http://www.proparents.com Just another WordPress weblog Wed, 16 Jun 2010 23:22:43 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 Ingredients:1 large flour tortilla 2 tablespoons cream cheese2 tablespoons peanut butter1/2 cup chocolate chipsDirections:Spread peanut butter on half of the flour tortilla shell and softened cream cheese on the other half. Sprinkle with chocolate chips. Grill on direct heat for 2 minutes on each side. Let cool before serving.M&M MONSTER COOKIES Ingredients:1 cup sugar1 cup firmly packed brown sugar1 cup peanut butter1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened3 eggs4 1/2 cups quick cooking rolled oats2 teaspoons baking soda1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips1 cup M&Ms1 cup chopped peanuts1/2 cup raisinsDirections:Heat oven to 350 degrees. In a large bowl combine sugar, brown sugar, peanut butter and butter, beat until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add oats and baking soda, mix well. Add chocolate chips, M&Ms, peanuts and raisins.Drop heaping tablespoons of dough on ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for 11 to 14 minutes or until light, golden brown. Cool 2 minutes, remove from cookie sheets and serve. http://www.proparents.com/?p=3714 Spending Time With Your TeenStephanie Romero | More from this BloggerI don't know if other parents feel the same way but as our children get older and become teens, it tends to become more difficult to spend quality time with them. It's not that I don't want to spend time with them. It's just that life keeps us busy and my children are in this stage where their friends are their main priority.So as a parent I have tried really hard to make sure that we spend quality time together. I think as the parent of a teen you have to be willing to enter their world. When they were younger I could pick all of the activities we did together. Now I have to let them pick or if I do pick, I have to make sure it is something they are going to enjoy.http://parenting.families.com* One of my recent favorite experiences was taking my daughter shopping for school clothes. It was special for us because it was just her and I and we were doing what she loves to do, shopping. I also made sure I took her to the mall, which is her favorite place to be. We had so much fun looking at the latest fashions, laughing at some and admiring others. After our shopping trip we stopped at a custard stand for some ice cream. The entire day spent together was just very nice. It gave us lots of opportunity to talk.I have to admit that finding things to do with my teen daughter is much easier than it is with my boys, especially my 16-year-old. He really loves to watch war movies, so once-in-a-while I will sit down with him and watch one. While we don't talk about deep issues, he does share interesting facts with me. This is his world and when I enter it, I get to enjoy a part of him.This past Labor Day my daughter went away with her friend and their family to spend time at a camper. Having the boys to myself, I wanted to enjoy a special evening. Since my husband had to work late Friday and my daughter was gone, it seemed the perfect opportunity. I made plans to cook their favorite meal, jambalaya. Then we watched a guy movie, not one I would typically enjoy but I picked it out for them. I asked what kind of dessert they wanted and they said root beer floats, so I made those.It may not seem like a big deal, watching a movie together. But my boys recognize that I have taken the effort to do something they would enjoy and I am making time for them. Sometimes we have to be creative but we should never give up on spending time with our teens. They will appreciate it more than they may let on. http://www.proparents.com/?p=3713 Juxtapose the Staples dad and the Office Max moms and you see why "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus" was such a huge seller. Then again, I suppose if there weren't some truth to the ads, they wouldn't resonate with viewers and said viewers wouldn't subsequently become Staples and Office Max customers. Still, as funny as the Staples commercial is, I question its accuracy. After all, how many dads do you know that take on the back-to-school shopping challenge? In all of the years I have gone school supply shopping I haven't seen even a hint of an adult male forging through the aisles in search of No.2 pencils, pink erasers and gluten-free glue.Where's dad when it comes time to drag the kids to the store, unfurl the mile-long school supply list and actually dig deep to pay for it all? At Staples? Or at home watching the Staples ad? http://www.proparents.com/?p=3712 TAIPEI – Taiwanese authorities are to offer subsidised babysitting in a bid to boost the island's dwindling birth rate, one of the world's lowest, an official said Tuesday. Those who have three children, with one aged under two, will receive a monthly babysitting subsidy of 3,000 Taiwan dollars (94 dollars) from next year, said Chang Hsiu-yuan, director of the Child Welfare Bureau. From 2012 the interior ministry will also give low-income families 5,000 Taiwan dollars per month for each child until it turns two, she said, in an initiative estimated to cost 1.18 billion Taiwan dollars a year. The average number of children Taiwanese women have fell to 1.03 last year and the government is hoping to boost the number to around 1.3, Chang said. In general, every woman needs to give birth to 2.1 children on average, merely to prevent the population from shrinking. Government data showed that fewer babies have been born so far in 2010, which is a Year of the Tiger, as some parents are anxious to avoid having children under one of the fiercest signs of the Chinese zodiac. "Taiwan's birth rates are expected to fall further this year because it's the Year of the Tiger, so we hope the incentives will encourage couples to have more babies," she said. Taiwan's authorities have been offering various incentives to try to boost birth rates, amid