BBC News: "If you don't eat enough just before conception and early in your pregnancy, you may be increasing the odds you'll have a premature baby, a new study suggests. The researchers, from Canada, New Zealand and Australia, believe the finding may shed new light on the 40% of premature births for which there is currently no obvious explanation. "

Omega-3 fatty acids, found in many fish, also serve to reduce the number of premature births.

There seems to be more and more evidence which confirms what our mothers told us: "You are what you eat."

Eat right. Live Better.

-Tim
4:13:20 PM    comment []  

In the Sunday New York Times Book Review Stacy Schiff writes: "Hulbert could hardly have taken on a more ambitious assignment, and for the most part she succeeds beautifully. She has fit her prodigious material around five of the century's conferences on childhood, focusing on the generations of experts who have guided us through this increasingly materialistic, increasingly meritocratic and increasingly messy business. Each generation has produced a sort of Jekyll and Hyde, from the stern L. Emmett Holt and the empathetic G. Stanley Hall, to the doctrinaire John Watson and the child-oriented Arnold Gesell, to Benjamin Spock, who seems to have managed to ride the seesaw all by himself. The teeter-tottering says a very great deal about this dismal science, which in Hulbert's telling moves not only back and forth between discipline and permissiveness but inexorably from the scientific to the sermonic. If the century began with scientists it ends with preachers, who have replaced manuals with manifestoes, each of them delighted to ease us through the 7,000 habits of highly effective parenting.

Available at Amazon 'Raising America: Experts, Parents, and a Century of Advice About Children.'
3:16:09 PM    comment []  

This special to The Washington Post by Caroline Elizabeth Wellbery inspired me to keep doing what I'm doing...i.e., building Rugged Elegance while raising my children.

-Jen
2:59:52 PM    comment []  

KHQA's Melissa Shriver writes: "Monsters like Sully in Monsters Inc. aren't causing children nightmares like they used to. The movie has helped a lot of children see imaginary monsters differently since these monsters are more scared of children than the kids are of monsters.

But since all children are going to dream, at some point they're going to have a bad one, and that means you need to know how to handle it."

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I always have a tough time getting my kids to talk about their bad dream when they climb into my bed for reassurance. However, Melissa Shriver offers some good suggestions as to how to bring it out of them.

-Jen
2:47:52 PM    comment []  

PARENTING Magazine writes: "We all love our children and wouldn't trade them, but we might be a teensy bit tempted to trade a few personality traits in. Maybe your son has a tendency to daydream and gets easily distracted from his chores. Maybe your otherwise charming daughter has a tendency to indulge in histrionics when told no. Maybe your youngest is a master at blaming others for things that go wrong. Roni Jay, business consultant and author of Family Matters: Parenting Tips from the Business World, writes "We like to think that our children will grow up to be sensible, rational adults. But experience shows us that many of the grownups we know haven't managed it. Many of our colleagues, bosses, or staff members exhibit traits that we fondly hope our children will have outgrown long before they are released into the community. The good news is that if there are ways of coping with these traits at work, you can do it at home."

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Some good pointers for parents with daydreamers, blamers, prima donnas.

-Jen
2:29:43 PM    comment []