KidRow

A pause

Kid Row — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 21:02:37 +0000

Well, as formerly regular readers of Kid Row might have noticed, I’ve taken a little bit of a pause from the blog to focus on other projects here at the Herald (I also haven’t showed the calendar any love so please call before you attend any of the listed events). We’re in the process of redesigning our website and Kid Row will be back better than ever in a couple of months. So watch for it and thanks for reading!

C-section babies skip good bacteria?

Kid Row — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 15:46:01 +0000

An interesting piece from NPR …

Study: C-Section Babies Skip The Bacterial Slide

A new study shows that bacteria found on babies delivered via cesarean section just minutes after birth are drastically different from the bacteria found on babies who are delivered vaginally. The findings are piquing interest in light of previous research suggesting that babies delivered via C-section may be more prone to potential health implications, such as asthma and allergies. Read more.

Meet the Trucks on June 26

Kid Row — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 15:13:28 +0000

If your kids are like mine, they’ll go bananas over this …

Meet The Trucks

10 a.m. – 3 p.m. June 26

La Plata County Fairgrounds

www.MeetTheTrucks.com

Vehicles include, two Dodge trucks, two semitrucks, a Care Flight helicopter, a hot-air balloon basket and burners, Mini F-22 Fighter Plane, a mini excavator and scissors lift, dump truck, tractor, skid steer, motor grater, water delivery truck, beverage delivery truck, school bus, bucket truck, limousine, trolley, wrench truck, roll-off truck, fire engine, police vehicles, mobile command center, search and rescue vehicles, a hearse, mail truck, jeep and tour vehicle and smart car.

There will also be appearances by Smokey the Bear, McGruff the Crime Dog, and Sparky the Crime Dog.

Other attractions include a boucy slide and house ans a barrel train. The charge is $2 per person. Children 2 and under are free.

Proceeds go to benefit Skills for Living and Learning in Bayfield.

This just in: Raising kids is expensive

Kid Row — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 18:38:43 +0000

A National Public Radio story, citing a new government estimate, says a middle-income, two-parent family will spend $222,360, on average, to raise a baby born in 2009 through the age of 17.

This naturally does not include college.

The government report found that housing is the most expensive part of raising a kid. It accounts for 31 percent of the cost, followed by childcare and education (17 percent) and food (16 percent).

Kids get more, rather than less, expensive as they get older. The cost per year to raise a baby is less than $12,000 but a teenager costs most than $13,000 a year. I’m guessing it’s extracurricular activities and trendy clothes that contribute to the added expense, but the story doesn’t say.

The bottom line is eye-popping, but as Mastercard would say:

Price of raising a child: $222,360

Getting to see your offspring’s shining face every morning: Priceless

UNLESS: the word of the Lorax

Kid Row — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 19:00:30 +0000

There’s just something about watching the slow painful death of a massive ecosystem to make you pessimistic about the future of our species. If a higher power was looking to send a message to the human race about its dependence on fossil fuels, an anvil to the head couldn’t be much clearer. But I wonder, will it change anything?

Over the weekend, I was reading my son Dr. Suess’ The Lorax. I got to this part, which I have always loved, and could hardly keep reading:

And all that the Lorax left here in this mess

was a small pile of rocks, with one word…

“UNLESS.”

Whatever that meant, well, I just couldn’t guess.

That was long, long ago.

But each day since that day

I’ve sat here and worried

and worried away.

Through the years, while my buildings

have fallen apart,

I’ve worried about it

with all of my heart.

“But now,” says the Once-ler,

“Now that you’re here,

the word of the Lorax seems perfectly clear.

UNLESS someone like you

cares a whole awful lot,

nothing is going to get better.

It’s not.

This has always made me feel optimistic about our potential as individuals to affect meaningful change through collective consciousness and action. But this book was written in 1971. I was 1! Forty years later, the bottom line is this: not enough people have cared a whole awful lot because nothing has gotten better.

It hasn’t.

It’s gotten worse.

And it fills me with dread and worry about the world we will leave our children. I have visions of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, in which father and son scramble for survival in the decimated landscape of a post-apocalyptic world. At my most pessimistic, I can almost see the fatalistic appeal of the argument, made by Princeton philosophy professor Peter Singer in The New York Times, that perhaps we should just stop reproducing:

Most thoughtful people are extremely concerned about climate change. Some stop eating meat, or flying abroad on vacation, in order to reduce their carbon footprint. But the people who will be most severely harmed by climate change have not yet been conceived. If there were to be no future generations, there would be much less for us to feel to guilty about.

So why don’t we make ourselves the Last Generation on Earth? If we would all agree to have ourselves sterilized then no sacrifices would be required — we could party our way into extinction!

