and witnesses said Monday. . . . [the bear] climbed up and grabbed the monkey, mauling it to death and bringing it to its concrete den, where three bears ate it.

May 17, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Subscribe to RSS

THERE WAS CONSIDERABLY LESS INTEREST IN LOT 107, THE "LIQUID LUNCH" WITH LIZA MINELLI

Small Fellow's public school made it onto the front-page of the New York Sun yesterday, in the paper's look at the ongoing school auction season, during which several neighborhood parents associations have given private school groups a run for their money by raking in more than $100,000 to pay for teacher's aides and other goodies. One of the most notable items up for auction at our school's fundraiser was afternoon tea with Ashley Olsen, which went for a bid of $5,000. Of course, the most hotly contested objects are the art projects made by the school's kindergarten classes. The eventual sale price for the quilt made by Fellow's class fell in the middle range of these precious works, as several of the parents at our classroom's table confessed to each other that we'd have paid twice as much for the collage of painted hearts produced by the class down the hall.

SMALL FELLOW: THE TIME-OUT LETTERS

The following represents an undedited sequence of notes composed by Small Fellow last evening, during a particularly rough patch, and slipped to us during an extended time-out (accompanied by translations from the original spellings):

i SORRY c i c You gb

[I'm sorry because I called you "garbage."]

i SoRRY.

[I'm sorry.]

iM SORRY

i Wt to c ot

[I'm sorry. I want to come out.]

And so we let him out. And we made flags together.

May 16, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Subscribe to RSS

DOES THIS BODE WELL OR ILL FOR OUR MARRIAGE? YOU MAKE THE CALL

Small Fellow has taken an interest in the Ten Commandments since learning more about them during Passover. Riding in the car the other day, he asked us if we could tell him what all 10 were. Between Loving Mother and myself, however, we could only come up with nine. Which one had we both forgotten?

Adultery.

INSERT YOUR "SOCIAL STUDIES?! WINK, WINK, NUDGE, NUDGE" JOKE HERE

A first-year West Boca Raton High School social-studies teacher will not face discipline for appearing in revealing photos on the USA National Bikini Team's Web site. The 25-year-old teacher posed for the photos before she became a teacher and in any event is getting out of the profession to go into real estate (OK, insert your "location, location, location" joke here):

The district's professional standards department decided Thursday not to investigate Erica Chevillar, whose photo spread on the USA National Bikini Team's Web site has become the talk of West Boca Raton High School.

Several 10th-grade boys, however, decided to conduct their own investigation of Ms. Chevillar's photos, and will share their conclusions as soon as they come up from the basement.

 

UNFORTUNATELY, THE NEW NETWORK WILL AIR ADS FOR THE USA NATIONAL BIKINI TEAM

A consortium of family-friendly companies is creating a new 24-hour TV channel for kids that will be free of junk-food ads and other marketing that has troubled parents. Key partners in the venture will be Ion Media (formerly Paxson), Scholastic, and NBC, and the new network will take over programming of NBC's Saturday morning tween programming block from Discovery Kids.

WE'LL ALWAYS HAVE LATVIA

 

In a comparison of 33 industrialized nations, the survival rate of newborn babies in the United States ranks ahead of only Latvia's. The US death rate of nearly 5 per 1,000 live births is on par with Malta and Poland, according to a new Save the Children report. For African Americans, the newborn death rate is 9 per 1,000 live births. US health experts blame obesity and teen pregnancies for much of the problem, since both lead to a higher probability of premature birth, the leading cause of newborn death in the developed world.

And Emory University health policy expert Kenneth Thorpe provides the thought for the day:

“Our health care system focuses on providing high-tech services for complicated cases. We do this very well,” Thorpe said. “What we do not do is provide basic primary and preventive health care services. We do not pay for these services, and do not have a delivery system that is designed to provide either primary prevention, or adequately treat patients with chronic diseases.”

May 15, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Subscribe to RSS

BEST. SHOW-AND-TELL. ITEM. EVER

It was Small Fellow's turn for sharing time in his kindergarten class the other day. And what did he choose to share with his New York City pals? His 2006 pocket Boston Red Sox schedule. Now that's our boy.

[PS: We recently discussed with Small Fellow the possibility of rebranding him Large Fellow, in advance of this summer's arrival of Small Fellow 2.0. He angrily refused, however, which leaves us in a bit of a lurch.]

