What a sweet picture: New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees lifting his one-year-old son, Baylen, in the air following the Saints’ win in the Super Bowl yesterday.

And it warmed my heart even more to see that Mom and Dad had decided Baylen would be wearing noise-reducing headphones for the occasion.

Consumer Reports’ Tobie Stanger has a great post about this, with lots of links to info on how to protect your hearing and your kids’ hearing.  (Full disclosure: I’m the social-media reporter for Consumer Reports.)

Check out the post, then talk with your own kids about the importance of protecting their hearing. And be sure to tell them that Drew Brees is one cool dad.

Ever wonder what your kid’s pediatrician would say if he or she had a chance to vent? I found out.

Little did I know, when I asked to interview several doctors, that they all had a mental laundry list of the things they’d like parents to know. (But they’ll never tell you to your face.)

Check out my article in Little Rock Family magazine for pediatricians’ pet peeves.

Note to any parent who is thinking that taking their kids to a “swine flu party” is a dandy idea: I wish you could have seen my then-13-year-old son in early November. (Matt gave me his OK to talk about his bout with H1N1 because he thinks purposely exposing a child to this virus is the craziest thing he’s ever heard of.)

My healthy, baseball-playing, junior-lifeguard son was fine one day and had a fever of 102.5 the next. (Full disclosure: Matt did get the H1N1 vaccination, but it takes about two weeks to be fully effective, according to his doctor, and he got sick before it became fully effective.)

He got so sick he developed a form of vertigo that was so severe he couldn’t roll over in bed without the room spinning. He ended up in the ER with pneumonia. He missed almost two weeks of school. Taking your listless child to the ER is as scary thing. Seeing him hooked up to IVs with fluids and antibiotics isn’t fun, either. (more…)

Your kids need more sleep. You know it. They won’t admit it. And teachers everywhere wish parents would put bedtime higher on the priority list in 2010.

Kick off the new year right with healthy bedtime routines and great tips on kids and sleep from my latest article in CarolinaParent.com.

Who knows… You may even find a bit of “grown-up” time in your evenings, after the kids are in bed. Bonus!

What do baseball slugger Mark McGwire and actors Vince Vaughn and Michael Landon have in common? They all wet the bed as kids. And all went on to speak out about it as adults to reassure both parents and kids that bedwetting is nothing to be ashamed of.

And it’s certainly nothing to be punished for. Landon wrote that his mother would display his unwashed wet sheets on the clothesline — and even tied parts of the wet sheets to him before he went to school — in a misguided attempt to get him to stop wetting the bed. As an adult, Landon had little contact with his mother. Hard to blame him.

(more…)

My, it’s interesting to see what happens when pediatricians get a chance to vent about parents! I learned a lot in writing “Pediatricians’ Pet Peeves” for a number of regional parenting magazines. Here’s the first part of the article. Head over to New Jersey Family to read the whole thing.

We all know the complaints we parents have now and then about visits to the doctor’s office. But aren’t you just a bit curious about what irritations pediatricians would share with the parents of their pint-sized patients if they had the chance? Here’s what your pediatrician would love to tell you (but you won’t hear it from him).

“As tempting as it is to ask the doctor to ‘just check his brother’s ears while we’re here,’ a piece of a medical encounter is no encounter at all,” says Dr. David Hill, an adjunct assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of North Carolina Medical School. “We need to know what’s going on with the ears; what other symptoms he’s having; whether he has had allergies, asthma, or ear surgery in the past; what medications he’s on; what he’s allergic to; whether anyone smokes in the home; and what illnesses run in the family,” says Hill, who’s also a medical expert on JustAnswer.com.

“If his ears are bothering him, it could be strep throat or part of a sinusitis or an illness that might kick up an asthma attack. So please, if you’re worried about multiple siblings, make each one a separate appointment to ensure he or she gets the doctor’s full attention.”

Also, Hill says, “Our expertise is the only thing doctors have to sell. Would you ask your grocer, ‘Since I’m buying this milk, could you just give me half a watermelon?’”