But small things still give me hope (perhaps irrationally so). The faces of my children. And movements like this: www.360.org. I heard founder Bill McKibben speak on Alternative Radio and found it profoundly inspiring to hear about participation in the movement from every remote corner of our planet.

The goal of the group was get world leaders at last December’s climate summit in Copenhagen to agree to lower the concentration of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere to 350 parts per million, which scientists say is the safe upper limit.

They failed.

But they’re not done trying. On Oct. 10, 350.org is organizing a Global Work Party. This is McKibben’s message:

In every corner of the world we hope communities will put up solar panels, insulate homes, erect windmills, plant trees, paint bikepaths, launch or harvest local gardens. We’ll make sure the world sees this huge day of effort — and we’ll use it to send a simple message to our leaders: “We’re working — what about you? If we can cover the roof of the school with solar panels, surely you can pass the legislation or sign the treaty that will spread our work everywhere, and confront the climate crisis in time.

Go to http://www.350.org/oct10 to learn more.

For our children, we must do something.

If we don’t, nothing is going to get better.

It’s not.

Stealthy battery poses deadly threat to kids

Kid Row — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 17:44:19 +0000

Wow, this on the NYTimes’ Well blog really got my attention …

For Very Young, Peril Lurks in Lithium Cell Batteries

By TARA PARKER-POPE

Last fall, 13-month-old Aidan Truett of Hamilton, Ohio, developed what seemed like an upper respiratory infection. He lost interest in food and vomited a few times, but doctors attributed it to a virus. After nine days of severe symptoms and more doctor visits, the hospital finally ordered an X-ray to look for pneumonia.

What they found instead was totally unexpected. The child had ingested a “button” battery, one of those flat silver discs used to power remote controls, toys, musical greeting cards, bathroom scales and other home electronics.

The battery was surgically removed the next day, and Aidan was sent home. But what neither the doctors nor his parents realized was that the damage had been done. The battery’s current had set off a chemical reaction in the child’s esophagus, burning through both the esophageal wall and attacking the aorta. Two days after the battery was removed, Aidan began coughing blood, and soon died from his injuries.

To this day, Aidan’s parents don’t know where the battery came from. “This is something I would never want another parent to live with,” said Michelle Truett, Aidan’s mother. “I was oblivious as to how dangerous they were, and I want more people to know the danger.”

Such deaths are extremely rare. There were fewer than 10 documented during the last six years. But ingestion of lithium cell batteries, which children may mistake for candy and elderly adults for medication, is a surprisingly common problem, documented this week in two reports in the medical journal Pediatrics.

About 3,500 cases of button cell battery ingestion are reported annually to poison control centers. But while swallowing batteries has occurred for years, the development of larger, stronger lithium cell batteries has increased the risk of severe complications. Read more here.

AP: Lawmakers move to ban drop-side cribs

Kid Row — Mon, 24 May 2010 16:43:10 +0000

by Jennifer C. Kerr, Associated Press Writer

Article Last Updated; Monday, May 24, 2010 12:00AM

WASHINGTON — The baby crib, usually a safe haven for little ones, became a death trap for 6-month-old Bobby Cirigliano.

: Photo by Cirigliano Family/AP

The side rail on his drop-side crib slid off the tracks and trapped his head and neck between the mattress and the malfunctioning side rail. His face pressed against the mattress, the boy suffocated.

“I just don’t feel complete anymore,” says his mother, Susan Cirigliano of North Bellmore on New York’s Long Island.

Bobby was one of at least 32 infants and toddlers since 2000 who suffocated or were strangled in a drop-side crib, which has a side that moves up and down to allow parents to lift children from the cribs more easily than cribs with fixed sides. Drop-sides, around for decades and probably slept in by many of today’s parents, are suspected in an additional 14 infant fatalities during that time.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission, which regulates cribs, has warned about the problem. Its chairman, Inez Tenenbaum, has pledged to ban the manufacture and sale of cribs by the end of the year with a new performance standard that would make fixed-side cribs mandatory. It could be several months into 2011 before becoming effective.

The industry has already started phasing out drop-sides and big retailers such as Babies R Us and Wal-Mart have taken them off sale floors. Yet there are still plenty for sale on the Internet, and that’s part of the reason Congress is getting involved.

“There’s a great urgency here. We have to make sure that no parent is unaware that drop-side cribs could kill their children,” Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., said in an Associated Press interview.

She plans to introduce legislation this week to outlaw the manufacture, sale and resale of all drop-side cribs and ban them from day-care centers and hotels. Gillibrand wants to accelerate efforts for a ban, from Congress or the CPSC, and highlight concerns about the cribs to parents who are using them.

