health

I love it when “expert” parents give the rest of us a little peek into their day-to-day lives. That’s why I was psyched to be invited to hear Dr. Jim Sears speak on kids and nutrition Thursday evening. The Web site he and his equally well-known parents oversee, AskDrSears.com, is one of my go-to sources of information on the Internet, and I’ve read a couple of their 40+ books.

His down-to-earth presentation didn’t disappoint – and neither did the snapshots into the lives of his 12-year-old son and 16-year-old daughter.  He mixed just the right amount of common-sense advice with guilt-inducing medical viewpoints and self-deprecating humor, starting with the topic of junk food.

Our pediatrician is a master at prepping parents for the year ahead. So after hearing what he had to say about 4-year-olds, I am bracing myself.

Kids this age are independent, willful, determined and dogged. All of these would be qualities I’d prize highly … if they weren’t already being employed in getting a cupcake for breakfast or two more games on the Wii or an extension on bedtime.

I’ve been hearing a lot of buzz about sunscreens among my friends. Turns out some contain ingredients that may disrupt the way hormones work in our bodies or actually do more harm than good when it comes to skin cancer.

With all the unknowns around increasing rates of everything from autism to type 2 diabetes in kids, a lot of parents are nervous about everything that goes onto and into their children. A few years ago, I was hearing similar “what-if” stories from the eco-parent types who were avoiding plastic drinking cups and bottles due to concerns about bisphenol A (which the government’s National Toxicology Program puts in the “some concern” category for developmental toxicity). Back when they first started talking about BPA, few of us knew what it was – and now, of course, BPA is pretty much a household term among families with infants and toddlers.  I suspect things could go the same way for oxybenzone in sunscreens.

Last week there was a major conference of sleep researchers in San Antonio, Texas. Usually reading through scientific abstracts like the ones presented there is a sure-fire way of inducing drowsiness, but I found several that actually made me sit up and pay attention.

The most interesting one looked at around 8,000 preschoolers to find out whether their bedtimes and how much total sleep they got had any effect on their overall development. My youngest son just turned 4 today, so I was curious—and I was surprised by what I learned.

The results may surprise you, too. But first, a pop quiz on how well you know your bedtime facts.

A few years ago my parents, husband, brother and I were playing a game called Worst-Case Scenarios. In it, players pit their wits against situations like bear attacks, deadly flora, armed assailants and the like – things we wouldn’t usually experience in our day-to-day vanilla lives.

If you’d asked me to predict the winner, I’d have gone with my brother, a trained mountaineer. Or my husband, an Air Force veteran. Or my father, a lifelong hunter. Who won?