Nation Siblings Day; Survey Says that Sibling Rivalry Thing’s A Myth

Posted on April 10, 2017

Today is National Siblings Day!

It’s a day to celebrate your brother and sister by posting a photo of yourself and/or with your siblings with the hashtag, #NationalSiblingsDay to post on social media.

The day was started by native New Yorker, Claudia Evart in 1995 to honor and celebrate siblings. After losing her two siblings early in life in separate accidents, she knew how important siblings could be in our lives.

Claudia created the Siblings Day Foundation (SDF), a tax-exempt organization, whose goals included the establishment of National Siblings Day. Claudia selected April 10 in honor of her late sister, Lisette’s birthday.

The folks at NationalToday.com learned from a recent survey that the concept of sibling-rivalry is a myth.

Only 3% of Americans hate their siblings while 92% of the 1,000 Americans surveyed said they do not fight with their siblings. Only 8% of Americans report having physically fought with their siblings.

Few siblings carry long-term grudges against each other. Only 3% of male subjects surveyed still hold a grudge over a childhood fight, while females are half as forgiving: 6% still feel a bit bitter.

Some people have best friends in their siblings. One in 10 American siblings are best friends. About 8% of Americans talk to their siblings every day, while another 8% say their siblings know them better than anyone else.

If given a choice, more Americans (36%) would chose to be an older sibling versus being an only child (15%), while 1 in 3 would enjoy being the youngest.

OTHER SIBLINGS DAY INSIGHTS

#1: We shared—or still share—clothes (7%)

#2: We are in a group text (6%)

#3: We share the same friend group (5%)

#4: We’ve embarrassed each other on social media (5%)

To learn more about National Siblings Day, you can visit [nationaltoday.com/us/national-siblings-day/].

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Study: No Allergies or Obesity for Babies Born to Homes with Dogs

Posted on April 10, 2017

A new study finds that babies born into homes that have pets, especially dogs, are less likely to have allergies or suffer from obesity.

Children born into a house with pets are more likely to be immune to certain allergies and less likely to be obese, a new study finds.

Researchers from the University of Alberta discovered that babies in homes with pets had greater levels of “gut microbes” that prevent allergic disease and obesity. This was especially true in households with dogs, which accounted for 70 percent of the participants.

Gut microbes are identified as “microorganisms or bacteria that live in the digestive tracts of humans and animals,” according to a university release.

But the team warned that the benefits identified for the children in the study occurred when they were exposed to pets during a certain timetable early in their lives.

“There’s definitely a critical window of time when gut immunity and microbes co-develop, and when disruptions to the process result in changes to gut immunity,” says Anita Kozyrskyj, a pediatric epidemiologist at the university and one of the world’s leading researchers on gut microbes, in the news release.

The study examined fecal samples from babies who are part of the Canadian Healthy Infant Longitudinal Development study, which is comprised of 3,500 children born after 2010. The study monitors the children to help figure out the various genetic and environmental influences that may lead to allergies and asthma.

Prior research has found that children in homes with dogs are less likely to be asthmatic because of their exposure to bacteria carried by the pets in their fur or on their paws.

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Study: Most Child Flu Deaths Occurred in Unvaccinated Kids

Posted on April 9, 2017

A new study of deaths in children from influenza analyzed over four flu seasons found that most deaths occurred in unvaccinated children.

The study, “Influenza Vaccine Effectiveness Against Pediatric Deaths: 2010-2014,” to be published in the May 2017 issue of Pediatrics (April 3 online) analyzed 291 deaths of children between ages 6 months through 17 years.

About one-fourth (26%) of the children who died had been vaccinated against influenza before illness onset. Among 153 deaths of children with underlying high-risk medical conditions, 31% had been vaccinated. Vaccine-effectiveness was higher (65%) among children without high-risk medical conditions.

Though uncommon, influenza-associated deaths among children occur annually, with varying incidence depending on the severity of the flu season.

Since 2004, the number of influenza-associated deaths among children younger than age 18 has ranged from 37 in the 2011-2012 season to 358 during a 2009 pandemic.

The study supports current recommendations for annual flu vaccination for all children age 6 months and older.

read the report here

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‘Raising Arizona’, ‘The Princess Bride’ in 30 Movies That Turn 30 in 2017

Posted on April 8, 2017

Can you believe it has been thirty years since Nicholas Cage’s character in the hit award-winning cult film Raising Arizona stole a baby for his barren wife?

I don’t know about my younger readers, but in my youth 30 years ago, Hollywood delivered some amazing and memorable movies.

They define a generation, for aure

The Princess Bride, Dirty Dancing, The Lost Boys, Adventures in Babysitting, La Bamba, Mannequin and Fatal Attraction all turn 30-years old this years, 2017.

My fave celeb websites Zimbio did an awesome roundup of 30 notable movies that turn 30!

check it out here!

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Children’s History Book Editors Struggle On Framing the Trump Presidency

Posted on April 6, 2017

Makers of children’s non-fiction history books are struggling to create editions for the current president because they are unsure how to include all the controversial statements and positions Mr. Trump has made and whether to include them at all.

