Cross-posted at Fussbucket

New software programs enable parents to learn of everything from their child's daily class attendance and homework completion to test scores and overall grades throughout the semester,  according to this article in the NY Times.

Boy am I glad I'm not a kid anymore. What a nightmare. Sorry if you're one of those parents who likes to use these programs, but this seems like an invasion of privacy to me.

The article profiles Nicole Dobbins, a mother of three from  Alpharetta, Ga. who regularly logs on to ParentConnect, and reads updated reports on her children. By the time she sees them after school she already knows what happened because she's been spying on them all day.

When her ninth grader gets home at 6 p.m., there may well be ParentConnect printouts on his bedroom desk with poor grades highlighted in yellow by his mother. She will expect an explanation. He will be braced for a punishment. “He knows I’m going to look at ParentConnect every day and we will address it,” Mrs. Dobbins said.

Apparently there are a bunch of these tracking programs out there with names like Edline, ParentConnect, Pinnacle Internet Viewer and PowerSchool. They are being used by thousands of schools, kindergarten through 12th grade, the article says.

Kindergarten? Huh?

Cross-posted at Fussbucket

If toxic paint wasn't enough of a reason to boycott toys made in China, an article in today's NY Times says that hundreds and maybe thousands of children in China have been sold to work as slave laborers in booming coastal factory cities.

Authorities in southern Guangdong Province, near Hong Kong, said they had already rescued more than 100 children from factories in Dongguan, a huge manufacturing city known for producing and exporting toys, textiles and electronics.  The children, mostly 13 to 15 years old, were often tricked or kidnapped by employment agencies working in an impoverished part of western Sichuan Province, and then sent to factory towns in Guangdong, where they were often forced to work as much as 300 hours a month for little money, according to government officials and accounts from the state-owned media.

The new child labor case “is quite typical,” said Hu Xingdou, a professor of economics and social policy at the Beijing Institute of Technology. “China’s economy is developing at a fascinating speed, but often at the expense of laws, human rights and environmental protection.” Professor Hu also said that sometimes the children were sold by their parents who didn't know of the working conditions.

Cross-posted at Fussbucket

I love this story - this is an issue my friends and I discuss regularly - how safe is the subway for our kids - Sue in Queens

A mother in New York has been making headlines the last few days after leaving her nine-year old son at Bloomingdale's in Manhattan to find his way home armed with a MetroCard, a subway map, twenty bucks, and some quarters to call home in case he got lost.

The mom, Lenore Skenazy who is a columnist for the New York Sun, told the Today show that it's good for kids to exert their independence.

Izzy, who is now 10, nodded in agreement and insisted it was no big deal. He had been nagging his mother for a long time to let him ride home alone, and finally she agreed to let him take the downtown Lexington Avenue subway and then transfer to a crosstown bus to get home from Bloomingdale’s. "I was like, ‘Finally!’ " Izzy said of his reaction when his mom finally caved in to his nagging. "I think that it’s a really easy, simple thing to get home."

The story has sparked both outrage and a wave of nostalgia among New Yorkers who spent their youth traveling independently around the city. These days even parents who live in the suburbs are afraid to let their kids roam free in their family-friendly neighborhoods. This fear, says Skenazy, is overblown.

"It’s safe to go on the subway," Skenazy replied. "It’s safe to be a kid. It’s safe to ride your bike on the streets. We’re like brainwashed because of all the stories we hear that it isn’t safe. But those are the exceptions. That’s why they make it to the news. This is like, ‘Boy boils egg.’ He did something that any 9-year-old could do."

Cross-posted at Fussbucket

One of my favorite things to do is to listen to my four-year old son Sage talk to himself when he's busy doing something. He totally uninhibited, talking about what he's doing or pretending he's hanging out with some of his imaginary friends. Often it happens when he's concentrating, like building train tracks, or coloring, or doing a puzzle.

A new study shows that not only is this chattering pretty damn cute, it's useful. According to this article in Science Daily, parents should encourage pre-schoolers to talk to themselves.

Parents should not worry when their pre-schoolers talk to themselves; in fact, they should encourage it, says Adam Winsler, an associate professor of psychology at George Mason University. His recent study published in Early Childhood Research Quarterly showed that 5-year-olds do better on motor tasks when they talk to themselves out loud (either spontaneously or when told to do so by an adult) than when they are silent.

"Young children often talk to themselves as they go about their daily activities, and parents and teachers shouldn’t think of this as weird or bad," says Winsler. "On the contrary, they should listen to the private speech of kids. It's a fantastic window into the minds of children."