growing concerns that a severe manpower shortage will trigger serious social and economic problems. The island's capital Taipei, where birth rates dived to an all-time low in 2009 with fewer than 20,000 babies born, will start paying couples 20,000 Taiwan dollars for every newborn from next year. Last year 191,310 babies were born in Taiwan, down 3.74 percent from the previous year. Follow Yahoo! News on Twitter, become a fan on Facebook http://www.proparents.com/?p=3711 UNITED NATIONS – Four million children have died in the past decade because governments have not spread major medical advances to the poor, a leading aid group said Tuesday. A highly critical report by Save The Children was the latest shot across the bows of world powers before they meet at the United Nations this month to discuss how to reach the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) set at a major summit 10 years ago. The UN Children's Fund (UNICF) released a parallel report calling for greater fairness in health spending and saying that millions of lives could be saved by targeting more care at the poor. "Some notable progress has been made in reducing child deaths in recent years, but 8.8 million newborns and children still die each year," said Carolyn Miles, Save the Children's executive vice president. "Too often, where children live or how much money their parents have determines whether they will receive proven, low-cost, lifesaving care. We must all work to end these fatal inequities -- not only between countries, but within countries themselves." Save the Children looked at data from 42 "high-mortality countries." It found that poorer children are far more likely to die. If all children had the same risk of death as the top 20 percent in their country, four million child deaths could have been prevented in the last 10 years, the report said. The main problems are pre-and post-natal care, skilled attendance at birth, and low-cost treatment for the major killers: pneumonia, diarrhea, and malaria. Save the Children said the inequity is a growing problem in many developing countries. The report said that since 1990, the global child mortality rate has declined by 28 percent -- well short of the target set by Millennium Summit goal of a two-thirds reduction by 2015. Many high risk countries -- including Ghana, Indonesia, Mozambique, Egypt and Bolivia -- have substantially cut the number of deaths. Nineteen of 68 high-priority countries are now expected to meet the millennium targets for child health. But Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, South Africa and Zimbabwe have all seen their child death rates rise in the past decade, the report said. At the new Millennium Development summit on September 20-22, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and other world leaders will launch a new push on women's and children's health in a bid to accelerate progress on child and maternal health. The 2000 summit set eight Millennium Development Goals to be achieved by 2015 in areas ranging from health to employment and access to the Internet. With five years to go, experts say that none of the global goals are likely to be met and Save The Children said the child health target is one of the most off-track. UNICEF also said that current health spending policies should be changed to give greater priority to the poor. "Our findings challenge the traditional thinking that focusing on the poorest and most disadvantaged children is not cost-effective," said Anthony Lake, UNICEF's executive director. "An equity-focused strategy will yield not only a moral victory -- right in principle -- but an even more exciting one: right in practice." UNICEF said it had found that money invested in the health of under fives in low-income, high-mortality countries would avert 60 percent more deaths than the current approach. The UN agency said a change of policy would "greatly accelerate progress towards the MDGs and reduce disparities within nations." Follow Yahoo! News on Twitter, become a fan on Facebook http://www.proparents.com/?p=3710 TUESDAY, Sept. 7 -- For HIV-infected children in the developing world, treatment choices have been limited by concerns over the possible development of resistance to drugs they received as infants during failed attempts to prevent their infection in the first place. But a new U.S. National Institutes of Health-funded study suggests there may be a way to administer one particularly cheap and practical HIV drug -- nevirapine -- safely and effectively to many of these children. The finding was detailed by study co-author Louise Kuhn, a professor of epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University in New York City, and Dr. Lynne Mofenson, chief of the pediatric, adolescent and maternal AIDS branch of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, during a recent teleconference. The study itself will be published in the Sept. 8 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. Mofenson noted that globally 430,000 infants become infected with HIV. About 90 percent of these children live in sub-Saharan Africa. To tackle this immense problem, public health officials often turn to nevirapine. A single dose of the drug given at birth to the newborn of an HIV-infected mother can reduce the risk of HIV transmission by as much as 50 percent, Mofenson explained. However, those infants who go on to become infected run the risk of developing a nevirapine-resistant strain of virus. And resistance testing, though available, is far too expensive to be considered a practical screening tool in the developing world. So, about three years ago the World Health Organization recommended that HIV-infected children who had first been given nevirapine not be given the effective and cost-effective treatment again in favor of a costly protease inhibitor cocktail that is difficult to store and transport. In this latest study, the researchers focused on the treatment of 195 children infected with HIV who were cared for