Working Moms, Are Your Children Eating Healthy?
Parenting is one of the greatest tasks that you will have to face in your lifetime. The task of being a mother is so demanding and consuming that for most women, it becomes their main career. However, if you are one of the many women who are trying to balance your job with being a mom then these new findings may interest you. A British study showed that a working mom can actually create an unhealthy environment for her children. According to the case studies, children who have full-time moms who stay at home are healthier than those whose mothers are working. This health discrepancy between children became most evident in the aspect of nutrition.
The fact is kids love to eat without giving any thought to nutrition. You’re not likely to see an eight-year-old choosing spinach over ice cream any day soon. When the mom is not around to provide food guidance then the child will simply devour anything he pleases—soft drinks loaded with sugar, bags of potato chips, candy bars, etc. Needless to say, unhealthy diet or food in the early ages can threaten the health of the child in future. And it’s not just the diet of the child that suffers. Lack of exercise is also rampant among kids who have working moms. They tend to use the computer and watch TV for longer periods of time. Unsurprisingly, they also spend less time walking to school.
It’s also not a surprise that working mothers have less time to spend with their children. Most of their days are dedicated to their jobs and we all know how tiresome working everyday can be. If you’re a working mom then you probably get home every day wanting nothing better than to take a few hours to rest. And the time you take to rest further subtracts from the time you spend with your child.
According to studies, almost more than half of the female population in the United States and United Kingdom join the work force shortly after giving birth. This study about working moms and kids’ nutrition is probably igniting an understandable outcry from working mothers everywhere. After all, with the current economic crisis, unemployment for men has grown more than it has for women. Because of this, many moms have no option left but to look and apply for a job in order to ensure the financial stability of their families. Unfortunately, there are many cases when the health of the family is overlooked.
So what can working moms do in order to maintain their job while maintaining the health of their kids? Organizing your time would be a great idea. No matter how tired you are when you get home, set aside an hour every day to spend time with your kids and be sure to teach them the importance of a healthy diet. If you don’t have time to prepare dinner, order take-out from a restaurant that serves healthy food. Enjoying outdoor exercises like a walk in the park or biking are also great ways to spend some quality time with your kids while ensuring exercise for everyone. If you have money to spare then hiring a maid would also be a great option. Be sure to train the maid to follow a healthy diet program when cooking for your kids. If you have other ideas how busy mommies can squeeze in healthy eating for their kids then be sure to share your thoughts!
Top 10 Popular Twins Baby Names in 2008
Choosing your baby’s name is not picnic. But choosing twins babies’ names is even more daunting.
A child’s name can be so significant in their identity, their personality, their popularity, etc.
With twins, it’s even more difficult. Do you name them similar names to celebrate the fact that they are twins or do you name them completely different names to underline their individuality? Well, the answers to these questions are completely subjective. But here is a list from the Social Security Administration on the Top Twins Baby Names for 2008. Now you can get a glimpse of what other people are doing.
| Rank | Names | Number |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Jacob, Joshua | 69 |
| 2 | Daniel, David | 59 |
| 3 | Jayden, Jordan | 56 |
| 4 | Ethan, Evan | 50 |
| 5 | Taylor, Tyler | 43 |
| 6 | Gabriella, Isabella | 42 |
| 7 | Isaac, Isaiah | 40 |
| 8 | Madison, Morgan | 38 |
| 9 | Elijah, Isaiah | 36 |
| 10 | Ella, Emma | 35 |
Are Your Children TV Addicts?
Some days I wish my daughter WOULD WATCH TV all day!!! Does that make me a bad mother???? I try to FORCE her to watch TV – but no luck??? Am I the only one who has a child who won’t watch tv??? Even when I absolutely need her to? I should be embarrassed to admit this but if you knew my daughter, you would understand. She epitomizes the energizer bunny. She just doesn’t ever stop. Most days I cant even cook her breakfast without witnessing the terror attacks on our cat with the laundry hamper (she traps the cat underneath it like a cage and tries to be “nice”), the stampede on our 13 year old pitbull (Most days she tries to see how long she can stand on the poor dog while she flips around on the swivel chair–thank god our dog is docile), the destruction of every piece of furniture and wall in the house and soooo much more!!! She is out of control.
I feel like I have to pick my battles most days. If I dont, I end up SCREAMING at her all day and my vocabulary consitsts of — NO, dont do that. DOnt do this! Stop it!!! Im warning You!!! Come here!!! NO NO NO!!! We dont eat crayons!!! NO NO NO, we dont take off our diapers!!! And so on and so on!!!