“There still are thousands and thousands of children who are sleeping every night in drop-side cribs and we need to protect them,” said Gillibrand.

She outlined her bill at a news conference in New York on Sunday, joined by Bobby Cirigliano’s parents and the family of 10-month-old Tyler Witte, who died in a drop-side crib in 1997.

More than 7 million of these cribs have been recalled in the past five years, often because screws, safety pegs or plastic tracking for the rail can come loose or break. The industry insists that babies are safe in drop-sides that haven’t been recalled.

“We believe firmly that when these products are assembled and used properly, they are the safest place to put your child,” said Mike Dwyer, executive director of the Juvenile Products Manufacturers Association, which represents over 90 percent of the crib industry.

But when the hardware malfunctions, the drop-side rail can detach partially from the crib. That creates a dangerous “V”-like gap between the mattress and side rail where a baby can get caught and suffocate or strangle.

Dwyer says manufacturers have seen cases where parents installed the drop-side improperly, sometimes upside down, or they have reassembled a crib for a second or third child with some of the screws or other hardware missing.

In addition to the CPSC’s pledge to vote on a ban by year’s end, two New York counties – Nassau and Suffolk, on Long Island – have banned the sale of drop-sides.

Late last year, crib manufacturers were already moving in that direction when they voted to eliminate the drop-side design and instead opt for four fixed sides, but the standard is a voluntary one.

Despite the industry’s move to end production, there are plenty of new and used drop-side cribs for sale online.

The Associated Press found them for sale on websites for Sears, Kmart and Amazon.com. Craigslist also had scores of used ones for sale.

The industry doesn’t have figures on how many drop-sides might still be on the market, but Dwyer says it’s a small percentage.

A ban – by Congress or the CPSC – won’t come soon enough for Bobby Cirigliano’s parents or his sister, Jennifer, who was 3-years-old when her brother died. She remembers him every day, her parents say. When the family moved to their new house on Long Island, her dad promised to build her a tree house.

“I want it as high as the sky,” she told her dad, “because then I can see my little brother.”

Pesticides linked to ADHD in children

Kid Row — Mon, 17 May 2010 17:50:06 +0000

The Associated Press is reporting that a new study found a troubling link between pesticides and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder in children (story below). Evidence certainly seems to be mounting that pesticides pose a serious health risk to our health and our environment. Results of study released in March showed Atrazine, one of the world’s most commonly used pesticides, turned male frogs into females.

Organic produce isn’t cheap, but we keep our grocery bill down by looking for sales and sticking to what is in season. Another good way to minimize the expense is using the Environmental Working Group’s shoppers guide. It lists produce that is relatively clean, even when grown conventionally, and those that you are better off buying organic. The other way to ensure the quality of the food you feed your family is to grow it yourself (steering clear of chemical fertilizers and pesticides). While it may be work (I spent the better part of Saturday stooped over with my hands in the dirt), the results are more than worth it.

Research links pesticides with ADHD in children

By CARLA K. JOHNSON

AP Medical Writer

CHICAGO — A new analysis of U.S. health data links children’s attention-deficit disorder with exposure to common pesticides used on fruits and vegetables.

While the study couldn’t prove that pesticides used in agriculture contribute to childhood learning problems, experts said the research is persuasive.

“I would take it quite seriously,” said Virginia Rauh of Columbia University, who has studied prenatal exposure to pesticides and wasn’t involved in the new study.

More research will be needed to confirm the tie, she said.

Children may be especially prone to the health risks of pesticides because they’re still growing and they may consume more pesticide residue than adults relative to their body weight.

In the body, pesticides break down into compounds that can be measured in urine. Almost universally, the study found detectable levels: The compounds turned up in the urine of 94 percent of the children.

The kids with higher levels had increased chances of having ADHD, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, a common problem that causes students to have trouble in school. The findings were published Monday in Pediatrics.

The children may have eaten food treated with pesticides, breathed it in the air or swallowed it in their drinking water. The study didn’t determine how they were exposed. Experts said it’s likely children who don’t live near farms are exposed through what they eat.

“Exposure is practically ubiquitous. We’re all exposed,” said lead author Maryse Bouchard of the University of Montreal.

She said people can limit their exposure by eating organic produce. Frozen blueberries, strawberries and celery had more pesticide residue than other foods in one government report.

A 2008 Emory University study found that in children who switched to organically grown fruits and vegetables, urine levels of pesticide compounds dropped to undetectable or close to undetectable levels.

Because of known dangers of pesticides in humans, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency limits how much residue can stay on food. But the new study shows it’s possible even tiny, allowable amounts of pesticide may affect brain chemistry, Rauh said.