In the study, "'Should I let them talk?': Private speech and task performance among preschool children with and without behavior problems," 78 percent of the children performed either the same or better on the performance task when speaking to themselves than when they were silent, the article says.

Cross-posted at Fussbucket

All's fair on reality television. People swap spouses, get new and improved homes to live in, and compete for titles like "Top Chef!" And now, according to this article in Newsweek, stay-at-home mothers can try out going back to work while the whole nation watches. The show is called "Secret Life of a Soccer Mom."

Umm, I think I'd almost rather be in therapy on television (and if you're an HBO watcher like me, you're seeing this very thing on "In Treatment." Love it.) I'd like to think that people out there would sympathize with a woman who had spent years at home raising children, side-stepping her own career path to wipe noses, give hugs, and sing silly songs. Maybe even root for her to find happiness and balance with kids who were just fine with a little less mommy time. But no.

If the initial reaction to the "Secret Life of a Soccer Mom," (Mondays at 10 p.m. ET) is any indication, TLC has struck one of the rawest nerves of parenting. In the show's March 3 premier Adrian Stark, a mother of three girls in suburban California, decides to go back to work full-time as a high fashion designer after 10 years at home. Stark's daughters are awestruck by the gowns she makes, and when she's offered a job, her physician husband gets teary with joy.

But as soon as the show aired, TLC's online message boards were  with comments from women outraged that Adrian would choose a career over being a stay-at-home mom (SAHM in parent lingo). The posts said the premise of the show is "sick" and Adrian is "selfish."

There were lots of nasty comments including someone saying that going back to work is "child abandonment." What is wrong with these people?

Women have been in the workforce for decades now, but the tension between moms who stay at home and those who, by choice, have jobs outside the home continues to brew. When in mixed company, mothers on both sides of the fence tend to tiptoe around the subject. Totally unvarnished confessions of either boredom or guilt are usually left to gatherings of moms of one's own kind.

Cross-posted at Fussbucket

About a week ago I went to hear a lecture on talking to kids about sex by Amy Lang, a parent educator in Seattle. I really was just tagging along with a friend and hadn't given much thought to the topic since my kids are only four and one-year old.

Well, I got an earful. Here's some of what she said:

We're told we should wait until they ask us. That's not true. It's not their job to know when they're ready. We need to be the ones to initiate the conversation. It's really important to have early, regular, consistent conversations with your kids about sex throughout childhood and adolescence.

How early? Earlier than you might think.

By age five they should know. Up to age five, they're a blank slate. They come to the conversation with curiosity. It's really easy to talk to them about it. It's science, it's biology.

After that, she says they go to school and hear about it from other kids who may or may not have their facts straight.

You tell them that sex is for older people. Sex is for when you are in love. You get to give them facts and information and a big dose of your family values. Hopefully you're in their head by the time they start dealing with this.

Here's some crazy crap for you: According to a new documentary film making its way through politically conservative circles, there's an ominous decline in childbirth rates around the world such that if we all don't start procreating fast, armageddon is surely afoot. The movie is called "Demographic Winter: Decline of the Human Family." This is from the promo web site:

Almost all of the developed countries of the world are now experiencing fertility rates far below replacement levels. Birthrates have fallen so low that even immigration cannot replace declining populations, and this migration is sapping strength from developing countries, the fertility rates for many of which are now falling at a faster pace than did those of the developed countries.

According to the film makers, this decline in human reproduction will lead to failed economies and social mayhem.

Huh? Whatever, I'm not in least bit concerned about this. But I write about it here because of a discussion it raised on this post on Reason Magazine.

The Reason writer wonders if the reason people aren't having more kids is because parenting ain't all that much fun.

Demographic Winter asserts that "every aspect of modernity works against family life and in favor of singleness and small families or voluntary childlessness." And surely they are right. Modern societies offer people many other satisfactions and choices outside of the family. In particular women find that their time becomes more highly valued in occupations outside the home.

In light of this children have become "consumption items to be enjoyed for their own sakes, more akin to sculptures, paintings, or theatre," he says. "But that's just the problem—according to happiness researchers, people don't really enjoy rearing children."

 

Cross-posted on Fussbucket

Should dietary preferences dictate love? According to this article in the NY Times, some people simply can't make a relationship work without a meeting of the minds (or stomachs) over food.

Sharing meals has always been an important courtship ritual and a metaphor for love. But in an age when many people define themselves by what they will eat and what they won’t, dietary differences can put a strain on a romantic relationship. The culinary camps have become so balkanized that some factions consider interdietary dating taboo.

People do take their food rules seriously. Some maybe too seriously.

No-holds-barred carnivores, for example, may share the view of Anthony Bourdain, who wrote in his book "Kitchen Confidential" that "vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter faction, the vegans ... are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit."

