Paul Scott exposes the child marketing industry’s unethical practices and harmful effects in his outstanding article in Children’s Health.

He warns parents that child marketing is everywhere, not just in the 30 second TV ads that we typically think of as marketing. The child marketing industry seeks to influence your children every chance it gets. The results are a quiet disaster. From the internet to cell phones, corporate brands are using every tool in the book to move your child “from brand awareness to investigation, from investigation to selection, to repeat purchase, to loyalty and ultimately to advocacy.”

If you’ve ever heard your child ask you for a brand, he or she has become that brand’s advocate and is now working for that company as part of its sales force. Seizing children’s brains is like shooting fish in a barrel it turns out.

Research has shown that children younger than 7 or 8 are unable to tell whether something or someone is trying to persuade them to do something. That, coupled with with proven damage that marketing to children causes, is why an organization no less prestigious than the American Psychological Association considers advertising to children under 7 to be unethical. In fact, it is illegal in Norway and Sweden and many other countries severely restrict it like we restrict cigarette and alcohol advertising.

Scott’s article lists the many harmful effects marketing has on children from higher body mass index to lack of creativity, and points out that the increasing sexualization of marketing to girls is particularly harmful. The American Psychological Association found “ample evidence to conclude that sexualization has negative effects on cognitive function, physical and mental health and healthy sexual development.”

These findings would not be so scary if our country’s children ages 8-18 did not spend 44.5 hours a week exposed to media and marketing. What can you do to fight this flood? Scott has some answers in his Princess Diatribes.

He also recommends toys that stimulate a child’s imagination and intellect. Hint: no branded toy can. Try PlanToys, Magna-Tiles, Gustafer Yellowgold, Back to Basics Toys, Thames & Kosmos, and TRUCE Toy Action Guide.

One such death was that of 13-month-old Aiden Truett who stopped eating and began vomiting. Doctors attributed the symptoms to a viral upper respiratory infection, but were forced to re-evaluate after treatment only led to worsening symptoms.

X-rays revealed the baby had swallowed a button battery, which was quickly removed surgically. Two days later, however, the baby started coughing blood and soon died.

Before doctors could remove the small battery, it had already burned a hole in the baby’s esophagus and damaged his heart. In the past, such batteries were not strong enough to cause such massive damage, but today’s batteries are supercharged for their small sizes and have caused a sevenfold increase in serious injuries and death since 1985.

Deaths are still very rare, fewer than 10 since 2004, but 3,500 button battery ingestions occur annually and today’s stronger batteries are causing more serious injuries. Every organ that encounters a button battery is a risk.

Vocal chords have been damaged, leaving children suffering from a lifelong whisper. Digestive tract injuries have caused children to undergo multiple surgeries and require feeding tubes. Children are not the only population at risk for these injuries. Our elderly have mistaken the buttons for candy and medication.

The worst offenders are batteries that begin with the number 20. They measure 20 millimeters and are the strongest of today’s tiny power plants. Batteries numbered 2032, 2025, and 2016 cause more than 90 percent of serious injury.

In 60 percent of child injuries, the child has removed the batter from an electronic device, not found it loose. Store your battery powered devices in a safe place.

Read the full article here.

Staying off busy roads is not enough. More than half the 135 children who die in bike-related car accidents are killed on minor roads or in residential areas. They don’t have to – bike helmets reduce the risk of severe brain injury by 88 percent.

Make sure you set a good example for your child. You are a role model whether you like it or not. Your approach cannot be “do as I say, not as I do.” Children are always watching you for what is acceptable behavior.

Use hand signals in traffic and always ride responsibly. Ride on the right side of the road with traffic. Don’t let your child be one of the 75 to 85 percent of children who ride bikes without helmets. Show them that using a helmet is the only way to bicycle.

Even though you may be riding responsibly, sometimes injuries occur due to the fault of others. Helmets significantly reduce your risk of needing a Daytona Beach personal injury lawyer.

Today’s researchers are now finding that many things that we traditionally thought of as innate human traits such as happiness and talent are actually more a result of nurture instead of nature. That means that we have control over how happy or talented we are. It’s a mistaken belief to think that some people are born more talented or happy than others. Studies show that talented and happy are the way they are because of their actions and behaviors, not any innate trait.

I recently read a fascinating review by Nancy Shute of USNews.com of the latest book to show us that there are many steps we can take to make ourselves happier parents. The book, Raising Happiness, was written by Christine Carter, a sociologist who studies happiness and also a mother.

Carter’s advice to parents is founded on solid science and provides often simple solutions such as why praise is a much more powerful tool to promote good behavior than punishment or nagging.

The book review mentions two simple steps to more familial happiness. You determine when you are happiest with your kids and what part of your normal day with your family routinely causes suffering. Step two is to structure your day so that you routinely get those happiest moments every day and so that you eliminate those routine pain points.

The review gives the example of bed-time reading being the favorite time of day for the author, but she couldn’t always be home at that time so she switched the bed-time reading to after-school reading so she could be sure she would have that time.

