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Blog Archives
Best Countries For Maternity Leave
Did you know that the US maternity policy ranks in the bottom 6 out of 146 countries worldwide? Americans are guaranteed only 12 weeks of unpaid leave. Stingy much? 12 weeks is barely enough time to adjust to life with a newborn, whether with a first time baby or an...
Justin Bieber Says “Don’t Text and Drive”
But if that doesn’t convince your teen, maybe this will. Warning: The Video Below Is Extremely Graphic According to Distraction.gov, drivers who use hand-held devices are four times as likely to get into crashes serious enough to injure themselves. Cell phone use while driving, whether it’s hand-held or hands-free, delays a driver’s reactions as much as...
Fighting Obesity, 8 Pairs of Little Legs At a Time
D*mn those Europeans, thinking of everything first. Just after writing my post about the walking school bus, I found this: Babble, an all-inclusive, all-things-family related site, highlighted the coolest form of child transportation around. The only difference between this and the walking school bus is………….style? No. Money. A decent road bike is somewhere...
Simple Childhood-Obesity Fix
While conducting research on America’s obesity epidemic, I stumbled upon this awesome study. Researchers in New Mexico devised a Walking School Bus Program for a predominantly lower-income Latino elementary school. They recruited parents as volunteers, had kids sign permission slips, and simply helped them walk to school. Yep. That’s it. It’s so...
#1 Diaper Rash Remedy
I wrote a post a while back that got to the bottom line (can’t help myself) of diaper rash. Over the past two weeks, my little guy has been producing a differently nuanced poop that has been sorely irritating his little bottom. I’m talking scarlet red skin, almost broken in some areas, and...
Why Can’t America Get Skinny?
It’s no secret that kids are getting fatter. They’re turning into fat adults (and for the record, I do not consider myself outside of this category). Have you watched this animated CDC map of the US obesity trend, illustrating the growth over the last 25 years? The term ‘jaw dropping’ is putting it mildly. ...
Countdown To Zero
There’s nothing like Bill Clinton’s fresh baby face to promote a good cause like eliminating HIV transmission to newborns across the globe. The image above was released on June 10 with the official announcement of UNAIDS’ plan to do just that by the year 2015. In their excellently written and easy to follow report,...
Are you prepared for the days following a disaster?
Just thinking about preparing for disaster makes me anxious, let alone writing about it or actually doing it. I’d prefer to pretend that I’m invincible to natural or (gulp) war disasters. But I often say that ignoring a problem doesn’t make it go away, so in an effort to practice what I preach, I...
Kids Get Skin Cancer, Too
You probably know that melanoma is skin cancer and has been pretty clearly tied to sun exposure. But did you know that children can also be diagnosed with melanoma? In a literature review published in 2009*, the authors report that approximately 1-4% of melanoma cases afflict the pediatric age group, with an average of 18 deaths per...