“After an election cycle whose divisive effect on voters is still being felt, publishing books for classroom use has been unusually perilous,” New York Times journalist Katherine Rosman writes today. “For Ms. [Beth] Sutinis [executive editor for the children’s division of Time Inc], the difficulty went beyond the time crunch to finding concise quotations from Mr. Trump’s campaign appearances that didn’t include contentious remark.”

One book had to edit its initial entry in one passage about Trump, “Troubling Statements.”

It initially read “Some of Trump’s biggest supporters were white nationalists. Their comments and actions during and after the campaign were racist and often dangerous. Trump did little to speak against them.”

The finished book was changed to “Campaign Statements.” The section about discrimination was modified to read, “Some of Trump’s critics felt he did not speak out against prejudicial people and groups strongly enough.”

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Are We Doing Autism Awareness All Wrong?

Posted on April 3, 2017

Yesterday was Light It Up Blue day for Autism Awareness, but today in Forbes, science, health and parenting columnist Emily Willingham writes that we should forget about the gesture. One, she says it supports Autism Speaks which Willingham has claimed in the past stigmatizing and demonizes autistic people.

Second, beyond Willingham’s personal and controversial thoughts on this matter, she has a point about awareness campaigns in general that aim to accomplish the basic minimum: Awareness but nothing more. She writes:

In the case of autism, the exhortation of the day, courtesy of Autism Speaks, will be to “light it up blue,” and powers that be around the globe will cause world-famous landmarks to do just that. Because nothing says, “I really care about autistic people,” like going to the trouble to install blue lights on tall buildings and then flipping them on for a few hours. Presumably, the world will then be led to wonder, “Why is the Leaning Tower of Pisa blue today?” and eagerly turn to the Internet for answers, learning for the first time that a condition called “autism” exists. Awareness achievement unlocked. All done.
But you can do some real work that can make a real difference for autistic people (read here on using “autistic”), something that goes beyond sartorial expression, social media tricks or light bulb purchases….
..you will encounter many a call for “autism awareness.” Have you heard about autism yet? OK. So you’re aware. Step one is low, and you’ve mastered it. Now for the steeper climb. For autistic people, awareness is not the goal at this point–acceptance is.

We can see her point.

A lot of adults without children with Autism do not really understand it. A recent survey of parents reveal that 92% of parents without learning disabilities harbor severe misconceptions. It’s unfortunate given the fact that 20% of Americans have a learning disability, according to the National Center for Learning Disabilities.

The survey of 1,000 parents conducted in March 2017 compared the responses of parents of children with and without difficulties. The study was released by Brain Balance Achievement Centers,a holistic, non-medical, drug-free approach to addressing behavioral, social, or learning difficulties

Asked what they think causes these difficulties, 46% of parents of children with difficulties say nature is the root cause of the difficulties while 24% think their child’s difficulties are hereditary, and another 22% think they arise from developmental delays. Only 7% say they’re caused by bad parenting.

Compare this to what parents of children without difficulties think:45% think that parents are to blame for difficulties and 27% of parents whose children don’t have learning difficulties think they’re caused by a lack of discipline, while 18% think they come from bad parenting. (In reality, learning, social, and behavioral difficulties can have many sources, including neurologically based processing problems.)

Parents who are curious about learning, social, and behavioral difficulties, or who think their child might have one, can take this online assessment: After years of helping children with behavioral and social challenges, the experts at Brain Balance have developed a cutting-edge (and drug-free) program combining sensory motor stimulation, academic stimulation, and nutrition to correct brain imbalance and improve achievement.

Given that 7% of children with difficulties are bullied at school, it leaves one to wonder if kids are getting those misconceptions from their parents at home.

Correcting wrong perceptions is essential as is moving past basic awareness and more towards acceptance.

Check out the rest of Willingham’s piece HERE!

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Study: Breastfeeding Doesn’t Make Babies Smarter After All, This Does

Posted on March 31, 2017

A new study casts doubt on whether breastfed-kids are smarter than their formula-fed peers, though it does note there are benefits to breastfeeding babies including reduced hyperactivity.

The study, published in the journal Pediatrics, finds that while kids between 3 and 5 years old who were breastfed as babies scored higher on cognitive tests than their counterparts, the difference was not that significant.”We weren’t able to find a direct causal link between breastfeeding and children’s cognitive outcomes,” Lisa-Christine Girard, an Irish researcher who authored the study, told NPR.

Socioeconomic factors and the overall behavior and environment of a child contribute to a higher cognitive ability, the study found. When the researchers accounted for those factors, it was harder to link breastfeeding by itself to smarter children, NPR reports.

The researchers did, however, note that the breastfed kids were less hyperactive by age three if they had been breastfed for six months as a baby. But by age five, the impact on hyperactivity appeared to fade.

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A Pesticide linked to Kids’ Brain and Nervous System Damage Just Got Ok’d for Use Again

Posted on March 30, 2017

Here is more reason to buy organic if you can afford it.

