Dumbing down our children is unacceptable

Some schools are allowing students who fail a test to retake it, with the lower score being tossed out. This process "dumbs" down the students and pushes students through the system who haven't earned it.

We should set high expectations and high standards and hold them to that. We should not lower the bar and give them an excuse not to succeed. This is not about giving students second chances. They need to learn to prepared the first time. After all as adults we don't get second shots at job interviews.

Here are other bad ideas seen in schools:
Only homework grades that raise a student's average will be recorded.

Students are given one opportunity to turn in homework assignments that weren't finished on time.

Students who fail to perform or turn homework in on time need to learn there are consequences for such behavior. This system creates an atmosphere of mediocrity.
Don't do this. Set the educational bar high. If you just lower expectations of students and tell them we'll let you slide and give you an excuse not to be successful, then by all means they will be unsuccessful. But if you say 'Here's the bar, you've got to come get it,' they'll find ways to come and get it."

Parents teach your kids to be independent

Don't speed over to your child's school or college whenever something goes wrong. Don't insert yourself into the most minute activities in your children's lives. Aim to empower your children to do things on their own. As your child gets older, you should be more in the background. If you do for your child for too long, they never learn to do for themselves. Show your children that you believe they are capable of handling situations themselves.

It's OK to take bring a left item to school the first time your child forgets something, but not if it becomes a habit. Children need to suffer consequences to learn from the experience. If you always end up picking up pieces, you can't expect your kid to learn the valuable lesson that they can do it themselves. Learn from failure -- failure's a great thing when you learn how to recover yourself.

Ask open-ended questions to help your children figure their problems out

Brush baby brush

Tooth decay is the most prevalent chronic childhood disease. It is five times more common than asthma in children. Dental health is just as important as bodily health. Children with cavities and toothaches have trouble in school and have little self-confidence because of the appearance of their teeth.

Limit or eliminate candy and soda from your child's diet. Teach good dental hygiene by example and by insistence. Flossing daily is a habit that is good to teach your children now. They will finally have their adult set of teeth which don't get to be replaced like baby teeth so these lessons need to be learned now before it's too late.

Virtual nanny for Wii generation

Monica Hesse of WashingtonPost.com writes the following re-posted in its entirety:

Like a knockoff Mary Poppins, she magically appears with a carpetbag, a pair of spectacles and a slight accent, the way that all child-care providers must in this era of "Supernanny" and "Nanny 911." "Relax," she intones calmly. "Nanny's here."
Nanny is the newest face of outsourced parenting. She arrives not at your doorstep but on your computer screen, as part of NannysCircle.com. The site, launched last month and originally developed for families with ADHD children (but don't we all have an attention deficit these days?), is a Web tool that turns household management into a Wii-like experience -- remote access and avatar children.

"Give Nanny 20 minutes and she'll give you peace of mind," says the beginning of the site's four-minute introduction video. (We are noting that replacing "Nanny" with "Xanax" throughout most of the intro does not at all change its effect.)

What follows is a presentation for a brilliant program that appears to allow you to never talk to your child again. For just $9.95 a month!

How This Can Be:

Have a chore, message or aspirational goal for your child to accomplish? Send him a note via Nanny's parental control panel. To receive it, your child must simply go to his room, log onto Nanny's Circle on his computer, then go to his virtual room, then log on to his virtual computer (in the virtual room), then read the note.

After finishing the task, your child checks it off on a virtual chore chart. When you log back on, you confirm the chore was completed with your own check mark, allowing your kid to amass points to decorate his or her room. (The virtual one).

Old way: "Madison, did you feed the dog like I asked?"

You see the appeal. It's tidy. Parenting, a messy series of weary battles that never seem to lead anywhere, becomes something that can be checked off and filed. No back talk. Just hit "send."

It's not a totally new concept. Sites like Cosi and Fircle have marketed themselves as online family schedulers for several years.