Read the rest at New Jersey Family

Is it getting cold where you live? If so, the kids are probably starting to climb the walls — and you’re probably ready to climb a few yourself. (Don’t worry. We’ve all been there.)

Indoor playgrounds are a great place to let kids burn off steam. Just watch for these common health-and-safety hazards, suggests the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) — and this mom who’s done her time in the ball pits:

1.    Big kid-little kid collisions. Don’t place your toddler in the rowdy big-kid section. (I once had to yank my then-preschooler out of the way as a big kid came careening down a slide into the ball pit.) Older kids love to hurl the balls at each other. Kids bury themselves in balls and can be hurt when another child leaps into the pit. Happily, most play centers have separate toddler/preschooler sections designed just for the younger set. Bringing younger children in the morning, before the rough-and-tumble crowd gets out of school, is helpful, too.

2.    Icky ball pits. Just say no. They’re dangerous — and often just plain nasty. I’ve seen toddlers wading through ball pits with their diapers falling off. And the balls and pits often aren’t cleaned regularly. (The CPSC recommends a weekly cleaning of each ball — by hand — and a thorough sanitizing of the pit itself. But how often does that actually happen?) If the ball pit is located at a fast-food restaurant, take a good look at the restaurant itself. Does it seem to be clean and well-managed? If the restaurant floor is rarely mopped and old mustard spills are dried on the condiment bar, you can probably imagine how often the ball pit is cleaned and inspected.

3.    Lack of supervision. Forget bringing a book and relaxing with a latte from the snack bar. (Sorry!) Indoor playgrounds require big-time vigilance. Is your child strong enough to pull himself up the rope ladder? Does he freak out inside the crawl tubes? Is he climbing up slide exits, sitting at the bottom of a slide or throwing (or licking!) ball-pit balls? It’s exhausting, but it’s a good idea to follow your child around.

4.    Unsafe equipment. Check for damaged floor mats and frayed climbing ropes and netting. Make sure crawl tubes have windows or cutouts so you can see inside. And check to be sure tube slides are large enough so that kids can sit to slide down and don’t have to lie down head-first. If a narrow crawl tube empties into a narrow tube slide, your child can only go down head first, as there’s no room to sit up or turn around.

5.    Strangulation hazards. Leave necklaces and other jewelry at home and avoid clothing with loose strings that can catch on equipment.

6.    Getting lost in the crowd. Now’s the time to let your child wear her favorite hot-orange Sponge Bob t-shirt to make it easier to spot her. Avoiding peak weekend (i.e., birthday party) times makes it easier to keep track of your child, too. Many play centers have added side-door alarms, matching child-adult wristbands and other security measures to keep kids from wandering off — or even being abducted. But no snazzy security system beats staying on your feet and keeping your eyeballs peeled. (Just don’t forget to pick up that latte on the way home — you’re earned it!)

About 1 percent of all the kids in the U.S. have some form of autism, according to a recent survey. And it’s diagnosed four times more often in boys than in girls.

I’m writing about autism today over at Jen Singer’s Mommasaid.net. Please stop by and check it out.

Warning: Jen is such a hoot, and has such great stuff there, you may get happily lost on here site and forget to pick up the kids at school…

If you’re like me, you have been wading through back-to-school paperwork
lately. And if your kid is in school, you’ve probably received the teacher’s “wish list”… wipe-off markers, Kleenex, paper towels and (of course) hand sanitizer.

With everyone’s concern about H1N1
flu in mind, hand sanitizer is even more popular these days.

Personally? I wish we could all just wash our hands more often. But
realistically, that’s not always going to happen at school. So I’m glad these little bottles of gel kill germs so effectively.

Only one problem. They dry out your skin something fierce.

So I was jazzed to try a sample of Infectigard Hand Sanitizer. This stuff kills the germs, but it also contains a moisturizer that left my hands soft, but not sticky at all. After it dried, I noticed a faint scent that smelled a bit like baby powder. Nice.

So I thought I’d share the news with you. I’m going to share the bottle of Infectiguard with
my son’s science class. Along with a few boxes of Kleenex, of course.