Some food eaten by children contains more than half the daily maximum limit of salt in a single serving, new research has revealed today.

While adults are recommended to eat no more than 6g of salt a day, guidelines say children aged four to six should have under 3g a day.

Those aged between one and three should have no more than 2g.

Despite this, a study conducted by Consensus Action on Salt and Health (Cash) found that some savoury foods have more than 1g of salt per serving. (…)

Cash chairman Professor Graham MacGregor, professor of cardiovascular medicine at St George’s hospital in London, warned that too much salt in children’s diets are linked to a number of health problems in later life including heart disease, stomach cancer and osteoporosis.

“Keeping children’s salt consumption below the recommended maximum limits is vital,” he said.

“Research published just last year showed that children who eat higher salt diets have higher blood pressure than children who eat less salt. It is also well established that blood pressure tracks into adulthood.

Professor MacGregor added: “Anything that lowers blood pressure in childhood is likely to translate into lower levels of blood pressure in adult life, with reduced risk of developing heart disease and stroke.”

A survey conducted by the parenting website Netmums.com released with today’s research warns that parental awareness of the amount of salt their children are eating is low. (…)

“Many parents know that their children should eat less salt than adults and we know that most parents do not add salt when they are cooking for their children,” said Cash nutritionist Jo Butten.

“But they are still confused by labelling that does not clearly state the salt content for a realistic portion and they do not expect sweet foods such as cakes, muffins, puddings and breakfast cereals to contain high levels of salt.” (…)

Source: InTheNews.co.uk, UK
http://tinyurl.com/34avap

Australian scientists have made the world-first discovery that a pregnant woman’s diet determines whether her baby grows into a fat adult or a skinny one.

It reveals that a mother’s diet during pregnancy affects the baby’s brain circuits, determining appetite and energy expenditure in their offspring.

“This suggests that mothers should think twice about overindulging, or using the excuse that they’re eating for two during pregnancy,” University of NSW professor Margaret Morris said.

Pre-natal period programs a child’s future appetite

Unlike previous studies, the groundbreaking work highlights the pre-natal period as a critical time for “programming of post-natal and adult appetite”.

It found that even before a woman falls pregnant, she is potentially “programming” a child’s future appetite.

“The major finding is the dramatic increase in body fat in offspring of overweight and obese mothers,” Professor Morris said.

Mothers fed a high-fat diet had offspring that were heavier, with more body fat and altered appetite regulators in the brain, meaning they overate, she said.

The results are supported by a study published in the British Journal of Nutrition last year. It found that mothers who eat junk food during pregnancy may produce children who crave the same foods. (…)

Pregnant women should not ‘eat for two’

She said that although nutritional needs were high during pregnancy, women should not be “eating for two”.

Professor Morris studied mothers who were already overweight before they fell pregnant. The experiment results also found their offspring were showing signs of developing diabetes at a young age.

The findings are particularly relevant for overweight mothers, highlighting the importance of maintaining a normal weight before and during pregnancy. (…)

Source: NEWS.com.au, Australia
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23113819-2,00.html

Young children in Scotland are brighter than those in the rest of the UK because their fathers read to them more often, their mothers run stricter households and their pre-school education is better, new research suggests. (…)

According to the Millennium Cohort study, which looks at children born around 2000, Scottish three-year-olds are an average of 1.5 months ahead of others in the UK. But last year’s international league table of literacy in primary school children ranked Scotland 26th, seven places below England. (…)

Primary reason for low standards

Sadly, I don’t find it at all surprising that Scottish children are more advanced at an early age, yet fall behind by the time they leave their primary schools.

Scottish parents still cherish the old values of talking and reading to their children, and tend to spend more time with them than their English counterparts, but all recent comparative studies place our ten- to 12-year-olds lower in the literacy and numeracy league tables than their English and many of their European counterparts.

The answer lies in our overcrowding of the primary curriculum, and our reluctance to ensure that they leave primary school with basic skills. In France, for example, if you don’t reach a certain standard by the end of the year, you repeat the year. Moreover, there is far greater concentration on the three Rs. Once a child leaves primary school without the basic skills, the problem compounds itself, because he or she falls further behind, and such pupils gradually become disillusioned with school.

So parents who have taken such a pride in ensuring their children get a good start by getting them into good habits when they are very young, should also insist that their children at least reach a basic level in literacy and numeracy during their primary years. More important, our political masters should set this as their overriding priority for primary schools. (…)

Source: Scotsman, United Kingdom
http://news.scotsman.com/scotland/Scots-tots-are-the-UK39s.3714074.jp

Most parents nowadays try not to use physical punishment, which they know undermines kids’ self esteem. Many experts advise using timeouts to “calm” kids down and correct bad behavior. But any child can explain to you that timeouts are still punishment. And we all know that sending a kid to a timeout it is not the best way to calm him!

