Community Conversation

That’s a good question, but one to answer first is, why do you teach your kids table manners?

I tried explaining why to my close friend, Debbi, who did not grow up in a household like mine where table manners were practiced at every meal. She was teasing me about the kids, hers and mine, licking their fingers at the dinner table. She didn’t think it mattered too much so why did I let it bother me and why did I keep after them about it.
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Yesterday at lunch, I was talking with my kids about the earthquake in Haiti.

“Mom, I think we should move out of California because it’s the state most likely to have an earthquake,” my nine-year-old son Jack declared.

“Well Jack, we could live in Kansas where they have tornados or New Orleans where they have hurricanes,” I replied.

He thought about that then asked, “Is there any way to prevent earthquakes?”

“Nope, but you can be prepared,” I said.
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“To drink or not drink with your kids?” It’s probably a question Hamlet would’ve asked, if he was around long enough to have children. And interestingly, whether or not parents should let kids drink is an issue that the experts don’t agree on.

Romi Lassally at Parents Ask has both sides of the argument. On one hand, allowing kids as young as 15 year old to drink will teach them responsible alcohol consumption. Quoting an article from Socyberty, “carefully introducing alcohol to children ‘may help them prepare themselves for life in an adult environment dominated by this drug’.”

On the other hand, Chief Medical Officer of the UK, Sir Liam Donaldson, says that the idea of weaning on alcohol preventing later substance abuse problems is not supported by evidence. (And remember: that’s Sir, as in Sir Elton John.) In fact, giving kids a sip of wine with dinner might even give them a taste for it.

Check out the rest of the article at Parents Ask.

Photo by Mistress B.

Do you drink with your kids? Kids, do you drink with your parents?

Losing weight? Eating healthier? Quitting smoking? What’s your resolution for 2010? Tell us!

Personally, I have a tendency to set pretty vague, easy-to-accomplish New Year’s resolutions, like “floss more regularly,” “exercise sometimes,” and “eat a lot of tacos.”

Some links to ponder over, especially if your resolution is to “read more about New Year’s resolutions”:

• About’s Top Ten New Year’s Resolutions
• Do New Year’s Resolutions Work? from Psychology Today
• How to Keep New Year’s Resolutions

Two weeks ago, President Obama declared H1N1 a national emergency, and Americans are having trouble getting vaccinated.

Though there are critics that claim the vaccine isn’t safe, it’s manufactured the same way seasonal flu vaccines are, a process that’s been approved by the Food and Drug Administration and been a standard for over 60 years. It’s also been tested extensively, minimizing side effects and successfully protecting patients from the H1N1 virus. And remember, the seasonal flu vaccine does not protect against H1N1.

But supply shortages are preventing many Americans from getting vaccinated. According to a story from the Wall Street Journal, 32.3 million doses are available — far less than the 159 million required to cover every high-risk person in the United States. 62% of those vaccines will not be available until the beginning of December, well after flu season ends.

The problem is that manufacturers can’t produce it quickly enough. Typically, two-thirds of Americans 65 and older opt to get the vaccine; for younger people, it’s only one-third. This year’s higher demand is far greater than the supply. U.S. health care officials promise to invest in the infrastructure to meet future demands for the flu vaccine, but it begs the question: why does it take a pandemic to galvanize us into action?

Did you get vaccinated against H1N1? Has the shortage affected your ability to get it? Discuss!

During the hullaballoo of Halloween, many kids collect enough candy to last a full calendar year, but parents usually aren’t willing to let their kids chow down on seemingly infinite chocolate, nougat, and candy corn… right?

Not so, according to a 1,200-child-poll conducted by kidshealth.org, which reports that around 50 percent of the kids surveyed said they had no limits whatsoever on how much candy they can eat.

While over 60 percent of respondents said they set their own constraints on how many sweets they devour, there’s no shortage of online advice on how to monitor or control you children’s post-Halloween sugar consumption.

Arguably the best thing to do would be to prevent kids from eating any candy, but that is nearly impossible and just so cruel. There are alternatives steps one can take, however, to keep things reasonably healthy. On her blog, Charm City Mom’s, Baltimore Sun writer Kate Shatzkin cites a nutritionist who suggests parents encourage their kids to eat candy with some nutritional value (vitamins, protein, etc.), while steering them toward small serving sizes.

Last year, the Washington Post ran a Healthday News story that indicated how often candy is eaten has more impact (at least on teeth) than the amount that gets wolfed down at any one time: one piece every hour during an afternoon, for example, creates more acid a mouth than several pieces all at once.

Halloween certainly isn’t the healthiest holiday, but is a few week sucrose-binge in November something worth worrying about? How much candy do you let your kids eat in the aftermath of October 31? What rules do you set? Discuss!

In England, kids start pre-kindergarten at age four, but a new study from Cambridge is suggesting putting it off until six.

The study itself took six years to complete, with 14 authors, 66 research consultants, 28 research surveys, over 1,052 “written submissions,” and 250 focus groups. The result is a report that’s 600 pages long. The conclusion: Kids are not allowed to be kids. They don’t have enough time to play, and preparing for standardized tests puts them under unwarranted stress.

The survey also suggests getting rid of testing for children between the ages 7 through 11. Finally, the study recommends focusing on improving basic skills — namely literacy and numeracy — shifting away from more specific subjects like history and geography while adding more emphasis on history and the arts.

