Concerned parents are checking their babies’ cribs in the wake of the largest crib recall in U.S. history. Yesterday, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) recalled 2.1 million cribs manufactured by Stork Craft and distributed through BJ’s Wholesale Club, Sears, Wal-Mart, Target and Costco. The recall covers 1.2 million Stork Craft cribs distributed in the U.S. and close to an additional 1 million distributed in Canada between 1993 and 2009. Nearly 150,000 of the cribs bear the Fisher-Price logo.
From the monthly archives:
November 2009
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Minnie Ortiz, a patient of Children’s Hospital Boston’s Optimal Weight for Life Program, is being featured on a new PBS Web video series called Living with My Type 2. Here’s her introductory video, where she talks about not even knowing what type 2 diabetes was before she was diagnosed with it and how, after the death of her mother left her without someone to talk with, she writes in her journal to express the concerns she has about her health.
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Dr. Claire McCarthy is a primary care physician and the Medical Communications Editor at Children’s Hospital Boston. Along with her blogs here on Thriving, you can find her at the Huffington Post and Boston.com. Follow her on Twitter @drClaire.
Last week the latest Twilight series movie, “New Moon,” smashed all records for opening day box-office sales, earning more than $70 million—$26 million from the midnight showings alone (beating out the Harry Potter midnight showings). Add that to the millions of Twilight series books sold, and there is absolutely no doubt that we are dealing with a true teen phenomenon.
If your child is a Twilight fan and you haven’t read the books yourself, there are some things you should know about them.
First, the books can be quite scary at parts, with a lot of real or threatened violence. And second, while there’s no sex before marriage between Bella and Edward, the relationship is full of sensuality and sexual tension. Hormones are raging big time.
What parents most need to know, though, is that the relationship between Edward and Bella is very obsessive.
For example: Full story »
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- Is my daughter’s Halloween costume too sexy?
- Less stress is best: taking the anxiety out of pregnancy is better for you—and your baby
- Parents, give your teens a chance to talk to their pediatricians…alone…
- Are parents legally responsible when their teens engage in sexting?
- Study shows cutting prevalent among young teens
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Other stories we’ve been reading:
A new study says your child is more likely to become a criminal if they don’t have good fear conditioning. Pediatricians are ordering Viagra for children with heart defects.
A new report says too much food, not a lack of exercise, is to blame for teen obesity, and researchers find that toddlers and obese kids suffer the most from secondhand smoke.
More kids’ lives are saved as the cost of child vaccines fall and Santa says he wants his H1N1 vaccine too.
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- Health headlines: Playground injuries, a new polio vaccine and the latest anti-soda ad
- Health headlines: H1N1 found in pigs, childhood abuse leads to obesity and the worst foods to feed your kids
Thanks to H1N1, Halloween came on November 15 for the Lord and Ladies of the Cyr household
My wife, Sara, and I are the proud parents of newly minted 4-year-old triplets, and this fall we just haven’t been able to get healthy in our house. We get over one illness and another one crops up a week later. Fevers come and go. Coughs are incessant. Headaches bloom and recede. It’s been never-ending.
So none of us was feeling particularly well on the Thursday before Halloween when Sara called me at work and told me she had spiked a fever. We weren’t sure it was H1N1, but working in the Public Affairs Department here at Children’s Hospital Boston, I spend much of my time communicating about swine flu, so I know fever is one of the bellwether symptoms. Alarm bells started going off in my head because, unfortunately, like the rest of the poor, huddled masses, the Cyrs were waiting for the H1N1 vaccine to be made available.
As soon as I got home from work, I shuttled Sara off to her parents’ house and called my parents to come help me with the kids. The next day was relatively quiet; Sara was miserable but quarantined (and, frankly, enjoying the room service and uninterrupted silence), and the kids and I were doing OK.
Then came Saturday, October 31. Full story »
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Media expert Michael Rich, MD, MPH, director of the Center on Media and Child Health at Children’s Hospital Boston, answers your questions about media use. Last week, he discussed telenovelas and toddlers.
Here’s this week’s question:
Q: I have two kids, ages 6 and 9, and they are both big Michael Jackson fans. I don’t think the music is a problem, though some of the lyrics are, so I don’t let them listen to just any old song. But my question is about the dance moves in videos. The kids know they can get MJ on YouTube (my son simply presses the letter M, and Michael Jackson is the first suggestion), but I always insist on watching with them. My nine year old has recently started imitating the dance moves (crotch grabbing and all!). I am concerned that he doesn’t fully understand the implications of what he’s doing, but I would like to explain it in a sensitive way, without embarrassing him. How should I handle that? Should I cut Michael Jackson out of the rotation?
-Dad of a Dancer in Toronto, Ontario Full story »
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Dr. Claire McCarthy is a primary care physician and the Medical Communications Editor at Children’s Hospital Boston. Along with her blogs here on Thriving, you can find her at the Huffington Post and Boston.com. Follow her on Twitter @drClaire.
Childhood should be a happy time, not a stressful time—that’s something everyone can agree on. But for many children, childhood is very stressful. Family tragedy, natural disasters, poverty, abuse or exposure to violence (in the home, in the community, or when the country is at war) are just a few examples of what can turn childhood from a dream into a nightmare.
This is terrible for children. It’s not just a matter of robbing them of happiness; more and more research is showing that stress early in life can actually change the way a child’s brain works—for life.
A study in the journal Nature Neuroscience this month helps us understand why. Researchers stressed baby mice (by separating them from their mothers daily for the first 10 days of life). The mice that had this early life stress behaved quite differently from mice that didn’t. They showed signs of anxiety and had trouble learning—even a year later. The researchers tied this to a change in a gene that caused increased production of a certain brain chemical (arginine vasopressin). This in turn led to increased production of corticosteroids, a stress hormone, and to disruption in the parts of the brain that control mood and learning. Full story »
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- Less stress is best: taking the anxiety out of pregnancy is better for you—and your baby
- Coping with the stress of a childhood illness
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- Helping kids cope with the stress of having a parent at war
- New Children’s study may lead to earlier detection of autism risk