THE NEW RESEARCH CONTRADICTS PREVIOUS STUDIES WHICH HAD CONCLUDED THAT IT'S IN HIS KISS

Women can tell whether a man is interested in having kids just by looking at him, according to a new study led by a UC-Santa Barabara scientist:

“This study suggests that women are picking up on facial cues that are perhaps related to paternal qualities,” said James Roney, a University of California at Santa Barbara psychologist and lead author of the study. “The more they perceived the men as liking kids, the more likely they could see having a longer-term relationship.”

In the study, women looked at photos of a group of men and accurately guessed which were interested in starting families - and which were just interested in having a good time. (For the purposes of the study, the two were presumed to be mutually exclusive.)

YOUNG WOMEN WERE ALSO ACCURATELY ABLE TO GUESS WHETHER TEEN BOYS WERE INTERESTED IN ORAL SEX JUST BY LOOKING AT THEIR FACES - AS IT TURNED OUT, ALL THE BOYS WHO HAD FACES WERE INTERESTED IN ORAL SEX

Over the past decade, the number of teens reporting that they had had oral sex appears to have doubled, according to a relatively narrow study of Baltimore-area young people. Clearly, young people feel that oral sex is safer than intercourse. However, STD experts worry that kids are missing out on the fact that oral sex is not STD-free, and that STDs acquired through oral sex may be harder to detect.

DON'T WE KNOW IT. AT OUR LAST PARENT CONFERENCE, FELLOW'S TEACHER TRIED TO CONVINCE US THAT HE WASN'T THE TALLEST KID IN THE CLASS. WHAT A NUT JOB

Recent studies have found that parents and teachers have widely divergent perceptions of children's behavior. In a nutshell, parents don't believe teachers when they say that Johnny isn't being a good boy. We. on the other hand, never believe Tiny Girl's nursery school teacher when she tells us that Tiny is being a good girl in school. Which goes to what strikes us as the key point about this study:

[Dr. Timothy Konold of the University of Virginia] said the study did not answer ''whether the kids are actually acting differently in home and at school.''

Nursery and kindergarten parents tell us all the time that their kids behave better at school than at home. It's the opposite of the disconnect Konold's study gets at, but it gets at his point that parents ought to pay attention to what teachers tell them about their kids, because we all know, at least in the abstract, that kids behave differently at home and away.

A CENTRAL PIECE OF PUTIN'S PLAN WILL BE AN IMMEDIATE 50% REDUCTION IN THE COUNTRY'S VODKA TAX

Russia needs babies, says President Vladimir Putin, and he wants something done quickly to boost his country's perilously declining birthrate. "Men of Russia, don't make me have to come into your homes and do it myself!" he thundered during his annual State of the Declining Superpower address earlier today.

May 10, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Subscribe to RSS

THIS DOES NOT BODE WELL FOR OUR DECEMBER CHILDREN'S WORLD CUP CHANCES

The Freakonomics guys dashed the hopes of many parents in yesterday's Sunday Times magazine with a column exploring the apparent anomaly that the rosters of so many World Cup soccer squads, in the US and around the world, are clogged with players born in January, February, or March. Their conclusion is fairly intuitive, and probably obvious to parents who have recently gone through New York City's nursery school/kindergarten application process. First, Dubner and Levitt make a compelling case that stardom, in fields like sports or the arts, is less a result of talent than of desire, hard work, practice - and the opportunity to receive speedy, constructive feedback. However, the latter most often goes exclusively to those picked first for the team:

Since youth sports are organized by age bracket, teams inevitably have a cutoff birth date. In the European youth soccer leagues, the cutoff date is Dec. 31. So when a coach is assessing two players in the same age bracket, one who happened to have been born in January and the other in December, the player born in January is likely to be bigger, stronger, more mature. Guess which player the coach is more likely to pick? He may be mistaking maturity for ability, but he is making his selection nonetheless. And once chosen, those January-born players are the ones who, year after year, receive the training, the deliberate practice and the feedback — to say nothing of the accompanying self-esteem — that will turn them into elites.

So, there's an inherent bias in selection systems favoring children born on the early side of the age range being judged? Fascinating. Hunter College Elementary? Anderson program? Might you be willing to share the birthday lists of your incoming kindergarten classes?

