Chronicles of a “Mr. Mom”

This is very cute… and touching…

Gabriel Hurles’ sixth birthday party wasn’t a surprise, but his present sure was. The kindergartner was so engrossed in the cupcakes his mother brought to his class on Wednesday that he didn’t notice the enormous wrapped box off to the side.

“That’s one big, giant present,” a 6-year-old classmate told him. “See what you got, Gabriel.”

Gabriel peeled back the wrapping paper to find the surprise of his young life — his father, an Army mechanic back in Nevada on leave from his second tour in Iraq.

“It’s my dad!” he announced to his classmates at Sutro Elementary School in Dayton, a few miles northeast of Carson City. “Hi, Daddy.”

… continued

Or was it really 7?

Dr. Harold Henry and his colleagues had followed their patient for 10 weeks, and knew just what to expect. The woman was carrying seven babies. Multiple ultrasounds confirmed it every time: 7 heads, 7 spines and 28 limbs, all packed into a space typically only several centimeters in diameter.

“Each time, we thought we were validating that there were in fact seven babies,” said Dr. Henry, the chief of maternal and fetal medicine at Kaiser Permanente Bellflower Medical Center in southern California.

But when the time for delivery came on Monday morning, there was one wrinkle. After the seventh baby was plucked from the womb, an assistant announced that he felt another foot.

“Quit joking,” Dr. Henry shot back.

continued…

The source of my most recent humbling is a pledge made several years ago that I would never hyper-parent my children.

Hyper-parenting, you may recall, is the term coined years ago by a psychiatrist describing parents who over-schedule their children in an attempt to enrich their lives. They drag them from one activity to another, always keeping something on the schedule.

As it turns out, experts say this is bad for both the children and their parents. I frequently belittled those parents and felt quite superior in my parenting skills. I hesitate to go so far as to call myself supercilious, but I was knocking at its door.

Full story: Dad has to eat his words about parenting … again

Nancy Shute, expert writer on all things parenting for US News and World Report, has just described the current salmonella outbreak as the ’scariest’ she’s ever seen. Her fears don’t stem from the number of people sickened (491 and counting) or killed (seven so far) or the widespread geographical scope of the outbreak (43 states and Canada). Her concern is for the extremely large number of common supermarket items that are made from peanuts, peanut butter, or peanut paste.

Many items under suspicion of contamination are common products easily kept at room temperature, don’t require cooking, and are packaged to make them so easy to keep handy. Those same characteristics create an ideal living environment for the bacteria that is making so many people so sick.

Full story: Parenting Expert Says Current Salmonella Outbreak is ‘Scariest’ Ever

The rate of accidental suffocation deaths among babies increased fourfold over the past two decades, according to a new study, despite a national campaign to encourage safe infant sleeping.

Authors of the study, which appears today in the journal Pediatrics, say the nationwide increase probably is the result of more thorough investigations and changes in how deaths are classified. Nevertheless, the researchers and local medical experts said the figures reflect a continuing problem and highlight concerns about whether babies should sleep in the same beds as their parents or siblings.

“These deaths are likely preventable,” said Carrie K. Shapiro-Mendoza, an epidemiologist at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and lead author of the study. “So this problem is ongoing, and we should not divert our attention. … We need an infusion of more efforts to make them reduce further.”

Researchers have long studied Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, a term that refers to infant deaths that cannot be explained after a medical investigation. Shapiro-Mendoza’s study sought to find out if a newer, more specific category of infant death - by strangulation or suffocation - was increasing.

Full story: Don’t share bed with infant, parents told

Today more than 70 diseases are being treated using stem cells and the possibilities for these remarkable cells keep growing. I’m not alone when I tell you that in the future stem cells will be used to cure and treat diseases now fatal or disabling. Stem cell discoveries in the 21st century will be like the antibiotic boom in the last century.

The reason for the explosion in stem cell research is because these cells have the remarkable ability to develop into almost any type of cell in the body. It’s a complicated process, but after years of successful research, stem cells are now considered standard therapy in the treatment of many serious diseases such as leukemia, lymphoma, some bone marrow diseases like multiple myeloma and some immune system diseases. And the list is growing.

Full story: Banking on cord blood

I mean, how much stupider can you get as a parent? Allowing an 8 yr old to participate in a shooting contest?

Dr. Charles Bizilj stood 10 feet behind his son this weekend at a “Machine Gun Shoot” in Westfield, where the third grader aimed an Uzi at a pumpkin in the distance.

As Bizilj reached for his camera, the boy clutched the gun in his arms and squeezed the trigger. The Uzi flipped backwards and 8-year-old Christopher Bizilj fatally shot himself in the head.

Full story: Grieving father says he gave son, 8, permission to fire Uzi

Eighth grader Charlie Sobcov wants to stop birds from dying in collisions with windows, but he doesn’t want to ruin anybody’s view.

For his latest school science fair project he has invented painted, plastic decals that can be placed — discreetly — right in the middle of a window pane.

“This paint is a colour that birds can see but humans can’t,” he said Wednesday on CBC Radio’s All in a Day. “It’s like putting a big stop sign in the middle of the window.”

The colour is ultraviolet, beyond the range of colours visible to humans. That means the “stop sign” lets birds know the window is solid, but is nearly invisible to humans.

Full story: Ottawa boy’s invisible invention warns birds about deadly window

Seven-year-old Ava Childers will soon be responsible for making her own bed every day.

And she can thank the Obamas for that.

Ava’s mother, Danita, got the idea after hearing that the soon-to-be first daughters, Sasha, 7, and Malia, 10, are required to make their own beds in the morning.

“I hadn’t given her any chores … and I just mentioned it to my husband,” says Danita Childers, recalling their recent parenting discussion. “Maybe she’s old enough to do something like that.”

Like others across the country who are looking to the Obamas as parental role models, the Childers family of Chicago’s South Side are eating up stories about the Obama family’s values — from the girls’ 8 p.m. bedtime to the president-elect’s “Harry Potter” reading nights to the task of selecting a pet dog.

Full Story: Obamas set parenting guidelines

How many times have you heard, “It’s a tie!”, “Everyone wins!”, and “You’re all winners!”? We have good intentions of not wanting to hurt children’s feelings, but are we really helping them in the long run?

This is the second in a series, “C’mon Parents!”, which tackles tough issues that parents are griping about. Some of my ‘mom friends’ and I were recently talking about this issue and wondering how it will impact our kids in the future. We basically have 5 major gripes with telling all kids they are winners.

Full story