What’s wrong with timeouts for disciplining kids? Nothing tragic. They’re infinitely better than hitting, and yelling. But Timeouts backfire if your goal is better-behaved children.

Here’s why.

1. Instead of reaffirming the relationship so that the child wants to please the parent, timeouts create a power struggle. Timeouts pit you and your authority against the child. It’s true that as long as the parent is bigger than the child, the parent wins this power struggle, but no one ever really wins in a parent-child power struggle. The child loses face and has plenty of time to sit around fantasizing revenge. (Did you really think he was resolving to be a better kid?)

2. Because you have to harden your heart to your child’s distress during the timeout, timeouts erode your empathy for your child. Yet your empathy for this struggling little person is the basis of your relationship with him, and is the most important factor in whether or not he behaves to begin with. So parents who use timeouts often find themselves on a cycle of escalating misbehavior.

3. Timeouts backfire with toddlers because two and three year olds love to experience their sense of power and agency in the world, and timeouts teach them they can get a big reaction from you, so they repeat it. Research shows that ignoring the bad behavior is generally more effective in eliminating the behavior than negative reinforcement. If the behavior can’t be ignored, such as hitting, it is more effective to remove the child to his room to calm him, but to stay with him. Don’t call it a time out, and don’t leave him there alone. Calmly explain that if he hits, he can’t be with other kids, and that he needs to calm down. Again, an emotional reaction from you will provoke a repeat offense.

Research shows that punishment is never as effective as positive discipline to encourage good behavior. But Timeouts are a terrific management technique – for yourself. When you find yourself losing it, take five. This keeps you from doing anything you’ll be sorry about later. It models wonderful self-management for your kids. And it ultimately makes your discipline more effective.

Parents who use timeouts as threats are often shocked to learn that there are families who never hit, never use timeouts, rarely yell at or threaten their children – and have well-behaved kids! But you shouldn’t need to use these methods of discipline, and if you’re using them now, you’ll probably be quite relieved to hear that you can wean yourself away from them.

What else can you do? Here are some basics to reduce the need for discipline:

1. A good relationship is your foundation; discipline doesn’t work without that.

2. Stay two steps ahead of your kid, so you can give him ample warning before transitions, and preemptively distract.

3. Always leave extra time to get anything done, which reduces your stress level and lets you be more patient. Rushing kids stimulates resistance from them.

4. Make sure your child gets enough sleep. It’s harder to stay patient with a cranky kid.

5. Sidestep power struggles. Give her as much control over her life as possible so she doesn’t need to rebel.

Finally, when all else fails — as it often will, because we’re only human — fall back on your sense of humor. How? Don’t take it personally. Turn things into a game. Distract your child with jokes and riddles. Sit down on the floor and laugh until you cry at the absurdity of the whole thing. The truth is, when you’re in a good mood, and have a good relationship with your child, parenting gets a lot easier. And remember, this too shall pass. (…)

Source: HealthNewsDigest.com, NY
http://tinyurl.com/3y2abo

Our skin is our largest organ, and it can be very sensitive and responsive. The warmth of a hand held, the sensation of a soft cheek against ours, arms wrapped around shoulders in embrace… they can all go a long way toward expressing our affection for someone. But touch can actually give more than a momentary tingle or a second of solace; touch can comfort and heal.

The effect of a touch depends, of course, upon the situation. A touch from someone can be relaxing or reassuring, off-putting or gentle, soothing or stimulating. Touch can also bond us together in ways that transcend words or in situations in which words may not help. Take babies, for instance. In one study it was found that fathers who gave their infants daily bedtime massages displayed more enjoyment and warmth with their child. In another, babies given a blood test were either swaddled in blankets or held, skin-to-skin, by their mothers. The babies being hugged had lower heart rates and cried 82% less than those left wrapped and lying in their cribs.

Touch’s comfort can extend to older kids, too. After receiving massage sessions, adolescents with ADHD expressed feelings of happiness, and their teachers noted a decrease in the adolescents’ fidgeting and off-task activities. Even self-massage has benefits, as proven by a study of people trying to deal with the cravings and anxiety associated with quitting smoking. When they felt the urge to smoke, test subjects were advised to rub their hands together or stroke their ear lobes. Rubbed away with the tension was the urge to light up.

