Category — Kids In The News

Because it’s tropical storm season I figured parents need to know as much as possible about how to handle things and keep kids calm during a storm. Here’s a great story I found online…….

Q.My family moved to South Florida recently and Fay will be our first tropical ”event.” My husband and I are a little worried about how our two kids might handle it and, with the prospect of being without electricity, it will be harder than usual to keep them distracted. Does Action Line have any ideas to share?
A.First of all, try to keep a level head. With all the rushing around to stock up on hurricane supplies, the calamitous TV newscasts and worsening weather, it’s easy to get worked up about an impending storm. But, if your children see you keeping your cool, they will, too.

Here are some tips for keeping the young ones occupied and calm before the storm:

• Don’t leave the TV on constantly: Check periodically for updates, but you don’t need to follow continuous coverage; it only heightens stress. [Read more →]

“What do you do all day?” is a question Anne Marie Davis, 34, says she gets a lot. Davis, who lives in Lewisville, Texas, isn’t a mother, nor does she telecommute. She is a stay-at-home wife, which makes her something of a pioneer in the post-feminist world.Ten years ago, she was an “overwhelmed” high school English teacher. “I didn’t have time for my husband, ” she says, “and I didn’t have a life.”
She presented the idea of staying home to her husband, a Web engineer. “I told him it was something I wanted to do, and he supported it. It was a great relief.”

Dr. Scott Haltzman, author of “The Secrets of Happily Married Women,” says stay-at-home wives constitute a growing niche. “In the past few years, many women who are well educated and trained for career tracks have decided instead to stay at home,” he says. While his research is ongoing, he estimates that more than 10 percent of the 650 women he’s interviewed who choose to stay home are childless.

Daniel Buccino, a Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine clinical social worker and psychotherapist, says stay-at-home wives are the latest “status symbols.” “It says, ‘We make enough money that we both don’t need to work outside the home,’” he says. “And especially with the recent economic pressures, a stay-at-home spouse is often an extreme and visible luxury.” [Read more →]

When Keri McCartney was 6-months pregnant, doctors discovered a large tumor growing from her unborn baby’s tailbone. Though the growth was non-cancerous, it was full of blood vessels and as big as the fetus itself, presenting a deadly threat.

In February, doctors at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston removed the fetus from McCartney’s uterus, took out the tumor and then returned the fetus. Ten weeks later, on May 3, Macie Hope McCartney was born again. Read The Full Story

A very small percentage of women will suffer from an ectopic pregnancy. An ectopic pregnancy is defined as: development of a fertilized egg elsewhere than in the uterus (as in a fallopian tube or the peritoneal cavity)

According to WebMD,

There is no way to save an ectopic pregnancy. It cannot turn into a normal pregnancy. If the egg keeps growing in the fallopian tube, it can damage or burst the tube and cause heavy bleeding that could be deadly. If you have an ectopic pregnancy, you will need quick treatment to end it before it causes dangerous problems. 

In a very rare case, doctors missed the opportunity to diagnose Meera Thangarajah with such a pregnancy. After enduring an ovarian pregnancy, the happy family welcomed a daughter into their family. The couple named their baby girl Durga, which means Goddess.
Source

From Green Eggs and Ham to To Kill a Mockingbird, kids seem to pick the classics when it’s time to read, according to a study of 78.5 million books read by more than 3 million children nationwide.

Dr. Seuss’s book was the most popular choice among first graders, Renaissance Learning found. The company, which looked at kids in 9,800 schools for the study, manages a program in which students take computerized reading comprehension quizzes. Students earn points based on the book’s word difficulty, word length, sentence length, and total number of words. Many schools even award prizes to students for their efforts in the program.

Some teachers were pleased with the popularity of To Kill a Mockingbird, which topped the list for ninth-through-12th graders. Others say the book owes much of its success to the fact that teachers make it a requirement. (The report doesn’t distinguish between books that were assigned and those students chose.

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NEW YORK, May 2 (UPI) — She may be one of the world’s most famous women, but U.S. actress Gwyneth Paltrow says she doesn’t think her two small children are aware of what her job is.Asked what her daughter Apple and son Moses think about mommy playing an action hero in “Iron Man,” Paltrow told UPI: “They have no idea what I do. I don’t think they have a clue. I’m not an action hero, I’m just a secretary.”In the blockbuster-to-be, Paltrow plays Pepper Potts, resourceful assistant to Tony Stark, aka Iron Man.Paltrow, who has made a career in grown-up movies like “Shakespeare in Love,” “Emma” and “Possession,” said “Iron Man” isn’t more on her kids’ radar because it is a superhero flick.

“They’re only 3 and 2, not really. No,” she said.

Director Jon Favreau told UPI he thinks many people will check out “Iron Man” because of its cast.

Although Paltrow and her co-star Robert Downey Jr. are not normally associated with big box-office hits, Favreau noted, “They are people everyone is very interested in.”

“Literally, we would go to the London premiere and the shoes (Paltrow) wore would be on the front page of every London paper and (on) every Internet blog,” he said.

Source

Competition for spots in acceptable state schools is so fierce in Spain, that parents are getting divorces in order to give their children an advantage. Under Spanish law, children living with a single parent get extra points on their applications.

Family courts have noticed that the numbers of official separation rose by 50 percent right before the deadline for school registration. In Spain, spouses can secure a divorce in only five weeks. After school placement is over, officials claim that many couples are back in court seeking reconciliation.

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Its really hot in Texas so we decided to give him sugar free popsicles . Can you tell his happy? I’m sticking to sugar free treats from now on because we were at Starbucks yesterday and I gave him some of my vanilla frappuccino and it turned out to be a really bad idea! It was non stop jumping he was everywhere. I’ve never seen him so excited and full of energy and I never thought he could ever get any more hyper than he already was. He was babbling, and spinning, jumping, crawling around ,picking up and touching everything he could get his hands on. It was like he drank 10 red bulls and when into fast forward. We all had a pretty good laugh, and it took hours for him to calm down, so I learned a very valuable lesson as a new mom, NEVER EVER give your toddler vanilla frappuccino or anything too sweet. The results will vary but you will have your work cut out for you trust me!

My babe is at the stage where he repeats EVERYTHING I say. It’s fun most of the time, but can be a tad harrowing when someone drops a four–letter word in front of her.

Somehow my motherly instincts have severely curbed my cursing, but every now and again, I let one slip.

Just the other night she caught me by surprise as she dropped the “F” bomb. Shocked and appalled, I didn’t know what to do. At 33–months–old, what good does scolding him for bad language do? And besides that, it wasn’t his fault that he learned it and was simply repeating it. It was just like any other word.

To find out what happened, read more.

As I stared at his with wide eyes and dropped jaw, he reached forward and grabbed his frog and again said the “F” word. Much relieved, I excitedly said, “Yes! Frog! F–R–O–G!”

Phew. A close call for sure. It was a good reminder to mind my P’s and Q’s.

Source

Salma Hayek and her fiance Francois-Henri Pinault their adorable little newborn Valentina Paloma out for a walk in Manhattan’s Central Park yesterday afternoon. The new parents even stopped for a romantic kiss while out on their stroll-awww. Also, is it just me or is Mr. Pinault looking better than ever? The whole thing is just the picture of happiness, warms my stone cold heart. Plus how amazing is Valentina all swaddled in her cashmere. Most well-dressed baby ever.

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