at one hospital in Johannesburg, South Africa, between 2005 and 2009. For these children, nevirapine at birth had failed to prevent HIV infection. As a result, each child was placed on a protease inhibitor regimen, which involved three drugs: ritonavir-boosted lopinavir, stavudine and lamivudine. All the children fared well on this cocktail, having maintained a desirably low viral load for a minimum of three months over the course of their first year of treatment. At the launch of the study, about half the children were randomly switched to a nevirapine treatment: namely, replacing ritonavir with nevirapine in the drug cocktail. The other children stayed with their standard protease inhibitor regimen. Blood samples were taken at 4, 12, 24, 36 and 52 weeks. The authors found that children who had fared well (for an average of nine months) under a non-nevirapine protease-inhibitor drug regimen appeared to fare even better once they switched to a nevirapine treatment. "Those children who changed to nevirapine were actually more likely to maintain the virus below 50 copies per milliliter (ml) in the blood, which is the lowest detectable limit that we use to measure the amount of virus in the blood," explained Kuhn. Among the nevirapine group, 66 percent of the children remained below this threshold. For the standard treatment group, just 42 percent achieved that goal. However, they cautioned that about one in five of the children who switched to nevirapine did not fare well, with viral loads rising beyond 1,000 copies/ml. Nevertheless, with a majority of children reacting well to the switch, Kuhn and her colleagues suggest the approach could cut costs and improve treatment, so long as viral loads are monitored. "What this shows is that this is a unique and innovative, but also reasonable, alternative strategy, and it will allow us to treat many more children," Mofenson said. "Because compared with the protease inhibitors we use now, nevirapine is much less expensive -- about $55 a year per child compared to about $280 a year for the PIs." "So this will allow us to treat five times as many children for the same price," she noted. "Which is why this is so critical." Kuhn added that nevirapine offers other crucial pluses. "Our group is very, very encouraged by these results, because the biggest factor in HIV treatment is adherence," she explained. "The drugs don't work if you don't take them. And here the big problem is that it's very, very difficult for parents to get their children to take what we currently offer them two times a day because they are really horrible, foul-tasting drugs." "So if we can move to something like nevirapine - which has a kind of a sweet taste that children don't really mind so much -- it would be very helpful," she said. Dr. Geoffrey A. Weinberg, a pediatric infectious disease expert at Golisano Children's Hospital at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York, agreed that a nevirapine treatment option would be helpful. "The important message is that many children will do better with anti-HIV therapy based on nevirapine," he said. More information For more on nevirapine, visit the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Follow Yahoo! News on Twitter, become a fan on Facebook http://www.proparents.com/?p=3709 TUESDAY, Sept. 7 -- The fillings and sealants that many dentists use can expose children to the controversial chemical bisphenol A (BPA), a new analysis indicates, but such exposure is short-lived and it remains unclear whether or not it poses a long-term health risk. Although these products do not contain pure BPA, saliva can cause the fillings and sealants to leach. This releases the chemical into the mouth and breaks it down to its pure form, the researchers explained. While the study authors do not recommend a ban of these dental products with pediatric patients, they caution parents and dentists to take steps that could minimize any potential risks associated with exposure to the ubiquitous chemical, which is found in many plastic products and has been linked to health issues such as male impotence, infant behavioral problems and birth defects. "The research that exists shows that upon contact with enzymes in the saliva some, but not all, BPA derivatives break down to pure BPA, and that BPA is said to be in saliva for a short time period of up to three hours," explained study author Dr. Abby F. Fleisch, a pediatrician in the department of medicine at Children's Hospital Boston, which is part of Harvard Medical School. "However, much of the risk that might be associated with this exposure is theoretical," she noted. "So, there's still a need for additional research looking at both systemic absorption -- as a result of this BPA exposure -- into the blood and the urine, and whether there is a more chronic low-level leaching of BPA underway." Fleisch and her colleagues report their findings in the October issue of Pediatrics. Strong, easy-to-use and translucent, dental resins and sealant composites that contain BPA are a popular tool used to protect teeth from decay and to repair decayed, broken, or malformed teeth. According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, BPA has been used in the manufacturing of hard plastic bottles and metal cans since the 1960s. The agency notes that toxicity testing has indicated that human exposure to small amounts of the chemical is not problematic. However, some recent research with laboratory animals has linked BPA exposure to heart health issues, an increased risk for cancer and diabetes, and some degree of sexual dysfunction and hyperactivity. In addition, particular concerns have also been raised about the potential risk to the brain, prostate and behavioral health of young children, infants and fetuses. In light of that concern, the FDA in January took "reasonable steps to reduce human exposure to BPA in the food supply" by funding additional BPA research to the tune of $30 million. At the same time, the agency has been