Another thing the author did at that bed-time reading session was to talk with her children about three good things that happened that day. This is another simple but powerful technique that research has shown makes significant improvements in happiness and self-confidence.

The review said that Raising Happiness is full of simple, powerful steps you can take to increase your happiness as a parent and the happiness of your children. It comes well-recommended.

In essence, toddler’s brains are only about as developed as the brains of our ancestors the cavemen were. When adults throw tantrums, we refer to it as “going ape” for similar reasons. When adults lose our temper, the left side of our brains literally shut down and we revert to emotional and not logical beings.

However, toddlers are constantly going prehistoric on us as parents and we would be better off communicating with them in a way they can recognize and respond to. So instead of using a soothing voice to tell a toddler to calm down, researchers suggest we communicate to their right brains, their emotional caveman brains.

The way we do that is to repeat short phrases while slightly mirroring their emotional state. Now this gets really interesting because research and experience shows that adults instinctively do this already when children are happy.

For example, if a child is happy about learning a new word or doing something else good, adults often say something like, “Yes, yes, yes, wow, great job, great job,” in an excited tone of voice that mirrors the child’s mood. However, we usually do the opposite when children misbehave. We use soothing tones and give them reasons why they shouldn’t behave that way.

Researchers suggest we would receive much better outcomes if we communicated to children’s right brains when they’re misbehaving.

Researchers also point out that adults do this with other adults sometimes which makes sense because we too become cavemen when we’re angry because our left brain shuts down. If you’ve ever found yourself using a charged tone of voice to say something like, “sorry, sorry, sorry, I can explain myself, but I’m sorry,” that is effective communication with the right brain. It’s mirroring the other’s emotional state while repeating short phrases.

Try it sometime with your toddler and see if they don’t respond better.

For example, some adults are afraid of flying but not driving even though your chances of dying in a traffic accident are much greater than your chances of dying in a airline crash. Unfortunately, many adults cannot shake their fear of flying even when confronted with the facts.

Luckily, the circumstances are different with most fears. For example, we might panic upon discovering that our child just ate our deodorant stick – that is unless we knew it could not cause serious injury. So while correct information may not cure your fear of flight, correct information is likely to be very helpful in assuaging parents’ fears of child injury and illness.

As a great service to parents everywhere, pediatrician and author Lara Sibners has written a book titled: If Your Kids Eat This Book, Everything Will Still Be Okay: How to Know if Your Child’s Injury or Illness Is Really an Emergency.” In it. She presents a detailed guide to everything you don’t have to worry about your child eating, licking, putting in their ear, etc, etc.

She teaches parents to know the difference between the household items that will and won’t hurt our children. The book is full of great information about why each item is dangerous or not and when you really need to go the the emergency room.

Sibners presents worst case scenarios that usually turn out to be not so bad. This priceless book will put parents’ minds at ease.

When using and sharing our roadways, whether it be by school bus, car, bicycle, foot, or whether it be in Orlando, Daytona Beach or Jacksonville, a few simple precautions will go a long way toward making this school year a safe one.

By Bus
Research shows that school bus travel is significantly safer than traveling by car or motorcycle. In fact, it is 16 times safer. Although school buses are quite a bit safer than autos, accidents do happen. More often than not, school bus related child injuries occur outside the bus, not while riding in the bus.

Parents and children should be more concerned with behaving safely when boarding or leaving the bus than with the possibility of a bus crash. At the time children are entering and exiting the bus, they can be hit by the bus itself or other vehicles.

Ideally parents should supervise their children as they send them off to school. If that is not possible for you, teach your kids just a few simple precautions:

• Look to the left, then to the right, and then to the left once more if you have to cross the street.
• Never stick your arms or head out of the window.
• Do not get off the bus before it stops moving completely
• When exiting the bus: take two large steps away from it. Then, if you have to walk in front of it, walk ahead at least three meters (10 giant steps). The driver must be able to see you.
• If you drop something that rolls near or under the bus, never attempt to retrieve it without the driver’s permission.

By Car
Rules for dropping off and picking up your children at school exist for safety and orderliness. While traffic congestion may be frustrating, do not get “creative” in the school zone. Respect speed limits, and drop-off and pick-up areas.

By Bicycle
Don’t ride your bike to school until you’re at least 9 years old and have enough experience to be able to look ahead and behind you without swerving.

• Note that when you look behind you while riding a bike, you will likely swerve to the direction in which you turned your head. Learn how to compensate for this tendency in places where there is no traffic before riding in traffic.
• Signal when you intend to turn by pointing to the direction you intend to turn.
• Always wear a helmet.

By Foot
If you’re walking to school, walk with a parent or friend.

• Never accept rides from strangers.
• Be aware of your surroundings. If you’re talking to a friend or parent on the way, look around occasionally to see what’s going on around you. At the least, it will keep you from walking into a pole, bumping your head and looking silly.
• Use sidewalks when available and cross with the light at crosswalks. Remember to look to the left, the right and then left again before crossing the street.
• Make sure drivers see you before you cross.

Children of that age are more susceptible to poisoning and often do not understand the dangers such substances present. Otherwise harmless substances found in the home can cause young children serious injury.

