health

I don’t know about you, but it makes me crazy that the foods offered to my children at their respective schools often seem to undo all of my efforts to make sure they’re eating healthy at home. On any given day, either one of my older children could choose for lunch an order of French fries and a packaged brownie that has so many preservatives in it that I could set it aside and serve it to my future great-grandchildren.
 

New Year’s resolutions are all well and good, but I for one don’t really have the energy to start new lifestyle commitments right after the holidays. This first full week of fall is a different story – I’m inspired by the cooler nights, back-to-school routines and fresh-off-the-tree apples.

And I don’t think I’m the only one – during the past week my inbox has been full of great ideas for enriching our children’s lives. Here, in no particular order, are five ideas to get you started.

I burst a first-grader’s bubble the other day. We were all set to go on one of the last water park outings of the summer, and as he was about to climb into our car, I stopped him. “What about your car seat?” I asked.

He gave me a highly insulted look, the kind only a perturbed 6-year-old can muster, but before he could say anything his mom jumped in. “Oh, he’s tall enough,” his mom replied. “He doesn’t need one.”

We stood there discussing it for a bit. She was pretty sure she was right, I was pretty sure she was wrong. I think she gave in only because I’d have been the one paying the $50 citation plus court costs for violating the booster seat law in Missouri – and because our destination was Illinois, I could potentially have been set back another $50 on that side of the river.

So what are the rules?

I’m not the kind of mom to follow trends, so I was a little slow on the uptake on the whole crazy bands (aka Silly Bandz) fad.

My son has shark teeth: His permanent teeth are growing behind his baby teeth. Apparently this is pretty common (another SmartParenting blogger recently dealt with this too), but I admit I’m baffled. Don’t baby teeth just fall out?

Not always. It turns out there are a lot of reasons why some kids’ baby teeth are tenacious. One is genetics. Another is impatience. Some kids are more aggressive at wiggling loose teeth. In my 7-year-old’s case, he needed encouragement from the dentist to start wiggling and twisting his three loose teeth.

In fact, she pretty much gave him an ultimatum this morning.

This past week one of my colleagues at Parents as Teachers (where I do some freelance work) was aglow over the news of a “miraculous” baby. The tiny boy was born prematurely and had been pronounced dead – but he was revived after being held in "kangaroo care" against his mom’s chest for a couple of hours, while doctors left her and her husband alone with him so they could grieve and say final farewells.

In fact, their doctor was so disbelieving that he wouldn’t return to check out the baby’s lifelike “reflexes.” The parents had to resort to deception to get him to come back and confirm that the boy was indeed alive.