It's hard to imagine Bourdain shacked up with a PETA activist. And likewise.

Returning the compliment, many vegetarians say they cannot date anyone who eats meat. Vegans, who avoid eating not just animals but animal-derived products, take it further, shivering at the thought of kissing someone who has even sipped honey-sweetened tea.

I could see how someone who feels strongly about being a vegan or a vegetarian could be opposed to dating a meat-eater. It's a political and moral thing. I look at James Carville and Mary Matalin and I can't for the life of me understand how they do it.

Cross-posted at Fussbucket

How do you teach your child to really care about others? Some use books. Some talk about how a friend feels when another friend does something hurtful. According to this feature in ParentMap magazine, one program that's just starting in ten Seattle schools begins with learning to care for a baby.

The program [called Roots of Empathy] is elegant in its simplicity. Every three weeks during the school year, a baby and parent, recruited from the community, visit the classroom (kindergarten to eighth grade) with a certified Roots of Empathy instructor. The instructor helps the students learn about the baby’s development, celebrate the baby’s milestones, and learn about what it takes to raise a baby.

Over the course of the school year, the students watch "their" baby reach its first milestones. The article says the children in the program become totally engaged when the baby visits, focusing intensely on the infant. Along the way, they develop feelings of protectiveness and love.

That love is key to developing empathy, and to refusing to allow others to be mistreated. "When a child becomes protective of a baby, the next level is the child doesn’t want anyone to hurt that baby," says Wendie Bramwell, a Roots of Empathy instructor at Sacajawea Elementary School in Seattle. "So why is it OK with a classmate?"

Cross-posted at Fussbucket

Get ready to feel guilty. Or smug. A report released a couple months ago from the UCLA Center for Healthier Children, Families, and Communities found that less than half of  parents aren't reading enough to their young children.

For children, early exposure to books -- including being read to aloud each day -- is critical for long-term academic success. Research has shown that up to one-third of American children enter kindergarten underprepared to learn, mostly because their early years leave them without the necessary language and literacy skills.

According to an executive summary of the report, called "Reading Across the Nation, A Chartbook," reading aloud is the single most important activity for building the knowledge required for reading success later on.

A news article from McClatchy Newspapers (which I can't find an online link to, sorry), says the survey found that parents typically read the least to children under age one, the most to children who are three years old, and less so when kids turn four or five.

"Maybe some children at 5 are starting to read themselves," says Shirley Russ, associate clinical professor of pediatrics at UCLA who is one of the lead authors of the study. "I'd encourage parents to keep up the reading at ages 4 and 5." One reason, she said, is that "parents can read to children with much richer language than children are initially capable of reading to themselves."

While nearly any kind of reading aloud offers some benefit, child-development experts are increasingly recognizing the value of "dialogic reading." This involves bringing children more actively into the process by having them point to certain items in the pictures, asking them questions about what might be coming up next, or encouraging them to think about how the book might relate to their own lives.

Oh brother. It's raining and gray outside. My husband took the car to work so I'm stuck at home with the two kids. My closest friend has gone AWOL and I don't know if she's upset with me or just upset in general and needs space. We hosted the neighborhood playgroup this morning and the kids were kind of mean to my son. And, DH has tickets to a basketball game tonight with some friends which means I've got to get everyone fed and into bed tonight solo and then sit on the couch staring at lame television while I think about how I should be working on the computer.

In short, I'm having a sucky day. So how do I cheer myself up? Any thoughts? What do you do when you're having a bad day?

Cross-posted at Fussbucket

Kids who are allowed to leave the house unsupervised are more sociable and more active, according to a new study out of the University College London in England.  According to this article from Science Daily, kids who are given more freedom are out and about more and spend more time at friends' houses than kids who must be accompanied by an adult.

The study included 330 students from two schools in Cheshunt, Hertfordshire, all aged between 8 and 11, the article says. The children completed questionnaires, kept travel diaries, had their movements logged using GPS monitors and wore portable motion sensors to measure their speed of travel, changes in direction and the number of 'activity calories' they consumed. ('Activity calories' are those burnt during activities, rather than those used to maintain core bodily functions.)

"We asked children whether they were allowed out without an adult and then looked at where they go and how they behave," says lead researcher Roger Mackett. "In general, children who aren't constantly supervised tend to leave the house more often -- exploring their surroundings, playing with other children and using up more calories than their sedentary, house-bound peers."

Children walk faster and take a more direct route when an adult is present, but they do not use more energy than unaccompanied children, the study found. This is because unsupervised children move in a more meandering fashion as they investigate their environment and socialize with other children.