THE COMPANY WILL NO LONGER CONTRIBUTE TO THE DEATHS OF CHILDREN BY CLOGGING THEIR ARTERIES WITH FATTY FOODS. RATHER, THEY'LL CONTINUE TO KILL KIDS THE FASTER, MORE PAINLESS WAY - ON THEIR AMUSEMENT PARK RIDES

Disney is getting out of the Happy Meal business. The LA Times reports that after fulfilling a few upcoming contracts to promote family movies with McDonald's tie-ins, the company will pull out of its longtime partnership with the fast-food giant:

. . . multiple high-ranking sources within Disney [say] that the company — which prides itself on being family friendly — wants to distance itself from fast food and its links to the epidemic of childhood obesity.

The Times reports that Dreamworks may follow suit, which would increase the pressure on Ronald and Friends to provide healthier Happy Meals, or to rethink the kids-meal-with-a-toy concept altogether. But don't cry for McDonald's just yet: Disney will still allow the Golden Arches and their transfatful treats inside its theme parks.

DOES THIS MEAN THAT WHEN ALL THOSE WOMEN WE DATED - IN HIGH SCHOOL, COLLEGE, AND INTO OUR EARLY 30s - TOLD US THEY WERE HOLDING TO A VIRGINITY PLEDGE, THEY WERE LYING?

According to Harvard School of Public Health researcher Janet Rosenbaum, teenagers who take virginity pledges, or claim virginity in order to make such a public vow, are in reality dirty, dirty liars:

Adolescents who sign a "virginity pledge" and then go on to have premarital sex are likely to disavow having signed such a pledge, according to an analysis of survey data. . . . Conversely, adolescents who have had premarital sex and then decide to make a virginity pledge are likely to misreport their earlier sexual history. This misreporting of sexual experience will make it difficult to accurately assess virginity pledges’ effects on early sexual intercourse, according to the author. Moreover, the fact that the majority of adolescents recanted their vows within a year may suggest that the virginity pledge programs have a high drop-out rate and that adolescents do not make a strong affiliation with the pledge, said the author.

Which goes to our longtime suspicion about virginity pledges - they're a little like "the lists" married couples carry around, in their heads or their wallets. The lists allow a husband, carte blanche, to commit adultery with any of their five favorite starlets. (We'd list our own top five here, but we don't want to jinx it.) Similarly, a wife would then have the right to do the same with, say, any of her five favorite 19th century novelists. And so we imagine that little Sally Johnson's virginity pledge is ironclad when it's Phineas Poindexter doing the asking, but somewhat more fungible should Johnny Quarterback come knocking.

FLIPPER, HELP US OUT: WE NEED A BOY'S NAME, STARTING WITH "A." WHAT CAN YOU GIVE US BY AUGUST 23?

Just like people, dolphins give themselves names, choosing a handle (actually a specific "call," or string of whistles) in infancy and retaining it throughout their lives. Researchers recently tested dolphin name recognition using underwater speakers:

In nine of 14 cases, the dolphin would turn more often toward the speaker — an established technique for gauging a dolphin's interest — if it heard a whistle resembling the name of a close relative.

It should be noted that in the other five cases, researchers played recordings of dolphins' fathers calling their children by name, eliciting absolutely no response.

May 9, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Subscribe to RSS

MOUNTAIN DEW? MOUNTAIN DON'T!

Following up on an initiative last August to voluntarily limit the sales of non-diet sodas in schools, the largest soft-drink bottlers have signed an agreement, brokered in part by Bill Clinton's personal foundation, to stop all sales of non-diet sodas in high schools, and all sales of sodas of any kind in elementary and middle schools nationwide.

Which is wonderful news, really, but the agreement leaves high-sugar, high-calorie drinks like juices and sports drinks in school vending machines. You're next, Gatorade.

WE'RE CURRENTLY SEEKING AN OVERNIGHT PRE-K FOR TINY GIRL

The Times City section this weekend endorsed full funding of full-day pre-K classes for the 34,000 city kids currently enrolled in half-day public programs. (Some city schools do offer full-day pre-K already; it's not uniform.) Study after study has demonstrated the short and long-term benefits of full-day pre-K, especially for kids from underprivileged backgrounds.

Not to rain on the parade, but our own experience and instincts tell us that if the city in fact converted all of its half-day pre-Ks to full-day, it might face an influx of middle-class parents suddenly seeking seats in the programs. Many middle-class families, confident of the benefits of full-day pre-K, but committed to public schools, send their kids to private nursery schools before enrolling them in public-school kindergarten classes. If the city began offering more full-day pre-Ks itself, there could be new, heated competition for those seats as middle-class parents rush to the free programs. We're not saying the city shouldn't go to full-day pre-K, we're just saying that if it doesn't simultaneously increase the number of pre-K seats, the programs may stop helping some of the families it's designed to benefit.