Some might argue that touch and massage just distract us from our aches or anxieties. But what to make of research that links massage therapy to decreased blood pressure in adults with hypertension or to the improved immune function in women with breast cancer? Some research suggests that people who are deprived of touch early in life may have a tendency toward violent or aggressive behaviour later, and research in rats has found that rats with a strong mothering instinct (measured by licking and grooming their babies) were more likely have babies that showed a strong mothering instinct. (…)

Source: Canoe.ca, Canada
http://tinyurl.com/2c9jgp

Living together is just as good as being married, even when it comes to bringing up children, British people now believe.

Fewer than a fifth of people think there is much difference between being married or living together and more than half (53 per cent) say that weddings are more about celebration than life-long commitment.

A comprehensive study of public opinion found that only 28 per cent think married couples make better parents than unmarried pairs and there is broad support for step-families, who are widely seen to be doing a good job. More than three quarters of the public believe that a mother and a stepfather could bring up a child just as well as two biological parents.

The research also discovered that most people think divorce is a normal part of life, with two thirds saying that it can be “a positive step towards a new life”. Even when children are involved divorce is no longer seen as a disaster, with 78 per cent of the public saying the end of a marriage in itself does not harm children, although conflict between parents does.

Only 30 per cent said that divorce should be made more difficult for parents with young children, with four in ten disagreeing.

The findings, in this year’s annual survey of British Social Attitudes, helps to explain why the rate of marriage has plummeted to a 100-year low. The number of Britons choosing to get married fell to the lowest level in 111 years in 2005, when only 244,000 weddings took place.

People are more divided when it comes to lone parents. Fewer than half (42 per cent) say that single parents are as good as two parents to bring up children, and only 44 per cent say that women who live alone should have a child if they want one.

The one remaining taboo appears to be extramarital affairs. An overwhelming majority (84 per cent) said that extramarital sex was always wrong, the same proportion as 20 years ago when records first began.

The report’s authors said that the last 20 years had brought a dramatic liberalisation of attitudes towards family life.

Alison Park, co-author of the report, said: “The key finding is that people’s views about marriage and cohabitation are clearly getting more liberal, although it only goes so far once children enter the equation. (…)

Source: Times Online, UK
http://tinyurl.com/2ygyo7

More than just comfort, a mother’s touch can actually trigger genes that shape the way a child will respond to stress later in life, suggests a leader in the field of child health research.

McGill University professor Michael Meaney deals with the impact maternal care has on the mental and physical well-being of children.

He has been named the winner of the inaugural Lougheed Prize from the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research, in fetal and early childhood development.

Meaney contends there are genes in specific regions of the brain whose activity influences the way the body responds to stress, beginning early in life.

“The level of activity of those genes is actually determined by the environment in early life, by a mother’s care,” says Meaney.

The most definitive and in-depth research involves animals thus far, specifically rodents.

Meaney says female rats lick their pups as a primary form of tactile stimulation. Some rats lick their pups a lot, some far less so.

The rats who received more of their mother’s attention were calmer and less fearful, said Meaney.

“And even when they had a stress response, it was quite modest.”

The latter group was more nervous and more cautious.

As it turned out, the mothers who were “low lickers” were themselves fearful and cautious.

“Really, in some sense, they were preparing their offspring for an environment that was more stressful, so there is a reason for it,” said Meaney.

The same principle is thought to be true for humans, where the equivalent behaviour would be considered holding, snuggling or cuddling a baby.

Environments that are substantially more stressful for parents, such as poverty, create parents who themselves are more anxious and fearful; thus, so are their children.

“But, again, there’s a reason for it; in an impoverished environment, especially one that has a lot of crime and a lot of violence, you’re better off being a little nervous,” said Meaney.

In fact, in that context the research suggests boys are more likely to succeed if they exhibit behavioural inhibition, or fearfulness.

“The more fearful and anxious boys don’t get into criminal activity, are more responsive to their parents and stay the course more successfully,” said Meaney.

“So, really, if we want to create healthier children, we need to create healthier environments.” (…)

Source: Calgary Herald, Canada
http://tinyurl.com/2uj3tw

For decades, scientists and parents explored how much of children’s chances for success were determined by their nature (the genes and the body chemistry they were born with) and how much came from nurture (whether or not they were raised in a loving, nurturing, safe environment).

This has historically been one of the biggest debates in the global research community.

The nature-nurture balance affects, for instance, whether researchers should focus on finding better ways of teaching to improve learning ability, or instead devote their time to developing gene therapies designed to achieve the same end.

But, as is so often the case in advanced research, it turned out that the original question was framed incorrectly.

