Once upon a time, families traveling with small children got to board first, to give them time to get their little ones settled in, put away their luggage, toys, and snacks, and do whatever else they needed to do, without blocking the rest of the passengers from getting on the plane. Instead of standing in the aisle getting angry at the parents, the other passengers could sit comfortably in the terminal, getting annoyed with the airline.
Not so anymore, according to the St. Petersburg Times. Southwest, American, Delta, and United have all dropped the practice, although you can still ask to board early on American and Delta; it's up to the gate attendants. The reason isn't corporate hatred of families; studies have shown that boarding everyone together -- including the little ones -- saves ten to twelve minutes, on average.
"If you're bringing on people who need assistance -- younger kids -- all at once, you potentially create a bottleneck on the front end, as opposed to randomly dispersing them based on where people are sitting in the aircraft," says Anthony Black, a spokesman for Delta. "The best process is to board the aircraft normally." I imagine, too, that parents move a little quicker when they feel the stares of other passengers beating down on them and saving time is clearly more important than saving a parent's sanity.
It's the time of year when school nurses across the country are looking over student's immunization records to make sure they've had all the shots they need in order to attend class. But as we've discussed here many times before, not all students will be required to show proof of immunizations before being allowed in school. Every state in the U.S. allows students to skip the shots if their parents object for medical reasons and most states allow an exemption for religious reasons. And with the growing fears that autism and other disorders might be tied to immunizations, more parents are claiming those exemptions.
Skipping the shots may give some parents peace of mind, but it is also being blamed for the increase in measles cases. The first half of 2008 saw 131 cases of the highly contagious disease, compared to just 42 in the entirety of 2007. According to the Centers for Disease Control, 112 of this year's cases were in people who were either unvaccinated or had unknown vaccination status.
"At the national level, I am concerned about our situation," said Dr. Anne Schuchat, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. "Every year, the U.S. experiences importation of measles. What is different this year is once it is imported, we are seeing it spread to more people, and most of that spread is to people under 20."
Dr. Neal Halsey, director of the Institute for Vaccine Safety at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, says that many parents who don't immunize mistakenly believe that the risk of contracting measles is very low. "That is, unfortunately, a false belief," he says. "It is important we maintain high disease vaccination. Getting vaccinated is the safest thing we can do for children."
Dora the Explorer may be one of Nickelodeon's most popular characters, but she's no Hannah Montana. Some of us would say that's a good thing, since she is designed to appeal to much younger audience. But, according to a source, the powers that be over at Nickelodeon want to give the bilingual cutie a makeover in an attempt to draw in the older kids.
First up for the Dora transformation is a new, feminine look. Maybe put her in a skirt and fix her hair up a little? Add some bows to the backpack and color the map pink? Next, get the girl some human friends. The source says they are considering adding a group of "Explorer Girls" to the animated cast. If these Explorer Girls follow the typical kid's show formula, you can expect a smart one, a pretty one and maybe a prissy one who doesn't like to get dirty.
If all that goes well, Dora may soon find herself featured on the big screen. Nickelodeon isn't commenting, but the source says they are considering a full-length feature film featuring Dora as an older kid. "Dora is as popular as she's ever been, and now has a second generation of viewers that we would love to serve," the company said.
I sure hope they don't ruin Dora. Sure, my 7-year-old has zero interest in that "baby show" now, but she loved it when she was younger. As do lots of little kids today. Does everything have to be about appealing to the tween audience these days?
Many of today's parents grew up with the daily query, "Did you remember to take your vitamin?" and would dutifully trudge back to the kitchen and pop that Flintstone chewable.
Today there is a vast ocean of choice when it comes to children's vitamins. You can choose between omega3, immunity support, zinc & echinachea, extra iron, or extra C in liquid, swallow-able, or chewable in the traditional chalky version, gummy-bear, or bubblegum variety forms.
But are vitamins still an necessary part of a children's daily diet? A British website did a study on children's multivitamins and found only five out of 14 brands of supplements contained all 12 essential vitamins and stated that some have little more nutritional value than candy.
Even experts seem to disagree whether multivitamins are necessary for all children. The American Academy of Pediatrics only giving supplements if your pediatrician advises you to, but the same organization also says a daily vitamin isn't likely do any harm, unless it exceeds the recommended daily allowance amounts of a vitamin or mineral.
With so many of today's common food and beverages being fortified (Who could have imagined that calcium could be added to orange juice?!) even finicky children are probably getting a lot more vitamins and minerals than parents realize. We're pretty lackadaisical on the multivitamin front in our house. What about you?
Fisherman love to tell tales about the one that got away. But how do you explain to your fishing buddies that the one that didn't get away was caught with a Barbie fishing pole that came with its own hot pink tackle box? Doting grandfather David Hayes isn't embarrassed. In fact, he's having the record-breaking catfish he caught with the pole mounted along with the Barbie fishing rod itself!
