Carrying a baby facing forward is 'cruel, stressful and terrifying'

Carrying a baby facing forward, in either a sling or a pram, is cruel and selfish says a leading Australian health care expert.

Cathrine Fowler, a professor of child and family health nursing at Sydney's University of Technology said that facing a baby away from its parents is creating a very stressful situation and is "inadvertently quite cruel to children."

"Imagine if you were strapped to someone’s chest with your legs and arms flailing, heading with no control into a busy shopping centre — it would be terrifying," said Professor Fowler.

"Outward-facing baby carriers and prams give babies a bombardment of stimulus, creating a very stressful situation."

But author of Baby Love, Robin Barker has spoken out about the controversial claims, saying that as long as the baby is loved and fed, it didn't matter which way the pram was facing.

"What babies need is parents who love them and feed them and if that's in place then I'm afraid which way the pram faces is irrelevant," she said.

"I don't think there is an issue with letting children experience the world before they are 12 months old."

Calories, Sugar Reduced in Flavored Milk for Kids

Good news for milk-pushing moms this September: kid-favorite flavored milks will have less calories and sugar, according to the Milk Processor Education Program.

MilkPEP - which runs the National Milk Mustache "got milk?" Campaign - said on Monday that flavored milk cartons will contain fewer than 150 calories and 22 grams of total sugar on average this school year.

Milk provides calcium, vitamin D and potassium that is critical for children's diet and development but in short supply in kids' diets, according to the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans.

Milk is the number one food source in America for these essential nutrients, according to MilkPEP's.

Cartons of flavored milk will carry just 31 more calories than white milk as the result of a five-year process of industry reformulations aiming to "provide nutritious new products with the same great taste kids love," said MilkPEP.

The healthy trend among milk processors will reduce added sugar in fat-free and low-fat chocolate milk by 38 percent.

"There are a lot of kids that don't want to drink plain white milk; they really love drinking flavored milk and that's very important for the essential nutrients in milk," said MilkPEP CEO Vivien Godfrey. "It's a happy balance between some added sugars but making sure that the kids actually drink the milk as opposed to taking the white milk on the lunch line and not in fact drinking it."

But flavored milk has been the subject of some debate in the national conversation over child nutrition.

Nearly one in three kids in the country is obese or overweight. On the USDA Healthy Eating Index, children's diets today score 55.9 out of 100.

Some school districts have removed flavored milk as part of efforts to reduce consumption of unhealthy drinks such as sugary soda. Such drinks are responsible for nearly half of sugar in kids' daily diet, and flavored milk represents only 3 percent, according to Godfrey.

But research has shown that when flavored milk is taken away, many students will not drink milk at all. A MilkPEP study of 58 elementary and secondary schools found that an average of 35 percent less milk gets consumed when students do not have the colored milk option.

The School Nutrition Association released their "State of School Nutrition 2011," Thursday, which found that 98 percent of all school districts nationwide offer fat-free, skim or 1% milk options, and 95.4 percent offer flavored milk.

"Changes are huge because milk is so important and we sell probably 70 percent of our milk to students," said SNA President Elect Sandra Ford. "To take away that chocolate milk to those students would be devastating to a children's calcium intake, so we like that producers have responded by reducing the sugar themselves."

MilkPEP is one of 18 agricultural "check off" programs, said Godfrey, meaning that all U.S. milk processors, excluding companies too small to qualify, are Congressionally mandated to pay into a marketing pool for the industry run by MilkPEP.

Breastfeeding VS. Baby Formula: Which is Really Better?

Many people have a misconception about how to feed their new born babies. Breastfeeding is still the general trend, but it depends on what time scale we are talking about. Most mothers breastfeed their babies when they are first born, but they would soon switch to the new trend of using formulas.

According to the World Health Organization, 90.3% of Canadian babies have been breastfed before, and 51.7% are exclusively breastfed after 4 months. The U.S. has lower numbers, showing 73.9% babies have been breasted before, and only 33.1% babies are exclusively breasted after 4 months. Knowing these statistics, we can compare the general trend in North America with the official WHO recommendations:  “Exclusive breastfeeding is recommended to 6 months of age, with continued breastfeeding along with appropriate complementary foods up to two years of age or beyond.”