Clearly, a lot of effort has been put into the study, but many parents are taking issue with the suggestion.

Barbara Ellen, columnist for The Guardian, suggests that the study doesn’t take into account working parents. With parents juggling more than ever — especially the many families that must have both parents working — pushing Pre-K off another year or two would be harmful to the middle and lower class.

“Most British parents deeply love their children, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be delighted when they’re ready for school,” Ellen writes. “Could it be that this is simply the last taboo – parents admitting that, among other important things, they view school as a reliable form of childcare?”

While the study took place in the U.K., the U.S. struggles with the same issues that Ellen highlights. Though Pre-K often starts at five in the U.S., delaying our children’s entrance to the school system by even by a year could be tough on working families.

Delia Lloyd has spent time with the public school systems in America and Britain. In a recent article for Politics Daily, she explains the diverging ideas in how Pre-K education are developing. She writes, “As an American, I’ve always been struck by how rapidly children are forced to grow up in the U.K… The expectations facing kids seemed quite high — not just academically, but in terms of discipline, play and what kids were supposed to get out of extra-curricular activities.”

It’s clear that how we view our view on education — both here and across the pond — is rapidly developing growing up, maybe even faster than kids for a change.

When should kids start pre-kindergarten? Discuss!

Tell me if this sounds like a good idea—you make a weather balloon; you tell your son to hide in the garage, and then, after releasing said balloon, you call the authorities in a panic to tell them something terrible has happened. If everything goes well, you get famous and ink a reality TV deal.

As everyone who keeps up with television or the internet now knows, the above episode basically describes what authority’s believe Richard and Mayumi Henne did, temporarily shutting down Denver International Airport in the process. Perhaps the saddest part of this story: it worked, provided you accept the 24 hour news cycle represents “reality.”

That’s all well and good for the parents, but what about the children or in this case the child: the six year old Heene son. While “Balloon Boy” isn’t such a big downgrade from Falcon, there may be more serious repercussions than a bad nickname as he grows up. The trauma of watching his parents go to jail could be one in the not-too-distant future, while the excessive media attention at his age could also pose certain risks.

There’s well documented anecdotal evidence that celebrity, especially a parent’s quest for celebrity, can impact a child’s development in a bad way. Think Britney Spears, Macaulay Culkin, a young Drew Barrymore, the list goes on.

That said, what kid doesn’t want to be famous, and there have been plenty of child stars who turned into seemingly normal, productive members of society, like Ron Howard and Drew Barrymore, eventually.

That said, would you want your child to become famous? Is fame too dangerous for kids? Discuss!

Last month a $110 million museum opened in San Francisco, dedicated to the life and accomplishments of Walt Disney. Located in a former army barracks and two adjoining buildings inside the city’s 1,491-acre Presidio National Park, it houses some of the earliest sketches of Mickey Mouse, audio recordings of Disney himself, as well as notes detailing his thought processes during on early projects, and of course numerous pieces of memorabilia.

Museum board member Diane Disney Miller, Disney’s daughter, was quoted in a Bloomberg article saying, “I think a lot of people don’t know [Walt Disney is] anything but a brand… I want people to know who he really was.”

By most accounts the museum makes a fitting and honest tribute to the visionary cartoonist’s legacy, but it’s that very legacy and the Disney brand that have sometimes incited controversy. In particular, Disney’s fascination with and promotion of princesses has concerned parents who sometimes see these slender and arguably over sexualized icons as potentially dangerous role models.

In a 2006 New York Times article, author Peggy Orenstein wrote:

There are no studies proving that playing princess directly damages girls’ self-esteem or dampens other aspirations. On the other hand, there is evidence that young women who hold the most conventionally feminine beliefs — who avoid conflict and think they should be perpetually nice and pretty — are more likely to be depressed…

While some of Disney’s more modern characters like Mulan or Pocahontas have defied female stereotypes to a point, Orenstein says, they are usually not the ones marketed to girls and held up as figures to emulate. One counter argument is that a princess obsession is a harmless phase that girls grow out of, but not everyone is convinced.

What is your take? Do Disney princesses make for bad role models? What do you see as the Walt Disney legacy? Discuss!

The morality of corporal punishment is a tough issue with many parents, but have you ever considered the fact that being spanked might make a child stupider?

Though it seems pretty unlikely (and somewhat out of left field), Murray Strauss, a professor in the sociology department at the University of New Hampshire, has two studies that show a correlation between children who were spanked and lower IQ scores. Strauss and his colleagues surveyed parents of 1,500 children and found that children who weren’t spanked between the ages of two and four had an average IQ five points higher than those who were; children between age five and nine saw a similar trend, but less striking.

But there could be other factors at work here. Strauss surveyed families from 32 different countries. Spanking is more taboo in developed countries, which could explain the difference in IQ scores. Plus, couldn’t the frequency of spanking be a determinant? NPR got Strauss on the phone and asked him about these possible explanations.

“The data suggests but does not prove that another reason the IQs are higher in these countries is that there is less corporal punishment where there is higher economic development,” he conceded.

Still, Strauss’s work is something to consider. Even if there was a chance that your child might be smarter — or at least have a higher IQ score — would it be worth foregoing corporal punishment entirely as a means of discipline?

What do you think: could spanking your child make them dumber? Discuss!