Medications were found to be the most common cause of accidental child poisoning. Almost half of all child injuries from poisoning involved either prescription or non-prescription medication. Those types of childhood poisoning occurred mostly in two situations: those involving parents administering an incorrect dosage and those involving unsupervised children ingesting incorrect medication or too much medication.

Household cleaning products and pesticides were the second leading cause of childhood poisoning injuries. They accounted for 21 percent of all child poisoning injuries. Other child poisoning causes include cosmetics, vitamins, and dietary supplements.

In this country, 71,000 children are injured each year from medication related poisonings alone. That included prescription and over-the-counter drugs. The total number of annual child poisonings is around 140,000.

This is a staggering number when you consider how simple it is to prevent accidental child poisoning. Simply store your medications and household chemicals out of your children’s reach. Take the short amount of time necessary to read and understand medication directions.

Never store your medicine in purses, bags, drawers, on counter-tops or other places kids can get to them. If you can’t store your household chemicals high enough to be out of the reach of children, use child locks on those cabinets.

Keep household chemicals in their original containers, and never near food so they are not confused with food. Also never refer to medications as “candy” to your children or say they taste like candy. This will only encourage them to overdose if they gain unsupervised access to them.

The study found that child athletes from 9-16 failed to drink enough water to stay hydrated during athletic activity. That problem is exacerbated by the fact that they routinely fail to drink enough and arrived at summer sports camps dehydrated to begin with.

Because many arrived at camp already dehydrated and then practiced an average of three times a day, between 50 and 75 percent of children at the various camps ended up “significantly” dehydrated and 25 to 30 percent of them became “seriously” dehydrated.

Acute dehydration can cause kidney failure and death, not to mention that just a 1 to 2 percent reduction in body mass from sweating causes reduced aerobic performance in young athletes. Children also become dehydrated faster than adults causing their core temperature to also rise faster.

Additional studies indicate that children just don’t drink water even if it is available. The ironic thing is that the same children think they are doing a good job of staying hydrated during their activities.

The solution is much easier than preaching the importance of hydration and praying they’ll listen. Here’s one of those “they really needed a study to figure that out” moments – children will drink a lot more liquids when they taste good.

Children voluntarily drank 44.5 percent more when exercising if the available hydration was grape flavored water than if the available hydration was pure water. When carbohydrate (sugar) was added like in today’s sports drinks, children voluntarily drank 91 percent more than when only water was available.

There is a caveat – sports drinks are not appropriate for children of all ages and activities. Sports drinks are only appropriate for older children engaged in intense physical activity for an hour or more continuously or if they engage in multiple practices per day.

Most children younger than 10 or 12 don’t exercise intensely enough to require carbohydrate and electrolyte replenishment. If a child is not burning enough calories to require a sports drink, the drinks can be counterproductive, having been linked to obesity and tooth decay.

In today’s economy, sports drinks can also be expensive. Try this do-it-yourself recipe from Nancy Clark’s Sports Nutrition Guidebook”

1/4 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup orange juice
1/4 cup hot water
2 tablespoons lemon juice
3 1/2 cups cold water

In a quart pitcher, dissolve the sugar and salt in the hot water. Add the remaining ingredients and the cold water. The drink contains about 50 calories and 110 mg of sodium per 8 ounces, approximately the same as for most sports drinks.

Since then, the blogosphere has erupted in debate about whether drinking while breastfeeding is harmful or whether the police were right. Only one thing is clear – that there are no clear answers. In fact, we can’t really be sure the woman was drunk at the time. While she pleaded guilty to child neglect, police did not administer a blood-alcohol test because they aren’t necessary for child neglect charges. Police said they knew she was drunk from the way she was behaving, but reports say no more than that.

Some bloggers think the police abused their authority even if Anvarinia had been drunk. “Since when is breast-feeding while drunk a crime?” said Dr. Amy Tuteur, a retired obstetrician and gynecologist who writes the Skeptical OB. If Anvarinia had been feeding her baby formula, “no one would have bothered to check what was in the bottle,” Tuteur opined. “You can do a lot more damage by mixing formula wrong.”

The thing is that no one can know what effect drunken breast feeding has on babies. No one has ever studied it directly because of the eithical implications of conducting studies whereby researchers induce intoxication in breast feeding mothers. The only evidence we have on the subject is anecdotal, which does not allow conclusions to be drawn one way or the other.

Most interest groups advise against drinking and breastfeeding but others see no harm in limited alcohol consumption among breast feeding mothers. It has also been said that alcohol assists a woman with making milk. Doctors report that alcohol remains in the body for two to three hours after consumption. Other interesting posts can be found at http://ecochildsplay.com

Commentators who feel the police came down too hard on the mother argue that the child’s best interests were harmed when its mother was put in jail for 5 years. They argue that drunken breast feeding is the lesser of the two evils. Police, however, argue that Anvarinia was arrested for more than just drunken breast feeding. Police say nothing more than that it was the totality of the circumstances and that they would have arrested the woman on child neglect charges even if she had not been nursing her infant drunk.