Asking whether nature or nurture has the greater impact on human development is like asking whether length or width has the greatest impact on the area of a rectangle.

Examining them as separate entities is meaningless.

The traditional nature vs. nurture debate is based on the idea that you are given a set of genes at conception and that combination of genes determines or influences everything from eye colour to learning ability.

It turns out, though, that you’re not nearly as limited by your original blueprints as it used to appear.

The reason for this has to do with how genes express themselves.

You might have a gene in your DNA that predisposes you to, say, breast cancer.

But that gene might never be activated, and therefore never have a chance to do any harm.

What determines whether the gene turns on or not?

Nurture and nature consort in ways that shape people’s health and happiness for their entire lives.

In fact, nature and nurture begin consorting even before prospective parents do.

The food, drink, and drugs the parents consume before conception can influence how the genes in their children turn on and off.

This is truer for men, who are constantly generating new sperm carrying updated genetic material, than for women, who are born with all the eggs they will have for their lifetime, genes included.

Thus, it is not nature and/or nurture but rather it is a nature-by-nurture interaction.

On a personal level, understanding this new relationship between nature and nurture means that parents and prospective parents can learn new and better ways to care for themselves and their children.

Things as simple as a small dietary change, regular physical contact, or even a song or a nightly story, can change the direction of a child’s entire life. (…)

Source: Canada.com, Canada
http://tinyurl.com/2w729v

Men who have lost their traditional roles as breadwinners are seeking to reassert their authority at home by becoming the “number one parent”, according to research.

The phenomenon, dubbed “Daddy Wars”, is seeing professionals who are married to equally successful women becoming far more involved in child care, it is claimed.

Dr Caroline Gatrell, author of Hard Labour: The Sociology of Parenthood, said fathers were challenging mothers’ “sphere of influence” in the home because they felt it was the one remaining area in which they could exercise authority.

Children - not money - were now the source of power struggles between the sexes, she said.

“These men want to continue with their careers but be the number one parent at home.

“They realise that jobs are not for life, relationships are often not for life, but children are for life and they want to put their investment in the right place,” she told The Daily Telegraph.

However, she added that fathers’ efforts tended not extend to helping with domestic chores such as washing clothes or packing lunchboxes.

Men saw playing with their children as more worthwhile because it “strengthened the paternal sphere of influence”, while indirect child care tasks such as sweeping the floor were “tedious and did not augment fathers’ power”, she said. (…)

In America, Daddy Wars are said to be in full flow.

The US Families and Work Institute claims 54 per cent of men in dual-earning couples report conflict with their partners, up from 34 per cent in 1977.

Source: Telegraph.co.uk, United Kingdom
http://tinyurl.com/2nrtq8

The development of fine motor skills is an important aspect of your child’s growth. One which you as a parent can help develop with a few simple and easy steps.

Fine motor skills refers to your child’s ability to use their hands. It encompasses writing, handling utensils and other tools, tying shoelaces, undoing buttons and closing zips. Children begin to develop fine motor skills from around three months of age.

In the first instance a baby’s hand and arm movements appear free of control, however as they age and the skill develops their movements show purpose and controls is established. Even at this tender age it is possible to help with the development of fine motor skills as a toddler.

By setting foundations early in life development milestones may be easily attained. Here are some helpful tips from around three months to early childhood.

Babies

- Provide babies with a range of rattles and objects to hold. They should be light and easy to clasp. Two handles are great as they allow baby to benefit from pass the object from hand to hand.

- From about six months provide the baby with Cradle gyms and activity boards. These have a variety of parts for baby to hold, push, twist, spin and a range of other things. It may take a while before baby can deliberately activate these but in the meantime they will get great pleasure from wildly waving their arms about in attempt. Not only do these activities assisting hand-eye co-ordination, a fundamental fine motor skill, but they also teach about cause and effect.

- Allow baby’s hands to be free. Free from mittens, and free to roam where ever they want, obviously with in reason though.

- Provide a range of objects like blocks, balls, dolls, in different materials and fabrics. This will encourage the child to want to touch them.

- Play clapping and finger games. There are a range of songs and games that involve the hands. Your child learns from watching you, so show them all the things your hands and fingers can do.

- Point to pictures in books and point things out for your child to look at as you travel. Get your child to point to pictures as well.

Toddlers and beyond

- Continue with similar ideas as to babies just add complexity and smaller objects may be increased. Smaller object for your child to handle will increase dexterity.

- Water play. Tipping water between bowls or cups and jugs is a wonderful way to develop fine motor skills and teaches again about cause and effect. (…)

Source: American Chronicle, CA
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/49726