But those sites basically look like digital day planners -- online versions of the paper things we already used -- meant to be visited but not hung out in. Nanny's Circle is built for lounging: children's rooms on the site come equipped with televisions, journals and trunks full of games. And, of course, that computer, which makes a visitor feel like he is in not Second Life but Third Life, in an online world in an online world.

So far the site serves just 200 families. But one should never underestimate the desperation of harried parents: Cosi, which launched in 2006, has more than 600,000 users.


Lots of families struggle with managing their lives," says Nanny's Circle founder Gwen Freer, who has a master's degree in education and a bachelor's in psychology. "We see our children far less than ever before."

Solution . . . parenting by computer?

But members seem to love it. Karen Brieant, a mom in Camillus, N.Y., signed up her daughter Lauren, 13, while leaving Lauren's twin brother Nanny-free so she'd have a base line for the program's success. "The idea was, let's get more organized so you can do [chores] without us talking about it," says Brieant.

"There was a lot of nagging" pre-Nanny, Lauren says. "Now she doesn't have to do that. I think it's more fun to go on the computer anyway."

Now, when the Brieants do talk, the conversation focuses less on bickering about what did or did not get done, "and more, 'Hey, how was track? How was practice?' " says Brieant.

It seems, to Mom, anyway, that Lauren does her chores more readily. It's actually pleasant.

Beth Dawson, an interior designer in Old Saybrook, Conn., originally subscribed to Nanny's Circle just to manage her two children's schedules. McKenzie, 8, plays soccer and has a "very full" social calendar. "Charlie is more of my intellectual," says Dawson. "He's experimenting with chess."

Charlie is 6.

Dawson, too, has noticed a decrease in family discord in the few weeks they've been using Nanny's Circle.

She doesn't have to hassle them. Nanny does.

"We're streamlining the parenting process," Dawson says.

There was a time (forever?) when "mom" was synonymous with "nag," when memories of our folks were one part fuzzy and two parts "Yes, that means drying the dishes, too."

Those exhausting parts of parenting seemed to be part and parcel of the other, rewarding stuff. Compartmentalizing the job, making the computer be the bad cop? What a relief.

And yet, one wonders about the outcomes.

Call the Nanny's Circle headquarters in North Carolina and you are met with the greeting, "Welcome to Nanny, your place for family harmony and organization."

That place, apparently, requires separate laptops

How do parents of underpriviledged children afford public school?

Public school is supposed to be free. But fees for everything seems to make it anything but free. $15 to take Advanced Placement biology, $40 for band class and $11 for a Spanish workbook are normal fees. Lab fees, band fees, art fees and ill-defined "activity" fees are proliferating in cash-strapped public schools at a time when many families are watching their spending.

Schools routinely charge students for goods and services and contend that the fees are permitted by state law. There are often fees for items such as workbooks, computer supplies, paintbrushes and gym suits. In addition, schools sometimes charge for use of lockers, musical instruments, football uniforms and parking spaces. Students who owe money may be excluded from graduation or be denied a report card.
Without fees, education officials say, schools might have to cut courses, swap acrylic paints for pencil and paper or send the band onto the field in T-shirts.

The bottom line is that public schools should have everything directly related to a school's curriculum be available to all free of charge. These fees need to stop because they are directly hurting those who don't have the means to pay. Education should be free truly free.

Cold medicines for kids?

Leading pediatricians' groups want to ban them for children. A ban might only drive parents to give adult medicines to their youngsters. With a new cold season coming, pediatricians are urging the government to demand a recall of over-the-counter cough and cold medicines for children younger than 6. The effectiveness of the medicines in children was never scientifically established, critics say, and problems with the drugs send thousands of kids to the emergency room every year. The FDA this year warned against giving OTC cold medicines to children younger than 2. At that time, officials said they expected to decide by spring on recommendations for youngsters up to 11. Now the agency is seeking more advice from doctors, industry and consumers -- and officials are not giving a timetable for a decision.