There are times I BEG her to watch TV!!! Just for 30 minutes! Doesn’t work! Go figure!
Anyway, this new study by the Seattle Children’s Hospital Research Institute, indicates that television may reduce speech in the home and, in turn, could hinder a young child’s language development.
Researchers at attached a small, business-card-size devices to 329 children from 2 months to 4 years old on random days each month during a two-year period to capture everything a child heard and said. They found that while the average adult speaks about 1,000 words an hour, that number goes down by 25 percent to 50 percent when a television set is on.
“This builds a pretty strong argument that television delays language development,” said Dr. Dimitri A. Christakis, director of the Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development at Seattle Children’s Hospital Research Institute and professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington School of Medicine. “And the effects of learning words is not just about language development but also cognitive development.”
Christakis suggests eliminating TV for children under 2 years and limiting television time to two hours a day for older kids. He also said parents should keep the television off during meals, avoid using TV as a reward, keep TV out of the bedrooms and turn off the tube when a chosen program ends.
Now, this is coming from just one mother of a two year old, but I have not noticed any delay in her speech development from watching TV. In fact, I’ve noticed she picks up new words and songs. She can even sing her ABC’s now, count to 10 and sing the Barney Song. She knows a lot of other songs also that we didn’t teach her that she picked up from the Sprout channel – The Happy Birthday Song, Twinkle Twinkle and a bunch more! And she is 22 months old. She knows a lot of colors and other things they include in the shows and when we play together, her Dad an I reinforce those things as well. We read books, sing songs, count to 10, do puzzles, and pretend play but COME ON — how much of that can you do in a day???
Obviously, if you left your child in front of the TV all day and didnt interact with him/her at all, OBVIOUSLY, that would impair social skills and cognitive development. They learn from copying others around them and speech is best learned through real human interaction.
Have you ever tried to learn to speak another language through DVD’s and books??? Not so good right??? But what if you moved to that country and actually interacted with the natives??? Language skills and fluency jumped through the roof, right?? You pick up the meanings of sooo many more words and expression simply through observing and communicating with a human being. Things like that you can’t pick up from TV, a book or a class. However, they can reinforce what you’ve learned through repetition and further practice on your own.
Children are the same way. They learn from actual real life communications with their parents and TV, books, etc. can reinforce that k nowledge. Leave them in front of the TV all day and you only get half the recipe.
I am not sure how these researchers came to the conclusion that children should not watch ANY TV at all. In my humble opinion, everything in moderation can be useful, healthy and even further your child’s development. But don’t take my word for it. I’m no certified scientist or child development researcher. 
What do you do during the day with your children?? What kind of activies do you participate in? Do you let them watch TV??
So today I told someone I hadn’t seen in a long time that we had just had twin boys in March. Instead of the obligatory “congratulations” that comes with pretending to be happy for someone who has a baby you could care less about, I got “oh really I always thought of you as a ‘girl’ mom”. Um okay, well technically speaking I am a “girl mom” cause last I checked I didn’t loose my vagina in the process of finding out I was having a son. But I have to admit this is not the first time I heard this discussion which brings me to my next point. What is up with the gender thing? I mean in case you haven’t noticed we kind of have evolved from that Father Knows Best (Really?! Cause sometimes I think Father doesn’t even know where the diapers are) generation where boys are the ONLY ones that play sports and only girls have dolls, and there is some huge difference. Hell, I think when I got to my local mall that the boys look more like girls than most of the girls do. The girls look like 12 year old boys with their anorexic stick figures, hair chopped a la Posh Spice, and sneaker/skinny jean/mascara combo. And the boys look like 12 year old boys with their aneroxic stick figures, hair chopped a la Posh Spice and sneaker/jean mascara combo. See my point? I am just as likely to have some Emo son rocking my Maybelline these days as a daughter. (In fact, my teenage daughter will probably be more likeley to STAB with with the mascara wand than use it). But seriously people, maybe back in the day (as in 1920, not 1990) girls used to stay close to their own family and boys would go off with that family but hello? I think today kids are closer to the parents that don’t look like a preview for Jerry Springer, and whoever is the least pain in the ass. Families are so disfunctional whoever can put on the most normal appearance probably “wins” the kids for the holiday. So when you find out you are having one or the other remember – each child is so much more than their gender, and personality plays more of a role in your relationship than anything. Trust me, you will be able to be annoyed …um I mean love…your daughter or son just as much as your daughter or son. So I told the lady what any self respecting mother of boys would say “Well I was never really a ‘girl mom’ until I had the operation anyway”.