It all started when Hayes and his three-year-old granddaughter Alyssa were fishing in his private pond. She ran to the house to use the bathroom, and while she was gone, Hayes got a bite. He hung on until she returned, and they pulled up a 32-inch catfish -- two inches longer than the fishing pole he was using -- that broke the state record.
Hayes isn't just a good grandpa, he's also a doting husband. He and Alyssa were invited to New York City by CBS News, but because his wife just had knee surgery, he figures it's more important to him to stay home. Alyssa's getting a new pole to replace the one that's being mounted, but no word yet on which one she'll choose.
Before I was a mom, there were a lot of things I was never going to do as a parent. I was never going to let my kids watch TV, I was only going to feed them homemade, organic food. I was never going to let them play with plastic toys adorned with licensed characters. And I was certainly going to make sure that most of the toys in our house were gender neutral.
Then I gave birth and became a real parent, and all of that (or at least a lot of it) went out the window. So when my girls, at around 12 to 18 months, embraced the baby dolls and princesses kind of girlhood, I figured it was because I hadn't given them enough trucks and tools to play with when they were babies.
But according a psychologist at CNN, many of the differences we see between boys and girls is actually hardwired at birth. Boys are more likely to enjoy watching mechanical motion, walk sooner, and are more fearless. Girls enjoy looking at human faces, are good listeners, and talk earlier than boys. Do these differences eventually lead to different interests in toys? She says that in one study, when toddlers were shown photos of dolls and vehicles, the girls tended to opt for the dolls, while the boys chose the trucks.
My kid takes showers. He is sixteen months old. I took showers as a kid, but spent most of my time in the bath, surrounded by various toys and lots of suds. When our children are first born we barely bathe them, then move them into the little plastic tubs, then eventually into the tub for big kids. I don't even know when the technical transition from bath to shower begins.
I got the idea to put my child in the shower from a friend who always took her three girls into the shower with her (not all at once). The concept was that mom was in the shower and wet already anyway. Showers also use a lot less water than baths, and they're faster. Baths are tough in our apartment as the bathroom is small and the bathtub is awkwardly placed.
So, my husband and I tried taking our son, who was able to stand very comfortably on his own, into the shower a few times with decent results. Over time he became less intimidated by the water and now enjoys splashing around in it. He still plays with his toys and we all get clean relatively quickly. Still, I wonder if there's any reason to go back to baths, or to only do baths. There will come a point when our son is too old to be in the shower with us, for obvious reasons. There will also need to be a time when he lathers himself up instead of having a parent do it. I'm not wild about leaving him alone in the bath or the shower, and I wonder if either is really "safer."
Do you do showers or baths for your kids? At what age did you settle on a routine?
What parent hasn't handed over the car keys to a fussy baby in order to distract and entertain them? A shake or two of the magic keys is usually all it takes for most babies to become enthralled and forget what they were fussing about in the first place. Keys as a makeshift rattle are a tried and true baby distracter, but after a while baby loses interest, right? You start digging into your purse and handing over any non-toxic items you can find. What about your cell-phone? Do you ever let the baby play with that?
Disney suspects that you do and is looking to create cell-phone applications specifically for the preschool set. Like a digital pacifier, you could hand over your phone to keep baby busy on the go. No word on the specifics of these baby cell-phone games, but I imagine they would involve lots of button pushing and annoying sounds. Which, to me, is only slightly more appealing than the sound of baby fussing.
But If they really are going to make cell phone applications for babies, they may need to rethink the design of the phone itself. Babies might actually push a few buttons on the phone, but they will also try to eat it. And unless the phone is drool-proof, it is going to end up in the junk drawer like the remote clicker for my last car.
In some families, the original isn't always the best when it comes to fathers. For 'fragile families', described as low-income urban families prone to non marital births, mothers say that stepfathers are often more engaged, cooperative and willing to share responsibilities than married biological fathers.
A new study finds that while married biological fathers and stepfathers may be almost equally engaged with the children themselves, it is their interaction with mom that often makes stepfathers better parents. The mothers surveyed reported that stepfathers shared their parental views and were more open to talking about their parental wants than natural fathers. Rebekah Levine Coley, a developmental psychologist at Boston College, says this is probably because stepfathers "have to work harder to fit in and to have a useful productive role."
Coley says the findings contradict the popular view among social workers and experts that dads are more invested if the child is of their own flesh and blood. "I think this research does, to some extent, call some of those assumptions into question," she said.
The conclusions were made after interviewing 2,098 urban mothers from the The Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing study and will be published in the Journal of Marriage and Family.
When the police in Auckland, New Zealand were called to shut down a loud party last Friday, they probably expected that the party-goers would be a bunch of kids. What they probably didn't expect is that the kids would all be about five years old. But that is exactly what they found when they responded to a complaint made by what can only be described as a cranky neighbor.