Why do new borns need to be breastfed up to two years of age? Why can’t we simply use formula powdered milk? There are obviously benefits. Breast milk contains much more than any formula milk sold on the market. Surely, formula milk contains water, proteins, carbohydrates, lipids, vitamins, and minerals; but breast milk has enzymes, growth factors, hormones, anti-bacterial, anti-viral, and anti-parasitic factors as well as those basic contents in formula milk. What do these extra ingredients in breast milk do to make breastfeeding so important? Firstly, the baby will receive health and physical benefits: less risk of infections by bacteria, virus, and parasites.

Chances of diarrhea, respiratory infections, ear infections, and necrotizing enterocolitis occurring will be reduced by an extensive amount. There is also less risk for the baby to develop diabetes, Crohn’s disease, sudden infant death syndrome, leukaemia, obesity, hypercholesterolemia, asthma, and Hodgkin’s disease. All these health benefits owe thanks to the enzymes, growth factors, hormones, and the many immune factors present in breast milk. Secondly, the baby will be psychologically healthier as physical contacts during breastfeeding increases mother-to-child bonding.

Benefits do not only go to the baby, the mother can also gain from breastfeeding: less risk of postpartum haemorrhage, breast cancer, and ovarian cancer; more weight loss after birth; and increased bone density. In fact, the whole family can profit from breastfeeding as it is much cheaper than buying formula powdered milk. Lastly, it is very environmentally friendly to feed babies with breast milk instead of buying massively produced formula milk.

My Daughter Is A Pathological Liar And I’m Ignoring It

My three-year-old daughter’s pants are permanently on fire. She lies non-stop, often for no obvious reason, about pretty much everything. She lies with abandon, about things that are easy to disprove and are sometimes important to her health, such as whether or not she’s washed her hands after using the bathroom. The more emphatic she is about something, the more certain I am that it’s a fib.

And lately disturbingly she’s been lying about other kids’ activities. “Drew-Drew punched me in the head,” she’ll report to me on the way home from daycare. “Drew-Drew bited me, and pushed me.” This is highly improbable, seeing as Drew-Drew is a two-year-old she could overpower with her little finger.

She lies about her brother, whose splutters of outraged disbelief at being falsely accused “What?!? Alice is LYING!!!!!” are a study in righteous indignation.

It appears to be a case of rapid-onset mendacity. Mere weeks ago it never would have occurred to her to fib, and now it’s as natural as breathing. In the space of a few days I went from believing everything that came out of her mouth to questioning it. Does she really need to go to the washroom again before bed or is she just stalling? (“I think I’ll save my poo for later,” she’ll say, blinking up at me innocently well past her bedtime. How does she know this is one bluff I’m not likely to call?)

The experts assure me there’s nothing to worry about; in fact, one study found that the complex brain processes involved in telling a lie are an indicator of a child’s early intelligence. According to the study’s author, Dr. Kang Lee of the Institute of Child Study at University of Toronto, “Parents should not be alarmed…. Their children are not going to turn out to be pathological liars. It is a sign that they have reached a new developmental milestone.”

Want more reassurance? “They even make bankers later in life,” Lee said. (It’s impossible to tell if he delivered this news with a straight face.)

What should parents do? Nothing, is the consensus, other than ignoring it where possible and daily reinforcing the potential consequences of dishonesty.

Researchers group lies according to their motives: those that are pro-social (“white” lies to protect others’ feelings); for self-enhancement (lies that save face or avoid punishment); selfish lies (those that protect oneself at someone else’s expense); and those that are anti-social (deliberately harmful).
The bad news is that kids lie increasingly as they get older. The heartening news is that overwhelmingly, those lies tend to be pro-social, which they clearly learn from adults who routinely skate over “truth” in their everyday interactions.

On balance, I would say my daughter’s lies mostly fit into the second category of self-enhancement. Though now that I think about it, she’s shown a talent for manipulation since she was two. “Mama, I love your pretty earrings,” she’d coo while stroking my hair. Then: “Can I watch Dora before bed?”

I have a suspicion my daughter might just have a future in finance.