Yesterday, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday reversed an Obama administration recommendation to ban a pesticide linked to nervous system damage in children, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Newly installed EPA administrator Scott Pruitt signed an order that would allow farmers to continue using chlorpyrifos, which is sprayed on more than a dozen crops, including tree nuts, soybeans, corn, wheat, apples and citrus, writer Geoffrey Mohan pens.

For over 15 years, Chlorpyrifos has been banned from consumer products and residential use because the science suggest that it can hamper children’s cognitive development. A UC Berkeley study found that 7-year-old children in the Salinas Valley who were exposed to high levels during pregnancy had slightly lower IQ scores than their peers. A Columbia University study showed similar effects at lower exposure.

In 2015, former President Barack Obama’s administration vowed to adopt a “zero tolerance” policy for residue of that chemical on food, essentially ending its use indefinitely.

But Pruitt undid that yesterday.

A nonprofit group called Pesticide Action Network said the USDA buckled under pressure from corporations like DowAgroSciences which makes 5 to 10 million pounds of chlorpyrifos, which are used each year on crops across the nation. The chemical is an organophosphate, a class of chemicals originally designed as a nerve agent weapon.

Eek!

“The new administration’s agency ignored their own findings that all exposures to chlorpyrifos on foods, in drinking water, and from pesticide drift into schools, homes and playgrounds are unsafe,” Schafer said.

The USDA says the science is inconclusive and removing the ban frees up farms to not interrupt their crop seasons.

“This frees American farmers from significant trade disruptions that could have been caused by an unnecessary, unilateral revocation of chlorpyrifos tolerances in the United States,” said Sheryl Kunickis, director of the USDA’s Office of Pest Management Policy. “It is also great news for consumers, who will continue to have access to a full range of both domestic and imported fruits and vegetables.”

Again, like I said.

More reason to buy organic if you can afford it. If not, wash your fruits and vegetables thoroughly before eating.

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Crayola To Retire A Color from The 24-Box For First Time

Posted on March 29, 2017

This Friday, the Crayola crayon company will retire another one of the crayons. It will announce which one this Friday in Times Square at 8:15 a.m. on National Crayon Day.

While it has retired colors before, starting in 1990 ( maize, lemon yellow, blue gray, raw umber, green blue, orange red, orange yellow and violet blue), but this is the first time it will retire a color from its classic 24-count box, the company said.

This color will join the “Crayola Hall of Fame” with the other colors that were given the boot!

But once the color is retired, the Forks Township,Pennsylvania-based company will not produce any more crayons in that shade. Only boxes that already contain that specific color will remain.

Current colors in the 24 box are: red, yellow, blue, brown, orange, green, violet, black, carnation pink, yellow orange, blue green, red violet, red orange, yellow green, blue violet, white, violet red, dandelion, cerulean, apricot, scarlet, green yellow, indigo and gray.

The last time Crayola got rid of colors was in 2003, when blizzard blue, magic mint, teal blue and mulberry disappeared from the collection.

Burnt sienna avoided getting cut after more than 60,000 fans voted in the campaign to “save the shade.”

Good. We love burnt sienna. So sad that maize went. That was a fave of mine a child.

Crayola will be livestreaming the Friday announcement on Facebook. To join in, head to the Facebook event.

The best guess is cerulean because who can pronounce that word anyway? (ha!)

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Researchers Studying High US Maternal Death Rate Seek Survey Participants

Posted on March 27, 2017

Surprisingly, the United States has become the most dangerous industrialized nation in which to give birth, recent data supports.

Scary, huh?

In fact, American women are more than twice as likely to die of pregnancy-related causes as British women, three times as likely as Canadians and six times as likely as Norwegians and Poles, according to 2015 data from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.

While other wealthy nations reduced maternal deaths in recent years, the U.S. maternal mortality rate jumped more than 25 percent from 2000 to 2014, researchers reported last August.

For every expectant or new mom who dies in or shortly after child birth, there are as much as 100 moms who came close to dying and were left with crippling long-term physical, emotional and economic effects. Yikes!

Think hemorrhages, strokes, aneurysms, clots, sepsis infections, cardiac arrest, organ failure and other life-threatening complications of pregnancy and childbirth.

Truth.

The Centers for Disease Control report that these problems have been on the rise, and now exceed 65,000 a year.

There are also frightening disparities also at play. African-American mothers are 3 to 4 times more likely to die or nearly die than whites.

What gives? ProPublica and NPR and Special Correspondent Renee Montagne have launched an investigative study to try to understand why so many American women die and nearly die because of pregnancy and childbirth—and how the health care system can be improved to protect more mothers from harm.

They’ve heard from 2,500 women since launching their study this past February but they are in search of more voices.

If you or someone you know passed away or nearly did during pregnancy, childbirth, or within a year after delivery, they want to hear from you. Do your part to help researchers get to the bottom of this crisis. Pretty please!

Go to this link and fill? Please tell us your story.

You can also reach the study group by email at [email protected] or [email protected]. Thanks much!

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A new study finds that babies born into homes that have pets, especially dogs, are less likely to have allergies or suffer from obesity.

Makers of children’s non-fiction history books are struggling to create editions for the current president because they are unsure how to include all the controversial statements and positions Mr. Trump has made and whether to include them at all.