U.S. families spend at least $286 million a year on such cough and cold remedies for children, according to the Nielsen Co. market research firm. In any given week the medicines are used by an estimated 10 percent of all children, with the biggest exposure among 2- to 5-year-olds, a recent Boston University report found.

But colds usually clear up on their own after a few days. Many doctors say rest and plenty of fluids are what it takes to get over a cold.

The industry says OTC medicines have been used for decades in treating kids' colds and are safe for those older than 2. The companies voluntarily stopped selling cough and cold medicines for babies and toddlers last fall.

FDA advisers said that was not enough and recommended that the drugs not be used for children younger than 6. An expert panel said children older than 2 could keep taking the medications while studies are undertaken to settle scientific questions about safety and effectiveness.

It turns out that when the FDA set standards for cough and cold medicines some 30 years ago, no separate studies were done for kids.

Cough and cold medicines send about 7,000 children to hospital emergency rooms each year with symptoms ranging from hives and drowsiness to unsteady walking. Low doses of a medicine are not likely to cause a problem; the main risk comes from unintentional overdoses.

The same ingredients usually are found in different products. For example, giving a child a cough syrup and a decongestant could inadvertently lead to an overdose.

The Consumer Healthcare Products Association, which represents the manufacturers, says preventable errors are the problem, not the safety of the ingredients in the medicines. The industry is starting an educational campaign aimed at parents, doctors and day care providers on the importance of following directions and storing medicines in places where kids cannot get at them.

Maryland saw an immediate benefit after OTC cough and cold remedies for tots were removed from store shelves last fall. Calls to poison control about problems with the medicines involving children younger than 2 dropped by 40 percent, from 99 to 60, in the first six months of this year when compared with 2007. Calls involving children 2 to 6 also dropped, but by much less.

Sugar cereals are unhealthy choices but marketed heavily to kids

Sugary cereals like Frosted Flakes are heavily marketed to children to the tune of about $229 million advertising dollars per year.

There are four cereals with kid-focused marketing that are more healthy choices: Cheerios, Kix, Honey Nut Cheerios (all General Mills), and Life (Quaker Oats) because they have relatively lower sugar and higher dietary fiber. Cheerios topped the list with only 1 gram of sugar and a healthful 3 grams of fiber per serving.

The bad news is that 23 of the top 27 cereals marketed to children are not "healthy." There is at least as much sugar in a serving of Kellogg's Honey Smacks and 10 other cereals as there is in a glazed doughnut from Dunkin’ Donuts. Two cereals, Kellogg's Honey Smacks and Post Golden Crisp, are more than 50 percent sugar (by weight) and nine are at least 40 percent sugar. Kellogg's Rice Krispies has only 4 grams of sugar per serving BUT it is higher in sodium and has zero dietary fiber. Kellogg's Frosted Mini-Wheats Bite Size is considered healthful cereal because it has 12 grams of sugar per serving, is also very low in sodium and has a hefty 6 grams of fiber.

Control childhood obesity. Provide healthy lunches at school

Schools should offers a variety of pizzas with whole wheat crust and a salad bar. We should be committed to improving students' health by offering healthy lunches. Typical school lunch fare such as high-fat, nutrient-poor cheeseburgers, nachos and hot dogs is damaging the mental and physical health of our children. Poor dietary habits are a contributing factor in dramatic increases in childhood obesity, type 2 diabetes, asthma and high cholesterol. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the number of overweight children from ages 6-11 has more than doubled in the last 20 years and tripled in those aged 12-19.

Schools and homes should respond to these statistics by adding more fruits, vegetables, salads and healthier alternatives. Research has shown that the food we serve our kids can help them facilitate learning and is tied to performance. So I think the answer is clear.....healthy eating is our responsibility as parents and educators to set our children up for success.