working with manufacturers to move away from products that contain the compound. Fleisch and her team noted, however, that the agency has not banned BPA from the market. The authors focused their analysis on the use of BPA-laced materials in dental products by reviewing what they characterized as "sparse" and "mixed" findings dating back about 15 years. Based on their review, they found there is exposure to pure BPA following dental procedures, but it appears to be short-lived. They added that some products contained different variations and concentrations of BPA. So, while noting that resin-based sealants are a critical tool for maintaining good oral health in children, the study authors called for manufacturers to label their sealant products to help dentists distinguish which formulations are more or less risky. The research team also stressed that steps should be taken to minimize exposure to children and pregnant women "to the greatest extent possible." "There are simple precautionary application techniques that can be used to dramatically reduce BPA exposure for people getting these sealants or white fillings," Fleisch noted. Gargling for about 30 seconds following application of a dental sealant will remove any excess BPA derivatives, she explained, and dentists can also clean off the sealant's surface once it has hardened. BPA expert Scott Belcher, an associate professor of pharmacology at the University of Cincinnati, said the research team's recommendation "is probably the most reasonable choice right now in terms of the tack to be taken." "Given all the things we don't understand right now about BPA's possible effects, these are common-sense conclusions and recommendations," he said. More information For more on bisphenol A, visit the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Follow Yahoo! News on Twitter, become a fan on Facebook http://www.proparents.com/?p=3708 MONDAY, Sept. 6 -- When given the choice to gaze at geometric patterns or children dancing and playing, toddlers with autism spent more time looking at the patterns while typically developing toddlers preferred to look at other kids, a new study finds. The finding could be another clue to helping doctors and parents spot the disorder early, when treatment can be most effective, experts said. In the study, researchers showed 110 toddlers ages 14 months to 3.5 years old two video screens, each of which was simultaneously playing a one-minute video. One video was of "screensavers" that featured moving geometric shapes and patterns; the other video was of children dancing, jumping, smiling and playing. About 37 of the children had either been diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder or were later diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder; 22 of the children had another developmental delay, while 51 were developing in the usual way. While children viewed the videos, researchers used an "eye tracker" -- a tiny infrared beam bounced off the lens of the toddlers' eyes -- to measure where the children focused their gaze. About 40 percent of children who had been diagnosed with autism or who were later diagnosed with autism spent more than half of the time staring at the geometric patterns, while only one (less than 2 percent) of the typically developing toddlers preferred the geometric patterns. About 9 percent of children with developmental delays preferred the geometric patterns. All of the children who showed the strongest preference for the geometric pattern -- that is, they gazed at it more than 69 percent of the time -- had autism, according to the study. "Only autistic babies looked at the geometric patterns more than 69 percent of the time. No normal babies did at all," said lead study author Karen Pierce, an assistant professor of neuroscience at University of California, San Diego, and clinical research director at the UCSD Autism Center of Excellence. "It's pretty clear that showing heightened interest in geometric patterns and repetitive moving objects is a risk factor for autism." The study is published online Sept. 6 in the Archives of General Psychiatry. Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by problems with social interaction, verbal and nonverbal communication and restricted interests and behaviors. While many children are not diagnosed until after age 3, interest is growing in uncovering the early signs of the disorder so that children can receive treatment sooner, when it may be the most beneficial, said Rebecca Landa, director of the Center for Autism & Related Disorders at Kennedy Krieger Institute. She said it would be valuable to follow the 60 percent of autistic children who did not show a preference for the geometric patterns at the time of the study, to determine if later on they did, or if they continued to prefer the more social images. Another question is whether early intervention would cause the autistic children to become more social, she added. "It's a really neat study, and the findings make a lot of sense," Landa said. "Autism is heterogenous. Some with autism are aloof. Others with autism are social, but they are socially unusual in their behavior. There is still a lot more digging that needs to be done to understand the children in the autism spectrum disorder group that didn't prefer the geometric patterns." While there is no one sign that's a clear indicator of autism, parents may want to pay attention if they notice their toddlers fixated on things like spinning fans for long periods of time, or spinning the wheels of a toy car, or flicking the eyelids of a baby doll, or other repetitive behaviors, Pierce said. The study also found that autistic children had fewer saccades, or eye movements, while looking at the geometric patterns than the normally developing children did while looking at the social images. "It was as if the patterns had a hypnotic effect," Pierce said. On the other hand, when looking at the social images, the autistic kids had more saccades than the