The exact causes behind the children’s reported ADHD though are unclear. Any number of factors could have caused the symptoms and the link with pesticides could be by chance.

The new findings are based on one-time urine samples in 1,139 children and interviews with their parents to determine which children had ADHD. The children, ages 8 to 15, took part in a government health survey in 2000-2004.

As reported by their parents, about 150 children in the study either showed the severe inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity characteristic of ADHD, or were taking drugs to treat it.

The study dealt with one common type of pesticide called organophosphates. Levels of six pesticide compounds were measured. For the most frequent compound detected, 20 percent of the children with above-average levels had ADHD. In children with no detectable amount in their urine, 10 percent had ADHD.

“This is a well conducted study,” said Dr. Lynn Goldman of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and a former EPA administrator.

Relying on one urine sample for each child, instead of multiple samples over time, wasn’t ideal, Goldman said.

The study provides more evidence that the government should encourage farmers to switch to organic methods, said Margaret Reeves, senior scientist with the Pesticide Action Network, an advocacy group that’s been working to end the use of many pesticides.

“It’s unpardonable to allow this exposure to continue,” Reeves said.

___

On the Net:

Pediatrics: http://www.aap.org/

EPA: http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/food

Holistic moms’ group forming

Kid Row — Sun, 16 May 2010 17:10:19 +0000

Passing this along …

—————————————————–

PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: May 16, 2010

CONTACT: Nancy Massotto, Executive Director

PHONE: (973) 228-2110

HOLISTIC MOMS NETWORK CHAPTER FORMING IN DURANGO

DURANGO, CO – A new chapter of the Holistic Moms Network is forming in Durango and will hold their Chapter Kick-Off Open House at the Durango Public Library located 1900 E 3^rd Avenue in Durango on Thursday, May 20, 2010 at 6:30 p.m.

The Holistic Moms Network is a rapidly growing national non-profit organization connecting moms who are passionate about holistic health and green living. “Through monthly meetings our local chapters bring parents together in a non-judgmental environment that honors their lifestyle and parenting choices,” says the group’s Executive Director Dr. Nancy Massotto. “For new parents who choose to raise their children holistically, having the support of like-minded parents is critical,” she says. The Holistic Moms Network encourages new moms to trust their instincts, to parent from the heart, and to educate themselves about the pros and cons of all healthcare options. Through a dynamic e-mail discussion loop, members of the group share life-changing information and advice on a variety of topics including pregnancy, breastfeeding, natural childbirth, positive discipline, alternative medicine, and all aspects of green living.

The organization, which was founded in New Jersey in 2003, currently has more than 120 chapters across the United States. “A majority of today’s moms say that pregnancy inspired a shift to green living, and three quarters of Americans seek out some form of alternative medicine,” says Massotto, “so we’re seeing a surge of interest in our organization.”

Moms, dads, grandparents, partners, and other caregivers are all welcome to join. The Durango, CO Chapter meets on the third Thursday of each month at the Durango Public Library and welcomes volunteer guest speakers on a variety of holistic lifestyle topics. For more information, please visit the Holistic Moms Network website at www.holisticmoms.org or contact the organization at (877) HOL-MOMS.

–
Holistic Moms Network
www.holisticmoms.org

Holistic Moms Network images available on Flickr at http://www.flickr.com/groups/holisticmomsnetwork/

Food allergies rarer than believed

Kid Row — Thu, 13 May 2010 18:12:53 +0000

Wow, I found this study on food allergies even more surprising than the medical myths in my last post. Especially this part:

Authors of the new report — and experts on the guidelines panel — say even accepted dogma, like the idea that breast-fed babies have fewer allergies or that babies should not eat certain foods like eggs for the first year of life, have little evidence behind them.

Here’s the story:

Doubt Is Cast on Many Reports of Food Allergies

By GINA KOLATA, The New York Times, May 11, 2010

Many who think they have food allergies actually do not.

A new report, commissioned by the federal government, finds the field is rife with poorly done studies, misdiagnoses and tests that can give misleading results.

While there is no doubt that people can be allergic to certain foods, with reproducible responses ranging from a rash to a severe life-threatening reaction, the true incidence of food allergies is only about 8 percent for children and less than 5 percent for adults, said Dr. Marc Riedl, an author of the new paper and an allergist and immunologist at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Yet about 30 percent of the population believe they have food allergies. And, Dr. Riedl said, about half the patients coming to his clinic because they had been told they had a food allergy did not really have one.

Dr. Riedl does not dismiss the seriousness of some people’s responses to foods. But, he says, “That accounts for a small percentage of what people term ‘food allergies.’ ” Read more.