Familes abandon their teens in Nebraska

Give me a break! I am a parent of three teenagers who have done the normal teen things that try all parents but to abandon them? That is beyond my comprehension. These parents need to step up and be parents not abandon their responsibilities as parents. What am I venting about? Frustrated parents are dumping their teenagers at Nebraska hospitals. Nebraska's "safe haven" law, intended to allow parents to anonymously hand over an infant to a hospital without being prosecuted is being misused. Now for that facts before you think this is an epidemic. Of the 17 children relinquished since the law took effect in July, only four are younger than 10 -- and all four are among the nine siblings abandoned by a man September 24 at an Omaha hospital. On Tuesday, a 14-year-old girl from Council Bluffs, Iowa, was abandoned at Creighton University Medical Center in Omaha, Nebraska, just across the Missouri River from Council Bluffs. The case marks the first time a parent has crossed state lines to abandon a teenager in Nebraska, authorities said.

Nebraska's safe haven law needs to be changed immediately and these parents need to be parents. The purpose of these laws was to protect an infant in danger. All 50 states have safe haven laws, but only Nebraska's lacks an age limit. Nebraska's part-time Legislature is adjourned until January, but two state legislative committees will hold a joint hearing November 13 to discuss a remedy.

So why are these parents doing this unconscionable act? A woman who dropped her 15-year-old nephew at a Lincoln, Nebraska, hospital told CNN affiliate KETV last month that she and the boy's guardian could no longer handle his behavior problems. The woman, Cathy Poulin, said she tried discipline and medication, but nothing worked. The boy's mother died several years ago, and his father left him, she said. "We had to go to the next level," Poulin said. "He can be made to get help."

The Omaha man who left his nine children, ages 1 to 17, at Creighton University Medical Center was overwhelmed by the sudden death of his wife after the youngest child was born, he told KETV.

"I was with her for 17 years, and then she was gone. What was I going to do?" Gary Staton said. "We raised them together. I didn't think I could do it alone. I fell apart. I couldn't take care of them."

There are resources in the community and churches etc to assist parents like those above. They need to avail themselves of the resources in the community NOT abandon their children. The emotional scars from abandonment these children suffer will be tremendous.

Tight times make for tough teaching

Markers are dry in classrooms across the country. There is no tissue paper for wiping the dry-erase boards. Teachers have had to fund their classrooms for far too long. They spend, on average, $1,200 a year of their own money on classroom supplies. That's on top of the supply lists posted by schools and fulfilled by parents, who spend perhaps $30 to $50 at the start of the school year. And that is on top of the books, worksheets, erasers and chalk provided by the school. The slowing economy has made it harder for school systems to keep classrooms fully equipped, and it has put a pinch on teachers. This is where the super-rich such as the co-founder of Google should put their money instead of paying $35 million to take a joy ride in space.

Swing Sets Safety Issues

As many as 50,000 children end up in hospital emergency rooms annually because of injuries on home playground equipment, about 80 percent of them as the result of falls. Make sure your yard has the proper clearances. There should be at least six feet between a play set and any obstacles, such as fences, walls or trees. For swings, the recommended leeway is twice the height of the structure both in front of and behind the swings. Take into account your children's ages. A 2-year-old, for instance, shouldn't be swinging in a flexible rubber seat with no restraints or barreling down a six-foot slide. The height of the play set and the spaces between ladder rungs also should differ depending on a child's size and physical ability. On the flip side, children might outgrow a small play set too quickly, so be sure to ask whether the set is expandable or adjustable. Avoid chemicals and opt for natural wood. Remember that you need to clean it regularly and paint or stain it.
Plastic or metal structures are the safest. Grass and dirt won't protect your children from falls, and even resilient surfacing won't work unless you use enough. This is one area where you don't want to cut costs: Protective surfaces are critical for preventing devastating head injuries. A minimum depth of nine inches of loose fill, such as wood chips, engineered wood fiber or rubber mulch, is recommended for an eight-foot-tall play set; nine inches of sand or pea gravel is sufficient only for a five-foot set. These materials must be replenished over time as they settle or are kicked away. Rubber tiles or poured-in-place surfaces should extend at least six feet from the play set in all directions. Tire swings require even more protective surfacing, with a radius equal to the height of the suspending chain plus six feet in all directions. Supervision is the best defense against injury. Monitor your children and your neighbor's children