CAN WE SUGGEST A SIMPLE SOLUTION: STOP CALLING DRINKS MILK THAT AREN'T REALLY MILK

This space has already discussed some of the many reasons parents should not substitute soy milk for cow's milk (excepting in cases of food allergies), most of which relate to potential long-term health problems. But (with the same exceptions) parents who feed newborns soy milk or rice milk (which is made from rice and sweeteners, fortified with calcium) apparently risk giving their children old-school, Third World diseases like rickets and kwashiorkor (you don't want to know). From Newsweek.com:

The problems associated with rice and soy milk are most pressing in kids younger than 2 because they don't eat as wide a variety of food as older toddlers. . . . "We're only seeing the tip of the iceberg," says [Kelley] Scanlon of the CDC, who estimates that up to 80 percent of kids with milder cases of malnutrition may not be properly diagnosed. "[Parents] don't recognize that something that's called milk is not necessarily infant formula," adds Bob Issenman [of] McMaster Children's Hospital in Hamilton, Ontario. . . .

The good news is the nutritional problems are often reversible. Those feeding rice- or soy-based beverages to children younger than 5 should see their pediatrician if their kids exhibit bowleggedness and delayed crawling and walking (symptoms of rickets) or distended bellies, lethargy and growth failure (kwashiorkor).

A PRINCE AND A PUPPY. SOUNDS LIKE THE START OF A LOVELY CHILDREN'S BOOK. EXCEPT, IN THIS CASE, NOT SO MUCH

Prince Henrik of the Danish royal family (charitable cause: ending animal cruelty) appears to have barked up the wrong tree when he recently told an interviewer that he loved dogs, particularly if they are "delicately sliced, lightly fried and served on a plate." Henrik was raised in Vietnam, where dog was a sometime delicacy, and while he has no inhibitions about eating dog, today this "passionate animal lover" is honorary president of the Danish Dachshund Club. He may not just be the president - he may also be a client:

The remarks are understood to have reopened a royal mystery surrounding one of the royal dachshunds which disappeared in the 1990s.
It was never found despite a national search.

CONSERVATIVE PARENTS, START YOUR LAWSUITS

The San Francisco Department of Public Health (what, you expected Dallas?) has launched the nation's first program to "direct safer sex advice to young people through text messages on their cell phones." Which gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "booty call." Kids can text the city about issues like condoms, STDs, and similar concerns, the idea being that since they don't actually have to talk to anyone in person, they'll be less shy about getting the advice they need. Which makes sense. What makes less sense is that the replies from the city are actually composed in text-message lingo, like  "if u hve sex, u can get an STD + not know it. Chlamydia, gonorrhea=no symptoms most of the time Dropin get chcked FREE."

Is the thinking that kids are so daft that they wouldn't pay attention to potentially life-saving advice - which they asked for - if the message was written in actual English? And does anyone really want to get scary news in text-speak?

Yr date was LOL but now u have STD :<

WHEN MUSEUMS GO WRONG, IT'S ALWAYS THE CHILDREN WHO GET HURT

Environmental writer and seasonal football pundit Gregg Easterbrook returned to ESPN.com this week with a special edition of his column, "Tuesday Morning Quarterback," analyzing the recent pro football draft. Easterbrook's columns are known for two things: their crushing length and their wide-ranging tangents. In the interest of sparing you from the former, we'd like to leave you with this sterling example of the latter, about his family trip to the new National Air and Space Museum outside Washington, D.C.:

In Space, No One Can Hear You Yawn: I took the Official Kids of TMQ to the Smithsonian's new National Air and Space Museum near Dulles Airport in Virginia. We saw lots of planes, including an SR-71 and, poignantly, the Enola Gay. We watched the Imax movie "Roving Mars" -- "Presented as a Public Service by Lockheed Martin" -- about the Red Planet rovers Spirit and Opportunity. But wait, "Roving Mars" depicts sound in space! This flick, blessed by NASA and featured at the Smithsonian, has an animated scene in which the rocket propelling the Mars probes has left Earth's atmosphere yet makes lots of loud noises as its engines fire and its fairings disengage. The noises add to the Imax theatrical touch, since Imax theaters have lots of bass. But even my 11-year-old, Spenser, leaned over and whispered, "Dad, I thought there was no sound in outer space." If the Smithsonian can't get this kind of detail right, how can we believe its exhibits are accurate?

May 3, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Subscribe to RSS