normally developing or developmentally delayed toddlers. The UCSD finding comes on the heels of another study, released Friday by Landa's team at Kennedy Kreiger, that also looked at the early signs of autism. It found that infants at high risk of autism were less likely to spontaneously look at their parents than other infants. In the study, Landa and her colleagues observed 25 six-month-old babies who had an autistic sibling and 25 infants with no family history of autism. Infant siblings of children with autism are 25 times more likely to develop autism, according to the study in the September issue of the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. Both sets of infants were equally likely to look at their parent when the parent tried to get their attention, Landa said. But the babies at high risk of autism were less likely to look over at their parents when unprompted and spent more time fixated on toys or a joystick used in the experiment. "This is about social initiation," Landa said. "The baby siblings of children with autism looked less often and with less duration. It's something parents should keep an eye on." More information There's more on autism at the U.S. National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. Follow Yahoo! News on Twitter, become a fan on Facebook http://www.proparents.com/?p=3707 MONDAY, Sept. 6 -- Infants and preschoolers who don't get enough sleep at night are at increased risk for later childhood obesity, a new study suggests. The researchers also found that daytime naps are not an adequate substitute for lost nighttime sleep in terms of preventing obesity. The study included 1,930 U.S. children, ages 1 month to 13 years, who were divided into two groups -- younger (ages 1 month to 59 months) and older (ages 5 to 13 years). Data on the children was collected at the start of the study (baseline) in 1997 and again in 2002 (follow-up). At the follow-up, 33 percent of the younger children and 36 percent of the older children were overweight or obese. Among the younger children, lack of sufficient nighttime sleep at baseline was associated with increased risk for later overweight or obesity. Among the older children, the amount of sleep at baseline was not associated with weight at follow-up. However, a lack of nighttime sleep at follow-up was associated with increased risk of a shift from normal weight to overweight and from overweight to obesity, the study found. The findings "suggest that there is a critical window prior to age 5 years when nighttime sleep may be important for subsequent obesity status," wrote Janice F. Bell of the University of Washington in Seattle, and Frederick J. Zimmerman of the University of California, Los Angeles. "Sleep duration is a modifiable risk factor with potentially important implications for obesity prevention and treatment," the authors concluded. "Insufficient nighttime sleep among infants and preschool-aged children appears to be a lasting risk factor for subsequent obesity, while contemporaneous sleep appears to be important to weight status in adolescents. Napping had no effects on the development of obesity and is not a substitute for sufficient nighttime sleep," they added. The study is published in the September issue of the journal Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine. More information The Nemours Foundation has more about children and sleep. Follow Yahoo! News on Twitter, become a fan on Facebook http://www.proparents.com/?p=3706 Spending Time With Your TeenStephanie Romero | More from this Blogger33 minutes agoI don't know if other parents feel the same way but as our children get older and become teens, it tends to become more difficult to spend quality time with them. It's not that I don't want to spend time with them. It's just that life keeps us busy and my children are in this stage where their friends are their main priority.So as a parent I have tried really hard to make sure that we spend quality time together. I think as the parent of a teen you have to be willing to enter their world. When they were younger I could pick all of the activities we did together. Now I have to let them pick or if I do pick, I have to make sure it is something they are going to enjoy.http://parenting.families.com* One of my recent favorite experiences was taking my daughter shopping for school clothes. It was special for us because it was just her and I and we were doing what she loves to do, shopping. I also made sure I took her to the mall, which is her favorite place to be. We had so much fun looking at the latest fashions, laughing at some and admiring others. After our shopping trip we stopped at a custard stand for some ice cream. The entire day spent together was just very nice. It gave us lots of opportunity to talk.I have to admit that finding things to do with my teen daughter is much easier than it is with my boys, especially my 16-year-old. He really loves to watch war movies, so once-in-a-while I will sit down with him and watch one. While we don't talk about deep issues, he does share interesting facts with me. This is his world and when I enter it, I get to enjoy a part of him.This past Labor Day my daughter went away with her friend and their family to spend time at a camper. Having the boys to myself, I wanted to enjoy a special evening. Since my husband had to work late Friday and my daughter was gone, it seemed the perfect opportunity. I made plans to cook their favorite meal, jambalaya. Then we watched a guy movie, not one I would typically enjoy but I picked it out for them. I asked what kind of dessert they wanted and they said root beer floats, so I made those.It may not seem like a big deal, watching a movie together. But my boys recognize that I have taken the effort to do something they would enjoy and I am making time for them. Sometimes we have to be creative but we should never give up on spending time with our teens. They will appreciate it more than they may let on. http://www.proparents.com/?p=3705