Web Resources

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission's playground safety publications are available online. The Outdoor Home Safety Handbook (Document No. 324) gives a particularly useful overview for homeowners considering a play set. The Public Playground Safety Handbook (Document No. 325) contains specific guidelines for the age-appropriateness of playground equipment. They can be viewed at http://www.cpsc.gov/CPSCPUB/PUBS/playpubs.html.

All of the commission's voluntary guidelines for public playgrounds, which are stricter and more detailed than residential guidelines, can be viewed at http://www.cpsc.gov/volstd/publicplayground/publicplayground.html.

Organ transplants 75 seconds after heart stops beating?????

When does death occur? There is a controversial new procedure in which doctors remove the hearts of severely brain-damaged newborns less than two minutes after the babies are disconnected from life support and their hearts stop beating, so the organs can be transplanted into infants who would otherwise die. I think this controversial organ-retrieval strategy is beyond acceptable legal, moral and ethical boundaries. How can you remove hearts from babies who are not brain-dead. They are not waiting long enough to make sure the infants met either of the long-accepted definitions of death -- complete, irreversible cessation of brain function or of heart and lung function. I think this even borders on being murder.

This should NOT be done. It used to be the standards for organ transplants to be done after the person was declared "brain-dead" but now "donation after cardiac death" or DCD is being promoted. DCD usually involves patients who have devastating and irreversible brain damage but are not actually brain-dead. Their families consent to removing life support, and their organs are removed minutes after the patients' hearts stop beating.

I am against DCD organ transplantation because a question can be raised as to if the person is really dead and 2 minutes isn't long enough to make that determination. Doctors at the Denver Children's Hospital had started removing hearts from babies, sometimes waiting only 75 seconds to increase the chances that the organs would be viable. The reason for the hastiness is that the organ donation rates of success go up the less time that lapses between the organ ceasing and the surgeons removing it. I think saving the little lives who get the organs is terrific but not at the expense of those giving the ultimate gift, their lives. I question whether the donor babies were truly dead when their hearts were removed. If the hearts were restarted in another child's body, this means that the cessation was not irreversible. I don't think this practice is ethically justified because the donors are not dead.

Sweets No Reward in Schools

Jolly Ranchers and Tootsie Pops are disappearing from teachers' desks ending a long tradition of rewarding classroom obedience with candy. Teachers are being discouraged from using candy or other junk food as an incentive. Food should not be used as reward or denial of food as punishment because students should not be taught it is a privilege to eat. Getting candy out of the classroom makes sense simply because it has no nutritional benefits. To teach our children to be healthy and well, we need to take candy out of the classroom. We need to teach kids that eating is to nourish our bodies and candy provides no nourishment. Besides this practice sends the children a mixed message as we preach in health class to eat fruits, vegetables, and whole grains and then we give out candy as a reward.

But now lets get real. Most parents don't seem to mind the occasional M&M or Skittle dispensed by a well-meaning teacher. But the problem is that the sweets can add up. Often neither parents nor children are able to track how much has been consumed in a day.

Among those concerned with juvenile health, a consensus is emerging that food as a classroom incentive sends bad messages. It encourages children to eat when they are not hungry, and eat poorly. It can fuel a habit of overeating as a reward. It contradicts lessons about nutrition and balance taught in school.

The bottom line is that sweets play a role in children's lives but it should be a limited role. To get classroom obedience, teachers need to offer non-food or sweet incentives such as first in line to go to lunch or extra recess.