The One Tree Hill Kindergarten was in the midst of their annual disco party, rocking out to Bob the Builder and the Chicken Dance when noise control officials arrived on the scene around 6:30 pm. Teacher Jenny Skerritt said the officials seemed a bit "red faced" as they ordered them to turn it down or shut it down. "I don't think it was that ragey, but it's all a matter of perspective I guess," she said.
Perspective, indeed. The babies sleeping in the very next room obviously didn't think it was too loud. Nevertheless, they turned the music down and continued with their party. And just for kicks, they plan to frame that noise abatement notice for all to see.
Tom Cruise is known for being an action hero of sorts -- from prancing about in his skivvies in Risky Business to chasing about as super spy Ethan Hunt in the Mission Impossible series -- but that doesn't mean he can't carry his kid's playthings out in public. In fact, he was spotted doing just that recently in New York.
From a stuffed bunny to a Cabbage Patch doll and from a coloring book to a baby bottle, he'll apparently carry anything his little Suri might need for a day or even a night on the town. So is he no longer the macho star he was before parenthood? Of course not! You can't get much more manly than to carry a child's toy for them, if you ask me.
No, if you want to rag on Tom Cruise, don't do it for taking care of his kid. There are plenty of other things to ridicule him for: his bad acting, the whole space alien religion thing, and his propensity for hopping up and down on talk show hosts' couches.
These days, traveling by air can be an extreme test of patience and restraint. Herded like cattle and crammed into tiny seats, most of us suffer quietly and try to make the best of the situation. Most of us adults do, anyway. Kids are often a little short on patience and restraint and being cooped up for hours in an airplane can be pure torture for them. And for those who sit anywhere near them.
What if there were a separate section on the plane where families traveling with children could sit? Wouldn't that make things a lot easier for everyone involved, including the frustrated parent who can't seem to get junior to sit still or use his inside voice? Airfare Watchdog asked that question and a whopping 85% of respondents said that airlines should have a section of the plane reserved for parents with babies and smaller children.
I wish there had been a kid section the first time I flew with a baby in tow. I thought I was being very considerate of my fellow passengers by keeping her quiet with bottle after bottle of apple juice plugged into her mouth. It kept her quiet alright. After about the fifth bottle, she quietly had a massive apple juice-induced blowout in her diaper, causing everyone in our immediate area to reach for their barf bags. I am sure each and every one of those passengers who caught a whiff and glimpse of that mess wished there were a separate section for kids. And I would have been happy to sit there.
But, as 27% of those polled agree, having a section just for babies and small kids will probably never happen and wouldn't work anyway. Airlines want to fill each and every seat and telling non-family traveling passengers that they have to sit in the loud, stinky section probably wouldn't go over too well.
Once upon a time, families traveling with small children got to board first, to give them time to get their little ones settled in, put away their luggage, toys, and snacks, and do whatever else they needed to do, without blocking the rest of the passengers from getting on the plane. Instead of standing in the aisle getting angry at the parents, the other passengers could sit comfortably in the terminal, getting annoyed with the airline.
It's the time of year when school nurses across the country are looking over student's immunization records to make sure they've had all the shots they need in order to attend class. But as we've 
Dora the Explorer may be one of Nickelodeon's most popular characters, but she's no Hannah Montana. Some of us would say that's a good thing, since she is designed to appeal to much younger audience. But, according to a source, the powers that be over at Nickelodeon want to give the bilingual cutie 
Many of today's parents grew up with the daily query, "Did you remember to take your vitamin?" and would dutifully trudge back to the kitchen and pop that Flintstone chewable.
Before I was a mom, there were a lot of things I was never going to do as a parent. I was never going to let my kids watch TV, I was only going to feed them homemade, organic food. I was never going to let them play with plastic toys adorned with licensed characters. And I was certainly going to make sure that most of the toys in our house were gender neutral.
What parent hasn't handed over the car keys to a fussy baby in order to distract and entertain them? A shake or two of the magic keys is usually all it takes for most babies to become enthralled and forget what they were fussing about in the first place. Keys as a makeshift rattle are a tried and true baby distracter, but after a while baby loses interest, right? You start digging into your purse and handing over any non-toxic items you can find. What about your cell-phone? Do you ever let the baby play with that?
In some families, the original isn't always the best when it comes to fathers. For 'fragile families', described as low-income urban families prone to non marital births, mothers say that stepfathers are often more engaged, cooperative and willing to share responsibilities than married biological fathers. 
Tom Cruise is known for being an action hero of sorts -- from prancing about in his skivvies in Risky Business to chasing about as super spy Ethan Hunt in the Mission Impossible series -- but that doesn't mean he can't carry his kid's playthings out in public. In fact, he was 
